In 2001, at the peak of Detroit techno’s third wave, one half of the controversial duo Drexciya broke off to work on a side project. Transllusion’s The Opening of the Cerebral Gate, reissued last month, was a deviation only in name from what James Stinson produced with his former collaborator. In the album’s beats one can hear echoes of records like Neptune’s Lair, the first full-length that he released with Drexciyan member Gerald Donald.
Unfortunately, neither Drexciya nor Transllusion made it past 2002 – that September, Stinson passed away, survived only by three LPs with Drexciya, as well as ten years’ worth of genre-defining EPs and singles. Still, this Tresor-issued buried treasure brings to light the sound of an artist whose talents were as prodigious as his life protracted.
The Opening of the Cerebral Gate tones down Drexciya’s wilder impulses in favor of subtlety. Other than an electro tremble on “Transmission of Life,” Stinson’s livewire rhythms of yore are nowhere in sight or diluted heavily. Beyond this restraint, though, there’s much to recommend for longtime Drexciya fans. In the absence of intensity, Stinson is free to explore how deeply acid’s synthetic charge can resonate.
What we end up with on The Opening of the Cerebral Gate is truly visionary; Drexicya never quite approached the lightness of “Walking with Clouds,” whose beats are complemented by lambent keyboard motifs. Only on “Cerebral Cortex Malfunction” does the producer go anywhere near the sonic unruliness that made his name.
Transllusion’s increased attention to ambience puts this act in stark contrast to Stinson’s work with Drexciya. On The Opening of the Cerebral Gate, he truly blossomed, taking us along with him; this small taste of what might have been gleams with an unrealized potential, as Stinson would have his musical journey cut short. Yet what’s stayed, what’s been documented on this record, has more life in its dozen tracks than Transllusion suggests.
That name is deceptive. It conveys fantasy – the delusory hold of hocus-pocus or make-believe – but Stinson made real magic. There’s no better proof of this than on one of the album’s softest songs, “Unordinary Realities,” which places contemporaneous minimal techno tropes within an almost chillout atmosphere that bucks any possible allegations of trendiness. Tracks like this show James Stinson transcending the pull of his own repertoire, until there’s nothing left but The Opening of the Cerebral Gate, and you enter.
Stream The Opening of the Cerebral Gate here.