The road to Belleville

Michigan micro-city Belleville is positively agricultural next to the heavy industry of Detroit, its annual strawberry festival the envy of rival fruit-based festivities the length and breadth of the US.

But aficionados will not need telling that it is to this rather Stately suburb that techno owes its greatest debt, namely as the teenage home of venerable tweakers Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson. The big A on the map (click to enlarge) is almost certainly pointing at one of their houses.

Stately's next project pays tribute to the Belleville Three and the peculiarly British response to that first wave of Detroit techno: the woods parties, the clubland befuddlement, the ache of the darkness that floods the room when the last strobe is switched off. There won't be a cover of May's unimprovable Strings Of Life – but there will be strings.

Further to yesterday's post, check out the latest instrumental progress via this six-track set.