Max HeyraudMarking the 20th anniversary of the passing of James Stinson and of the releases of the Transllusion and Shifted Phases albums, Tresor Records will release special editions from its catalogue of Drexciya and related projects, in sequence.
The rights holders, their families and Tresor have commissioned Detroit-based artist Matthew Angelo Harrison, who teamed up with graphic designer Yannick Nuss and photographer Corine Vermeulen, to produce new album art for each release. These new editions bind the unique musical world of Drexciya with Harrison’s conceptual art, continuing the legacy of Drexciyan transmissions.
James Stinson and Gerald Donald embarked on an infinite journey to inner space within, to find the beauty inside and bring it out, devising an immersive world that summoned the concept of water as one of the mightiest elements on this planet. Their music embodied what water is to our world and inhabited their underwater territory – named Drexciya.
To this day, the influence of Drexciya on electronic music and Black cultural heritage remains impressive. Their outlying missives confronted much of the diluting and pasteurisation of once- innovative music. They worked in isolation, with a sense of remoteness and distance from their Detroit peers, with output that would confuse DJs with uneven intros and abrupt switches. A presence throughout was their unconditional message of the diasporic background and mythologic futures, communicated through their world-building and story-telling that was both cryptic and meticulously advanced.
The electro sound has developed a broader appeal in recent generations, and artists working in this terrain regularly adduce Drexciya, for example, Russell E.L. Butler, whose track James Stinson On A Beach In The Mid-Atlantic was on the Tresor 30 compilation. Sherard Ingram (DJ Stingray 313) operates with the alias and balaclava given to him by Stinson.
The series starts bimonthly from early September 2022, commencing with Neptune’s Lair, first out in 1999, with the Hydro Doorways single arriving shortly after. In November 2022, Harnessed The Storm and Digital Tsunami are coming. In February 2023 the Transllusion records, both The Opening Of The Cerebral Gate and complement single Mind Over Positive And Negative Dimensional Matter, will be released. The series is completed by the long-awaited re-release of Shifted Phases – The Cosmic Memoirs Of The Late Great Rupert J. Rosinthrope – at the end of March 2023.