Ten tracks, a single name in the credits and an entire Detroit street map in the titles: 'Renaissance Centre', 'Woodward Avenue', 'Campus Martius', 'Grand Circus'. 'Motor City Blues' is the kind of statement that only fits on a label where the owner answers to no one, and SUB TL is exactly that: HD Substance's Madrid-based platform, devoted for years, per his Resident Advisor biography, to releasing other people's techno. Here the boss flips the formula and signs all ten cuts alone, with no remixes and no guests.
A Blues with a Madrid Passport
The Detroit connection is no tourist postcard. Luis Rozalén, the man behind the alias, has been releasing since 1995, founded Undersounds, Spain's first specialised electronic music magazine, in 1993, and has been a regular in the booth at Detroit's The Works since 2010, with a Movement festival appearance in 2012. That first-hand contact shows in the choice of locations: alongside predictable avenues like Michigan or Woodward you get Greek Town, Sweetwater's Tavern or the Heidelberg Project, stops picked by someone who has walked the city beyond the obvious circuit.
Read as a label manifesto, the tracklist fits that double residency: the core hammers between 128 and 133 BPM in almost exclusively minor keys, the industrial grey that defines SUB TL's line, while three cuts break the pulse and give the record its blues:
- 'Renaissance Centre' opens at a restrained tempo in G minor: nearly seven minutes that work as a panorama of the city before stepping into the club.
- 'Michigan Avenue' eases off at the exact midpoint of the record, right when the 133 block was starting to bite.
- 'Heidelberg Project' stretches C minor far from peak time and takes the role of the most introspective cut of the lot.
The only two excursions into major keys, 'Woodward Avenue' —also the longest cut at 7:31— and 'Gratiot Avenue', both at 128, act as harmonic breathing room. When 'Grand Circus' closes in D minor, back at 133, the label's thesis is clear: you can write a Motor City blues from Madrid, as long as you have earned the right to walk its streets.
Sources: RA · Bandcamp