Rod Modell Artist Bio

Dub techno legend Rod Modell is best known for his Deepchord project, and for his work in the duo Echospace with Stephen Hitchell (Soultek), with whom he runs the Echospace Detroit label. But he has also produced several ambient-leaning solo releases, as well as the dancefloor-focused 2019 album Captagon.

Born in Detroit, Modell came of age during the first wave of Detroit techno, and was friendly with originators of the sound like Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson. first surfaced in the mid-’90s as half of the duo Waveform Transmission with Chris Troy. In 1998, he teamed up with Michael Mantra for the Hypnos release Sonic Continuum; his debut solo album, The Autonomous Music Project, was issued the following year on Italian label Lunar. In the early 2000s he co-founded the dub techno project Deepchord with Mike Schommer, releasing a series of highly sought-after 12″s. Throughout that decade he released more ambient solo albums, culminating in 2007’s Incense and Black Light on Plop. That year also saw the launch of the Echospace project with Chicago’s Stephen Hitchell. Their two albums on British label Modern Love, The Coldest Season and Liumin, were widely acclaimed. They also launched the Echospace Detroit label to release music under their many aliases and side-project.

In the 2010s, Modell took the Deepchord project solo, releasing a number of highly regarded albums for Scottish techno institution Soma. His first solo album in almost a decade, Mediterranea, appeared in 2016 on Echospace Detroit; three years later, he released his debut for Tresor, Captagon. Very different from all of his other albums, it was a high-energy, dancefloor-focused work that sounded like his Deepchord material cranked up to twice the speed.

Biography by Jason Ankeny Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.