Juan Atkins

Juan Atkins was born in 1962 to a father who worked as a concert promoter, bringing Norman Connors, Michael Henderson, and Barry White through Detroit, including a Barry White show at Cobo Hall. Before any of that, Atkins was already a working musician: by twelve or thirteen he was playing bass and lead guitar in funk and garage bands with kids from around the block in Detroit, a scene he had to leave behind entirely when his parents split and he moved to the suburb of Belleville. There, an unlikely inheritance took hold. Charles "The Electrifying Mojo" Johnson's radio show on WGPR introduced him to Kraftwerk's "We Are the Robots" and "Trans-Europe Express" alongside Parliament-Funkadelic, and DJ Ken Collier, spinning disco records at his apartment, showed Atkins and his friend Derrick May how to mix two records together on beat. Atkins started recording in his Belleville house in 1979 with two cassette decks, a Korg MS-10, and a four-channel mixer. In 1980, he formed Cybotron with college classmate Rick Davis, and the duo's "Alleys of Your Mind" (1981) sold 15,000 copies before "Clear" (1982) set the template for what would become techno. After Cybotron split in 1985, Atkins launched Model 500 and, working alongside fellow Belleville residents May and Kevin Saunderson, coined the word "techno" itself in 1988 — a genre whose records were largely ignored at home before catching fire in Chicago and then Europe.

At a glance

Active

1980–present

From

Detroit, USA

Listening guide track

“Track Ten”

Listen

In the Detroit Techno listening guide: “Track Ten”

In the issues

• 002
  Detroit Techno

  Principal · 1981-1995

  Detroit Techno is a music scene from Detroit/Belleville, Michigan, USA, 1981–1995. Its principal artists include Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. This issue covers 10 essential albums and 14 dated events.

• 036
  Berlin Techno

  Supporting cast · 1988-2005 · Members

  Berlin Techno is a music scene from Berlin, Germany, 1988–2005. Its principal artists include Dimitri Hegemann, Basic Channel (Moritz von Oswald & Mark Ernestus), Jeff Mills and Norbert Thormann & Michael Teufele. This issue covers 9 essential albums and 15 dated events.

Places

• Cheeks
  Detroit · 1980s · Detroit Techno

  Detroit club where Juan Atkins and Derrick May played as Deep Space Soundworks, testing their eclectic electronic sets on local party crowds in the early 1980s.

Voices

Quotations from the issues, each matched word for word against the source it links to.