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I just had fun with the title :)

Been wrapping my head around Detroit techno pioneer Juan Atkins and his group Cybotron and their genre-defying/genre-awakening song, Clear. This song is on a pink-label bootleg comp I just took home called “Electric Funk”. On the label it says, “Special DJ Mixer…For DJ’s Only.” This comp was probably released right around ‘83, either before or after this was released on Atkin’s own label and then later on Fantasy.

The other three songs on “Electric Funk” follow the same pattern - a new form of electro/funk that combined elements of early hip-hop and the new form of funk that was emerging and being introduced by mainstream bands like Midnight Star and Parliment/Funkadelic, along with European industrial synth-funk such as Kraftwerk. Other examples of artists mixed up in some form of this movement/sound were Nucleus, Africa Bamaataa, the Egyptian Lover.

By this point, disco was chewed up and spit out - the ’80s were when the future came into effect. Computers were emerging along with futuristic concepts like Atari and robots. This was time for change - to move into new time and space with atomic sounds, exploring into who knows where.

Juan Atkins and Cybotron seemed to grasp onto the apocalyptic vision of post-industrial Detroit. But he did so in a way that defines Detroit, much like any other genre that came from the Motor City. If you listen to the song, it starts electro, slowly layers, and then BAM! Like a bomb going off, there’s the birth of techno, the birth of ghetto-tech, the birth of an entire movement. Right there. You know the part I’m taking about about. It’s been sampled most notably by Missy Eliot on Lose Control, but even if you didn’t know that you heard the song Clear, you’ve heard that loop. You’ve heard it before somewhere - a DJ has played it late at night on WJLB, you heard it at the club one night, it was mixed at that show you were at, you heard your friend’s older brother jamming it from his bedroom back in the day. Or maybe you bought it when it came it out. Even if you can’t place it, you know it. It’s like a siren, urging everyone to Clear out, but at the same time drawing you back in, to bounce your booty like you’ve never bounced it before. It’s really embracing Detroit, it’s what the people are all about. It says: we know we’re Detroit, we know what’s going on, but so what? If we can feel like this, we’re O.K. The funk, the movement, the beat - layered together in a perfect sonic-robotic funkstorm. Clear my mind? Thanks, robot voice.

I’m not a modern-techno fan - I don’t dislike it, but I don’t listen to it. I do respect it, though, and it has a well-deserving place among the family-tree of Detroit music. I definitely like this old school stuff, though. Some people claim Detroit as the birthplace of techno, which it might be. Juan Atkins and Cybotron just might be the roots, the radical clear radicle dropped to earth from a futuristic funkbot embryo.