Aaron Carl

Like many of his Detroit contemporaries -- Kenny "Moodymann" Dixon, Jr., Anthony "Shake" Shakir, and Mad Mike Banks, to name three -- Aaron-Carl Ragland had a chameleonic knack for switching effectively between lush house, brute-force techno, and bumping electro-funk. His versatile touch, combined with lyrics that could be sexually frank as well as heartrending, was nothing if not singular. From his 1996 debut through his final releases in 2010, he issued material on revered Detroit labels like Soul City, Metroplex, and the short-lived Moods & Grooves sublabel Afrosyntrix, but...