Tag Archive: stacey pullen

LWE Podcast 45: Stacey Pullen retires this week

LWE’s 45th podcast arrived care of Stacey Pullen, Detroit’s ambassador to the world. Make sure to add his mix to your collection before it’s archived this Friday, April 29th.

LWE Podcast 45: Stacey Pullen

LWE spoke to Stacey Pullen about that album which lead to a bleak period of disillusionment, the early years at Transmat and feeling reinvigorated again with a basket-full of new music to unleash on the world. He was also kind enough to put together an exclusive mix for LWE of tracks he has been feeling lately.

BBH: Various Artists, Detroit: Beyond the Third Wave

There have been plenty of Detroit techno compilations over the years; True People would probably rate as my favorite for its sheer comprehensiveness and myriad pieces of vinyl, though its spot at number one has often been contested in my mind by this compilation on Astralwerks which came out the same year in 1996. Packed with ten tracks of exclusive material from the creme of Detroit’s third wave of techno producers, it showcases their many different sides, from deep and hypnotic through to raw, jacking soul and clinical, electro funk. Though many of the producers on the album were familiar to me already, there were others like Ectomorph, Will Web, and Mode Selector I was discovering for the first time. Throughout it all can be heard strains from their mentors mixed in with the new directions in which these younger guns were taking the music.

BBH: Silent Phase, The Theory of Silent Phase

Coming through at the end of the second wave of Detroit producers, Stacey Pullen fell under the direct tutelage of Derrick May, who not only mentored the young producer in capturing the essence of his sound but also gave him a taste of life as a traveling DJ. In the early 90’s, Pullen decamped with May to Amsterdam and ended up staying a year with the Detroit maverick, playing their native techno to hordes of appreciative Europeans. May had previously signed Pullen’s “Ritual Beating System” under the Bango alias to his Transmat offshoot, Fragile. Buoyed by the critical acclaim it met, he was offered a deal by R&S records while in Belgium to record a full length album which would become The Theory of Silent Phase under the Silent Phase sobriquet. With publishing duties falling between R&S and Transmat, Pullen claims that he never got the album to sound quite as he wanted it to due to analogue copies being shuttled back and forth across the globe for mastering, though there is no denying that contained within is the music of a truly inspired and gifted musician.