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be tired of the good fight. You have to create your own combustion, and people have lost perspective. I think a certain generation has been lost to technology. I don’t think my daughter’s generation will be excited by technology. But we trust these laptops, the smart phones, these devices. We consider them members of the fucking family. We’ve given them precedence and priority in our lives, to the point where they control us and they tell us what’s right and wrong, and determine how we live our lives. And this to me is frightening. I wish to get back to common sense and people using their minds, their intuition and imagination.”


DJ Mag USA: “Why do you think, in your opinion, there’s a lack of originality out there?”


Derrick: “Everything is bundled now. So it’s prepared for you in a sense where it’s almost become inconvenient to spend time developing your own personality. So that’s why what Jimmy is doing is a paradox to what’s happening in music. The sound is better, the production is far better, and in many cases the music is great. But the level of originality that keeps music timeless is not there. There’s very few people who have that ability, and maybe that’s because they haven’t put the exploration time into creating something unique. “Jimmy, are you your own worst critic?”


Jimmy: “Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes a song will only be finished because a friend or a girlfriend might say, ‘Oh I like that, you should finish it’. It’s in those moments when you’re making something that sounds good, you don’t really know it until later. Which is kind of amazing. That’s why it’s hard to work alone these days. Most producers and musicians are working completely alone, and I think that means creativity has suffered. You don’t need an engineer to operate your tape machine, you don’t need anybody.”


Derrick: “What got you into making music?” Jimmy: “I was always into it. Going to church,


learning piano. I lived near [seminal record store] Record Time, so I’d be going up there buying funk and dance records. A friend of mine found an 808 at a garage sale, and that was how we started doing it.”


DJ Mag USA: “Derrick, do you ever get nostalgic over your early material?”


Derrick: “We rarely look back. It’s rare that Juan ever talks about his old stuff, and me either. When we sit down together, we don’t talk about it, we don’t consider it. It has nothing to do with our lives, almost. People tend to think that we eat and sleep this stuff, but we don’t. We’re trying to absorb new things, move into new paths. But we also want to help and support people like yourself, Jimmy. Not that you need it! But if you did...”


Jimmy: “I was curious about the concept of the compilation we’ve done, if you had anything specific you wanted to do with it?”


Derrick: “There was a Radiohead track, but I don’t think it made it onto the album. The track is called ‘Feral’. It’s only three minutes long, and it’s totally left from anything they’ve ever done. They were having a moment when they made it. But I’m very happy to have Petar Dundov on there. His stuff is really cool, really reminds me of another period. And Deep’A & Biri, these guys are from Israel, from Tel Aviv, but they have such an appreciation of the music of Detroit and they’re working hard to do some serious stuff.”


Jimmy: “I know that most people will gravitate towards thinking this is a heritage versus new Detroit thing, but we have a lot more things in common than it would appear. My tracklist ranged from inspiration to friends. Coyote Clean Up, we went to high school together, going to raves to see Derrick when we were teenagers. Magda did an exclusive track for it, and she’s been kind of pivotal in my career. Kyle Hall too, I love that kid. He’s one of the most creative young producers coming out of Detroit. And there’s not so many of them.”


Derrick: “That’s right. It’s not because they’re not coming out of Detroit, it’s because they left Detroit. We’ve had a major exodus from the city, and the suburbs, of course. Economics is 90% of the reason. “Young families want something better for their kids. There’s a lot of reasons. But within that exodus was about 60 or 70% of our creative class. We lost that creative backbone in the city. We now have to recreate it, but it’s going to take time. It may never be as it once was. There was only one Motown, there may only be one Detroit techno. There’s offspring from it, Jimmy is one of them. But music from Detroit lives in many different forms, and many different genres. People view us as purist, but we don’t come from one style of music. There’s a tremendous rock scene in Detroit that’s been around for years and will continue. There’s a cultivated underground hip-hop scene that’s been around for longer than hip-hop itself. The alternative music scene.”


Jimmy: “Do you think there’s such a thing as true originality?”


Derrick: “Oh yeah, I do. There is always a form of originality, but it’s often smothered by society. But every now and then, someone’s able to bust out and find it. To be who they really should be.”


•‘We Love... Detroit’ is out now on We Love Recordings.


022 djmag.com


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