Eric Dulan has been doing his own thing for over 20 years now. Staying true to the essential principles of Detroit techno as passed down by his elders Derrick May and Jeff Mills, he has released record after record of steel-capped dancefloor movers, mostly on his own label, Subject Detroit. Doggedly independent and devotedly underground, he maintains a connection with the classic Motor City sound, balancing relentless forward momentum with a certain serenity and poise, and boasting the ability to turn simple ingredients into a heady, psychedelic soup by dint of sheer repetition.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his classic stylings, Dulan has enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years. He has slotted into a gap that’s appeared in the market as older Detroit DJs wind down their touring careers, steadily enlarging his fanbase through masterful, highly technical DJ sets. A Piece of Beyond is Dulan’s second full-length as DJ Bone, after 2007’s Out of Knowhere, a hard-to-find CD-R release. It’s also a swift follow-up to last year’s It’s Good To Be Differ-Ent LP, released under the name Differ-Ent. Through that alias, he dug into the anger and melancholy he felt after the death of his mother, transforming his darker emotions into more experimental material on several records for the London-based label Don’t Be Afraid. The experience of communicating through an alter ego seems to have expanded his vision; there’s an obvious grandiosity to this triple-vinyl release, even as he settles back into a more streamlined sound.
The record starts boldly with “It Begins,” throwing a delicious squiggle of interplanetary bleeps over soaring, faux-choral pads—it’s a quirky track, recalling the muddy thrills of early UK rave, and it could only work as an opener. Likewise, the closing track is an outlier: a gospel house teardown featuring the vocal acrobatics of Aaron-Carl Ragland, a Detroit producer and singer who died in 2010. Dulan reanimates one of Ragland’s unused vocals for an emotional final curtain, his close-harmonized falsetto reaching back to Detroit’s peerless R&B history.
Aside from those obvious markers, A Piece of Beyond doesn’t waste a second on scene-setting or ambient diversions—this is end-to-end dancefloor material, and its hour and fifteen minutes pass in a breathless sprint. Most tracks draw their power from a careful balance of darkness and light: tough, expressive drums overlaid with increasingly psychedelic, time-shifting layers of melody and harmony. As a rule, all the working parts are visible, yet they fit together to create something mysterious. You could recreate it, but it would never be the same.
The album’s highlights seem to prove this suspicion. On “Dreamers 9,” Dulan turns the simple thwack of the 808 into sturdy scaffolding for layers of drunken organs: sleek and functional, it occasionally strips down to just a solid kick, exposing the manufacturing process before rebuilding again. “Power Outage” offers livewire danger through the crackle of a broken connection, like a substation with its doors blown open in a storm. “Sweat” is sheer mechanics, as skull-cracking drums and woozy organs take us deep into the warehouse rave zone. But despite the engine-powered efficiency, the mood is far from inhuman: “Workings of the Inner Circle” brings squelching, soulful chords, while “All My Heart” is an ecstatic romance running on an 808 throb and oxytocin-laced synths as a voice whispers those three little words, over and over.
The worship of Detroit techno can spill into fetishization too easily: This idea of a futuristic, sci-fi sound emerging from a post-industrial wasteland verges upon “ruin porn” as we imagine the ghostly clang of machinery pealing through the broken windows of the Packard Plant. But despite its many imitators, it’s hard to argue with the feeling that Detroit techno just sounds best when it comes directly from that lineage. By dint of circumstance, raw talent, and endless persistence, DJ Bone has become a treasured keeper of the flame.
