Tic Tac EP

Martin Bonds — Reel By Real — was a Detroit producer who, while studying electrical engineering in 1991, dropped out and moved into Juan Atkins’s Metroplex Studios. He apprenticed under Atkins, then moved to Kevin Saunderson’s KMS studios in the same building complex. His 1990 12” “Surkit” was one of the most sought-after Detroit techno records that almost no one had heard at the time.

In 1993, UK producer LTJ Bukem lifted the synth line from “Surkit” wholesale and built “Atlantis” around it — a foundational document of atmospheric drum & bass, one of the records that defined what intelligent jungle could sound like. A specific Detroit producer’s work became the backbone of an entire UK subgenre via a sample that ran through London and came back.

The Tic Tac EP is a 2023 reissue on a.r.t.less, a sublabel of Berlin’s Mojuba, specifically built to document underrated Detroit producers. The sleeve art is by Abdul Haqq of Third Earth Visual Arts — the same artist who designed the Drexciya covers and the Underground Resistance visual language. A single 12” touching Detroit’s second wave, the Berlin-Detroit reissue economy, and a sample chain that produced an entire UK subgenre thirty-two years before the reissue reached a shelf.