Detroit, MI · detroit-techno

Carl Craig

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Second-wave Detroit techno architect whose productions still sound like they were made next year — a catalog that treats techno as jazz's rightful heir.

Craig grew up in Detroit, the son of a teacher's assistant and a post office worker, and attended Cooley High School where he took up guitar. His cousin Doug Craig, who worked lighting for Detroit-area parties, introduced him to club music, and hearing Derrick May's radio show on WJLB pushed him toward recording on a dual-deck cassette player.

He began releasing records in 1989 under aliases including Psyche, BFC and 69, later collected on the compilation Elements 1989–1990. His debut album under his own name, Landcruising, came out on Blanco y Negro in 1995, and as Innerzone Orchestra he released Programmed in 1999, the source of the much-sampled "Bug in the Bassbin."

His music tends to be melodic and harmonically restless, with an audible debt to jazz and Detroit's older musical traditions, and his remixes are treated as compositions in their own right. He has reworked tracks by Manuel Göttsching, Theo Parrish, Tori Amos and Depeche Mode, and was nominated for a Grammy for his remix of Junior Boys' "Like a Child."

He founded Planet E Communications in 1991, which has also released records by Kevin Saunderson, Moodymann and Kenny Larkin. He served as artistic director of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival in 2000 and 2001, was dismissed amid controversy that prompted a breach-of-contract lawsuit, and returned to the role in 2010.

He has recorded collaborative albums with Moritz von Oswald as Recomposed in 2008 and with Green Velvet as Unity in 2015. Later projects have set his catalogue against live orchestral and ensemble arrangements, including Party/After-Party, an immersive sound and light installation begun at Dia:Beacon that later moved to MOCA Los Angeles.

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