Richie Hawtin on the Model 1

The Techno icon has launched a high-end DJ mixer through his new PlayDifferently brand. We sat down with him at ADE to get the lowdown…

Since FM last met up with Richie Hawtin back in January, much of his 2016 has been occupied with the launch of PlayDifferently, his new high-end DJ tech brand. The first fruit of the venture is the Model 1, a new all-analogue DJ mixer developed in conjunction with former Allen & Heath man Andy Rigby-Jones, best known for his work on the muchlauded Xone mixer series. FM caught up with Hawtin at this year’s ADE to find out more about the project.

FM: How long has the project been in development?

Richie Hawtin: “We’ve been working on the project for probably two years, but the dream of being involved in a brand new DJ mixer has been around for about ten years, so it feels like the project's been longer than it has.

“We’re hoping we can define a new level, or section, of the market. I guess the best analogy is, I feel that DJing is a complete art form and something that over time you get better and better at, just like any other art form or type of musical skill. If you’re going to be a guitarist you’ll probably start with some cheap guitar you get from your parents for Christmas, then as you get better there’ll come a point where perhaps the instrument you’re using is starting to impose limitations, so you’ll upgrade to something better, maybe better strings or a better instrument, but there’s somewhere else to go.

“I didn’t think that we had that same upper level for DJ mixers – a mixer that was really an instrument, that felt good, that could take DJs to another level of articulation and sensitivity. That’s what I was missing and that was the grounding foundation for the project, that idea of quality, level and build.”

How does the Model 1 fit into the way you perform?

“For me, of course, I’m the octopus; I have lots of things going on. With the Model 1 we’ve been able to squeeze eight channels into the usual Allen & Heath or Pioneer-style frame, so you’ve got extra channels, you’ve got a way to configure it with a third send and then you’ve got beautiful filters and EQs. It gives you ways to get at the frequencies you want.

“The mixer is designed for people who want to play and modify the records they’re playing. They might not necessarily pull them apart in the way that I do, but it lets DJs play their favourite record and bring up that one frequency or smoothly take the bass out. That’s what the mixer is for.

“I’ve been able to add an extra effect, and to do some feedback loops of effects. There’s a very cool feature, which is an analogue overdrive, so I can now bring up some drum sounds I’m using in Ableton and push them and let them slightly distort in an analogue way. So for me the whole show is now somehow smoother.”

What was the impetus behind the design? Were you limited with what you could do with existing mixers?

“You know what, I’ve been playing with the Allen & Heath Xone:92 for over ten years and I love it. It’s become part of my sound; part of my sound is the frequency range of that mixer. But I think electronic and Techno music should find ways to push forward. I felt that I wanted to try something new; I wanted to see how a new mixer would affect how I play.

“When we were designing the mixer, Andy Rigby-Jones and I made a very conscious and scary decision to take a departure from the old three- or four-band EQ and make a new configuration of low-pass and high-pass filter with a sweepable parametric EQ where you could choose and sweep the frequencies. That in itself is not an epiphany – those components have been around forever, but they’ve never really been put in that configuration on a DJ desk. So it was our aim to give people another way of mixing. Of course we wanted to bring incredible sound quality too – and it sounds beautiful – but just an incredible sounding mixer with all the same parameters would have been disappointing.

“To answer your question, I knew I wanted more channels, and I knew I wanted a third send – which we eventually actually had to ditch – but mostly I wanted something different. I wanted something that would make me take a step back and ask, ‘How will I play with this mixer?’ because it was something completely different from everything else out there.”