Jimmy Edgar releases EP of ultra rare techno found at a Detroit storage auction

Ultramajic is set to release a collection of rare electro tracks from Detroit that were almost forgotten.

After receiving a tip about a storage unit being auctioned off in East Detroit that contained some historical techno artifacts, Jimmy Edgar and his Ultramajic label became the proud proprietors of some old recording equipment, hundreds of reel-to-reel tapes and over 1000 vinyl records.

One box, labeled in sharpie with the name “ASHTAR LAVANDA”, was filled with miscellaneously dated tapes. On those tapes was a plethora of jaw-dropping Detroit electro from an artist that yielded no google results and had never released any music under the moniker.

Edgar got in touch with Lavanda in 2014 - a Detroit native who still lives in the city and works in the medical industry - and two years later plans to release the forgotten artist’s first EP titled ‘Unsolved Mysterious’ on February 9 via Ultramajic.

"I just wanted to see my music on The New Dance Show, I wanted to hear it on 97.9FM but I didn’t have the hustle to get the music out there”, says Lavanda when speaking about his long lost tapes. Despite this, Ultramajic is confident that Ashtar Lavanda will soon be known as “one of the true pioneers in late 90s Detroit Electro alongside artists such as AUX88, Ectomorph, Dopplereffekt, and Drexciya.”

Learn more about Detroit's perfectly techno TV series The New Dance Show here.

Cameron is Mixmag's US Editorial Intern. Follow him on Twitter here