A selection byThe Waxonia Desk
Detroit Techno
Four Detroit records whose second life was European. Ghent, Berlin and Rotterdam heard them before most of America did, and a continental floor is audible in what happened to the music afterwards.
- Picks
- 4
- Genre
- Detroit Techno
- Years
- 1987–1999
- Curator
- The Waxonia Desk
- Updated
- 2026-08-29
Listen to the whole list
Play it through here →One record after another, with the verdicts
Take this list to YouTube → (opens in a new tab)
Opens the list on YouTube as a playlist you can save to your own account. We never see your account, and nothing is stored here.
The picks — selected, not ranked
Rhythim Is Rhythim / Strings of Life
1987 · Transmat
Obvious, and obvious for a reason. It was a Belgian and British floor record before Detroit had a market of its own, which is why a city's most famous export sounds nothing like the city that made it.
Also on Detroit Techno, The Eighties, The Waxonia Desk — A Way In, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Jeff Mills / The Bells
1996 · Purpose Maker
The other pole entirely: no melody, no release, just a riff tightening for six minutes. It was built for a very large European room and it has been closing them for thirty years.
Also on Detroit Techno, The Waxonia Desk — Detroit Techno, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
DJ Rolando / Underground Resistance / Jaguar
1999 · Underground Resistance
A Detroit label's politics turned into a continental hit and then into a fight over who owned it. The record outran its own scene, which is the thing Underground Resistance had spent a decade warning about.
Drexciya / Bubble Metropolis
1993 · Underground Resistance
The strangest thing here and the one Europe held closest — the records found a home in Berlin as readily as in Detroit, and the mythology around them travelled better than any press release would have.
Also on Detroit Techno, The Waxonia Desk — A Way In, The Waxonia Desk — Detroit Techno
About the curator
The people who write the rankings on this site. We keep the lists honest, we argue about the order, and we get asked the same question more than any other: where should someone actually start. These are our answers.