Terrence Dixon
When Stars Remember
Tresor
The immediacy in Terrence Dixon’s approach is palpable as soon as his new EP starts rolling. “Mono Collapse” has a daggering, one-note piano loop that launches from the first bar and plants itself squarely in your cerebellum. It’s a simple, thrilling trick that feels removed from Dixon’s more typically furtive and shadowy approach. He’s framed When Stars Remember as being intentionally aimed at peak time, and he’s achieved his goal without sacrificing his particular style.
Ever since he first emerged around 1994, Terrence Dixon’s music has sat at an odd angle compared to most Detroit techno. The classic Roland-sourced ingredients are all there throughout his catalog, but in his hands these tools have been bent into compelling, confounding shapes. Landmark albums like the From the Far Future series and Train of Thought cemented his unique sound around alien synth figures and minimal drum machine patter, and he’s continued to forge an uncompromising path ever since. The prospect, then, of an outlier like Dixon hoping to catch the ears of modern DJs and throw down some slammers could easily be a cause for concern—he’s the kind of singular sound explorer who should be insulated from the tedious churn of the techno mega-industry.
Fortunately, his take on high-impact main room techno doesn’t override his musical otherness. The relentless forward thrust of “Mono Collapse” is embellished with chaotic flurries of synth that uphold Dixon’s mutant sound, while the grandiose Detroit arp whirling through the EP’s title track finds its own headiness through slow-burn repetition and modulation, holding the hi-hat explosion off until the final stretch. Even when the drums are made to bang hard on “The Art of Possible,” there’s still a different slant to the way the snares fall and the nimble lead lines remain squarely in the hi-tech jazz realm. No matter what Dixon does, he can’t help but sound wildly original. That’s precisely why he’s one of the greatest techno practitioners of all time.
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