Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome

Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome (1977) is late-period Parliament — George Clinton’s project aimed at the dancefloor rather than the rock stage. The extended grooves, the Bootsy Collins bass patterns, the layered synths and horns: this is the funk vocabulary that hip-hop producers were systematically mining through the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Clinton himself is the George Clinton in Derrick May’s description of Detroit techno as “like George Clinton and Kraftwerk caught in an elevator.” The Funkadelic and Parliament records are the other half of the chemistry that produced Detroit techno — the soul and funk that fed one side of Derrick May’s elevator.