Mille Plateaux
In the grand tradition of all that is egg-headed in Popular music, the acts on Mille Plateaux started out defining themselves as 'cleverer' than what preceded them and which shaped their sound. Detroit Techno didn't actually pride itself on being 'clever', just 'superior'. As Derrick May once said: he imagined it appealing to the most fantastically exotic audience; only to be throughly dismayed by its embrace by oiky British Nutters rushing on amphetamines. The Techno Jocks were always happier in the bohemian milieus of Berlin and Edinburgh.
And again in the grand tradition of egg-headed music (see also Scott Walker and Ryuichi Sakamoto) Achim Szepanski steered the label further and further from its relativly conventional roots, into an extremely fascinating terrain and then further to a region where it seemed the artists on the roster were the only people who cared any more and most everyone else had found a way to seem yet more convolutedly 'intelligent'. "Volume 4" and "In Memoriam" are the discs you want here.