Japanese Telecom's Virtual Geisha reissued, Arpanet live, Drexciya info and more

 

Clone Records' Aqualung label is reissuing Japanese Telecom's Virtual Geisha album from 2001. I have been calling this one of Gerald Donald's best albums for a long time now so this is major (its been out of press for about 20 years as first released on Gigolo Records).  They have already reissued the self-titled Japanese Telecom 12" from 1999. Right now it's only available on purple vinyl (limited to just 100 copies) but I assume it will be followed by a full release.  It will be available from 31st Jan 2022 but can be pre-ordered now on Bandcamp and the clone.nl website here. Love the new cover too.

Very nice to see a new Arpanet date announced (the first in a long time). It's not until 1st Jan 2022 but in case anyone wants to plan a New Year's trip to Berlin I thought I'd mention it now. Hopefully more to follow. There is a Dopplereffekt live show too but that is not until April 2022 in Mexico.

Ghostly International have commissioned a brief history of Dopplereffekt and Gerald Donald by DeForrest Brown, Jr. 

This is a new 2 our mix curated by Dopplereffekt for DUSK. 

This is an excellent new Drexciya and Detroit vinyl mix. There is a great video where you can see how it's all done.

I love this video from SPIN - Beershop & Records' Drexciya Day event. It's great just see people playing their records and socialising again. These Italian fans have supported Drexciya Day every year since it began in 2017. 

One of my eagle eyed readers noticed Drexciya listed for a London New Year's Eve event in 2000 (cutting from Muzik). I assume they never played but I guess the rest did. It was quite a line-up. They would have been on Tresor by now (Neptune's Lair came out the year before) but it looks like there was a plan to have them over as part of this UR showcase. 

"When it was time I started hooking up with friends trying different styles until one night I could not sleep, cold sweat, tossing and turning and around 3am September 18, 1989 I stood up and said Drexciya. It felt like a tidal wave rushing across my brain. All kinds of ideas were coming out. I could not stop it and I would not stop it. For the next three years we worked hard to perfect Drexciya before we would release it onto the world. Getting into production was not quick. It took a year of experimenting."

This James Stinson quote comes from Techno Tourist (Feb 2002) in a piece by John Osselaer. I've often wondered why he gave such a specific date for coming up with the name Drexciya and I'm not saying this is the reason at all but it's an interesting coincidence I think (I've previously speculated it connects to the release of the movie The Abyss).

I discovered that the issue of Time magazine that week (dated 11th Sept) ran a cover story on the drug problems in Detroit and in the wider US and how community groups were trying to solve it. The woman on the cover, Rantine McKesson, even lived in his part of the city (Seven Mile-Van Dyke on the east-side). It's quite possible he read it.

The article may well have nothing to do with his naming of Drexciya but at this link below you can read the story in full (pages 24-28) and at least get a picture of what it was like for him growing up at that time and why he might have wanted to create an alternate reality (he would have just turned 20).