Carl Craig: 20 years on

A visit to Carl Craig’s Discogs page could set you up with a week’s worth of inspiring listening. While he remains a dedicated DJ and label boss, it’s the Detroit don’s untouchable catalogue of productions and remixes that shines brightest.

From Paperclip People and 69 to his orchestral collaborations with Francesco Tristano and Moritz Von Oswald, the man never stops creating. He never stops remixing, either, with Discogs listing 447 credits to his name – many of them legendary on techno dancefloors.

This December, Carl Craig is back in Australia on his 20 Years Of Planet E tour, following the release of the double-disc label retrospective earlier this year. We managed to track the man down for a brief chat on his travels.

So 2011 marks 20 years of your seminal label Planet E. Firstly, congratulations!
Thanks.

So you have been touring round the globe celebrating 20 big years, inviting the likes of Radio Slave, Luciano and Psychotron, among others. What have been a few highlights from the tour so far?
Yeah, all the parties that we have been doing have been great. We had Richie [Hawtin] play, along with Moodymann in Amsterdam, and the next one we’re doing at ADE has Pearson Sound, who’s Ramadanman, and also Caribou, and Moritz Von Oswald and Francesco Tristano – we’re gonna do our trio thing – and Kenny Larkin is gonna play. So we’ve got some really great stuff that’s goin’ on.

Speaking of that live act with Moritz Von Oswald and Francesco Tristano, how did that collaboration initially come about?
Well it first started because Moritz and I did Recomposed together, and then about the time we did Recomposed we also did the ‘versus’ project together with Francesco. So it all kinda naturally morphed into this trio that we do.

It must have been a monumental task attempting to pick the cream of the crop for your 20 years Planet E compilation. How long did it take you to reach your final decision?
20 years.

Of course. Were there any omissions that particularly gnawed at you?
Uh yeah, I mean, there are always things that I wanted to include – but y’know, we’d just end up having people downloading digital files for days if that were the case. So we had to put into some kind of a context – some sort of a rational level. It couldn’t just be tracks, tracks, and more tracks, y’know?