Closer to Kenny Larkin and Derrick May in his approach, Pullen's drive to restore the spirituality and soul of techno figured him as a classicist in the widest sense (although his disdain for the analog sound of the early Detroit techno distanced him sharply from the genre's old school). Living in the Motor City club scene as a kid, Pullen began DJ'ing early on, drawn to the new-school machine music of Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, and Soft Cell. Although his interest in production began early, his first chance behind the boards didn't come until the early '90s, when Derrick May gave him an inside track on a business he was desperate to learn. Learning studio technique through May and the various projects that came through the Transmat label studio, Pullen released his earliest material on Transmat subsidiary Fragile as Bango, then used aliases such as Kosmik Messenger, X-Stacy, Silent Phase, Black Odyssey, Graffiti. Known for fusing the more musical aspects of house and garage into a steadfastly techno framework, Pullen's complex, often tribal-sounding compositions have proven influential on a number of fronts, from deep house to hardcore. As a DJ, he contributed early volumes to two of the longest-running mix series -- DJ-Kicks (1996) and Fabric 14 (2004) -- and later mixed the 28th volume of Balance 028 (2015). ~ Sean Cooper