Mike Parker’s deep, hypnotic techno bubbled up through a slew of celebrated singles as the millennium approached. But, as work turned to a full-length debut, he’d let his music spill a little looser, away from the restraints of traditional club arrangements.
“I just wanted that statement of an artist album,” he says. “And to reach an audience that went beyond just DJs…”
Diving headfirst into his machine-driven, spontaneous approach to production, he’d jam out on his raft of Roland and Korg equipment, never glued to a computer screen, preferring to let the runway lights of his blinking analogue sequencers lead the way.
“Every single track is a live take,” he says. “It’s just the way it’s always been.”
There would be no edits and no overdubs on Dispatches. And none of his synths had patch memory. Words by Roy Spencer
“A big part of my creative processes was to approach them with a new sound every time,” he says. “That does make it difficult to reproduce, live. But, it adds vital improvisation within the way the track evolves.”
The resulting album is full of icy moods, playful time signatures, complex metallic tones, and overwhelming, evocative sound sculpting. All hinting at a direction the deeper strains of techno would pick up and run with in the following years.
“I never knew at the time I was influencing anyone,” says Parker. “I was just playing in New York and making this music and sending it out.
“I was
