Desire: The Carl Craig Story review - a worthy, brand-conscious encomium for a techno star

Carl Craig (b.1969) is a leading Detroit electronic music producer and DJ whose Planet E Communications label has existed for over three decades. This 90-minute documentary, which was directed by Jean-Cosme Delaloye and features over thirty interviews, tells Craig's life story and attempts to define his importance. It's accompanied by a soundtrack largely comprising music recorded by him, either under his own name or under his many aliases.

The film's account of Craig's early years draws on extensive input from his parents and his sister. In one vivid exchange, he recalls the formative experience of entering alone the church in the tiny town of Watkinsville,Georgia, where his grandmother lived, to try out drums and the organ. “I could have the church by myself and get into my own thing,” Craig says.

Instead of fulfilling his parents’ ambition for him that he should attend university, Craig cut loose, bought a synthesizer, and explained to them that it was cheaper for them than sending him to college. If there was any element of a gamble there, then the financial success his work has afforded him is clear. And, the proud owner of a Mies van der Rohe house, he declares in interviews that he takes inspiration from architecture.The film's focus on Craig shows the range of projects he has been involved in, such as the Party/Afterparty installation he devised for the Dia Beacon art gallery in 2020, and has since taken further afield: the Deutsche Grammophon album “ReComposed” which he made in partnership with Moritz von Oswald, and appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival, a particular source of satisfaction for a man who says that his musical idol was Miles Davis, for years a Montreux stalwart. But the reasons why he is fascinated for Miles aren't articulated in the film. 

Detroit appears as a moody setting. Drone footage artsily escorts the viewer around derelict buildings with their penumbral shadows while appropriately gloomy music plays in the background. The way we keep being taken back to similar images before being returned to yet another interview becomes repetitive. 

Almost all the interviewees are insiders in the techno scene – and, indeed, a high proportion of them happen to have an association with Craig’s agency Detroit Premiere Artistes – so we have similar encomiums being delivered by a succession of people with similar experiences and attitudes. This feels narrow and insular, not to say flat and monotonous. One talking head after another describes what Carl Craig has brought to techno. There are several versions of the trope that he “has feeling” and/or “makes machines cry”.

As I watched the dystopian images of Detroit, while hearing Gilles Peterson admit that it had been the "exotic" side of Detroit techno that had “looked good and that’s all we cared about,” I couldn’t help thinking that Detroit is limited here to fulfilling the role of an "exotic" backdrop for techno as a brand. There is a much broader story to be told about Detroit and its music scene, but this film largely ignores it.

As Pat Metheny has said, that “no city has meant more to American musical culture than Detroit.” For the past seven decades at least, it has been a unique and improbably fertile breeding ground for music of many kinds, and for forming labels to support music in particular. There was a label in Detroit, Tamla, which meant that Stevie Wonder could make his first recordings as an 11-year-old. Artist-driven jazz co-operatives and labels such as Tribe and Strata Corporation flourished in the 1970s. Carl Craig himself was nurtured by those in techno who went before him. The depth of this infrastructure and the struggles and defiant attitudes that forged it are skated over if touched on at all in this story. It is a shame.

Detroit also hatched Eminem, who had his first recordings issued by a Detroit rap label. He was responsible for the immortal line “It's over, nobody listens to techno.“ I'm having a mischievous and only semi-serious thought, but if the makers of Desire: The Carl Craig Story had tried to deal with that kind of put-down, it might have livened up their film, injected some variety and perspective, and could have made it somewhat less of a brand-conscious tribute. A good alternative –or even antidote to it – is a recent live (and lively) London performance by Carl Craig filmed by the UK label Defected Records.  

• Carl Craig (All Night Long) will be at the Jazz Cafe in Camden on 30 May 
• More new music reviews on theartsdesk