Ontario (Canada) native Richie Hawtin started working as a disc jockey in the dance clubs of nearby Detroit. Soon be became Plastikman and began composing his own music, often inspired by the masters of electronic music (Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, Brian Eno). Under the moniker of Cybertronic, Hawtin released the single Circuit Breaker that established him (a white kid from Canada) as a creative force in the Detroit techno underground. Under the moniker of F.U.S.E. (aka Futuristic Underground Subsonic Experiments), Hawtin released a few tracks that became rave anthems (the psychofest of polyrhythm and acid keyboards F.U., the elegantly surreal Substance Abuse, Slac), later collected on Dimension Intrusion (Wax Trax, 1993). The album also includes the new single, Train-Trac 1. Another early success was Hawtin's collaboration with LFO, Loop.

Hawtin's trademark sound was, first and foremost, a delirious inferno of electronic grooves (thanks to his mastery of the bass line synthesizer), but from the percussive orgies of following singles Krakpot and Spastik, Plastikman boldly moved on to the ambient/psychedelic subtleties of Sheet One (NovaMute, 1993). Plasticity, Smak and Helikopter run the gamut from techno to ambient, acid-rock, industrial music and acid-house. The overall feeling is transcendent, rather than hedonistic.

Musik (NovaMute, 1994) offers a mature synthesis of his technique and his vision. Other than the techno locomotive of Goo, the album does not contain anything that can be easily related to existing styles or genres. There is a strong psychedelic undercurrent (Plastique, Marbles), and deviant metabolic units that border on industrial music (Konception, Ethnik), experiments in sound that only accidentally include regular beats (slower, chill-out beats).

The next project and closing chapter of the trilogy was supposed to be Klinik. While Hawtin was working on this album, that was meant to make music with the remnants of dance-music after dissecting beats and bass lines, the US authorities expelled him for performing illegally as Plastikman.

After a three-year hiatus, Hawtin resurrected Plastikman with the singles Sickness (Novamute, 1997) and 8068 (Plus 8, 1997). The subtlety of his spare style shines in these singles.

Klinik's ideas were honed for Consumed (NovaMute, 1998), that salvaged some of the material readied for Klinik, when even the beat liquifies. Hawtin's magistery is immediately highlighted by Contain, whose soft polyrhythmic ticking in a sea of echoes slowly evolves into a swinging beat. The following Consume, basically, picks up from there: the swinging beat (just a bit faster, lower and bluesier) journeys a desolate landscape of haunting drones and burbling electronics. Consumed has a steadier, almost military, beat, that doubles a couple of time and intersects one of the few melodic lines in the entire album (a very diluted melodic line). That title-track, de facto, bridges the first two tracks' programmatic music with their popular application: Locomotion is the only track with a familiar dance structure, although its techno-id beat is warped by a dub reverb.
Another experimental core is represented by the sequence of Cor Ten, Convulse, Ekko, and Converge, which is virtually a suite: melody and beat-boxes fade out, leaving mainly atmospheric breathing and heartbeats to compete in an ecosystem of distant and android noises.
This is all highly original and ultimately mesmerizing. But, once he has made such a revolutionary statement, there is little he can add, and In Side sounds already dejavu.
The laid-back and subdued tone(s) of the album have coined a new post-ambient idiom by leveraging on the dub dogma of "minimal means to maximum effect".

The material omitted from Consumed finally appeared on Artifakts (NovaMute, 1998). The funereal Korridor and the Kraftwerk-ian Skizofrenik show a much stronger interest in texture. But one can't help noticing that these are, indeed, leftovers, still under the influence of much more conventional forms (the heart-beat pulse of Psyc, the world-beat of Pakard and Hypokondriak). At the same time, one can appreciate how daring and calculated Hawtin's operation was on Consumed, as he methodically removed the "easiest" tracks and focused on the experimental side of his work.

The excellent single PK (M-nus, 2000) also comes from those sessions.

In 1996 Hawtin released a single a month (meant to document the evolution of his technique) under the moniker Concept. Concept 1 96:CD (Minus, 1998), credited to Richie Hawtin, is a continuous suite built out of excerpts from those singles. Decks, EFX & 909 (Novamute, 1999), again credited to Richie Hawtin, is a fluid suite in 38 short movements that pastes together freely reworked compositions by other musicians. While a show of dexterity at the studio machines, it also marks a sudden drop in creativity.

Too much thinking went into Richie Hawtin's next project, DE9: Closer To The Edit (Novamute, 2001). The compositional process (heavily reliant on samples) looks more like a game and almost disqualifies the album as mere research. But, thankfully, the result has nothing to do with the premises, and Hawtin ends up with a brainless, mindless, utterly vulgar super-charged set of techno stereotypes. These three albums credited to Richie Hawtin were basically high-class mix albums.

After a five-year hiatus, Plastikman's Closer (Mute, 2003) also returned to Hawtin's roots in house and techno music. This is possibly Hawtin's least creative album, a mere repetition of cliches of modern dance music, compounded by the fact that each idea gets stretched as long as possible (vocals do not help). CDs are cheap to make.