Various Artists: True Spirit

The evolution of techno is generally broken into geographical components, with an embryonic stage played out in the post-urban isolation of Detroit, an insouciant adolescence transpiring through English rave culture, and a heady adulthood emerging from the political swirl of Germany. As with any linear history, the narrative is distorted by overly tidy timelines and romantic illusions. It's hard, though, to overstate the profound links between techno's international ports of ideas, particularly the alliance formed between Detroit and Berlin during the music's earliest days. Central to the bond was Tresor, a German club opened in an abandoned bank vault after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Largely ignored at home, Detroit's pioneers found kindred spirits in their Berlin counterparts, whose faith in techno's austere philosophies proved more complementary than the precocious breakbeat extrapolations of the British rave scene. True Spirit chronicles the Detroit-Berlin connection with three discs devoted to the 1989-2002 output of Tresor's namesake label, which became a home for both European natives and American expatriates like Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, and Joey Beltram. Boasting a thick booklet and loaded with indisputable classics (X-101's "Sonic Destroyer," Jeff Mills' "Hypnotist," Cristian Vogel's "Absolute," Model 500's "Light Speed"), the set serves as an invaluable textbook treatment of the taut rhythms and mournful sonic-fictions that dominate techno in its purest form. The most intriguing passages document the inspired overlap of the Detroit-Berlin union: Maurizio's "Ploy" grafts a Detroit-style electro line to an über-German gabba stomp, while Eddie Flashin' Fowlkes' "420-Low" wipes a messy synth smear over a clinically sterile post-soul beat. Both Detroit and Berlin tend to get caricatured in tales of techno's invention, but True Spirit's 39 tracks show how two cities crippled by identity crises transformed into departure terminals leading to the same destination far, far away.