“A really good musician cannot do techno” - a rare interview with Terrence Dixon
Detroit producer Terrence Dixon doesn’t go out, rarely DJs and, according to lore, doesn’t really like interviews. So when he agreed to speak to Line Noise around the release of his new EP for Tresor, When Stars Remember, I jumped at the chance.
In a very sweet interview, we talked about his history with Tresor, the power of extreme repetition, falling asleep to your music, his grandmother’s love for Kraftwerk, Juan Atkins, Mike Banks, not reading manuals and so much more.
The interview was first released on the Line Noise podcast earlier this week. The text has been lightly edited for clarity.
Ben Cardew: How is Detroit?
Terrence Dixon: Detroit is good, man. The weather is starting to get better.
Ben Cardew: I noticed, actually, on the press pictures around the new release, that you’re shovelling snow. Has it been a really hard winter?
Terrence Dixon: It was a real hard winter this year, very hard.
Ben Cardew: And what’s it like in Detroit at the moment? I’ve never been there; obviously, I’ve listened to Detroit’s music all the time, but how is it at the moment?
Terrence Dixon: Oh man, it’s still the thing. Like I said, it’s a lot of love here, man, a lot of good people, a lot of respect here. The whole city runs on respect, and that’s it.
Ben Cardew: And what’s it like to be a musician in Detroit? Is there lots of support from everyone?
Terrence Dixon: To be honest with you, man, it really is. It’s like a group of people that do music together around the city, but I’m more of just an independent kind of person.
Ben Cardew: You do your own thing. Exactly. Your house is looking nice in the pictures as well. It has a big backyard.
Terrence Dixon: Oh yeah, I’ve been working on my house for 15 years. It’s 104 years old now, so I’ve been working on it.
Ben Cardew: And you’re into gardening, right?
Terrence Dixon: Yeah, a lot. Yeah, gardening and vegetable gardening. And plants that come back every year, bigger and better every year.
Ben Cardew: I’ve got to as - maybe this sounds like a stupid question - but do you see any connection between music and gardening?
Terrence Dixon: Yeah, I do. I’ve learned that the patience you have to have to make good music is the same patience you have to have to have a good garden.
Ben Cardew: We’re here to talk about many things, but your new EP, When Stars Remember, is an excellent, excellent EP. You said it was made with Tresor specifically in mind. What was your history with the club?
Terrence Dixon: My history with the club is like, you know, I love hard techno. I used to go downstairs; I could be downstairs for hours at Tresor. So I always wanted to have a record that a DJ could play at three o’clock in the morning at peak time, and it raises the crowd and raises the energy. Yeah, so I was thinking about energy - raising energy, a lot of energy, more energy.
Ben Cardew: Are these tracks you’ve tested in the club?
Terrence Dixon: These tracks? No, I never tested anything.
Ben Cardew: No? How come - you’ve not been DJing? Or have you just not played them? Because I can imagine they’ll be big in a club.
Terrence Dixon: Yeah, I don’t DJ really - maybe like twice a year.
Ben Cardew: You must be looking forward to a time when you can play them, though. They’re really hard.
Terrence Dixon: Yeah, you know what? It’s funny because I don’t DJ my own music yet because I’m so shy about it, man. So I really don’t DJ my own music, not yet.
Ben Cardew: I think - I mean, I respect the fact that you’re shy - but I think you should play these tunes the next time you DJ. I think they’ll go over really, really well.
Terrence Dixon: Okay, yeah, I’m going to try. I’m moving into that. There are so many good tracks to play when I DJ - so many good tracks that I want to play - because I only play twice a year. So many good things, I really can’t fit it all in. It’s hard to really fit in.
Ben Cardew: You say you only play twice a year. Presumably, you could play a lot more if you wanted. Why only two times a year?
Terrence Dixon: Because I don’t like to wear out my welcome. I make maybe 12 appearances a year - like 12 events a year now.
Ben Cardew: What makes an event special enough for you to want to do it?
Terrence Dixon: Well, you know what? It’s always the right people who reach out, who know my style. They know how I think and they know exactly how I look at life and it just always ends up being a good marriage every time.
Ben Cardew: Yeah. When did you first play Tresor?
Terrence Dixon: I think I was playing this club called Suicide in Berlin a long time ago… Juan Atkins was in town and I was playing this other club in Berlin and Juan was on the radio saying that Terrence is in town. He was really hyping my name. And I was like, "Wow." So they came and got me, put me in the car, and drove me down to the club. I wasn’t even booked, and they told me to play, and I just started playing.
Ben Cardew: And Tresor - I’ve never been, but it seems like a legendary place.
Terrence Dixon: It’s number one to me because of the vibe, the people, and the people who know what’s real and how it’s supposed to be. They know exactly how it’s supposed to look and how it’s supposed to sound because it’s really Detroit. It’s really the same vibe, I’m telling you. It’s really the same vibe as Detroit.
Ben Cardew: What is that vibe, then?
Terrence Dixon: Dark with smoke, a strobe machine, graffiti, and good people. People who don’t really smile in your face all the time - real people.
Ben Cardew: There’s obviously a big link between Berlin and Detroit. Is it still as strong as ever?
Terrence Dixon: As strong as ever.
Ben Cardew: I was reading an interview you did where you once said you found it really hard to make EPs - so what changed?
Terrence Dixon: Oh, nothing has changed. It’s still hard. It’s just what people want sometimes. It’s just what labels want sometimes because I always want to make the biggest album I can all the time.
Ben Cardew: Because you want 12 tracks, 14 tracks, 15 tracks.
Terrence Dixon: Exactly, right.
Ben Cardew: But I think When Stars Remember works really well as an EP-four really strong tracks that just kill your brain in a good way. Not killing your brain, but sort of taking your brain.
Terrence Dixon: And I owe that a lot to Thomas Hoffman and Felix from Tresor. They worked hard to get these tracks and to make me feel like it was a full project. Because a full project to me is an album all the time. But they worked so hard, man, and they put the right tracks together. I’m satisfied with this EP.
Ben Cardew: They put it together and they were like, "Look, this is it. This is the project."
Terrence Dixon: This is done. They had a whole bunch of tracks and they put it all together.
Ben Cardew: The four tracks here have extreme repetition. And I mean that in a good way. Why did you want to do that?
Terrence Dixon: Well, like I said, I had little equipment when I first started. I didn’t have any money and I didn't have a choice but to just make repetition. And I found out that if you listen to it for hours and hours and hours, it becomes a different track. It changes your mind. Your mind is going to change that track if you listen to it for at least three minutes and beyond.
Ben Cardew: Because your mind responds to it.
Terrence Dixon: That’s right.
Ben Cardew: What happens to the brain with repetition, do you think?
Terrence Dixon: Well, I think the brain sees repetition and can find different things in repetition where the human can’t. The brain can find the different things in repetition because there’s a lot of different things in there. There are a lot of different things in the same thing.
Ben Cardew: I wonder what it’s like for you when you’re making a track like this. You’ve got this extreme repetition and you’re listening to it many, many times - you must listen to it thousands of times, right? What’s it like for your brain? You must get a really extreme response to it.
Terrence Dixon: You know what happens? When I make it, I fall into like a light sleep. Then I wake up maybe three hours later and it’s still going. It’s not like a full sleep; it’s like a real light sleep. And it’s like it’s got my body; if somebody turned it off, I’d wake up. Then once I wake up, you would know if it’s the right one or not.
Ben Cardew: I would love to know what your brain waves are doing when you’re having that sleep. It’s interesting because when I listen to this EP - and in fact to quite a lot of your music - it makes me think not of "trance music" as we know it, but that it actually could make you go into a trance. Do you know what I mean?
Terrence Dixon: I do know what you mean, yeah. And that’s exactly what repetition does. Repetition does that. For instance, the iPhone promotion for the iPhone - you see it so many times that you might buy it. It's the same thing with the mind. The mind is going to really hear other things and see other things with the repetition over and over and over. If you don’t have repetition, the brain misses a lot. And the right tempo, too.
Ben Cardew: What is the right tempo for you? 130? 135?
Terrence Dixon: Well, the perfect tempo is 120. But if you want to speed things up, Ben Sims taught me 128 beats per minute. Then I went up to 131, then to 133, and right now I’m at 137 beats per minute.
Ben Cardew: It’s interesting you mentioned 120 because I seem to remember reading that 120 is the speed at which the body swings naturally - like if you swing your arms, they’ll swing at 120 beats per minute.
Terrence Dixon: That’s right, yeah. At 120 beats per minute, you get everything. You get the whole bass, you get everyone.
Ben Cardew: So why don’t you make more music at 120?
Terrence Dixon: I think because of techno and the way people want to dance a little faster. I know I love 137, I love 141, 143 - I do. I love it, man. But I try to be polite to certain things and have respect for certain things. You can’t reinvent the door handle. You can’t really reinvent everything. So I try not to go too far with that.
Ben Cardew: I love the idea that 137 is "polite" for you. I think I’m right in saying that another key theme of the EP is absence. Is that right?
Terrence Dixon: Yes.
Ben Cardew: Absence of what?
Terrence Dixon: Like a whole bunch of sounds deleted into something that’s good. Imagine 30 sounds on top of each other, all going at the same time, and you just delete this one, delete that one, delete that one - and then you have something underneath that all the time. That’s what we do.
Ben Cardew: So is that how you make music? You build up to 30 sounds and just take away the ones you don’t need?
Terrence Dixon: Build up, build up. It’d be terrible, it sounds terrible, then it sounds better, sounds better, then it sounds good. There may be a time where it sounds terrible and then you’ve got to delete this and lower that. Volume is important, too. Different volumes give you different effects with different sounds. Just volume.
Ben Cardew: How do you know when you’re finished with the track, then? How do you know that those four elements are "it"?
Terrence Dixon: That’s a good question. I just start recording. I don't know, I just start recording everything.
Ben Cardew: You’ve probably been asked about this before but you announced in 2004 that you were going to retire from making music. Why did you decide to do that?
Terrence Dixon: Man, it was nothing but being lonely and depressed.
Ben Cardew: Ah, sorry to hear that.
Terrence Dixon: That’s alright. But depressed about the wrong thing, man - not a serious depression, just a minor depression. I don’t know, man. Juan Atkins is the guy that gave me the motivation to come back. He said, "No man, you’ve got to come back." So I said okay. That’s when I came back. It was tough, but I’m glad I came back. I’m so happy I came back.
Ben Cardew: Me too.
Terrence Dixon: There are a lot of young kids, man, that need to hear some things.
Ben Cardew: Did you miss making music when you weren’t doing it?
Terrence Dixon: Yeah, man, I really did. I was horrible. I was in everybody's business. I was gaining weight. It was terrible. I didn't know what to do or where to turn. That’s the truth. It was a terrible retirement. I’m glad I came back.
Ben Cardew: I’m glad you came back as well. You talked about Juan Atkins' influence. Mike Banks was a big influence as well, right?
Terrence Dixon: Yeah, exactly. My man Mike Banks, man - he was tough on me. He really was tough on me but I’m glad he was. He made me a better man and better at music because he taught me how to do the reel-to-reel tape. He did a lot for me, so I really appreciate that.
Ben Cardew: When you say he was tough, was he just like, "You can do better, you can do better"?
Terrence Dixon: Man, I’m talking about how I would do a track and he’ll come in like, "Nah man, do another one. That ain’t good enough, do another one." He just kept pushing and pushing and pushing and then I finally got one. And then it just didn't work out; it just didn't get released. I was supposed to be one of the Underground Fugitives. [NB I am pretty sure he means Interstellar Fugitives, which was a 1998 compilation album from Underground Resistance.]
Ben Cardew: I read about that. What happened?
Terrence Dixon: I don’t know. I did the track, he had the track and it just didn’t happen. I know that right when it was about to happen, that’s when Juan Atkins came and got me and put me in his studio. I think it was right there when me and Juan got together. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it but it was right at that same time.
Ben Cardew: You have had no training in music, right?
Terrence Dixon: No. The only training I had was when I was in grade school; I played the clarinet. My mama bought me a clarinet and I played in a band in high school, too, but it was just some clarinet band music. It wasn't serious.
Ben Cardew: Do you think, in a way, it helped you not having much training in music because you could do your own thing?
Terrence Dixon: That’s right, man. That’s a good point because I really feel that a really good musician cannot do techno. I believe a really good musician cannot break down enough to do something simple - do, do, do, do. It would take a lot for him to do that. And vice versa, I can’t do what a polished musician can do either. So I think techno is special like that. I don’t know anything about music at all. I don’t know anything about isolators and effects or what kick drum to use. I just go with what is in my ear and my heart. That’s the truth.
Ben Cardew: And you’ve never read a manual, either.
Terrence Dixon: Never. The only thing I read is the "How to Get Started Quick" section and then I put it down. That’s it. Just get it going.
Ben Cardew: I wonder if I could ask something about having children. I’ve got two children, so I find the influence of having children on music really interesting. I don’t want to get too personal, but I wanted to ask - you had your first child at the age of 19, right? How did that change the music you were making?
Terrence Dixon: Oh, I think it changed the music a lot, man, because I couldn't go anywhere anymore. I couldn’t go out with my friends. So, hey man, that’s all I had. That was like a blessing in disguise because I probably would have never done all that music if I didn’t have to sit in one room for 18 years.
Ben Cardew: That’s what I was thinking. Because if you can’t go out, you’re not too influenced by other people’s music. You don’t hear a track in a club and think, "Right, I’m going to make something like that." This was presumably before the internet was a big thing, right?
Terrence Dixon: Exactly, that’s right. No internet.
Ben Cardew: So you were just alone in your room like, "Okay, this is what I’m going to do."
Terrence Dixon: And this is what came out. Exactly, that’s it.
Ben Cardew: Talking of family, you said once that your grandmother likes Kraftwerk? That’s cool. She sounds cool.
Terrence Dixon: Man, she loves Kraftwerk. She loves that track Numbers. She likes Cybotron, too. She liked the Dance Band, Staples Singers and George Benson. She had a good taste in music. Real good taste.
Ben Cardew: Because in Detroit, you got Kraftwerk on the radio, right?
Terrence Dixon: Yeah, all day, every day.
Ben Cardew: Have you seen them play live?
Terrence Dixon: It’s so funny; I never saw them play live because I never was interested in seeing them play live. I’m not interested in seeing too many people play live. I don’t get out of the house, man. But maybe I should get out and support that more. I will. But because I’m so busy and so tired at the end of the night, I just can't make it sometimes. But I’m going to start supporting the local scene for sure because they’re doing a great job too. There are a lot of great new artists out there that I want to see and help all I can.
Ben Cardew: It’s alright to stay in. I stay in.
Terrence Dixon: I always say I want to go but then I just stay in and do music.
Ben Cardew: Do you dance?
Terrence Dixon: Man, I used to be a big dancer in the very beginning. I did that robot style - dancing the robot. I tried breakdancing but I was terrible at it. I couldn't do breaking. But dancing? Yeah, I love it. But not now, though. I don’t dance now.
Ben Cardew: You are often described as enigmatic. Is that a fair description?
Terrence Dixon: Oh, well, what does that mean?
Ben Cardew: It means mysterious, maybe.
Terrence Dixon: Oh, yeah, I can understand that. Only because I’m not trying to be, though. I’m just being myself. I’m a "stay in the house, around the garden, at my mother’s house" kind of person. That’s it. Just at my mother’s house, my studio or on a plane. That’s where I’m at.
Ben Cardew: This is what I love about you. You like gardening and staying in and going to your mum's house, but the music you make is absolutely ferocious. You might think you’d make ambient music but your music is absolutely fierce.
Terrence Dixon: Because that’s the inside - that’s my environment. That’s the gunfire that I hear every night, the screams and the people fighting and the police. That’s all that too, on the inside. And a lot of my own problems, too - my own inner-self things that I try to keep back to be a normal person in society. It comes out in my music sometimes.
Ben Cardew: I really appreciate you doing this interview today. I know you’ve previously said you’re not particularly into doing interviews, so it’s very kind of you. It’s been absolutely lovely to speak to you. You’ve got a vast catalogue - so much brilliant music. Is there one tune you’d recommend for people who might be new to your music?
Terrence Dixon: Yes, I would recommend From the Far Future Part-3 [A 2020 album released on Tresor].
Ben Cardew: Okay and why that one?
Terrence Dixon: That’s my favourite one.
Ben Cardew: And do you have any DJ dates coming up? I know they’re pretty rare.
Terrence Dixon: No, I don’t have any DJ dates coming up.
Ben Cardew: Okay. Well, it’s been lovely to speak to you. The EP When Stars Remember is a brilliant piece of work. It’s been a pleasure. I hope it gets a bit warmer in Detroit and I hope one day I’ll get to see you DJ.
Some news
I’m interviewing Irvine Welsh!
On Saturday May 16, legendary Scottish writing Irvine Welsh will be in Barcelona for the Britunder Fest, talking about his new book Men In Love. And I get to interview him live on stage. Which is pretty incredible for me, who first read Trainspotting in 1994, then fell headlong into a Welsh wormhole, with Marabou Stork Nightmares and The Acid House coming soon after.
Some listening
I call it barbecue jungle: the kind of jungle you can listen to while grilling up vegetarian sausages on a warm summer afternoon. There’s not enough of it in this world, although London producer IZCO has produced a real meat-tongs-and-cold-beer take on the genre with Wonderluv, which skips around the interzone between broken beat, D&B and the sweetest soul music, ringing maximum sunshine out of a Leroy Hutson sample as he does it. The IZCO album, Powerscroft, is a real gem, by the way.
Mondo Love & Betrayal - Your Latest
Your Latest… love? Your Latest…swoon? Your Latest… slice of heaven? I don’t know.
Mondo Love & Betrayal is Neil “Nail” Tolliday - a name that will bring a smile to anyone who remembers his immaculate deep house work for Classic records in the 90s - and singer / songwriter / jazz guitarist Henry Claude Scott. Together, on Your Latest, they launch the Pet Shop Boys at their most gloriously melancholic into the psychedelic ether, from where they drift around casting benevolent smiles towards the earth. Catch this at the right time in a club and it will sound like the greatest song ever written.
In a piece of wonderfully improbably musical maths, LA’s Sharada Shashidhar crosses jazz and Indian classical music to come out with Kate Bush. Kind of. On Arches, to be more precise, it’s Kate Bush x LFO x Björk x cosmic clicks and cuts, a five-sided object of wonder and mystery.
What’s the one thing better than a previously obscure cosmic disco song having a new day in the light? It’s a previously obscure cosmic disco song made in Croydon having a new day in the light, particularly one where the press release come with the legend “Erol Alkan unearths my mum’s forgotten disco gem”. (Dubstep comes from Croydon; Peep Show is set in Croydon; I lived in Croydon for a year - I love the place.)
Luckily Fools Are Friendly - one of two releases by Croydon sisters Karen and Maxine Berlinski as Xclusiv in the early 1980s - lives up to this happy legend. There is something very yearning in the song, the plaintive synth melodies suggesting that happiness is out there somewhere, while the sisters’ twinned vocals speak of regret, tempered by the possibility of getting lost in the music. Even the slap bass sounds unhappy, which is quite a musical feat.
PS Erol Alkan, whose Phantasy Sound label is re-issuing it, called the song “a radio hit that somehow slipped through the cracks”, which I think might be somewhat overestimating British radio’s love for cosmic disco in 1982; but Fools are Friendly is kind of an earworm.
Things I’ve done
The playlists
If I wanted to make a playlist that was true to the spirit of Terrence Dixon, it would have one unnamed song playing 1,000 times over until you give in a dance.
I mean, that’s not what I’m offering. But you might like it anyway.
Apple Music: The newest and bestest 2026.
Spotify: the newest and bestest 2026.
Apple Music: The newest and the bestest
Spotify: The newest and the bestest.
