Detroit-based Deepchord earned recognition as the dub-techno successor to Berlin’s Rhythm & Sound circle through closely aligned methods rather than direct copying. Rod Modell, already known for ambient work, joined Mike Schommer for a first shared 12" issued quietly in the late 1990s. Deepchord favored sparse constructions built on repetitive dub-derived rhythms, subtle white-noise layers, and restrained synth accents, mirroring the earlier model. A devoted underground audience remained steady while the pair issued further singles through the early 2000s and a small-run CD compiling their initial six pressings, each originally limited to minuscule quantities. Activity dropped sharply after 2002, interrupted only by an uncommon live appearance at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival and an infrequent series of singles, one of which appeared in an edition of just 100 copies in 2006. A 2005 retrospective titled Vibrasound appeared under Modell’s name alone on the Silentes label. Later the same year he collaborated with Kevin Hanton on Illuminati Audio Science, reshaping large sections of the duo’s catalog through looped and sliced segments in the manner of Richie Hawtin’s DE9 series to produce a continuous seventy-minute mix CD.
Modell next joined Stephen Hitchell, known as Soultek, in 2007 for Echospace, eventually one of his most widely received ventures and the name of a label launched concurrently. The project’s first album, The Coldest Season, came out on the British cult imprint Modern Love and delivered one of the most radically stripped interpretations of the Basic Channel aesthetic, its decayed, echo-heavy surfaces wrapped in layers of tape hiss. The 2010 follow-up Liumin, named after a Chinese personal name, achieved even broader reach while intensifying the “destroyed” aesthetic, converting hundreds of hours of field recordings captured in China into dense, indistinct textures.
Operating Deepchord alone, Modell signed to Glasgow’s longstanding Soma label in 2011, which released the project’s first full-length album proper, Hash-Bar Loops. A burst of productivity ensued: 2012 brought both another Echospace album, Silent World, serving as the soundtrack to an experimental film Modell produced himself, and the Deepchord release Sommer. Soma issued 20 Electrostatic Soundfields in 2013, while Echospace [Detroit] began a series of archival compilations drawing from the early-2000s 12" catalog. The next year Subwax put out an album of Deepchord reworkings of Yagya’s 2006 album Will I Dream During the Process?, and Astral Industries released the limited double-LP Lanterns. Deepchord maintained a schedule of 12" EPs on Soma, culminating in the expansive double-CD statement Ultraviolet Music in 2015. After the 2017 release Live in Detroit [Ghost in the Sound], documenting a set at an official afterparty for the annual Movement festival, the project returned to Soma for the full-length Auratones.
