Name: Neptune's Lair
Brand: Drexciya

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

TRESORLP 10129

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Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2019-01-24

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

4251804135009

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Total Cap

2 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Drexciya

Genre US

Techno / Electro

Label US

Tresor

<p>Detroit electro-techno outfit Drexciya emerged in 1989 and gained recognition in 1994 with their release "Aquatic Invasion". James Stinson and Gerald Donald, the masterminds behind Drexciya, remained hidden behind their alias for most of their career. They crafted a complex personal mythology centered around a fictional race called the "Drexciyans" - descendants of pregnant slave women thrown overboard during trans-Atlantic deportation. Their music, which they claimed was recorded live rather than programmed, served as a bridge between their African roots and contemporary USA.</p>

<p>Tragically, James Stinson passed away suddenly on September 3rd, 2002 due to a heart condition. However, Gerald Donald continues to create music under different names.</p>

First released by Drexciya’s James Stinson and Gerald Donald in 1999 after establishing a cult reputation via EPs and 12”s for UR, Rephlex and Warp, ’Neptune’s Lair’ was issued by Berlin’s Tresor to the acclaim of those in the know. Since James Stinson died in 2002, in subsequent years the album has become widely regarded as their definitive opus - a hugely sophisticated, imaginative piece of Afrofuturist sonic fiction embedded with deeply rooted politics.

As the album approaches its 20th anniversary of release, it still holds the power to utterly transport us to other dimensions, both physically and philosophically. Using the ocean and water as metaphor for deep space, and by extension a site of the unknown, where far-fetched (but not entirely unreasonable) ideas about slave babies thrown overboard on slave-trade routes evolved into futuristic, practically alien beings, Drexciya, much like Sun Ra and his Saturnian roots, formed a whole world unto themselves thru their music and track titles and Abdul Haqq’s artwork, creating a sort of holistic gesamtkunstwerk as rich in subtext and noumenal flights of fancy as the most cult comic books or underground animation and cinema. 

In context of the very late ‘90s, when ‘Neptune’s Lair’ was issued, these ideas - whilst perhaps oblique on some levels - were necessary and important, as the electro/techno/house paradigm had been largely whitewashed by labels, promoters and DJs who either didn’t understand, or didn’t want to understand, the roots of the worldwide dance phenomenon that cropped up a decade prior - one mostly generated by PoC based in urban US cities. As prevailing techno-electronic trends in 2018 prize forms of classic EBM and trance, it’s perhaps as important as ever ever to acknowledge Drexciya’s origins and intent, to historically hold their work up to the rest of the field as waves of new, plugged in dancers become enthralled by their Hi-Tech Sci-Fi.

Neptune's Lair

Music US