If you ever sweated it out to a set by a Detroit house or techno DJ from the early ’90s until the mid-2000s, there’s a good chance that what they played went through DJ/producer Mike Huckaby’s hands. The manager of the storied dance room at Roseville, Michigan’s Record Time store, Huckaby—alongside other DJ-coworkers Rick Wilhite, Daniel Bell, Magda, Claude Young, Derek Plaslaiko, Mike Servito and Rick Wade—was a filter for the club sounds being made inside and outside of Detroit, and quietly shaped the perception of the city as an electronic music capital, one 12-inch at a time. It made sense that Huckaby—who died on 24 April 2020 from complications related to a stroke and COVID-19—was a tastemaker. He had an ear for finding the soul buried inside techno’s more mechanical impulses, and he bridged that with house’s natural warmth in his DJ sets. His original productions and remixes—minimalist, unfussy, grooving and thumping in equal measure—were just as inspired.