«
»

UR – “Mad” Mike Banks interview

Intervista a "Mad" Mike Banks, Underground Resistance, Detroit.

From the free dvd magazine Slices (http://www.eb-slices.net/), english language (with german subtitles)

Underground Resistance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
For underground resistance movements, see Underground resistance.
Underground Resistance
Background information
Origin Detroit, Michigan, United States
Years active 1989–present
Label(s) Underground Resistance, Somewhere In Detroit (SID)
Associated acts Drexciya, Marc Floyd, DJ Rolando, James Pennington, Blake Baxter, Chuck Gibson (Perception/Hi-techfunk) and Gerald Mitchell, DJ 3000, DJ Skurge, DJ Dex, DJ S2, The Vision, Buzz Goree, Suburban Knight, The Unknown Soldier, DJ Di’jital and Claude Young, Galaxy 2 Galaxy
Website www.undergroundresistance.com
Members
Mike Banks, DJ 3000, DJ Dex, DJ S2, The Vision, Buzz Goree, Suburban Knight, The Unknown Soldier, DJ Skurge
Former members
Jeff Mills, Claude Young, Robert Hood, DJ Rolando

Underground Resistance (commonly abbreviated to UR) is a musical collective from Detroit, Michigan, in the United States of America. They are the most militantly political example of modern Detroit Techno, with a grungy, four-track
musical aesthetic and a strictly anti-mainstream business strategy.
They have exerted their portion of Detroit Techno’s cultural influence
towards promoting political activism.

Begun in the late 1980s by Jeff Mills and "Mad" Mike Banks, UR related the aesthetics of early Detroit Techno to the complex social, political, and economic circumstances which followed on from Reagan-era
inner-city economic recession, producing uncompromising music geared
toward promoting awareness and facilitating political change. Later Robert "Noise" Hood joined the collective.

As with Public Enemy, there have been intimations that UR’s subversively ‘militant’ approach to music was related to the activities of the Black Panthers in the 1970s, something Mills confirmed in an interview.[1]

Many of Underground Resistance’s labelmate’s early releases were the
product of various experiments by Banks, Mills, and Hood, both solo and
in collaboration, before Mills and Hood left the collective in 1992 to
achieve international success as solo artists and DJs. Mike Banks
continued to lead UR in the wake of the split, releasing EPs during the
mid-1990s such as "Return of Acid Rain," "Message to the Majors," and
"Galaxy to Galaxy" under the UR name, as well as 12-inches by
increasingly renowned artists such as Drexciya.

UR tracks have occasionally been released on other labels (usually
in what UR metaphorically describe as "reconnaissance" or
"infiltration").

1998’s "Interstellar Fugitives", the first full album credited to
Underground Resistance, saw Mike Banks redefining the collective’s
sound as "High-Tech Funk", reflecting a shift in emphasis from hard,
minimal club Techno to breakbeats, Electro and even occasionally Drum and Bass and down-tempo Hip-Hop. In 1999, newcomer DJ Rolando released UR’s most commercially successful EP, "The Knights of The Jaguar".

In 2000, Kraftwerk
released a remix single of their theme composed for the Expo 2000 in
Hanover, featuring contributions from Rolando and Banks, making them
two of only a handful of producers ever to be given the privilege of
remixing Kraftwerk. From 2002 onwards, Kraftwerk’s live shows featured
the group performing UR’s remixes compiled in the song now called
"Planet of Visions".

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Discography

[edit] Remixes

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^
    "All the black men you see in America today are the direct result of
    those actions: all the freedoms we have, as well as the restrictions,
    refer back to the government and the Black Panthers in the ’70s," he
    said in that interview. "So we make music. We make music about who we
    are and where we’re from. Of course there are going to be links –
    that’s why we had songs with titles like Riot. Because that’s
    indicative of the era we were born in, and the things we remember. As
    time goes on, naturally I think the messages will get further away from
    that. It’s not a coincidence. There is a reason behind UR and Public
    Enemy and these people.” – Jeff Mills Does Solo Flight, Andrez Bergen. Daily Yomiuri, September 2006.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Resistance"

info:

http://www.undergroundresistance.com/ 

tti-speaks-to-underground-resistance.txt – intervista con alcuni esponenti di Underground Resistance

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 11:32 am and is filed under dischi fonografici. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.