The eccentric producer and Detroit native Jimmy Edgar once described his label Ultramajic as a platform for “futuristic music, digital shamanism, and virtual altars.” Even its newest release, a collection of lost electro tracks from the mid-to-late-’90s, fits so well with the label’s forward-looking ethos, but the story behind Unsolved Mysteries sounds like classic Edgarian lore. In 2014, Edgar took possession of an East Detroit storage unit that contained over 1,000 vinyl records, some rare, broken recording equipment, and boxes of over 100 DAT and reel-to-reel tapes, one dusty box of which contained tapes from 1995 to 1998 inscribed in black Sharpie with the name “ASHTAR LAVANDA.”
Edgar at first assumed that it was a pseudonym of an already prominent Detroit recording artist, but after two full years of searching—Google came up with no results—he tracked down the real Ashtar Lavanda, a previously unknown producer who hadn’t released any music (in a recent interview, he said that he assumed that the tapes that gave rise to Unsolved Mysteries had been tossed in the garbage long ago). Lavanda still resides in the Motor City to this day, where he apparently works in the medical industry.
And while all of this sounds almost too serendipitous to be true, especially considering Ultramajic’s willfully obscure roster of artists, it’s fitting given much of the genre’s tropes: Electro has always been infused with a certain sense of mystery and myth-making. From the time when a 14-year-old Edgar would download electro tracks on GeoCities websites to the Afrofuturistic myth that Gerald Donald and James Stinson fleshed out as Drexciya, the funky sounds derived from the Roland TR-808 are frequently encased in an epic, enigmatic backstory.
The provenance of these tracks aside, the six songs that make up this collection of archival recordings are undeniably fun additions to the canon, and by clocking in at only 22 minutes, it’s tight enough to not overstay its welcome. “Opulence” starts things off with a rising arpeggiated synth line and some classic 808 rhythms, and “Gratiot Shake” follows with an even funkier bassline that’s accentuated with vocoded commands to “shake it” and “get freaky” along with some sci-fi phaser sounds. The title track and closer “Marfa Lights” are the highlights—the former’s menacing refrain contrasts well with its rickety percussion, and the latter’s more atmospheric touches end things on a relatively breezy note.
Lavanda himself didn’t exactly have lofty ambitions for these songs—he claims that when he was programming these tracks in the ’90s, he just wanted them to play on the “New Dance Show,” Detroit’s local, techno version of “Soul Train” (Ultramajic uploaded an Ashtar Lavanda mix to YouTube that plays alongside clips from the show, and the audio and the visuals sync up remarkably well). In light of the genre’s current renaissance, with artists like DJ Stingray and Helena Hauff leading the pack, this collection sounds surprisingly fresh. When asked what he thought about these songs finally seeing the light of day, Lavanda responded: “It would have been better as a record in the ’90s.” And while it’s not necessarily a crucial release, and Edgar’s claims that it belongs in the cultural memory alongside acts like Drexciya or Dopplereffekt are overstated, it does accomplish what Lavanda wanted—it’s a pretty playful, taut selection of songs to dance to.
