Music
James Stinson
1969–2002 · electronic musician, producer
East-side Detroit producer who co-founded the Afrofuturist electro duo Drexciya and recorded the cult album Lifestyles of the Laptop Café.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Newnan, Georgia
aged 32- Birth name
- James Marcel Stinson
- Also known as
- The Other People Place · Clarence G · Transllusion · Drexciya
- Detroit years
- 1969–2002
- Field
- Music
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
James Stinson was born on Detroit's east side and graduated from Kettering High School in 1989; for much of his life he also worked as a truck driver. After a first EP in 1991 as Clarence G, he formed Drexciya with Gerald Donald in 1992. The duo's hard, aquatic electro built a science-fiction mythology of an underwater nation descended from pregnant African women thrown overboard during the transatlantic slave trade, and they released key records on the Underground Resistance label, where Stinson was also a member. The pair stayed masked and anonymous; Stinson was confirmed as a member of Drexciya only after his death. After the album Neptune's Lair (1999) he recorded prolifically under other names, including The Other People Place, whose Lifestyles of the Laptop Café (Warp, 2001) has since become a revered classic. He died of a heart condition in Newnan, Georgia, in 2002, aged 32, and was buried in Detroit.
Highlights
- Co-founded Drexciya with Gerald Donald in 1992.
- Drexciya's myth of a Black undersea nation is a landmark of Afrofuturism.
- Lifestyles of the Laptop Café (2001) as The Other People Place was reissued by Warp in 2017.
- Released records on Underground Resistance, Tresor, Warp and Clone.
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1985–1989
Kettering High School
Closed · 2012
The east-side high school he graduated from in 1989; it closed in 2012 and students were rezoned to Pershing High School.