Drexciya Day 2021, Arpanet re-press and more

EDIT: There will be a Drexciya Day event in Rome, Italy on 3rd September 2021.

I've just been contacted by the first fan wanting to organise a Drexciya Day this year so I guess it's time to remind people of what this is all about.

The 19th anniversary of James Stinson's death will be in about a months 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. Due to COVID-19 last year there was only two physical events (Rome & Weimar) and no doubt this year will also be very different due to restrictions, so perhaps some people might want to organise online or radio events instead or get more creative. Whatever you do please stay safe!

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 five years there have been events in Tallinn, Vienna, Cambridge, London, Dublin, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow, Reykjavik, Grenoble, Rome, Manchester, Turin, Thessaloniki, Weimar and on radio (hope I didn't leave any out). 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 #drexciyaday2021 for your events. Thanks

France's TV Showw has made a rather remarkable Drexciya and Yellow Magic Orchestra mixtape. I've commented here before how they both have a lot in common and that YMO must have been an influence on both James Stinson and Gerald Donald. Elecktroids, Clarence, Dopplereffekt, Japanese Telecom and even JS phone interviews also turn up in the mix, obviously a lot of work went into this one.

This is a very fascinating new piece by John Eperjesi for Selector that connects Drexciya with Herman Melville's Moby Dick. It has useful Drexciya video links for those new to the band as well.

There is an exclusive new Heinrich Mueller track 'Plasma Field' on a limited boxset from Vinylograph. Available on Bandcamp here.

You can now pre-order both Wireless Internet (2LP & CD from 2002) and Inertial Frame (2LP & CD from 2006) by Arpanet at a brand new Bandcamp page. It must have been set up by Record Makers and will be very useful for those of you who prefer to get your music this way (all the tracks can be sampled or downloaded too). Physical copies will be ready to ship on 6th September. 

"We sold a lot of music to Europeans that we couldn't give away during the rest of the year...Tearing up bins like flesh, I actually filmed the bins, people grabbing titles. Drexciya, UR, Transmat, KMS, Metroplex. It was nuts." 

-Mike Huckaby (RIP) and many other Detroit luminaries remember Detroit Electronic Music Festival aka Movement 2001-2009.

Alex Wilcox is back with a brand new Drexciya breakdown video, this time for 'Species of the Pod' from Neptune's Lair. 

This is an excellent Drexciya long read I missed from 2016 by Patrick Langley.

I've never seen this press release for Lifestyles of the Laptop Cafe by The Other People Place before but it has probably been on Discogs for ages. It's actually from a four track promo 12" EP. It's very interesting to see the date of release, which by chance would turn out to be just eight days before the 9/11 attacks but even stranger is that it's exactly a year to the day before James Stinson's very tragic early death (he was about to turn 33).

This album was the start of what he called the Storm Series, seven albums (there would actually be eight in total) that would be released around the world in one year. As it turned out, the final album (Lab Rat XL) would be released on 27/10/03 (just under two years since the release of TOPP).

These promo copies of TOPP were available a month before in August. The opening typeface of the press release/info sheet looks like something Warp might have already used for Autechre. It's also made very clear this is a solo release and there are so many hints that it's something to do with Drexciya.