Juan Atkins (Interview)

Good morning.

It’s Friday so we’re listening to something more upbeat. Today we’re listening to Juan Atkins, a producer and DJ from Detroit. He coined the term techno – he explains the backstory in our conversation below – and created some of the earliest examples of that now global artform. He’s put out most of his music via monikers or bands, including Cybotron, Model 500, and Borderland. We’re first playing his 2013 record Borderland, a dubby instrumental collection made in collaboration with Moritz Von Oswald. We’re also re-upping The Berlin Sessions, a collection of techno tracks recorded at the club Tresor in Berlin.

An interview with Juan follows the streaming links. On our Flow State Today playlist we’ve curated standout tracks across his discography.

Borderland - Juan Atkins & Moritz Von Oswald (70m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal

The Berlin Sessions - Juan Atkins (60m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Tidal

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What are your earliest memories of music?

My earliest memories are of my mother’s music: Motown and psychedelic. The Doors (“Light My Fire” in particular), Jimi Hendrix (“Foxy Lady”), “Cool Jerk,” Smokey Robinson (“Tears of a Clown”), Supremes, stuff like that. Basically, all the music that my mom was listening to.

The early Detroit radio station WGPR (107.5) featured The Electrifying Mojo's shows, which played music from a wide variety of genres. What were the most inspiring artists and tracks you heard broadcast on that show?

Just about everything Mojo played was interesting, because this was when FM was first developed in the mid- to late-’70s. There were only three stations on FM bandwidth at the time. GPR started out as a gospel radio station. As a matter of fact, WGPR stands for Where God’s Presence Radiates. Eventually it went secular and started playing popular music. They hired Mojo in late ‘77. He was playing everything from James Brown to Rolling Stones to Peter Frampton to Parliament Funkadelic.

The most notable stuff on his show, for me, was P-Funk and Kraftwerk. That was the first place I heard Kraftwerk: “We Are the Robots” in particular and “Trans-Europe Express.” He broke a lot of artists. He broke Prince in Detroit. Mojo was considered an urban radio personality, and any black music that came through during the late ‘70s couldn’t be broke if Mojo didn’t touch it.

What did you learn from Ken Collier?

In the late ‘70s all of the radio stations went disco, because disco was huge from about ‘77 to 1980. Stations changed their format and hired local club DJs to mix on the radio. Ken Collier inspired a lot of disco music, which was popular in gay clubs, and that was the first place I heard records blended into each other. On radio, DJs would usually segue a record over the top of the end of the previous record. [Collier] was the first I heard mix two records on beat. It piqued my interest in wanting to learn how to do that. Ken Collier was my main inspiration to start being a mix DJ.

I later met Ken, and me and Derrick [May] used to go to his place and buy records from him. He was in what you’d call a record pool. He would get extra copies of a record, and he could only play one or two records at a time, so he would sell the extra records. He didn’t like every record, but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. He would sell records out of his apartment. We’d go over there, and he’d be mixing, and we’d pick up pointers from him, watching him do mixes.

The transatlantic journey of dance music from the U.S. to Europe led to a Cambrian explosion of dance genres, which changed the course of music. You were a major figure in that initial creative wave that crested in the U.S. How did you first learn about the spread of your music to Europe, and how did that lead to your work in European clubs like Tresor?

My first records were “Alleys of Your Mind” and “Cosmic Cars,” and then “Clear” was my biggest hit from that time from early ‘80 to ‘83. “Clear” was released in 1983. Most of my early Cybotron stuff got released on Fantasy Records. I guess someone contacted Fantasy – I would imagine it was Morgan Khan from Street Sounds – because “Clear” appeared on a Street Sounds compilation in the U.K. The U.K. was famous for doing compilations. Compilations weren’t so big in the U.S.A. In Europe and in the U.K. specifically, compilation records were the way into the charts. “Clear” happened to be licensed by Street Sounds for a compilation. That was my first foray into the European market.

Later on, the same guy, Morgan Khan, and also Neil Rustin from Network (called Cool Cat at the time), started licensing music from Detroit. This is after my colleagues – Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Blake Baxter, Eddie Fowlkes, Santonio Echols, James Pennington – started releasing music there. It became a movement, and Neil Rustin started licensing this music directly from the artists – from us – to release on Cool Cat Records. Morgan Khan continued with Street Sounds compilations: the first one that “Clear” was on was electro, but later that became dance music, like they had Chicago house compilations.

Ultimately, Detroit techno compilations were released on Virgin [Records], who followed the lead from Street Sounds. Virgin 10 Records released the first techno compilation – Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit – which had “Big Fun” on it and my record “Techno Music,” which is what they named the record after. It also had some early Blake Baxter tracks and James Pennington and Thomas Barnett and Derrick’s “Strings of Life” and things of that nature.

Jeff Mills said techno is “what you haven’t imagined yet.” How do you personally identify "techno" music versus other forms of dance and electronic music?

Techno was originally a broad term. Of course “techno” is short for “technology.” When I coined this term, it was after taking a course in high school called “Future Studies,” which featured Future Shock by Alvin Toffler. That led me to pick up his following book, The Third Wave. What Toffler outlined was the transition from an industrial society to a technological society. I applied this principle to electronic music and called it “techno,” because technology and the digital age – all of that streamed out of the computer, which is a technological masterpiece. It would spawn the whole technological era.

In terms of other forms of dance music, “techno” would be more technology based. Disco was considered dance music, but it was mainly strings and real drums and acoustic musicians. That was the difference between a dance record and a techno record or electronic dance music.

What music do you listen to while doing busywork, like answering emails, etc.

I love all kinds of music. I grew up listening to my mother’s music from an early age. My father listened to a lot of jazz. I listened to a lot of jazz fusion, like George Duke, Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock, Return to Forever, Weather Report. All of this stuff shaped my early musical influences. To this day I still listen to a lot of jazz fusion. A lot of that stuff was 10, 15, 20 years ahead of its time. To me, it’s in vogue right now still. A lot of jazz music doesn’t age. I listen to that.

Sometimes now I listen to basic sounds and frequencies. You can have a sequence of frequencies that are not your typical compositions so to speak. When I’m working, I would usually play more ambient/atmospheric stuff. Sometimes when you’re answering emails, doing officework, etc., your mind is focused, so if you’re listening to popular music, it’ll distract you from your work. So I save music listening for music listening, and when I’m working, it’s something to fill in the backdrop.

Name an underrated musician from the last 50 years.

I would say Bernie Worrell. For those who don’t know who he is, Bernie Worrell was the synthesist from the P-Funk era. A track like “Flashlight,” which was 75% Bernie Worrell – that was the first time I heard a synth in the bass register. Not enough credit is given to Bernie Worrell for advancing electronic dance music.

What are you working on next?

I’m still developing my two main entities. Cybotron is the band that we relaunched. We just released a single in October called “Maintain” and “The Golden Ratio.” The next single is coming out pretty soon, leading to a forthcoming album for Cybotron.

I’m also working on my life story: a book, maybe a biopic, my memoirs…

And then there’s Model 500. When I started my label Metroplex in 1985, I formed an entity called Model 500. A new Model 500 single is being released on a Carhartt Tresor compilation. I’m gonna do a follow up EP for that to be released on Metroplex.

So I’m keeping busy. There’s a lot of working I’m doing with Movement Festival which is coming up soon. That’s going to be in May. Also playing with Borderland with Moritz Von Oswald.