Original subtitles

(film reel clicking)

(driving techno music)

♪ Techno city ♪

♪ Oh techno city ♪

♪ Walks upon planet ♪

♪ That modern man ♪

♪ We try to understand ♪

♪ What's the master plan ♪

♪ What's the master plan ♪

♪ Possible plan ♪

♪ What's the master plan ♪

(ethereal techno music)

- [DJ Electrifying Mojo] When there will be no one

to blame but yourself.

The time has come and we must take responsibility

for your own success or your own failure.

Knock down your own barriers.

Another page from the book called the mental machine.

There will always be people standing in your way.

There will always be people setting up roadblocks.

There will always be people who put barriers

in your way.

On the other hand, there will be other people

getting out of your way when they see you coming.

There will be other people removing roadblocks.

- There was a DJ on the radio named Electrifying Mojo

who was very iconic and this was when FM radio

was in it's infancy stage.

Like in the mid-70s, they started FM

and Mojo happened to get recruited by 107.5,

which was WGPR.

He must've came on around 1977

and there was only two other radio stations

on the whole FM bandwidth.

And after riot state,

the government had to make a lot more things

kind of accessible to urban or black youth

or black people period.

And so I guess this was kind of a bone that was thrown

to black community, this radio station.

So Mojo came on and it was no format

because this was FM and it was all new.

It was like people just on the radio

doing whatever they wanted.

And Mojo was on every night, weeknight,

from 10 p.m. to three a.m.,

every weeknight, Monday through Friday.

He was off on weekends,

but he definitely had a huge impact on Detroit

and actually, eventually, the whole nation,

because there was no other radio station or other DJ

in the whole country that was doing what Mojo was doing.

- [DJ Mojo] Yes, there will be other people

knocking down barriers.

Remember, the tallest barrier that will ever by around you

is the barrier that you erect.

The tallest person that will ever stand in your way

is the person that you look at in the mirror every day.

Knock down your own barriers and the others will disappear.

Another page from the book called The Mental Machine.

- One thing about American radio,

everything is so separated.

You got the rock stations, you got the urban stations.

Basically white and black stations,

country, classical, everything is separated.

And this was the first kind of DJ or radio station

that was played our record first

because he had that much power.

And anything he played, especially from a new artist,

he's the one that broke Prince here.

And it was like people thought we were from Europe

and it's like no, we from right here.

And it was like a smash success.

(upbeat keyboard-based hip hop music)

The height of the Industrial Revolution,

the height of industrial age.

I mean Detroit was a big place, man,

'cause the car industry was booming,

jobs and unions and auto unions and things were forming.

Then when industry came to a close,

of course the city kind of went down.

I think a lot of good music

and a lot of great art and creativity

comes from depressed and stressful situations

and I think the city of Detroit

is very instrumental in my development.

I don't think I could've developed the same way

in any other city.

(birds chirping)

(plane roaring)

In 1980, I was 17 years old and I met Rick Davis,

who became my partner in Cybertron.

We started a group called Cybertron around '81.

But my most progress happened before I even

before I met Rick,

which is the other half of Cybertron.

Before I ever, I mean I was still a senior in high school

and this was the time when I was sitting at home everyday.

When I got home from school, tinkering with,

I think I had a Korg MS10 synthesizer

that I talked my Grandmom

into buying me for Christmas one year.

These days after days and hours after hours

I was working on this Korg MS10.

It's probably the most in my entire life,

entire career, was the most productive period.

And I brung these demos that I was making

with this Korg MS10 to class,

'cause I was taking all music courses and everything.

And everybody in the class loved these demos

and everybody wanted to hook up with me

because of that.

And Rick was the only one that I knew

that was working with synthesizers and sequencers.

So like that's the guy I want to hook up with.

But he had a record out already called Methane Sea

and his label was called Deep Sea Records.

When we hooked up,

we made our first record made together

was called Cosmic Rain Dance

and this was around the end of 1980.

And so later on we did Alleys of Your Mind

and we released it on our own label,

which of course I got the idea from him.

And so this is what sparked the idea

to start Deep Space Records

and release this record that we made together.

It was definitely, it was very early on

and it was definitely a new thing for me

because no one ever knew

that you could release your own record, you know?

(hypnotic electronic music)

When I was in high school I took a class

called Future Studies because I was always interested

in futuristic and technology and stuff like this

so I thought this was a cool course to take.

And basically what it was was studying how the future

would impact society and life.

So the reference book in that class

was called Future Shock by Alvin Toffler.

One of the things that he talked about

how white collar jobs will probably

move more like work out of your home.

They call it the techno village

and then there was another concept that he discussed

about how cities, like Detroit and Chicago,

would grow so big that they would eventually

become one city.

And what they called

that the Detroit Chicago Metroplex or Metro Complex.

And so basically that's where the name came from.

Combining two major cities to become one city

and call it a Metroplex.

(hypnotic electronic music)

(machine humming)

Basically what you do is that you record your music

down to two track tape.

And then we would send the tape to get mastered.

And then what they do is they make a lacquer

and then they make plates from this lacquer.

They take this lacquer and literally dip it

in liquid metal and when the metal hardens,

the grooves are in the metal.

And they peel it off and make stampers out of this

and it literally what it does is it stamps the record out.

And they send it to the pressing plant and it stamps out.

So because it's hot when they stamp that

and they need the right kind of paper that doesn't' bleed,

the ink doesn't bleed,

I can remember this vividly.

He had to tell me what kind of paper,

so I had to go to the paper store and buy this paper

for these labels.

And take them to the printing.

First couple of times it wasn't the right paper

so I had to go back and find the right paper

and then we had to print on one side of the paper,

'cause this special paper was glossy on one side

and flat on the other.

So you had to make sure that it was printed

on the proper side.

So we had to go through that process,

but after a while, I became an expert

on finding the right paper and the ink.

And then I had to take them to Archer,

which is the pressing plant in Detroit.

So that's the whole process.

And after you get your physical records made,

then because Mojo was playing the record,

we getting calls from all the local record stores

that wanted to get the record in.

So we literally put the boxes of records

and drove to all the stores

and put records in the stores here in Detroit.

And it was just a Detroit record at the time

but eventually, it got popular.

And then we moved out to Cleveland

and then we got picked up by a bigger record company

that was able to put the records out nationwide.

(intense electronic music)

♪ Sitting in my car ♪

♪ Driving very far ♪

♪ Traveling oughta know ♪

♪ Far away from home ♪

♪ The music's playing loud ♪

♪ I'm (mumbles) ♪

♪ Stepping on the gas ♪

♪ Sending way too fast ♪

I mean let's face it.

This is the top of the pyramid

in terms of capitalism, commercialism, sales, profits.

You know, that's, America basically invented that almost.

So it's like by everything here being so predicated

on selling and commercialism and, you know,

it's just there's no room for true innovation

because bottom line is the bottom line

and a lot of the major companies and music companies,

it's not about the music.

It's about the bottom line.

(birds chirping)

Our second record, Cosmic Cars,

we released the record in '82.

The record, of course it was taking off here in the city

and it was this WCHB chart based on sales.

And they also played records based on sales.

So this chart, when our record, Cosmic Cars came out,

we went to number one.

On that same chart that week,

Little Red Corvette by Prince was number two

and the major labels were upset

because this little independent, little company from nowhere

is number one.

And here is an artist that's on,

I think he was on Warner Brothers,

with all of the major resources behind it.

And here's the number two.

So this is why this number is sitting up here

and Prince is number two,

because things are changing.

This is like a new sound come in.

But of course, the major companies,

they were really upset by that.

This is nothing that they wanted to see.

(moody electronic music)

♪ I'm driving in the back on black ♪

♪ Yeah black for sure night before ♪

♪ Guilty fate ♪

♪ To live more ♪

♪ (Mumbles) ♪

♪ Metro times ♪

♪ They smacked me ♪

♪ The shadows sometimes space ♪

After our first record,

anybody that bought that record also

was wondering like I want to do the same thing.

Kevin and Derek and people that were my closest friends.

When they saw the success

and girls wanted to go out with me,

they wanted the same thing.

All of my closest friends saw this stuff firsthand,

so of course, they started making music.

So now, instead of one record, Alleys of Your Mind,

now you got four or five records to choose from.

People who comin' in record store don't have a fortune.

They not gonna necessarily buy all four or five.

So that's the first thing that happened.

And of course, that didn't stay with just us three.

All of a sudden it just snowballed nationwide

so you got different DJs and producers all over the country

making records.

So eventually the competition just expanded

and that was probably one of the main things

that will reduce your sales right off.

And then not only

was it the competition affecting each other's sales,

it was affecting the major record labels sales as well.

So they thought they would develop this concept,

this format, that when the CD first came out

it wasn't like you could go,

like when you press a record,

you could just go the pressing plant

and press a record.

It was virtually impossible for independent

to make an actual CD.

So they tried to kill the independent vinyl market

with the CD.

("Clear" by Cybotron)

♪ Clear clear ♪

♪ Clear clear ♪

♪ On display ♪

♪ Clear on display ♪

♪ Clear today ♪

♪ Clear today ♪

♪ Clear your mind ♪

♪ Clear your mind ♪

♪ Clear ♪

♪ Clear ♪

(birds chirping)

- Juan had this idea when we were just 14, 15 years old,

that he was gonna one day have a record label

and call it Metroplex records.

He hadn't even made his first record yet

but he knew one day he was gonna do that.

And once he finally did,

I was more less his protege.

He was my friend, I was there for whatever he needed,

but I sort of put myself in the position of protege.

And I watched him run his record label,

go to the record pressing plant, press the records,

design the labels and get the artwork done

and mix the record, send it off to the pressing plant.

Everything, I watched the whole process.

So I realized it was feasible, it was possible

to do it as well.

But at the time when I first started trying to make music

and Juan was there as my counsel,

I got to the point where I felt like I knew enough

that I didn't want to be counseled anymore.

I didn't feel like waiting.

It's typical.

It happens for the mentor and the protege.

It just happens.

And that was really my motivation

to starting my own record label.

And with Juan, of course I wasn't just going to break away,

'cause he's my friend.

So I decided to call the label Transmat

because he had made a song called, "Night Drive."

And in the song Rick Davis is saying in the lyrics,

time, space, transmat.

And that's where it came from.

And of all my records on the Matrix inside the record,

it says MS1, MS2, MS3, MS4,

on and on to each record.

Well basically the MS stands for Metroplex Subsidiary.

It is completely a tribute to Juan that I do that.

I wouldn't imagine ever changing that.

That would be there in forever.

(ominous electronic music)

The success that Juan received so fast,

it was incredible.

The amount of records he was able to sell

and how he was able to really inspire a complete movement,

especially in the Detroit area,

I mean without a doubt.

After Juan had so much of a response and immediate success

and appreciation,

and no one knew his face.

They knew his music but not his face.

There was no media blitz.

There was no television interviews.

There was no music magazines that were celebrating Juan.

It was a few small reviews

but the music was just a magnanimous success

in the community.

And it just inspired and fueled this thing in me

and Kevin and everybody else.

Knowing how to do it, knowing the business,

understanding the marketing and the strategizing

and the developing of it, we didn't get it.

We didn't understand that part of it.

We just thought you make a great record and you put it out.

Now the romantic part of that

is that it was the truth.

It was the absolute truth of the matter back then.

It was always made to seem so difficult

to put your own music out and you need a record label.

You need to go to Warner Brothers,

or you need to go to Geffen Records or Sire Records

back at the time.

And that was our original ambitions.

But when record companies finally did call us,

they weren't calling us to put our records out.

They were calling us to make other people's records better

so they could put 'em out.

We felt left out.

We felt resentment.

We felt rejected

and I think that fueled this sort of eternal fire in us

that made us feel that we had more to prove to ourselves

than to anybody else.

(edgy electronic music)

("Strings of Life" by Derrick May)

Today's technology makes it very simple for anybody

to make music.

I'm not trying to take anything away

from any kind of artist period.

But it is of a totally different nature now

than it was.

We took time to program your sounds

and to really develop your own algorithms

and to customize the keyboard to the point

where it was a signature of you.

Almost like you were signing on a piece of paper.

This was your sound.

This was your personality.

This was your identity.

I was always a DJ as a kid but I wasn't playing records.

When I first made my record, I did (mumbles).

Clubs were not paying for international DJs.

It was an ideology that just did not exist.

So the dedication to making the music was easy.

You just stayed home and you just worked.

I'll never forget the first time somebody asked me

to play records.

I was in London and I got a call from my manager

who was in Birmingham, England.

And he called me and said,

"Derrick, there's a club down in London called Heaven

"and they want to know would you like to play some records?"

I said, "What?

"Play records?"

I had never ever been a guest DJ in a nightclub before.

I didn't even have a record bag.

There was no record bags.

There was no record bags.

You know?

It was a few record boxes but there was no record bags

and there was none of that.

It didn't exist.

So the first days were incredible

and they were also distracting,

because here you were able to make money

for doing something that you truly loved

as well as making music.

But you made it ever easier than making music.

So it just became easy money in a sense.

Fun and easy money,

which is probably one of the biggest problems

with the DJ world now.

Most of these guys are not DJs anyway.

That's another story.

(siren blaring)

I don't travel in America.

I maybe play in America five times a year.

I play in Europe maybe 300 times a year.

That means flying back and forth from Detroit.

Staying over extra days in Europe.

Missing time away from home.

Constantly in hotels.

Dealing with different clubs, different promoters.

Meeting people every single week.

It's a lot of work.

And you need to love what you do at this point

or you can't do it.

(birds chirping)

I didn't ever stop wanting to sell records

and stop wanting to look for new talent.

But I shut the record company down in a sense

because I was disgusted with what was happening

with the vinyl movement.

I was disgusted where record stores

were disappearing left and right.

And I felt that people were moving too fast away

from a generation of people that enjoy buying records,

enjoyed listening to music,

just to accommodate a group of people

that nobody knew would buy music yet.

I mean, I don't blame Mr. Napster.

I don't blame any of those people

that tried to introduce a new format to the music industry.

I blame the music industry for not paying attention

and laughing,

because that, once again, we're not even part

of a major record label.

We're not even working with major record companies.

We're not even involved with them.

But yet what they did

and the way they handled that situation

affected everybody.

It had a resounding loud big bang effect

on everyone in the music industry.

To the point where record stores just collapsed.

The music industry just collapsed on top of itself.

And it really was disgusting to watch it happen.

A lot of talented people just fell out of the business.

Lost their lives.

Musicians left and right lost opportunities.

So it was, to watch one level of it fall down

and another level of it slowly rise

definitely gave me the attitude

where I didn't want to be a part of it for a while.

So it was about three to four years

that I decided to bring the label back.

And just sort of slowly developed things.

(experimental electronic music)

(bricks falling)

(machine running)

(machine beeping)

(house falling)

(wood crunching)

And why would a city like Detroit

fuel such a futuristic vision of what music should be?

Or what it would be?

What caused that and how are we somehow be able

to interact with the world with the music?

That is why we have this thing that we call Detroit techno,

which has cultivated and recultivated and recultivated

to something now that yeah, it's outta control.

It's all over the world.

It's mutated into good and bad and ugly.

But it comes from here

and the origins of it are still here

and the people that made it are still here

and thriving and doing well.

Detroit is unique for this.

It's like a creative pool that was left untouched.

It's this sort of, it's like a rainforest

of electronic music.

Like all the stars came together, like click!

And here we all are together.

Now will this ever happen again?

I can't tell you (laughs).

Say la vie, huh?

(wipers wiping)

- The surroundings definitely impact your being,

your personality.

At least in my music my feelings going towards

like growing up in the hood

and all of Detroit became pretty much the hood.

This dead building that's there

and nothing's gonna happen to it.

It's just gonna end up getting worse and worse and worse.

And unless you can do something about it

then you can.

And like Derrick and Stace and Kevin and Kenny and I

have all had these conversations over the years

about how Detroit can be better.

And we have these grand ideas of what could be done,

but it comes down to that we took those ideas

of what we could do with the future

and earn money in a way that we know how to,

which is by DJing, traveling, running our labels and stuff.

And try to beautify Detroit in our ways

of how people perceive Detroit from the outside (laughs).

And if my children are going to be in Detroit as adults,

then I'd like for them to have a place

that feel like a metropolis.

It's like Chicago has been for all my life (laughs).

Or New York and Manhattan.

Detroit has that possibility

but then we had 30 years off (laughs).

And now we've got it coming back.

(truck beeping)

(children yelling)

(futuristic electronic music)

(children laughing)

By the negative thing that's happened by the riots,

I think something really amazing and positive

came from it which is that Detroit

became one of the really first black cities,

and it taught that empowerment that you feel

that you can do your business and be strong during it.

You feel like there's something that's backing you up

in relation to it.

Whether it's the legacy of Motown

or whether it's just this kind of you know

that everybody around you is grinding

and they're trying to do things that are,

you know, the good people are trying to do good things.

The bad people you trying to stay out of the way.

(children singing)

(people chatting)

- [Man] Okay, (mumbles).

(synthesizer playing)

(dramatic orchestral music)

I started Planet E

because I needed my own creative independence.

When I was doing music for Transmat

and learning under Derrick,

I think I learned a lot about independence from him.

And that's how I started Planet E.

I just so happened to be watching a documentary

on the moon landing.

As I'm watching the movie,

a radio discussion between the astronauts

and ground control.

It's like, okay, communication.

Planet Earth seemed like it was obvious to me

but I like to be a little vague about things.

So I just used E for Earth

and I think that it worked out

to my benefit as well,

because it let people's imaginations go wild.

So I would get people asking me what E meant.

If E meant a drug of if you meant Earth

or if you meant something else.

And my answer was always it means

whatever you want it to mean.

(hypnotic electronic music)

When I'm in the studio on my own

I can listen to a loop of the same thing

for eight hours, no problem.

And just makin' little tweaks and doing little things there

to try to delve into what I'm doing and feeling.

As the loop is playing I'm hearing different things happen.

It can be a form of meditation in some ways.

It just depends on if you're listening to it clinically,

or if you're listening to it spiritually.

It is a trance, it's a meditation

that's happening when I can get spiritually into it.

But people aren't gonna appreciate

standing in front of me for eight hours

playing the same loop (laughs).

So I have to be a little more active about what I'm playing

and how I'm playing it to the people

so they can at least appreciate what I do.

(rhythmic repetitive electronic music)

(whistling)

Of course now after all these years

there's so many elements that

are involved in running a label

that goes far beyond what have ever

had the capacity of doing,

but you really need a big corporation

in order to do what Warner and Def Jam

and all these labels have done over the years.

In Detroit, we've pretty much mastered the boutique label

and everyone here in Detroit runs their own label.

And I was fortunate to walk into the business

at a time when Detroit records were selling quite well

and there were some good distributors.

And we could sell a ton of records

through one or two avenues.

Of course when the sales started decreasing,

with vinyl especially

and the file sharing thing and whatever,

it became more difficult to navigate that path.

And with what we've been able to do online,

it's been great because you open people's eyes to it

and they can get to us a lot easier.

But unfortunately the numbers aren't nearly the same

for the kind of things that we do

as when you have the record in a store

and somebody gets it and they go,

okay, this is something that's special.

I see that it's marble color vinyl.

You know, I see that these guys took time

to pay attention to it and the music's quite interesting.

But then that you're fighting

against so many other products out there

that are being made so fast

that you can download so easily.

In many cases you can download for free.

Haven't been able to find an optimal advantage

of selling over the internet

versus what we had been doing with distributors.

But when you're an artist run label,

you have that commodity that you can go out on the road.

You can sell what you do in another way.

(ethereal electronic music)

(ethereal electronic music)

The U.S. is a rock'n'roll society.

In the U.S. we had disco (mumbles) movement

that was around the time of, peak of disco music.

And there was never that in Europe.

I believe that it was easier for Europeans

to hear house music and techno music

and say okay, I get it,

in comparison to U.S. people.

When it was happening, they were like, oh yeah,

this is just disco music.

You know, disco music is ah, ah, sucks.

Give me rock and roll all day long,

you know, that kind of thing.

So it's made it difficult to have a great representation

of electronic music in the United States.

(people speaking in French)

And then as time went on and where the DJ came in

was the DJ played the music

that was already prerecorded for the people.

And then it became improvising on top

so whether it would be an MC

that would talk over the top of the record

or someone scratching on the record.

So then it became more of an ownership of the style

by the DJ.

And now the way DJing is is that many a times,

people are making new things live as a DJ

in the same way as someone would do in the studio.

- [Man] Here?

- I think a lot of people don't quite understand

because it's like oh well,

you're playing somebody else's music as a DJ

but when I remix a track,

I didn't write the track,

so I'm actually playing their music.

I'm just creating something on top.

And now DJing has probably become more of a live remix.

So maybe that's what I should go by instead of DJ

is just remixer, you know?

'Cause I do that onstage as well as I do that in the studio.

(upbeat electronic dance music)

♪ Hey you ♪

♪ What's your plan for tonight ♪

(driving electronic dance music)

(hypnotic electronic music)

(mysterious electronic music)

- The social history and the atmosphere in Detroit

had always been very different, very special

from other cities.

It was really unique that young kids

would be able to have their own type of party,

to socialize amongst themselves.

And so for me, I started going out regularly I suppose

by maybe the age of 11 or 12.

And my older brothers and sisters did the same

but at different type of levels of parties.

And my parents also did the same.

We were listening to any and everything.

It was strange.

At certain songs that would make everybody excited.

I don't know why that was.

And some things were often influenced by movies.

The American Gigalo was a really influential film.

And very much connected to Detroit techno

that people wanna mention.

But that was a very influential film

and the Eyes of Laura Mars,

that was also an influential film.

So we would listen to the soundtracks of those films

and researched to find out who made it.

Sometimes it was Giorgio Moroder,

sometimes it was some other producer

and we would play this music at these parties.

And it was kind of shaping a certain type of mentality.

A certain type of, we felt that we were kind of moving

out of Detroit and out of the soul,

the very typical soul music influence

and moving up and out into other realms of music.

And this was also reinforced by Mojo

was also doing the same on the radio.

So we thought that what we were doing

was really cutting edge.

♪ What is the DJ if he can't scratch ♪

♪ Scratch scratch ♪

(lively upbeat electronic music)

♪ What is ♪

♪ What is ♪

♪ What is ♪

♪ What is ♪

♪ What is ♪

♪ What is ♪

♪ What is a DJ if he can't scratch ♪

♪ I can do it all baby just like that ♪

(lively upbeat electronic music)

♪ Clap your hands ♪

Well for me to start running an independent label,

it started a few years

before forming the Underground Resistance.

Tony Schrock and me, we got together to form a label

called Full Effect Records

and that experience was bad.

So that led me to rethink the idea

of purpose of having a label

and I met Mike and got to forming Underground Resistance.

So it didn't take very long to get started.

Many people are connected to the music industries.

And all these engineers were still in the city.

We could master the record and press the record

in our own city.

That was something that was quite special

and we thought we should take advantage of, you know?

But once we pressed the record and we get the copies here,

then what do we do with it?

How do we get this record to the record shop in Germany?

Or how do we get this record shopped in Japan?

How do we, we didn't know anything about distribution.

So we, Mike and I took a few trips down

to speak to Juan and then we went to Derrick's,

Derrick May's place.

And asked them how do you do that?

So they told us as much as they could,

so we said okay, where do we find distributors from?

So what I did, I went to the library

and found a directory of all the distributors

in the country of music,

which was about at the time,

about 500 distributors of music.

And wrote a letter to 500 distributors

and hoped that we'd get a response

from the ones that were interested in the music

that we were making.

About 20 replied back.

(soothing electronic music)

Then I decided to leave Underground Resistance

because of an offer to move to New York

to be a resident at a big club called the Limelight.

This was around 1992.

That was when I started Axis Records.

And then I realized that it wasn't one label

that I really wanted to create.

But it was actually various labels

and be more active and not feel so confined

to one particular sound if I had multiple labels

to work on consistently.

And so I ended up turning to be four labels.

So the first label which was called Axis,

the first point, was to be music that

would be designed for you to think about.

For you to listen and to you to absorb mentally.

The second label was to be designed almost solely

for the physical aspect of it.

So really dance music and that was called Purpose Maker.

And the third label was dedicated to conceptual work

and that label was called Tomorrow.

Everything on this label would be pertaining to the future

and future works and future ideas.

And then the fourth label I left open.

(dramatic electronic music)

I'm gonna try to interpret what I see

on this vinyl record here.

And so looks like the first song begins

with obviously more than one instrument.

The band, but not the full band,

meaning that that's probably some type of introduction part.

But then about two and a half minutes in,

I see one groove,

which means that it's probably a solo instrument

that's playing without the backing of the orchestra.

Then it goes to a break.

It looks like a percussion break or somethin'.

And then it breaks down to a sole instrument,

which leads to another chorus part,

short chorus part and then another single instrument

to another chorus part, a little bit longer.

So it's important to know how to read the grooves

on vinyls when there's no map.

You have to know when things are gonna happen.

That's the important thing when you're a DJ

because you know that you've got about a minute

before something's gonna happen

and you can get another song in.

(lively jazz music)

♪ Who's nip are you ♪

♪ If you are not a reality ♪

♪ Whose nip are you ♪

♪ If you are not a nip ♪

♪ Whose reality are you ♪

♪ If you are not a reality ♪

♪ Whose nip are you ♪

Throughout that whole dark time in the record industry

I decided that if my company,

if Axis is going to survive,

I need to find another reason to make music.

I need to find other ways to release vinyl records

or CDs or whatever.

I needed to change the parameters

in which the label functions.

And so before that collapse really happened,

I was of course very conscious of what people were saying

and what they were saying about digital file sharing.

How great it was.

You could have 10,000 tracks all in one file

and you don't need to buy anything anymore.

So I had begun to think about what I should do.

And one thing that I did was

I had figured that we had arrived at a point

where there were a certain amount of collectors.

So guys, people that loved electronic music

but loved it much more than the average person.

The ones that would not buy one copy,

but would buy two

because they didn't want to open the second copy.

Or people that really looked at and read the information

on the album covers and looked at the label

for any clue of any message or anything.

So I decided that the label should focus more

on those type of people.

So some releases we decided not to press thousands of units,

but only hundreds.

In some cases, only a box of 25,

and we would tell the distributor you can only have two.

And you choose the two best people

that come into your shop and you sell it to them.

And so we had different variations

of the quantities of music that we were doing.

Which was making the music even more special

and it was the bottom line at the end of the year

that we calculated and we end up making actually more money

doing it that way.

And we were changing the parameters

of advertising a release

but advertising the concept of why the release exists

in the first place.

So the subject is about Orion stars.

That's a story and that project consisted of a vinyl,

it consists of a book,

it consists of other things.

But what you're buying is not a 12 inch.

What you're buying is actually the concept of Orion.

And so we were changing the narrative

of what an independent label should do.

(ominous music)

One project called The Sleeper Wakes,

and the Sleeper Wakes is a science fiction story

that I wrote and each chapter of the story,

we play out in an album form.

In one was a project about a story called Jungle Planet.

And so in the story there is a flat land area

which was kind of populated by animals,

but these are not your typical animals.

These were things that were of a shape of a black cube.

This idea of rethinking what animals are

was how I used this to create this cube.

And the cube is what we used as the format,

install the music in,

that the person buying it would actually have.

So it's not just the music,

but you would then have the pet from the story.

(frantic electronic music)

Another chapter is called Emerging Crystal Universe

that will be the symbol of the changing of time.

If you buy this album, if you buy this unit, this record,

and view this crystal that's embedded inside of it,

you will see the change of the universe.

(futuristic electronic music)

I'm not convinced that I'm only supposed

to do one type of thing,

or a few types of things.

I'm more convinced that I should be able

to do whatever I want at any time, for any reason.

And I don't need to tell you or explain.

That's the freedom I think I have,

not being connected to a company or anyone

that's gonna tell me,

that's the beauty of being an independent.

And being an independent artist

and so using all the freedom that you have

to be able to do anything you want.

And so I think I'm just practicing

with the freedom that I've been given

by not signing my signature and name on someone's contract.

And I can walk out of here and create 18 labels tomorrow

and okay (laughs),

it's completely valid and if I can produce the music

for 18 labels, done.

And the result of that, I don't know.

I don't care 'cause next week I'm gonna make 24 labels.

And then I'm gonna quit the week after

and go play, be a professional tennis player.

(ethereal futuristic music)