Drexciya Day 2020, reissues of Dopplereffekt's Linear Accelerator, Gesamtkunserk & Cellular Automata and more

A Drexciya Day event had been organised for Weimar, Germany on Thur 3rd Sept, details here.

There will also be an event in Rome, Italy on Thur 3rd Sept, details here.

The 18th anniversary of James Stinson's death will be in just under 3 weeks time, 3rd September. Since 2017 fans around the world have been celebrating his music on or around this date on what has become known as Drexciya Day. This year will no doubt will be very different due to Covid-19 restrictions but perhaps people might want to organise online or radio events instead or get more creative.

As ever there is no pressure from DRL as this concept originally happened spontaneously from fans and I simply remind people about it and promote whatever anyone feels like doing that year.

So far over the last three years there have been events in Tallinn, Vienna, Cambridge, London, Dublin, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow, Reykjavik, Grenoble, Rome, Manchester, Turin, Thessaloniki and on radio. There is no guarantee that the same people will do it again in these places, best to go ahead and organise it yourself if you want (as soon as I get confirmation of one I will post details here).

Search online for previous Drexciya Days to get ideas. If anyone wants to organise something please let me know and I will be very happy to share it. Email or contact me through the DRL FB page with an FB event link or whatever. Please use #drexciyaday2020 for your events. Thanks

Alex Wilcox has been doing a track by track breakdown of Lifestyles of the Laptop Cafe by The Other People Place on his YouTube channel here. He has also made videos for Drexciya ('Andrean Sand |Dunes' & 'Black Sea') and Der Zylus ('Elektronisches Zeitecho').

The last few months have been incredibly busy for Dopplereffekt reissues. If you missed it, a third vinyl pressing of their Cellular Automata (2017) is now available. You can now also get copies of the new vinyl re-pressing of Dopplereffekt's Gesamtkunswerk (1999) from Clone Classic Cuts. WeMe Records also got the rights to reissue Linear Accelerator (2003) for the first time on vinyl. It is available in two editions, clear double vinyl and regular black.  

There is a new track on the Avina Vishnu (Heinrich Mueller & Aina) Bandcamp, 'Samhita', which makes two there now. They have a new FB page  and website as well.

You can now watch the video for 'Spiderweb Symmetry' by Black Replica at the 13 minute point on this episode of Monomer TV. This was a new track included on the s/t release on metaphysik in 2018. The video was made by Hectic Laboratory and has been nominated semifinalist in the best experimental film category at the Toronto's Alternative film festival.

In the current issue of The Wire you will find an articles about Drexciya by DeForrest Brown Jr, a look back at The Quest, a review of The Exaltic's & Heinrich Mueller's Dimensional Shifting and even a review of the Drexciya graphic novel. Deforrest has tweeted about it here with images of the text.

'(Drexciya's 'Lardossen Funk') This is the pure essence of Detroit electro. I get very nostalgic about my days growing up in Detroit and hearing it takes my mind back to a warehouse party where I got to hear Drexciya live; still one of my fondest memories. I never heard such pretty, spaced-out electro before and it’s been a big influence on me since.'

Magda 'opens the contents of her psychic record bag' for The Guardian in 2017. Wow, I guess she saw them play their only known live show at DEMF in 2001.

Four Four magazine selected their five favourite Drexciya tracks in a new piece. 

This is an excellent and recently published short essay about Drexciya by Mick Harvey M.Sc.

I made a Time Travel radio show special which focuses on my favourite Heinrich Mueller remixes/remodels for Dublin Digital Radio. 

Remember, even if you are not a member of Facebook you can still read my daily DRL posts there. Direct link to the FB photo archive here (loads of rare press cuttings like the one below etc).

It seems very strange to see Drexciya at number 8 in the UK Indie Singles Chart (Melody Maker 11/3/95) but it really happened! In fact at the height of Britpop they were in the top 30 for at least a month with The Journey Home EP on Warp Records. Sales of the 12" and CD must have been very strong and consistent (8 was as high as it went).

While still remaining very underground, 1995 was certainly Drexciya's breakthrough year as far as recognition goes with this EP, the Aquatic Invasion 12" on UR and the Elecktroids EP and album also on Warp. Of course sales of their back catalogue would also have been increasing from this year on. This same year Dopplereffekt also released their debut EP, Fascist State.

The MM indie charts at this time were compiled from sales from the Subterranean chain of record shops. According to a comment on Discogs, Drexciya also appeared in the NME's Indie Singles chart for the same period but I don't have any copies. To my knowledge their charts were compiled from a different source. Nice one for the archive anyway.