JUAN ATKINS

Juan Atkins is simply one of dance music and club culture’s founding fathers. No question. If electronic music had its own Mount Rushmore, his would be one of the impassive faces carved into the rock, the original Detroit techno pioneer who has played a vital role in making electronic music the worldwide phenomenon it is today.

Born and raised in north-west Detroit, Atkins attended high School in Belleville, where he met Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, both of whom were classmates of Juan’s younger brother. Soon, Juan became a mentor to May and Saunderson, introducing them to the new electronic music from Europe. Today, the trio are often known as the ‘Belleville Three’, techno music’s very own Holy Trinity. All three drew heavily on Detroit’s duel heritage in making their music, for the city was both the home of Berry Gordy’s Motown empire and Motor City too, the centre of the US’s car industry. It may well be something of a platitude, but techno married that technological industry with the heart and soul of black music, the blues of social deprivation and past enslavement with the freedom of movement inspired by the car. One way or another, the Detroit environment was a crucial force in shaping the music. As Atkins himself puts it: ‘Detroit is still a post-industrial city, and still somewhat boring. I think that leads to a lot of creativity, because there’s no clubs to go to, there’s not a lot of things to do, so folks just sit home and make music.’

It was during those school days in the late 70s that the young sci-fi enthusiast listened to a radio DJ called The Electrifyin’ Mojo (Charles Johnson) on Detroit’s WGPR station, whose nightly ‘Midnight Funk Association’ show was broadcast for five hours a night from 10pm onwards. Mojo’s taste was an eclectic mix of styles - form the B52's to Peter Frampton to Parliament/Funkadelic to Jimi Hendrix - and included a number of British and German imports, Kraftwerk’s Man Machine LP among them. Indeed, it was in 1980 that Atkins fell under the spell of the new European electronica - Kraftwerk, Telex, Devo, Giorgio Moroder (who had produced Donna Summer) and Gary Numan. The new disco sounds also inspired many of Detroit’s young music fans to take to the turntables - Atkins among them, who himself encouraged Derrick May, teaching the Rhythim Is Rhythim star to mix (using David Bowie’s ‘Fashion’ and Edwin Birdsong’s ‘Rapper Dapper Snapper’!). In fact, by 1981, both were providing mixes for The Electrifyin’ Mojo’s show, playing around with new effects, mixing two copies of the same record together and constructing elaborate ‘pause button’ compositions.

But playing other people’s music was never enough. As a teenager Atkins had always aspired to make his own music, playing the drums and then moving on to learn bass guitar. When George Clinton started employing synthesisers with Parliament and Funkadelic (in particular with their 1978 no. 1 R&B hit ‘Flashlight’), it was a logical progression for Juan to exploit the new electronic technology. Experimenting with a basic keyboard in the summer of 1980, he played his demo tape to his new classmates at Washtenaw Community College, one of whom was Rick Davis aka 3070 (a Vietnam Vet who had already released ambient electronic music which had been played by Mojo). 3070 had banks of equipment - the kind of rudimentary studio of which Atkins could only dream - and under his tutelage Atkins began to refine his vision of the new sound, learning the basic techniques of sequencing and immersing himself in futurist texts such as Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave - another key element in the techno pioneers’ musical ideology.
Together, 3070 and Atkins produced as Cybotron, releasing their first single ‘Alleys Of Your Mind’ on their own Deep Space label in 1981. The record sold remarkably well - nearing 10,000 copies - with many fans in Detroit assuming that it was made by white, European musicians. The similarly successful ‘Cosmic Cars’ (with its ‘I wish I could escape from this crazy place’ vocal) and ‘Clear’ followed in ‘82, leading to a deal with San Francisco’s Fantasy label, who released the Cybotron debut album Enter. In retrospect Enter displays an uncomfortable mishmash of styles as Aktins pursued a techno direction at odds with the rock ethic of 3070 and new member, electronic guitarist Jon 5.

Convinced that the future lay with the new electronic music and the dense layered sounds and textures pioneered by Kraftwerk, Atkins struck out alone under the Model 500 name. ‘I wanted to use something that repudiated an ethnic designation.’ he now remembers, ‘Something that was really techno - because I’ve always been into a techno-futurist th