Underground Resistance "Expect No Mercy"
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by Mike Banks to write the liner notes for the upcoming UR compilation "Expect No Mercy." I was flattered by the request and got to work. I thought I'd share my first draft with you here on Blackout. The CD will be out before Christmas, check www.submerge.com
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I was honored that I was asked to write the liner notes for "Expect No Mercy." As many of you know, I got my start as a press release writer for UR in 1990, then as the first UR "assault DJ" in '92. Those were some huge shoes to fill, coming in after Jeff Mills' departure, a real trial by fire. Even today, I am grateful to Mike Banks for believing in me during those early days.
The tracks selected here represent the beginning of a movement, the much-heralded "Second Generation." Detroit Techno was already an entrenched, globally-popular artform when Mike Banks and Jeff Mills came on the scene, monopolized at the time by the standard bearers; Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson.
Like the real Big Three, the automakers that dominated and controlled our Detroit landscape, the innovators also began to face upstart competition. Not from Europe, as would happen later, but from within their own backyard.
Underground Resistance was an unlikely alliance between two musical outsiders. DJ Jeff Mills, a.k.a. "The Wizard," a high school friend of mine who was already a legend in Detroit due to his hip-hop influenced WJLB mix show, and studio musician Mike Banks, who had played guitar in local '80s black rock band The Mechanixx. The band used to play at an East Side rock club called Traxx, and I went to high school with their lead singer, Gil Clark, who is the cousin of DJ Mike Clark, a.k.a. Agent X. I remember seeing the band twice as a kid, even before I knew Banks personally.
After several false starts dealing with local labels individually, Banks and Mills somehow decided to join forces, combining ideas, studio gear and resources. Militant rap group Public Enemy was big in those days, as was the Belgian body music outfit Front 242, on the industrial side. Taking elements from both, yet adding their own distinct personalities, Underground Resistance was born.
Despite all that, it was Juan Atkins who unwittingly gave UR their official start.
UR's "Sonic" EP had been completed, and a demo was given to Juan for his label Metroplex. The tape sat on the back burner for months, as Atkins was busy with other things. Tired of waiting, Mills and Banks mastered the record and put it out themselves. Thus, UR, the label, was kick-started.
In those days, the Europeans were always on the lookout for the new, post-Belleville Three Detroit talent, and UR emerged at the right time, with the right image, and the right music. They were a success on their own terms, almost from the start.
From there, UR went from strength to strength. Their concept record as X-101 was the very first release on Berlin's legendary Tresor label. Their "Riot" EP was the very first locally-produced double-pack ever. And who could forget their landmark anthem "The Punisher"? The World Power Alliance series (three separate tracks each produced by Mills, Banks, and Rob Hood, a.k.a. The Vision), which birthed the acid classic "Seawolf," was also on deck.
What I always liked about a lot of UR's tracks were that they were hard and dark. A lot of the electronic music coming out of Detroit at the time was slow, airy, borderline house. In my younger days, I liked my shit evil.
Certain people were getting a lot of props in the UK for putting out what amounted to the techno equivalent of easy-listening music. UR made their melodic, jazz-influenced tracks, too (made more viable by the fact that Mike Banks was a real player, not just a sequencer), but they always worked both sides, and I appreciated that. Mills with the 4/4 in mind, and Banks with the live piano solos and lush orchestration.
Mills' departure from UR in 1992 pushed the music to even darker places. I was around Banks a lot in those days rehearsing for the live shows, and it was a place you didn't necessarily want to be. Although "The Punisher" was strictly a Mills creation, the pure, analog evil of "Deathstar" and the breakbeat-driven, EPMD-sampling "Message to the Majors" were 100% Banks, his musical responses to Mills' leaving and the Malice Green police brutality case in Detroit, respectively.
Looking at the tracklisting for this CD, I can only hope that it's the first volume of a series. If you are a true UR fan, as I am, you know there's more to the story.
For myself, I'm the luckiest of all. You are listening to this great music. But I, in small part, lived it.
--Alan Oldham
