DJ Stingray is the future-focused selector at the helm of the electro renaissance. Catch his debut at The Ground on Friday February 7, 2020 Sherard Ingram is a menacing node in the vast tangle of electronic music’s history, present, and future. As DJ Stingray he propagates a seer-like, totalising concept of what it is to beengaged in thinking ahead by making people move. Permit yourself to zoom out of your singular reality enough such that all activity, all that is knowingly accumulated and all that is unnervingly accepted on this earth, is a spectrum of information. This includes the thermodynamics of our own biological structure. Now consider that music is a segment of this spectrum, and DJ Stingray’s nexus of electro and techno a further specialised section forged in bypassing normalised circuits to confront the future, to articulate abstract dynamics. It’s a slice of information, it is a bandwidth. Ingram’s crucial and distinctive function in this system is to decode his particular nexus as a speculative software for others, and to encode its conspicuous qualities as a feedback system with the rest of the spectrum. If it sounds intense, it’s because it is, and it’s still just about sweating it out at a club. A Detroit native, Ingram is an established figure in electro and techno from its earliest days.His Urban Tribe project is testament to this. First appearing on the genre-defining 1991 compilation ‘Equinox’; Urban Tribe has come to call Anthony Shakir, Carl Craig, and KennyDixon Jr. members of the group. Though perhaps what has thus far come to be Ingram’s most finely calibrated and entirely natural maneuver was under the wing of Drexciya’s James Stinson. Performing with Drexciya’s live unit, Ingram took the “Drexciyan DJ Stingray’ identity and conjured a torrential storm from the DJ booth. His aqua-genetic code persists in the form of NRSB-11, his ongoing collaboration with the other half of Drexciya, Gerald Donald. The caustic, neuro-shock brand of apex electro that Ingram exhilaratingly pushes in every corner of the world isn’t contained by this past. There’s a motivating edge that’s founded in his formative years, but it’s one that only keeps the next page blank, with little clue of which way the swing will drill across the spectrum, gathering pace sufficient to redistribute definitions and test the limits of those being made to move. With his recent releases coming from an enviable smattering of crucial labels both genre-centric and experimental, Ingram is overhauling the very premise of the Detroit legacy he had a hand in writing, and on which others comfortably sit. With an oeuvre that touches base from Planet E to Presto!?, and from Mahogani Music to Reflex, Ingram’s justified attempts at exiting the gravitational pull of genre tropes anticipate a dynamic edge of what we know is an ever-shifting centre.