Herb Sundays 139: Kevin Saunderson
Legendary Detroit Techno pioneer shares a "World Of Deep" playlist including soundtrack inspirations. Plus, the "Reese Bass" sound from Burial to La Roux.
Herb Sundays 139: Kevin Saunderson (Apple, Spotify)
Art by Michael Cina.
“I put together this awesome playlist because I have such a wide variety of music that I absolutely adore, especially anything that gives off those soundtrack vibes. I've always been drawn to it, but that doesn't mean I can't groove to some soulful funk as well. Music is my love, and I always have it playing during those long journeys”
- Kevin Saunderson
Kevin Saunderson (b. 1964) is a living legend. In any other country he’d be given every tribute and lifetime achievement award imaginable. But this is America, and this is electronic music.
A member of the famed “Belleville Three” (named for the town they met in as kids), along with Juan Atkins and Derrick May, Saunderson was one the main protagonists and pioneers of early Detroit Techno. He is still producing and DJing at a prolific clip, even bringing his son Dantiez into the fold as of late, as part of his e-Dancer project, one of his many aliases.
Kevin historically assumes the role of the “normal guy” of the Techno pioneers, or the least mythologized behind Juan’s cosmic persona and May’s extraversion. As the football guy and the fraternity guy of the bunch, he’s the most knowable of the group who innovated this special sound, one Simon Reynolds (Herb 32) described for Details in 1992 as “icy and austere, the music manifested a new kind of "soul", in the sheer power of the rhythms and the crystalline poignancy of the arrangements.”
However, if you opened the Techno songbook, Kevin Saunderson may have the most diverse and in some ways, most prescient discography of all. His platinum late ‘80s hits as Inner City (with Chicago signer, Paris Grey), which also aid in demystifying his persona, are amongst the most beautiful songs of that decade. The improbable twin monsters of “Big Fun” and “Good Life,” each a masterpiece, lit the world on fire and gave Detroit chart presence globally aiding in the UK’s Acid House revolution. Then there’s “Rock To The Beat” under his Reese alias, which doubles as a goth-y Belgian New Beat staple, still comfortable in the sets of DJs like Veronica Vasicka (Herb 62).
Saunderson in interview is unassuming, and sees himself as the “tagalong” of the originators, but is proud of his global and enduring success. As a guest on Scuba’s excellent Not A Diving podcast, he shares how he honed his sound while visting the veritable institutions and witnessing their resident DJs as a young man, from going with cousin to see Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage, then Mancuso at The Loft, and then early in his career taking records to Chicago and seeing Ron Hardy at the Music Box and Frankie Knuckles at the Warehouse. Saunderson’s musical omnivorousness is also in debt to the Electrifying Mojo, the “faceless” hero voice of Detroit radio.
The miracle of Saunderson’s vision for Techno was one of songcraft. Saunderson most succesfully synthesized House and Techno, into something that is probably the most contemporary to a current dancefloor. As my friend, the late Dan Sicko, wrote in his essential Detroit book, Techno Rebels: “In addition to writing some of the most brutal Detroit techno of the late 1980s with his friend and schoolmate Santonio Echols, Saunderson also dabbled in more “above-ground” pursuits, namely pop-oriented dance music with vocals. “I was really surprised when he wanted to do ‘Triangle of Love,’” recalls Detroit DJ Art Payne. “Everyone else was making these little sample tracks, but he saw that he wanted to go beyond that and . . . make a ‘real’ record, more or less. He was always the one who had a vision and then did whatever he could to get to where he wanted to be.””
Alongside his vast catalog is also a history of statesmanship for Techno globally, one of inclusion. In a powerful interview with Billboard in 2020, Kevin Saunderson shared the often unspoken but widely true concern that dance music’s continued commercialization had failed to keep Black artists front and center.
And there’s another, very profound addition to Saunderson’s imprints of music history, perhaps more infectious than any of his is “Reese Bass” (named for another of his aliases) or the bass sound that has attributed to Saunderson (a happy accident, as he told Scuba) which has been impactful on numerous genres, from drum & bass and variants of techno and house like Speed Garage. It’s a muscular, melodic, and menacing sound, giving it a level of prominence that now sits alongside the totemic breakbeats and even the 303 or 909 signature sounds in dance music.
The best part of the Reese Bass is it's portability, meaning that producers of any stripe can trot it out as they see fit and to different, but usually thrilling effect. I heard it at the gym this morning in a random dance-pop song and then again when listening to a James Holden remix from his Prog House days, it’s the allure of an offshore storm cloud, portending something sinister. Its sexier than its geekier cousin, the ravey Hoover Bass and thus strangely timeless. One of the best Reeses in pop is Skream’s La Roux remix opening with a simple “tension string” before it becomes completely awash in The Stuff before the drums hit.
Detroit Techno, at its best, is dramatic even if stoic, the best cuts always twinkle with theatrics. The topic of much concern on music production forms, the Reese Bass, as shared in an interview with Attack Magazine, Saunderson says, came playing with the Casio CZ-5000, experimenting with oscillators until he arrived on something that he thought was interesting.
The Reese Bass is indeed a living thing metaphorically and sonically, one that undulates, or as Substacker
says in a post last year:“The rumblizm of the Reese bass is perfect for physical force of the Jungle sound systems. It must be felt. Over time it slows down into the artificial glamour of 2-Step garage. Dubstep then slams on the breaks. The vibrational instability in synthetic basslines becomes all the more prominent the slower they get. The grinding metal on metal bass of dubstep gets called “wobble”. The menace of Saunderson’s original track become at once horrific and comic like a splattercore horror movie. First as tragedy, then as farce.”
In a French documenatary from 1996, Universal Techno, Saunderson shares that sound, for us while playing back a remix for Underground Resistance. He sums it up much better than any of us could: “I like the darkness.” We are grateful.
Bonus Beats:
Ghostly’s reissue of Studio’s 2006 lost Swedish masterwork West Coast came out Friday and has garnered a Best New Reissue tag from Pitchfork, written up by
who runs the great substack. We have LPs/CDs/Cassettes/MiniDiscs on hand for those keen to explore.Herb 139 artwork above by
features new typeface Contro by Cina and Harsh Patel, from his Public Type foundry. An absolute heater.More Saunderson: As with most dance music, especially techno adjacent, you can’t often capture the energy at the song level, which is why the DJ Mix is increasingly the best source. Saunderson’s entry from 1997, X-Mix - Transmission From Deep Space Radio effects a radio show style and features the great DJ Minx on announcer duties. And it’s not a perfect mix, its a rough and ready one, but issonically one of the most satisfying mixes of all time, a tunneling slab of Serra-esque rusted metal, not dissimilar to Jeff Mills’ Live at the Liquid Room, Tokyo from just the year before, which
pegged as “sort of a mess. Liquid Room may be taxing for anyone reared on the high-definition, blemish-free mixes that flood our digital feeds today. You don’t have to make it past the first song to detect crackle and damage in the audio…”. We could use more of this imperfection these days.