Osborne

• Genre: Detroit/U.S. Techno
• Hometown: Detroit

About

Todd Osborn is a busy dude even by the industrial logic of the Detroit area, where he lives. He's a dedicated tinkerer, coding his own software, building strange machines and repairing the airplanes he also flies. (He's even reportedly at work on a hovercraft.) And that's just the moonlighting. Co-owner of Detroit's first drum 'n' bass record store, Dubplate Pressure, he went on to launch the Rewind label, where he collaborated (as Soundmurderer) with Tadd Mullinix (aka Dabrye, recording there as SK-1) on tough, biting ragga-jungle. He adopted Osborne for his more straight-ahead house and techno, releasing three cult-favorite EPs between 2002 and 2004 and returning from hiatus in 2007 with "Outta Sight." Ghostly sublabel Spectral Sound released his self-titled debut the following year; gathering together years worth of DAT tapes, it was refreshingly diverse but surprisingly coherent, lovingly gathering vintage styles like acid, disco and even freestyle.

- Philip Sherburne