When we’re unhappy with something in life, we generally have two options. We can either complain about it, or we can try to do something about it. This is a philosophy which the editor of Ears To The House tries to follow in life – he wasn’t keen on much of the house music around, so he started making his own. He wasn’t happy with the lack of coverage of certain issues in  the dance music world, so what did he do?

He started Amateur’s House, the predecessor of what was to become Ears To The House. And by the looks of it, the hugely underestimated Detroit techno producer Blake Baxter has a similar approach to life. As covered by this site recently, he isn’t happy with some of the messages from the film God Said Give ’Em Drum Machines – even going so far as to dismiss the so-called Belleville Three story as a “fairytale”. 

But it seems Baxter isn’t just content with voicing his dissenting views online. Far from it – he wants to put them all into a book. As he puts it with the subtlety of a brick in a new Kickstarter which he’s launched, “stories have more value when they’re told truthfully”. Ouch…

https://www.instagram.com/p/CjB1LRdsX6Z/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

This being a book, Baxter needs pretty substantial funds to get this project off the ground. He hopes to raise the specific sum of $12,000 to kick things off, and this money needs to be raised by 26th November this year. The money will go on appointing an editor, artwork, a publisher and on remastering some old photographs and articles – in addition to getting a 500-run of a double vinyl release filled with new and old releases from Baxter himself.

Whilst Ears To The House wishes Baxter every possible luck with this venture, isn’t there something quite astonishing on show here? The recent God Said Give ‘Em Drum Machines film largely sticks to the tired old story of the Belleville Three appearing from nowhere to change the world – why have none of those three men announced a new release to coincide with the release of the film?

There are so many what they call cross-pollination opportunities here – where everything helps to promote everything else. Yet we’re meant to believe that Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins and Derrick May have no new material they could put out – particularly bizarre when Atkins, whom this site holds a deep respect for, publicly brands himself an “originator of techno”.

Baxter, in contrast, has music awaiting release. These may be records he’s made recently, or they could be years old records which have never been released – but it doesn’t especially matter. He can commit to the material required to fill a double vinyl release – why can others not do so?

Everyone who’s attempted to make sense of Detroit techno so far has failed. Can Baxter succeed? Only time will tell – but he certainly won’t be repeating the Belleville Three “fairytale”, that’s for sure…