Keith Tucker is a DJ and

producer Producer or producers may refer to: Occupations *Producer (agriculture), a farm operator *A stakeholder of economic production *Film producer, supervises the making of films **Executive producer, contributes to a film's budget and usually does not ...

Detroit techno Detroit techno is a type of techno music that generally includes the first techno productions by Detroit-based artists during the 1980s and early 1990s. Prominent Detroit techno artists include Juan Atkins, Eddie Fowlkes, Derrick May, Jeff Mil ...

and electro music from

Detroit, Michigan Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...

Career

Tucker began his career playing cover versions of

Juan Atkins Juan Atkins (born September 12, 1962), also known as Model 500 and Infiniti, is an American record producer and DJ from Detroit, Michigan. ''Mixmag'' has described him as "the original pioneer of Detroit techno." He has been a member of The Belle ...

' electro hits from the 1980s with his childhood friend Tommy Hamilton. The live ensemble achieved local renown for combining

break-dancing Breakdancing, also called breaking or b-boying/b-girling, is an athletic style of street dance originating from the African American and Puerto Rican communities in the United States. While diverse in the amount of variation available in t ...

, and Tucker's mobile DJing while manually playing repetitive, high-speed synthesizer basslines. They later became known as Regime, then RX-7, and finally, in 1994 they became

Aux 88 AUX 88 is an electro group from Michigan, United States. AUX 88 is composed of Tom Tom (Tommy Hamilton) and Keith Tucker (DJ name DJ K1.) and BJ - William (POSATRONIX) Smith (BJ)and Anthony Horton (Blak Tony). The group was originally formed as ...

. They were joined by BJ Smith (Posatronix) and Lamont Norwood (DJ Dijital). Tucker's first 12" EP was a collaboration with Juan Atkins and Jesse Anderson, under the name "Frequency" in 1990.

released the album "Bass Magnetic" and were the first group to revive Electro in the mid-to-late 1990s. As such they have been credited with eventually inspiring the genre known as

electroclash Electroclash (also known as synthcore, retro-electro, tech-pop, nouveau disco, and the new new wave) is a genre of music that fuses 1980s electro, new wave and synth-pop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) ...

. In the mid-1990s they described their own sound as Techno-Bass, a fusion of influences from

, electro,

Miami bass Miami bass (booty music or booty bass) is a subgenre of hip hop music that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. The use of drums from the Roland TR-808, sustained kick drum, heavy bass, raised dance tempos, and frequently sexually explicit l ...

. As co-founder of Puzzlebox recordings in 1996 with Anthony "Shake" Shakir, Tucker also joined the tradition of independent dance music publishing and vinyl record pressing in Detroit. He utilized, along with other artists, the National Sound Company vinyl lathe which was used to produce the records of legendary Detroit Soul labels such as

Motown Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on June 7, 1958, and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau of ''moto ...

. In 2006, Tucker's song "Plastic People" was featured on the DJ mix album '' A Bugged Out Mix'' by

Miss Kittin Caroline Hervé (born 1973), known professionally as Miss Kittin, is a French electronic music producer, DJ, singer, and songwriter. Since rising to prominence in 1998 for her singles " 1982" and "Frank Sinatra" with The Hacker, she has worked ...

, which charted at number one-hundred seventy on the

French Albums Chart French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ...

Music

Among his influences, he cites 1970s

Funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...

such as

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

Kraftwerk Kraftwerk (, "power station") is a German band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk were among the first successful acts to popularize the ...

and classical music, particularly

Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the '' Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard w ...

. The distinction of his solo work and production credits, is in their blending and refinement of syncopated, minimalist Electro and

Techno Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time (4/4) and often ch ...

rhythms influenced by the tonal undulations of

Miami Bass Miami bass (booty music or booty bass) is a subgenre of hip hop music that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. The use of drums from the Roland TR-808, sustained kick drum, heavy bass, raised dance tempos, and frequently sexually explicit l ...

and the

Roland TR-808 The Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, commonly known as the 808, is a drum machine manufactured by the Roland Corporation between 1980 and 1983. It was one of the first drum machines to allow users to program rhythms instead of using preset patte ...

drum machine. True to the Detroit techno tradition, Tucker's music is often emotive of a machine-like consciousness and a mental imagery of solipsism, urban alienation and decay. This is often expressed, masked or sublimated through metaphors of high technology, science fiction and space travel and conveyed through affected analogue synthesizer timbres. This harks back to Kraftwerk's description of their music – "Electronic blues made with a jazz improvisation technique.”

References

External links

optic-universe.com
– Keith Tucker's website ''Optic Universe''
aux88.com
– official website of ''AUX 88'' * *
Keith Tucker
at

Last.fm Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the tracks the user listens to, e ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tucker, Keith Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Musicians from Detroit American techno musicians