Detroit Techno Tourist: Techno Boulevard

Detroit Techno Tourist: Techno Boulevard

23 May, 2008 | 7.05AM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: detroit techno tourist, movement 2008

It’s not exactly within walking distance from Movement: Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival (not for Detroit, anyway), but it’s definitely one of the reasons the festival even exists.

Techno Boulevard, although not listed on any type of official city tourist guide, was, at one time, home to a few of the genre’s groundbreaking record labels — Transmat, KMS and Metroplex among them.

The veterans of Detroit know this Eastern Market area well, if not for the labels, then for the late-night parties that inevitably populated some of its nearby buildings as well.

The whole block seemed to have a sort of communal living feel, with Derrick May having had his homestead established within Transmat nearby other music-scene residents.

But it was Juan Atkin’s Metroplex that first housed itself on the Boulevard in the late 1980s, followed shortly by Kevin Saunderson’s KMS and May’s Transmat.

Later, as the early 1990s kicked in, floating through the halls of its block-long series of buildings was 7th City, a label and distribution operation run by minimal techno luminary Daniel Bell, AKA DBX.

As techno expanded its foothold throughout the world, so did most of Techno Boulevard’s residents.

It’s the Transmat offices that remain there today.

Location: Russell & Gratiot (near Eastern Market)

Supplies: A car and a camera

[photo credit: Hans Veneman]

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