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Trackmaster Lou Robinson/Scan 7
(interviewed July 29, 1999)
by Andrew Duke Black Man, The Shadow, The Specialist, and Unknown Force are just a few of the many names under which Detroit’s Trackmaster Lou Robinson has recorded, but it’s been his Scan 7 guise to which he’s returned most often. Equally adept at crafting funky house, sleek tech house, or propulsive techno, his recording career began with “Hot Box”, a track created in the mid ‘80s with David McMurray--of the still-underappreciated band Was Not Was—as The Preps. He joined up with locals Mark Kinchen and Terrence Parker in 1988 to form Separate Minds, who released one EP on Robinson’s Direct Hit label before splitting up to work on their own; Robinson later recorded a second Separate Minds EP, “Troubled World” with Vernell Shelton. He shut down Direct Hit after much confusion with a similarly named imprint based in New York and has since gone on to record for labels including Mad Mike Banks’ Underground Resistance, the Burden’s 430 West, the short lived Makin’ Madd (a sister to Terrence Parker’s Intangible), FFRR, Soma, and Tresor. Happy to collaborate, he’s worked with Dave Peoples in The Specialist, DJ Reggie Curry as Allergy, and as the Cratesavers with Gary Romalis; the latter two are still active projects with hopes of recording albums. His latest release, however, is a solo album as Scan 7, his second full length for Berlin’s Tresor. It was actually the disintegration of his Direct Hit label that lead to Robinson recording for Underground Resistance. “Submerge was distributing my label for me and there was a big mixup because there was a label in New York called Direct Hit Entertainment,” Robinson remembers over the phone line from his Hidden Territory Studios in Detroit. “My label was called Direct Hit Records and their people were calling us asking for their records, and other people were calling them asking for my records.” Banks and Robinson weren’t happy with all the confusion, but the result worked out well for all parties concerned. “Mike just said to me, ‘well, dog, this is a little problem’ and he asked me to join UR [Underground Resistance]. So I dropped my label and joined forces with UR to release two EPs and a 12” that you could only get at Somewhere In Detroit [the mysterious store famed for its limited releases].” Robinson credits Blake Baxter and the UR connection with his eventual hookup with Berlin’s Tresor; simply put, Tresor’s first release was the UR related X-101 project and they’ve kept a keen eye on those working in the Underground Resistance camp specifically, and the Detroit area in general, since then. When Baxter used a track from Robinson on a compilation he put together for Tresor, the German label asked for an EP from Robinson’s Scan 7 and the “Beyond Sound” release was the result. The Trackmaster’s “Resurfaced” album is his followup to 1996’s “Dark Territory” album as Scan 7. How does he compare the change in the Scan 7 sound over the last three years? “The first album was maybe a little softer, a little funkier. This one is harder, I believe, and a greater variety of tracks”, he explains. “This new one even has got a jungle track. I went everywhere to come up with something different, [whereas] ‘Dark Territory’ was strictly bangin’.” He isn’t averse to trying new things, and Robinson believes that, despite what some might say, many producers in Detroit feel the same way. “Some of the cats here have said, ‘I don’t do jungle, I don’t get into it’,” Robinson says, “and I have to say ‘I don’t think so’ cos I know there’s some here who say that and then do it [jungle] under an alias. Some of the Detroit cats have basically abandoned techno because a lot of other cats came in and kind of raved it up, watered it down. And a lot of cats were telling me ‘as soon as they’re [the others] finished with it, that’s when we’ll come back and carry it on.’ But I said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to carry the flag. I’m not going to give up.’ We basically started the whole thing and really made some noise throughout the world; to abandon it because a couple cats have watered it down, that’s not even cool. History repeats itself. I’m trying to keep it going until [the Detroit cats] finally say ‘okay, we’re gonna come back and make it like it used to be.’” “Resurfaced” is Robinson’s second album for the Tresor label, with releases from other Detroit artists--Alan Oldham (as DJ T1000) and Drexciya--on the way from the German imprint. Robinson admits frustration over the fact that people in his own city of Detroit will have to buy his album as an import, but says that labels in the UK and Europe often have better business practices and he has tried to release more material domestically. “I could sit here and submit numerous tracks to the Detroit based labels and get no response; I’ve done it many times. But me not getting a response from my own people, what do you do? You go outside to somebody who will show you a little bit of love. I have dropped plenty of tracks to different labels here and no one seems to want to be interested. I guess because sometimes when you do step out of this scene or the hood and do something overseas then the people back home are like, ‘that cat sold out.’ But we wouldn’t have to sell out if the cats here in Detroit would open their arms and embrace the artists who are trying to submit tracks to people—that’s what’s sad.” Robinson has a concrete example from his own experience. “This one track, I took it to like two or three labels in Detroit and it gets no response. So I send it out, and it gets mad response and gets put out. Then when it comes out, the people back home say, ‘well, dang, dog, you could have at least brought it by here [for us to check out].’” You sit up there banging your head on the wall thinking ‘you were the first people I’d brought it to!’” Trying to figure out this logic is not something that Robinson and others find easy. “I guess because [the labels in Detroit] said ‘no’ [they figured] I was just going to sit on it and not have anything out. I’d rather have something out then nothing out. That’s why you get frustrated and a little upset when you take it to these cats and they look at you like, ‘OK, whatever’”, Robinson says with a sigh, “and that doesn’t make you feel good at all. And then they sometimes wonder why a lot of us send tracks overseas. It’s because a lot of cats here don’t want to be bothered; either that or sometimes they’re just player hatin’.” This is a reality Robinson would like to see change. “I swear I’d like to see my tracks come out from home than over there any day, but if I can’t have them come out at home, than they’re gonna have to come out somewhere, and it’s gonna be over there.” Despite his feelings, Robinson still has a good relationship with many in the Detroit scene including Mike Banks and Underground Resistance. “I can’t say UR has shown me anything but mad love. They were the first ones to say ‘hey, dog, I’ll put your stuff out and there won’t be any funny business. Mike did everything he said he’d do. Sometimes I regret that I kind of stepped out of the zone to do something for Tresor and not stay at home. I guess I thought maybe [UR] were moving too slow and with me being anxious…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but continues his thought. “It’s a learning tool and so I have to suffer the consequences, miss out on a lot of things that I could have been involved with with UR.” The Trackmaster would be happy to record for the Detroit imprint again. Is this in the forecast? “That would be totally up to Mad Mike [Banks],” he says. “I would love to, but I guess once there’s a mission for me to do on UR, then I’ll be called for duty to do that mission. Until then, I’m on hold or on call. If I were to get a call from him--‘we need you to get back in there and take care of some things’—I would not hesitate to do it. He could buzz me any day and if he asked me for a track, I’d give him a track, whatever he needed. Mike opened up the door for me and I’ll always be grateful for that, and him, and the UR family.” Robinson has some ideas as to how the situation could be improved in Detroit. “There’s a lot of player hatin’ going on around here,” he confides, “and we just have to stop the madness and all come together.” What does he think it would take to do that? “Oh boy,” he says, “egos need to get let down. I mean, egos have to just fly away. We need to have a Detroit summit meeting or a block club meeting and just have everybody out and talk. That’s one thing right there, the communication gap with all of us here.” His personal philosophy could apply to many situations outside of music, in fact. “It’s like this with me: at one point someone helped me. Maybe it was Blake Baxter introducing me to Tresor; much love to Blake Baxter because he has helped a lot of people along. And a lot of people might wonder why I go back or reach back to help others. It’s because at one point I was being helped, someone helped me. And someone had to help them to get them where they were at. But sometimes people forget that, and that’s the sad part. I don’t mind helping someone if I can. Some others might say, ‘let that cat get his own.’ But why if I have the means or the tools or know people who can help him, why would I do that? If all these cats here in Detroit could just come together, we could blow everybody away. We need to sit back and look at this whole picture and unlearn what we’ve learned and start embracing each other.” Future plans for Robinson include working with fellow Detroiter Mike Grant in the Black Noise project, but his latest goal is to get a new label started up by early next year. “I’m working on that as we speak, actually. I’m thinking of calling it Cratesavers Recordings. You know when [you’re DJing and] you go looking through your crates, you need a record to save your set. So I thought, ‘Man, our records might be the records to save their set; they’ll need our records in their crate’; that’s how I came up with the name for the label.” He’s got plenty of enthusiasm for the label’s potential. “It’s not going to be just one kind of music; they’ll be techno, house, tech house, jungle,” he says, “because everybody’s crate needs savin’! We’re gonna give everybody a little somethin’.” Releases from Mike Solano, Voice In The Shadows, Partyin’ Atmosphere, and various works from Robinson are scheduled at this point. “What I’m going to probably end up doing is bring Scan 7 home, bring Allergy home, bring Cratesavers home, come back with Unknown Force. All the stuff that I did over the years, I want to finally bring it home and put it out myself eventually.” Scan 7’s “Resurfaced” album is out now on Tresor; an EP from Cratesavers is out this month on Soma. A selected discography: Allergy—Forbidden Journey EP (Soma)
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