We're supposed to learn from reissues, right? We become more educated listeners, better listeners, perhaps more adventurous listeners? We're trying to understand how these gems stayed hidden, so that we can scoop down and pick them up next time, 49ers panning through disc three's outtakes and dub edits for something shiny. It's functionally the same logic we've been fed since grade school: Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
So forgive me: My favorite part about Drexciya's Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller II is how little it teaches me about modern dance music. Drexciya are cloistered, pugnacious, local, racial, and exclusionary to the point of distraction. I immediately understand why their limited, obscure, geeky material was missed the first time around. No one could figure out Detroit techno in the mid 1990s, and they still can't. (Boiler Room, an organization that broadcasts live, secretive DJ sets, announced their first-ever Detroit simulacast as "what we originally wanted to call 'Boiler Room 313,' but have been advised to call 'Boiler Room Detroit' instead." Stay provincial, D.) Drexciya has no corollary in a world in which even underground dance musicians continent-hop, establish vanity imprints, and use remixes as marketing tools.
So forget about added perspective. What Clone's Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller series (there are to be four volumes) threatens-- like New Order's Substance or Creedence Clearwater Revival's Chronicle-- is to define an act that, for those who experienced it firsthand, was already well-defined. A collector friend griped recently about Clone's re-ordering of a serialized, conceptual catalog, though he did so while noting that the original 12"s-- released on Detroit-centric labels like Submerge, Underground Resistance, and Tresor-- were poorly pressed. Shuffling these records has only proven the durability of Drexciya's sounds and concepts. By picking and choosing from the duo's catalog, Clone has removed the burden of totality; we don't have to absorb every Drexciya single in chronological order all at once and are therefore afforded a convenient last fraction of the puzzle the early birds received.
Vol. II continues in much the same manner as Vol. I: short tracks of spackled, analog funk dominate, offering occasional clues about Drexciya's sci-fi mystery. Like Vol. I, the selections here are mostly drawn from Drexciya's early run of singles. Wild high-pass filters, like those found on the maniacal "Danger Bay", provide plenty of twine for James Stinson and Gerald Donald to bind their clapping 808s. There are some beautiful stylistic diversions-- "Aqua Jujidsu" sounds like someone took an Instagram photo of drum'n'bass, "Unknown Journey II" is a particularly wily slab of electro-- but the music here doesn't exist to shine light on 1990s dance music. We are better off attempting to map "Positron Island"'s longitude in relation to "Danger Bay" than we are positioning Drexciya in the genealogy of dance music. Both are going to result in shitload of guesswork, but the former allows us to dream with Drexciya instead of at them.
And dreaming with them is way more fun. Imagine the sad, ghoulish piano man playing in "Davey Jones Locker", or the exquisite, proud charge ahead in "Journey Home". The twinkling arpeggios that speckle "Neon Falls" speak for themselves. These are kernels of techno so dense and potent that they require no context whatsoever. Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller II, refreshingly, doesn't bother to give us any.
