Techno Tales

It’s November 1994, and you’re a police detective working in a suburban area of Detroit. In the early hours of one morning, you’re called to a house where a shooting has occurred, the house occupant’s girlfriend, and the neighbours, having reported it. Like you, the officers who first attend the premises initially suspect this is related to drug crime, so you are not surprised when you arrive there to see them already cordoning off...

It’s 1992, and you’re an architect from the United States, now living and working in Berlin, Germany. An old architecture classmate from your university student days in Detroit, a guy called Jeff Mills, has just relocated to Berlin for his work as a music producer and dj. You’ve arranged to meet up with him at his new apartment, and are looking forward to talking with him at length about architectural concepts, just as you used to....

It’s 1994, and your son plays in the local high school baseball team. You’ve heard that the coach, Mike Banks, is considering quitting his role. This bothers you. Mike is a wonderful coach, knowledgeable about the game, and continually improving the players individually, as well as collectively as a team. Perhaps of greater significance though is that he has been more than a coach, taking on basic mentoring responsibilities with ma...

It’s 1991, and you work as an astronomer at Detroit’s Wayne State University. Your work involves examining far flung aspects of the universe, with your particular area of expertise concerning the planet Saturn. Given that this job reflects your natural curiosity for what lies beyond your local environment, it’s not surprising that you are also an avid traveler, taking your family on adventures whenever you are able. One such journe...

It’s the mid-1980s and you work for a telephone company in Detroit, in their fraud control division. The company for which you work sells cards with phone credit, that customers use to make calls locally and internationally. Thieves, however, steal the cards to make free calls to places all over the world. Your job is to identify these stolen cards by analysing any unusual call activity, and then to cut the access of these cards to...

It’s 1992 and you work at a zoo in Brussels, Belgium. For your whole life you have been fascinated by nocturnal animals. As a result of this passion, you have developed a career studying and working with bats. Usually your workday involves the same routines, such as feeding, caring for, and analysing, these creatures in their enclosures. Today however, your schedule will also include a meeting with a guest visitor, a music producer...

It’s 1991 and you’re sitting outside the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. You’re about to pick up your friend, Blake Baxter, who is returning from a trip to Berlin, Germany. Blake has been in Berlin for his work as a music producer, apparently developing what will be his debut album with a label over there. It sounds like he has been working day and night on this new project, and a few days ago he said he was looking forw...

It’s 2013 and you’re sitting around a poker table at the MGM Grand Detroit Casino. A tournament in which you’re playing is about to begin, and you’re a little nervous. There is a lot of money on offer, after all. Looking around the table, one of your opponents strikes you as being quite different from the others. Sitting immediately next to you, he is listening to music privately on ear buds, nodding his head and tapping out a rhyt...

It’s first thing in the morning, early December, in the late 1990s. You step out of your bedroom and feel an early winter chill occupying the rest of the yet to be heated house. You’ve very recently moved into this new place, a large house on a forgotten street in a sleepy location called White Lake Township, about twenty miles outside of Detroit’s city limits. You’ve long called this town your home, life here is very quiet, people...

It’s 1982, and you’ve just finished a tough session of football practice at Eastern Michigan University. The beginning of the college football season is approaching, and training has been inflicting a lot of gruelling fitness work on you and your fellow team members. As you walk wearily off the field, you see your friend and teammate, Kevin Saunderson, deep in conversation with your coach. Kevin hasn’t been at training all week, wh...

It’s 1986 and the clock has just struck three o’clock in the morning. You’ve been up all night, trying to finish writing an article reviewing the new album from the German electronic music artists Kraftwerk, which is titled Electric Café. Your work involves writing pieces concerning the arts for a local newspaper in Detroit, and your deadline for this article is tomorrow morning. You need energy for at least another hour to complet...

It’s November 1989 and there’s been a lot of buzz around a club in downtown Detroit. The Music Institute has only been open for a little over a year, and tonight is its last night before closing permanently. You’ve managed to score a ticket, which is expensive at $25, but it’s worth it, especially as your old associate from high school, Derrick May, will be playing the closing set. The final track he will end up playing in this set...