How have you changed your philosophy in the past decade?
What are your most memorable gigs?
The Montreaux Jazz Festival, the Metamorphose Festival and Club Metro in Japan, our initial assault at the Tresor Club Berlin in 1991, the Rex Club in Paris, Club 69 in Scotland, and of course our performance at home in Detroit at a youth center organized by MC Invincible.
Certain things do not change, while at the same time, we constantly evolve out of necessity. Due to the Borg assimilating, certain aspects of our dynamics we have moved to “hidden in plain sight” mode. We are determined to now produce more sound with less actual sightings. UR has developed the sound of high-tech jazz. Is there a connection between great musicians that you might admire, like Chick Corea? Certainly, speaking for myself. I feel that the great fusion era of jazz was as much of an influence on our music as Kraftwerk or Public Enemy. Chick Corea, Tony Williams, Billy Cobham, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Herbie Hancock, Jean-Luc Ponty, Weather Report, and many others all experimented with early synths and incorporated the new sounds into their new style of jazz called fusion. It was and still is extremely important music to me and the musicians in the Galaxy 2 Galaxy band.
Why is Detroit so much a part of UR?
[It’s] the type of people the environment breeds. People who respect machines as work partners, but never feel inferior to them. People who can give a shit job to a robot, recognizing that no human being should do work that is harmful or hazardous to one’s health. People that don’t cry when the robot beats you out, but adjust, adapt, and change to manipulate the robot and create things in sync with the technology that the technology by itself is incapable of dreaming of. People that know machines are vulnerable and have a lot to learn. People that realize that greed, corruption, and corporate efficiency are the building blocks of moral and environmental disaster. People that know that today’s space stations are tomorrow’s rest areas for the interstellar highways to rape the moon and all other neighboring planets. Detroit knows this shit. We are way ahead. It’s the rest of the world I worry about.
What do you set out to do when you play live?
When we play live, we first and foremost out of respect give the audience the tracks they have come to hear! No funny stuff or artistic bullshit. Then once they’re feeling it and everybody’s ready, we may attempt to take the track to another level based on the spontaneity of the musicians, as it is a great advantage over the machines in our band. It is our chance to outplay the machines. And for better or worse, we try. I think it is an interesting challenge to witness. If my musicians can’t outplay the machine, then what is the purpose of the musician?
Who is really doing something for Detroit?
The army of listeners—those who know—have been helping us here at UR for years, by setting up online shopping carts, advising us on bogus fake-ass promoters overseas, and on unfortunately with ill-advised computer attacks on giants that think they can fuck with UR. We have a unique relationship in which our listeners strongly participate in the development of our situation via technologies and strategic assistance not available to us here in the hood. Many listeners are physically
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