Derrick May
- Derrick May ( Transmat | Detroit )
- Rosenberg ( Extended Birthday Set )
- Flash Bar: Synesthesia
- Basscamp
- Throe
Doors 0:00AM
Flash Nightclub
Forefather of electronic dance music, Derrick May returns to Flash. Few people have influenced dance music as much as the Detroit-native and member of the original Belleville Three. We owe a great debt to Derrick May for his ingenuity and pioneering spirit, and are pleased to host him for an extended set.
Derrick May |
Derrick May (born June 4, 1963), also known as Mayday and Rhythim is Rhythim, is an electronic musician from Belleville, Michigan, United States. He was an only child[1] born in Detroit and began to explore electronic music early in his life. Along with his Belleville, Michigan high school friends Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson, commonly known as the Belleville Three, May is credited with developing the futuristic variation on house music that would be dubbed "techno" by Atkins.
Of the Belleville Three, the cadre of early Detroit producers who tested the limits of spirit within electronic dance music and changed the integrity of the form forever, Derrick May's reputation as an originator remained intact despite more than a decade of recording inactivity. While Juan Atkins is rightly looked at as the godfather of techno, with a recording career beginning in the electro scene of the early '80s and encompassing some of the most inspired tracks in the history of dance music; and Kevin Saunderson is the Detroit producer with the biggest mainstream success through his work with vocalist Paris Grey as Inner City, May's position as an auteur eroded slightly during the 1990s due to a largely inexplicable lack of activity.
As far as influence counts as part of the equation, however, May recorded the techno tracks which top dance producers point to as the most original and influential. The classic Derrick May sound is a clever balance between streamlined percussion-heavy cascades of sound with string samples and a warmth gained from time spent in Chicago, enraptured by the grooves of essential DJs like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles. May's Transmat Records label was the home of his best material, cuts like "Nude Photo," "Strings of Life," "Kaos" and "It Is What It Is," most produced from 1987 to 1989 as Rhythim Is Rhythim. And though his release schedule all but halted during the 1990s, he continued DJing around the world and honed Transmat into one of the most respected techno labels in the world.