STINSON
A FACELESS MUSICIAN CONSUMED BY THE OCEAN.
An album on legendary British label Warp was re-released recently: the Elektroids LP, Elektroworld. The precise identities of the artists involved were never officially revealed, though it was fairly well known that at least one member of the equally mysterious Detroit duo Drexciya was behind it. The recent re-release confirmed as much: “Produced by Drexciya’s late James Stinson”, one of the great virtuosos of electronic music, yet a man we know so little about.
Stinson preferred it that way. His death in 2002 from illness impacted heavily on those who knew him - on his family, his friends, his fans and his fellow music makers - but, as they searched online and off for bios, profiles, interviews and images, it also revealed just how little the world knew about Stinson the man. All they could find was the music.
Born in 1969 and growing up on Detroit’s East side, James Stinson was fanatical about African-American history. He took the name for Drexciya from a mythical underwater city populated by the unborn children of pregnant African women thrown from slave ships into the darkest depths of the ocean. And the ocean itself provided a lifelong concept for his musical exploration. This deliberate use of narrative created an immersive yet twisting ideology in which he and his music will forever be wrapped.
I never tire of listening to Drexciya records. Not one is the same, yet each, despite the differences, is unmistakably Drexciyan: crystal sharp underwater machinations, squelchy undulating synth lines and thumping round 808s, all delivered with precise intention, nothing left to chance. Stinson knew how to move the soul.
In the liner notes to his last album, released in 2001 on Rephlex, he left a rare but prescient “Message To The World”: “Life is fast ending - so live.” It echoes those famous words of Ferris Bueller: “If you don’t stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it.” He may be gone, but through the music (as always), Stinson lives on.
