Generator Records Profile

For most of his life, Alan Oldham from Detroit has been more than passionate about music. He grew up with the legendary Jeff Mills who now owns Axis Records in Germany. He used to host a radio show called, “Fast Forward” which enabled him to meet Mad Mike Banks, who along with Jeff Mills did all the early Underground Resistance releases.

Two years ago, the in house distribution company for Underground Resistance called Submerge, set up by Mad Mike, approached Alan Oldham about setting up a record company in Detroit. It would be run though Mad Mikes’ distribution network and Alan agreed to it. Generator Records was now up and ready to take the world by storm.

Originally the first years worth of releases were made by Alan Oldham and his partner, who used to record under the name Level A. The first release was called the TCX-1EP, a classic track that started to create a huge interest in the label. This was followed by Alan’s first solo project on the label when Jeff Mills had left Underground Resistance and Mad Mike has asked him to become their DJ. The next five releases, which included X-313’s all time classic ‘World Sonic Domination’ proved that Generator was a force that few could reckon with.

However, soon after this, Alan split up from his partner, running the label by himself. Now due to the fact that Underground Resistance were doing fewer live gigs, he was able to concentrate on releasing quality techno music.

This he has managed with apparent ease, and recently has been negotiating some major new signing to the label, including one of my favourite artists, DJ E.S.P. aka Woody McBride, who has just released a double pack called ‘Transporter’. Marco Passarani and Matteo Montedeuro from Rome, both responsible for the fifth release on Generator, have two new EP’s set for September and one solo EP by Marco for October. Also look out for the new DJ T-1000 twelve inch, hitting your shops around Christmas time.

All the releases are as diverse as possible. Alan tries to listen to anything from ambient to hard techno, but one thing he doesn’t like very much is what he calls ‘Gabba House’, as he explained.

“It’s very different from the type of stuff we do in Detroit. It’s not my kind of music at all. You see, I can listen to Gabba House for about half an hour and then I get a headache”.

But, even with the absence of this style of music on his label, I can safely say that Generator should be an example to all record companies. Most use different labels to put out different types of music, but with Generator, it’s all under one roof. To Alan it doesn’t matter what he puts on his label because as he says, if you keep putting out one label after another, then the retailers don’t know where abouts on the shelves to put all the releases, and the DJ who is buying the records can’t afford to keep up.

Check out the new ‘World Sonic Domination’ album and you should see how diverse Generator can be. It’s an album bringing together most of Alan’s different sounding releases and will be released soon on Kickin Records in the UK. I asked Alan why he decided to sign to Kickin Records.

“I was in London last September with the whole of underground resistance and what had happened was Peter Harris from Kickin had done some licensing deals with Mad Mike. He was also negotiating deals with a couple of American house labels, but for some reason or other they fell through. Peter and I had got on so well, so when it came to me releasing the World Sonic Domination, I immediately thought of Kickin and we took it from there”.

It seems like because of this new release on Kickin, Generator Records will be reaching far more people than ever before. It will be distributed throughout the world, which suits Alan very well as he wants his label to expand as much as it can.

Talking of expansion, there will be a new Generator comic book out in all good comic shops in September. It is called Alan Oldhams Generator comics, drawn by him and it’s about two characters called Danger Girl and Brian Deadlock. It takes place in both the future and after World War Two in Argentina.

“I’m a cartoonist really, it’s what I started doing. I did the label art for Transmat in the early days and now I do all D-Jax’s label stuff. I’ve also done a plus 8 comic book and two for D-Jax. So now I feel it’s time to do my own. It will be different though, in the way it won’t be a techno comic, like most of my previous work. Then in October, I will be putting books in with the records”.

So there you have it, Alan Oldham music maker and cartoonist extraordinare. But is he as popular in Detroit and America as he is over here, and throughout the rest of Europe?

“Let me get one thing out in the open right now. Nobody cares about what I or the rest of us do in Detroit, To most people over here techno doesn’t matter. In fact people overseas and in other states of America care more about what we do than Detroit itself”.

Recently Generator Records were going to do a World Sonic Domination party in Detroit with DJ T-1000 and DJ E.S.P., but it feel through in the end proving that Detroit is definitely not the place to hold a party. One city in America however, that has got a thriving techno and house scene is Mineapolis.

“Last time I played for Woody McBride, which was in Mineapolis, we pulled 1,500 people. Next time we are expecting even more. They seem to like us down there. It’s got a beautiful musical history, with loads of local bands getting well known throughout the world such as Prince and Husker Du”.

As well as pulling thousands of people at Woody McBrides Mineapolis events, another thing really surprised me. The DJ’s play everything from house through to techno, through to Gabba House. This is very different from the events organised in England, where mainly only one type of music is played.

It seems like they have the perfect scene, one that we should all learn from.

But, this is what Alan Oldham is all about. He wants to educate people and open their minds to the extent that the divisions will fall by the way side and we have only one thing in common – House Music. Good luck to him, that’s what I say.