Terrence Dixon - Reporting From Detroit

  • A manifesto for the future of Detroit minimalism.
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  • The video essay that accompanies last year's From The Far Future Part 3 LP is made from jerky cellphone footage of Terrence Dixon driving his Saab through Detroit. Halfway through, the film stops as Dixon pulls out from an overpass into a wall of light. In the next scene, we're brought back to earth. Anxious bass notes pulse while Dixon tells us, "I'm worried about kids growing up out here and having no hope, you know what I mean?" But just as quickly, Dixon catapults us back to the ether, as the film pipes in the melody of "Remarkable Wanderer," one of the most beautiful songs on the album. This tension of duelling emotions and tones is the signature of Dixon's music. His latest LP, Reporting From Detroit, renders this dualism in technicolor: it's at once dense and spacious, using minimalism as a vehicle for a wealth of new ideas. We hear this from the jump. "7 Mile At Night" starts the record nervously with a tightly wound arpeggio and vocal refrain clogging up the stereo field. Slowly the song starts to unravel, the melody decaying as the music drops out and an almost arrhythmic call-and-response emerges with Dixon asking, "Where?" and responding, "In Detroit." There's a similar trick on "Beautiful Jerusalem," where the synth loop riffs on this claustrophobic feel before Dixon opens the track by bringing in some galactic chord patterns. These tracks show Dixon at his most headsy, tapping into the psychedelic mode of Detroit techno he's been perfecting for the past two decades. And even when Dixon is in straight-up club mode, things are never quite as they appear. "Music Box," a homage to the famed Detroit club and juice bar, has heavier kick drums than we're used to from Dixon. But listen carefully and you'll notice how the melody is one of the most delicate and trippy on the record, with twinkling synths moving at a different speed over the percussion. The ambient interludes on Reporting From Detroit hold their weight, too. "8th Chance" is structured around a simple melodic progression that slowly chimes in synth notes that sound like blowing on the rim of bottles. "Star Garden" is a simple loop where the changes are so subtle it can sometimes feel like the musical equivalent of our own bodies' atoms gradually replacing themselves. I kept returning to Dixon's idea of minimalism when listening to this record. None of the songs here—hardly any of Dixon's songs on any record, for that matter—are much more than an arpeggiated loop, a few drums and some synth chords beamed in from another dimension. It's a purposeful approach. "To be honest, my style of minimalism comes from having less gear to work with," he told Aaron Coultate in 2017. "I'm not trying to make minimal music—it just comes out that way. I call my music Detroit techno. Living in a city with a really low population, no businesses, one house on the entire block, no jobs... everything about Detroit is minimal." Under these terms, Reporting From Detroit feels like a manifesto, or at least a renewed charge. Dixon's minimalism is distilled into its purest form to highlight how the focus on just a few key elements can be as political as it is aesthetic.
  • Tracklist
      01. On 7 Mile All Night 02. Beautiful Jerusalem 03. Resolution 04. 8th Chance 05. Dexter And Joy At Night 06. Reporting From Detroit 07. Music Box 08. Star Garden
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