A tribute to Juan Atkins – leading light and Techno pioneer (1962-2026)
With the news emerging on Sunday 1 November that one of Detroit techno music’s leading lights and pivotal figures Juan Atkins passed away. With his agency Greensmith Artists confirming the news to Resident Advisor, informing that he’d been found unresponsive in a hotel room in Mexico City, prior to a performance at Yu Yu Club. We wish to pass on our deepest sympathies to all his family and friends at this difficult time.
Born in Detroit in 1962, Atkins later moved with his family to the rural Michigan suburb of Belleville. Here he met Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, two junior high schoolmates with whom he formed The Belleville Three. A trio of like-minded musicians who are largely credited as the city’s “first wave” of artists, who would soon be sitting at the vanguard of Electronic music and its emergence onto dance floors across the globe.
Whilst Atkins was still in high school and using increasingly affordable hardware such as the Roland TR-808 drum machine and the Korg MS-10 synthesiser, he formed the seminal band ‘Cybotron’ with his friend Richard Davis. As they say, the rest is history…
Over 4 decades later, Atkins has continued to be at the cornerstone of creating and releasing gleaming, mechanistic forms of futuristic music. Which he first started in the early 80s, then multiplied across a multitude of aliases such as Model 500, Infinity, Kreem, X-Ray, 3MB, Borderland amongst others. Commanding dancefloors while evoking sci-fi fantasias, fuelled by the influence of the extra-terrestrial funk of Parliament Funkadelic, propelled by the futuristic rhythms of Kraftwerk and the progressive theorems proposed by Giorgio Moroder. Not only did he lay down his own imprint Metroplex, a quintessential proponent of Detroit’s sound. He was the first person to use the term “Techno” in tandem with the style, pre-empting an entire genre that now stands as one of the pillars of dance culture.
As EPM Music put it so brilliantly:
“It is almost impossible to truly capture what Juan meant to music — and to all of us.
Even if you never knew his name or listened to his music directly, if you’ve ever felt the pulse of Techno or Electro, his hands shaped your world.
We’ve lost our Originator. He was the very first to give this sound a name, speaking “Techno” into existence before it grew into a global language. He pushed the boundaries of what music could be right up until the moment he drove his Cosmic Car into the next dimension.
We throw the word “legend” around far too easily, but for Juan, even that word feels too small. It falls short of the reverence he deserves.
For a man, quiet and self-effacing, he left behind a legacy that holds nothing less than the blueprint to a utopian sound.”
Thank you for giving us the blueprint and so much more…
