“This music started around futurism,” Sherard Ingram told DJ Mag back in 2018. He was talking about the type of Detroit electro that Gerald Donald and the late, much-missed James Stinson had synthesized as Drexciya. But Ingram could also have been talking about the shapeshifting techno he made alongside Carl Craig, Anthony “Shake” Shakir, and others as the collective Urban Tribe, who spent the turn of the last century releasing increasingly explosive tracks on labels like Mo Wax, Rephlex, and Mahogani Music—the latter run by Moodymann, who taught Ingram how to DJ in the early 1980s. Or the dozens of releases of his own, after Drexcyia waved him in as their tour DJ and anointed him Drexycian DJ Stingray. Those tracks apply a scientific rigor to rhythm, distilling histories of Black music into politically minded dancefloor fuel. Over the last 30 years, Ingram has earned his place in history by staying on the move.
This year, Ingram—now known as DJ Stingray 313—has revived his Micron Audio label, with plans to reissue his storming 2012 album F.T.N.W.O. This is no nostalgia act, though. While Ingram could coast on his reputation, the label marks its relaunch with a new EP, Molecular Level Solutions, that kicks into instant overdrive.
“Bioplastics” feels streamlined yet integrates a massive number of components, from a kick drum that kicks up clouds of smoke to little melodies spattering like rain on a windshield. It passes through a few wind tunnels and peels off into the distance. Detroit techno has a long history with transportation, but Stingray here sounds uncommonly revved up.
Things get even rougher for “Carbon Neutral Fuels,” in which great clouds of dub techno ignite. Cymbals burst in hisses of white noise that sound positively iridescent. Two-thirds in, everything burns up and only a brutal kind of rattle remains. I had the very good fortune of hearing this on a very loud soundsystem on a hot summer afternoon a few months ago; it felt like the air inverted around me. “Construction Materials From Organic Waste” takes that rattle and hammers it into a teetering, vertiginous power station. It just works. Ingram once told The Wire that, while working in Detroit’s famed Buy Rite record store, he had an argument with Gerald Donald over an early Drexcyia song’s unusual arrangement, which made it tough to mix. The next day, James Stinson came in and they had the same argument. Stingray’s productions don’t have the uncanny funk Drexcyia’s oddness enabled. But a long faith in rationality has served him well: It takes discipline to sound this unhinged.
Closer “Enzymatic Detergents” rinses the EP in some tightly controlled reverb and delay, just enough to imply that things could go on forever. Its limber five minutes could easily work themselves into 10. But he shuts it down and moves on, right on time. Today, in a world where prospects seem so dim that even pessimism feels Pollyanna-ish, Stingray offers brutal beacons of hope. The future arrives each time you play it.
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