Juan Atkins - An introduction...

At the dawn of the 1980s, Juan Atkins began recording what stands as perhaps the most influential body of work in the field of techno. Exploring his vision of a futuristic music which welded the more cosmic side of Parliament funk with rigid computer synth-pop embodied by Kraftwerk and the techno-futurist possibilities described by sociologist Alvin Toffler (author of The Third Wave and Future Shock), Atkins blurred his name behind aliases such as Cybotron, Model 500 and Infiniti -- all, except for Cybotron, comprised solely of himself -- to release many classics of sublime Detroit techno. And though it's often difficult (and misleading) to pick the precise genesis for any style of music, the easiest choice for techno is an Atkins release, the 1982 electro track "Clear," recorded by Atkins and Rick Davis as Cybotron. He soon left the progressively album-oriented Cybotron to begin working alone, and released his most seminal material from 1985 to 1989 as Model 500. And while fellow Detroit legends Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May were known for their erratic output during the following decade, Atkins recorded much more during the 1990s than he had during the '80s, soaking up new rhythmic elements from contemporary dance music but keeping his unerring, instantly recognizable sense of melody intact throughout. As the electronic scene began looking back to the past to find musical innovators, Atkins was a name much-discussed and -anthologized, hailed as the godfather of techno.

Born in Detroit in 1962 (the son of a concert promoter), Juan Atkins began playing bass as a teenager and then moved on to keyboards and synthesizers, after being turned on to their use in Parliament records. Two local DJs, Ken Collier and the Electrifyin' Mojo, first introduced Atkins to a wide range of other synthesizer-driven bands -- Kraftwerk, Telex, Gary Numan, Prince, the B-52's -- in the late '70s. Atkins then turned on two friends he had met (initially through his younger brother) while attending Belleville Junior High School, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. He also bought his first synthesizer, a Korg MS10, and began recording with cassette decks and a mixer for overdubs.

Hoping to learn more about the burgeoning field of musical electronics after high-school graduation, Atkins studied at Washtenaw County Community College in nearby Ypsilanti; there he met Rick Davis, a Vietnam War veteran, synthesizer expert and fellow Electrifyin' Mojo devotee -- Davis had even released an experimental record used by Mojo to open his radio show. The two began recording as Cybotron and released their first single, "Alleys of Your Mind," in 1981 on their own Deep Space Records. The clever balance of urban groove and synthesizer futurism signaled the new electro wave in black music; though crossover success for electro was quite limited, it went on to become one of the most influential styles for the new electronic music of the next decade.

"Alleys of Your Mind" got immediate play from Electrifyin' Mojo and became a big local hit, even though most listeners had no idea it was recorded in Detroit, or America for that matter. The 1982 single "Cosmic Cars" also did well, and Cybotron recorded their debut album, Enter. Then the group signed a deal with Fantasy Records to reissue the album. One track, "Clear," was a quasi-instrumental which set the blueprint for what would later be called techno. Instead of merely reworking elements of Kraftwerk into a hip-hop context (which proved the basis for many electro tracks), "Clear" was a balanced fusion of techno-pop and club music. Unfortunately, competing visions for the future of the group forced him to leave the group by 1983. Davis and new member Jon 5 argued to pursue a musical direction closer to rock & roll, while Atkins wanted to continue in the vein of "Clear." (Cybotron carried on in the direction proposed by Davis, and was promptly forgotten.)

Juan Atkins had no trouble staying busy during the mid-'80s. He continued working with the music collective Deep Space Soundworks which he, May and Saunderson had founded in 1981 to provide a club-based forum for their music. Later, the Deep Space family founded their own club, the Music Institute, in the heart of downtown Detroit. It soon became the hub of the Motor City's growing underground family, a place where May, Atkins and Saunderson DJed along with fellow pioneers like Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes and Blake Baxter. The club invigorated the fractured sense of community in Detroit, and inspired second-wave technocrats like Carl Craig, Stacey Pullen, Kenny Larkin and Richie Hawtin (Plastikman).

Of course, Atkins continued recording during this time, and the period from 1985 to 1987 proved to be his most influential period. He founded his own label, Metroplex Records, in 1985 and recorded his first single as Model 500, "No UFO's." Derrick May, who was living in Chicago at the time, invited Atkins over and told him to bring his records. The duo sold thousands of copies, and "No UFO's" soon became a hit with Chicago mix shows like the Hot Mix 5. Later Metroplex singles like "Night Drive," "Interference" and "The Chase" also sold well and set the template for Detroit techno; moody and sublime machine music, inspired by the drone of automated factories and trips down the I-96 freeway late at night.

By 1988, Britain had caught up with the advanced music coming from Chicago and Detroit; soon Atkins, May and Saunderson made their first trip (of hundreds) across the Atlantic, in Atkins' case before thousands of people at one of the open-air raves typical of England's Summer of Love. Acts like 808 State, A Guy Called Gerald, LFO and Black Dog began due in large part to the influence of Atkins, and the man himself was invited to remix current pop acts like Fine Young Cannibals, Seal, Tom Tom Club, the Beloved and the Style Council. Though dance music in Great Britain shifted its course radically from 1989 to 1991 (to the burgeoning, cartoonish sounds of rave and hardcore), others in Europe were quick to take up the cause of championing Detroit's techno elite. First, the Belgian R&S Records began releasing stellar work by a cast of techno inheritors including New Yorker Joey Beltram and Europeans C.J. Bolland and Speedy J. By 1993, Berlin's Tresor Records had picked up the baton as well, issuing American projects by second-wave Detroit producers Underground Resistance (as X-101), Jeff Mills, Blake Baxter and Eddie Fowlkes.

Atkins visited the label's studio in 1993 and worked with 3MB, the in-house production team of Thomas Fehlmann and Moritz Von Oswald (both of whom were to go on to better things, in Sun Electric and Basic Channel/Maurizio, respectively). He returned to Berlin several years later to begin recording what was, surprisingly, his first album since the days of Cybotron. Finally, in mid-1995, R&S released the debut Model 500 album, Deep Space; more importantly, the label also released Classics, a crucial compilation of Model 500's best Metroplex singles output. Another retrospective, Tresor's Infiniti Collection, traced Atkins' work as Infiniti, recorded from 1991 to 1994 for a variety of labels including Metroplex and Chicago's Radikal Fear.

Several years passed before he released any additional material, but it came with a rush during 1998-99. First in September 1998, Tresor released an album of new Infiniti recordings named Skynet. One month later, the American label Wax Trax! released a Juan Atkins mix album. The second full Model 500 album, Mind and Body, was released in 1999 on R&S.

Atkins has remained active throughout the 2000s. He put together Classics (2002), a mixed compilation of Metroplex highlights. An album of new productions, The Berlin Sessions, came out through Tresor, and so did the double-disc 20 Years Metroplex. Both of them were released in 2005.

Link's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Atkins
http://www.myspace.com/68657561

Juan Atkins Interview - Godfather of Techno Interview

By DJ Ron Slomowicz

DJ Ron Slomowicz: So you headlined the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, how did you get involved with that? Juan Atkins: It was pretty much because of me the whole thing started. This is the seventh year of the festival and even if I don't choose to play one year, it wasn't too complicated for me to get involved.

RS: Where do you see the electronic scene in Detroit going right now? Juan Atkins: Well, Detroit has always been more soulful and more melodic in its approach to electronic dance music, so I don't see it going too far away from that. Of course, there's new technological advances that enhance the musical production across the board, but I think the one thing that remains a constant in Detroit is the soul and the funk.

RS: Detroit is known for being the home of techno and Chicago is known for being the home of house. With Detroit having the soulful background, why do you think techno sprung from Detroit? Juan Atkins: People have been trying to answer that question for the last ten to fifteen years. That's a question I can't really answer. I think it's something about the climate and atmosphere in Detroit that makes it very unique where anybody making music wants to start something new. I couldn't give you an exact description of what that formula is but there's something in the water here.

RS: Obviously, if it's spawned people like you, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson. How did the three of you guys meet up? Juan Atkins: We all went to high school together.

RS: It's just amazing how so much of the history of dance music sprouts from that one high school. When you first made the Cybotron record, the one that people called the first techno twelve-inch, did you have in your mind to create a new sound? What was your inspiration then? Juan Atkins: I knew it was a new sound. I was a kid, sixteen/seventeen years, so it was my first foray into the music business. I was planning to be around for a while so anything that I'm doing, I'm thinking forward. The track to me felt like the hottest thing to do - make a hot electronic, dance, funk, high-tech trip. I had no idea that it was going to have the influence and the ramifications that it had around the world.

RS: When you made the track what gear was you using? Juan Atkins: I was using one of the first affordable Korg synthesizers, the Korg MS series, with a Roland RS-09 string and a DR-55 rhythm machine. That was the whole set up back there.

RS: Fast forward to today, when you're working on music what gear are you using? Juan Atkins: Right now I mean I'm using whatever I can get my hands on. I work in different studios with different musicians and different artists, so it's no one particular things. There's so much stuff out there and then you have computers now that have such an impact over a lot of music production that it's not even about the gear, it's more about what kind of software and what kind of computers you use. I can run down stuff for the next two or three hours, but I don't want to get into that one.

RS: Right now you're working on new music under the guise of Model 500, what kinds of sound are you making? Where are you genre-wise with that? Juan Atkins: Model 500 is really a continuation of Cybotron. That's one thing that I've always stayed the course with and I've always wanted to not deviate when I do stuff with Model 500. In the past year it's probably what Cybotron would have done had the partners not split. Its more song-oriented with melodies, not just dance track - that's always been my experiences with Model 500. Now if I do stuff under the name Infinity, that would be the more straightforward form of pure techno, the purest techno what is deemed as techno right now in North America and in Europe.

RS: It seems like the German and Belgian record labels like R&S and Tresor seem to give you more love than the American labels do. Why do you think that's the case? Juan Atkins: America is so big that you can polarize the different parts of the music industry and the different parts of the music palette. One side of the country doesn't know or have anything to do with the other side. These other countries in Europe are smaller so they seem to have a lot of ideas and mixing together.

RS: You are DJing out a lot right now, right? What kind of music do you play out? Juan Atkins: Yes, I still play around and travel the world. What I play depends on the venue where I play. I love all music so I play a variety and try to push the envelope and get away with a lot of things. I don't like to play venues where everybody's looking to hear just one style of music.

RS: Where do you find the music that you play or how do you choose the tracks? Juan Atkins: I get hired to play a lot of strict, pure techno, and I am still a firm believer that you can take these crowds where you want to. I play a lot of four on the floor upbeat. Choosing tracks, I don't use a certain formula - if it hits me, it hits me; if it don't, it don't.

RS: Where do you see dance music going right now? Juan Atkins: That's a hard question because with mp3s and downloading, the way that people pick and choose music now is a lot different than going to a store and buying vinyl. It makes it more of a listening form rather than a dance form. I have records that sound great in the club, but when you play them on the radio or listen to them at home it's a whole different record. With the advent of downloading, the music for me has to be more listenable than just a bare dance track. I think music now will have to have a little bit more structure to it, other than just looking at breaking a front and a breakdown in the middle and intro, because that stuff doesn't really matter too much anymore. When you're sitting down at home in from of your computer and you going to download the music, you're not at the club.

RS: You're called the Godfather of Techno - where did that name come from? Juan Atkins: The fist time I heard that name was in a big article in Face magazine. When they referred to me as the Godfather of Techno – it just stuck. That was the way they described a lot of people. I taught a lot of them how to make music as I was one of the first, if not the first dance, electronic, or electronic funk musician in the United States. There probably that wasn't that many in the world for that matter, so I get a lot of those types of accolades. So I guess that that was just something that they put in. I didn't name myself that, but I mean it's not a bad name and it's not a bad title.

RS: Frankie Knuckles is referred to as the Godfather of House, so it's definitely a compliment. Juan Atkins: I think it's something that the British do. The British press is more powerful than even the European press. They read the paper more over there than then do watch TV. Here it's not such a big thing as people are more into the television. But over there, a magazine like Face or Record Mirror, put a term on somebody and it just sticks. Its something that they came up with and called me in that article, then every article that came out after that referred back to that term.

RS: What kind of advice would you give to DJs and producers who are getting their start now in electronic music? Juan Atkins: Stay dedicated and don't be scared to try something new. Don't follow the leader. Dance to the beat of your own drum and don't be scared to do it.

JUAN ATKINS ALL TIME TOP 5 CLASSICS

Channel One - Technicolor - 12Ep

MODEL 500 - No UFO's - 12Ep

Model 500 - Ocean To Ocean - 12Ep

Model 500 - Night Drive / Transmat - 12 Ep

Juan Atkins - Jazz Is The Teacher -12 Ep