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Juan Atkins, a Detroit disc jockey (born 1962) who started spinning in 1979,
coined the term "techno" to define the high-tech funk of Cybotron,
his joint project with Rick Davis.
Juan Atkins had begun playing
keyboards and synthesizers as a teenager inspired by George Clinton.
From the beginning, Atkins had realized the
potential of the emerging electronic instruments.
Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson were high school buddies that had an influence
on him in choosing to start recording the music that was flying in his mind.
Their friendship would soon be cemented through the collective Deep Space
Soundworks, founded in 1981, and their downtown disco, the "Music Institute".
While in college studying music, Atkins met Rick Davis, a synthesizer expert
who had just recorded an experimental record, and history was made.
When very few people were paying attention, Cybotron was producing singles
such as
Alleys Of Your Mind (Deep Space, 1981) and Cosmic Cars (1982)
that were changing the concept of dance music.
The album Enter (Fantasy, 1983) contained a track,
Clear (Fantasy, 1982), that was almost instrumental and already had all
the attributes of techno.
Techno City (1984) introduced the term "techno" to characterize a fast
electronic beat.
Atkins left Davis and new member Jon 5, who veered towards rock & roll, and
move on to explore techno music.
His first single as Model 500, No UFO's (Metroplex, 1985), is generally
considered the first techno recording.
Atkins was a visionary, but followed in the footsteps of visionaries who had
come before him. His aim was a futuristic music that would wed the most
abstract funk of Parliament with the robotic synth-pop of Kraftwerk.
Cybotron was his album-oriented project, while Model 500 was his
In 1988 Atkins, May and Saunderson traveled for the first time to Britain and
Atkins was invited to play in front of a huge crowd at one of the open-air
events, so called "raves". Atkins soon became a staple of London's
underground and helped spread Detroit techno to the rest of Europe through
links with the R&S label in Belgium and the Tresor label in Berlin.
The latter's duo of producers Thomas Fehlmann and Moritz Von Oswald joined
him for 3MB (Tresor, 1994)
The mini-album Sonic Sunset (R&S, 1994) and
the debut Model 500 album, a sci-fi concept titled Deep Space(R&S, 1995), featuring
The Flow,
were landmark events,
as were the Classics (R&S, 1993) compilation of early singles and
the Infiniti Compilation (Tresor, 1995) of obscure 1991-94 tracks
recordings under the moniker Infiniti.
Infiniti's Skynet(Tresor, 1998) is a quiet and ecstatic work that
sails off for the galaxies
(Skyway, Postcards from the Future).
Model 500's Mind and Body (R&S, 1999) was a rather pale follow-up to
Deep Space.
After a six-year hiatus, Atkins' The Berlin Sessions (Tresor, 2005)
harked back to his Cybotron roots.
20 Years of Metroplex 1985-2005 (Tresor, 2005) is a comprehensive
2-CD career retrospective.
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