40 years of techno production
Since its birth in the early 1980s, techno has taken over the world and remains one of dance music’s most enduring genres. This issue, we delve back through nearly 30 years’ worth of interviews to discover how the changing face of technology has shaped the sound of techno
It’s hard to pin down an exact date that techno as we know it today was born; unlike some other genres, there isn’t one definitive release that can easily be singled out as the first proper example of techno. It’s more accurate to say that, like both house and hip-hop, it emerged over the course of the early ’80s out of the roots of synth pop and electro, as a byproduct of the arrival of the first wave of truly affordable electronic instruments.
Even if the precise date is up in the air, you can certainly tie the birth of techno to a place – the city of Detroit – and a small circle of young Black musicians. If there is a single originator, it would undoubtedly be Juan Atkins. As a young man at the dawn of the 1980s, Atkins acquired his first synths – first a Korg MS-10, then later a Sequential Pro One – and began experimenting with creating tracks, resulting in a string of proto-techno releases under the moniker Cybotron with friend Rik Davis. While quite simplistic in their construction, the earliest Cybrotron releases, such as 1981’s Alleys Of Your Mind, bear a distinct similarity to European synth acts such as Kraftwerk and Gary Numan, whose hit Cars had arrived two years previously.
Atkins, along with close friends and fellow techno pioneers Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May, would absorb an eclectic melting pot of musical styles through Detroit’s legendary local radio stations and influential hosts such as WGPR-FM’s Electrifying Mojo. The trio – informally dubbed the Belleville Three, after the suburb of Detroit they called home – have cited everyone from homegrown Motown icons to David Bowie, New Order, Parliament and even the B-52s as early influences. Despite the shared listening experiences, techno’s founders came from different places as musicians.
“I’ve been making music all my life, starting out with a guitar, then a drum set, but I didn’t really start experimenting with electronics until around 1978,” Atkins explained to Future
Music in 1999 (FM80). “I hadn’t heard of people like Kraftwerk at that time, but I’d been working on demos, really early versions of tracks like Alleys Of Your Mind that were put together on cassette.
“At that time I had a basic mixer and a Korg MS-10, which was the synth that really developed my interest, introducing me to waveforms and oscillators. I’d just bounce between two cassette decks, taping from one to the other to create the overdub. There’s a real art to that.”
For Atkins, an element of futurism and sci-fi played a role in these earliest musical experiments. There’s no doubt that this outlook was, to an extent, a reaction to the postindustrial landscape of Detroit, which had begun its much-discussed decline by the early ’80s. Atkins has cited the influence of
American writer Alvin Toffler too, whose book
Future Shock he’d studied as a teen, and whose writings inspired the fledgling genre’s name. This tendency toward the futuristic would remain a running theme throughout techno and its numerous offshoots, found predominantly, for example, in the afro-futurism of later Detroit icons Drexciya.
By contrast Saunderson, who grew up in
New York and moved to Detroit later, was equally influenced by the soul and disco coming out of his home city. Through NYC radio he absorbed the likes of Chic and the extended remixes designed for the dancefloors of the iconic Studio 54.
Of the Belleville trio, Atkins was the first to release music, following up Cybotron’s debut with synth-pop indebted tracks such as Clear and Cosmic Cars. In 1985, Atkins’ collaborator Rik Davis left the group and shortly after, under the alias Model 500, Atkins released No UFO’s. Built around a punchy 909 beat, funk-style synth bass and repetitive vocal, No UFO’s is arguably the first track sonically recognisable as ‘techno’ as we know it today.
The years that followed would see the arrival of formative techno classics from each of the Belleville trio, such as Strings
Of Life from Rhythim is Rhythim (May) and Good Life by Inner City (Saunderson), as well as contemporaries such as Eddie Fowlkes and Blake Baxter. The sound, and its name, was eventually solidified with the release of the compilation Techno! The New Dance Sound Of Detroit,
compiled by British journalist Neil Rushton in collaboration with the Belleville originators.
HANDS ON, HANDS OFF
Alongside the social and cultural influences, the impact that 1980s music hardware had on the creation of techno is inescapable. The genre’s birth coincides with the rise of ‘affordable’ music hardware, such as the synths from Korg and Sequential cited by Atkins and, most significantly, Roland’s run of iconic rhythm machines.
Techno’s style is derived from more than just the sound of these specific machines though – it’s equally influenced by the way in which they were used. Early techno tracks were largely the work of one or two musicians, created in simple home setups rather than big, wellequipped studios. This meant that their production involved working around a lack of gear and manpower, making use of often
“DEEP SOUND PROGRAMMING PLAYED A BIG PART IN DETROIT’S SOUND”
KEVIN SAUNDERSON
“CHEAP AVAILABILITY OF THE ANALOGUE SEQUENCER SHAPED TECHNO” JEFF MILLS
simplistic sequencers to loop and trigger patterns while wringing as many sounds as possible out of each instrument.
As Saunderson told FM in 1998 (FM71): “I think [The Groove That Won’t Stop] is a good example of what you can do when you get into some deep sound programming. I think that played a big part in creating Detroit’s unique sound back then; we really did spend a lot of time programming. Programming sounds is an important part of how your vision comes alive. It helps you create. You can come up with sounds which just trigger all kinds of ideas or give parts a whole new life.
“You’ve got to remember that back then we didn’t know anything, a lot of times we created something and it almost happened by accident. It wasn’t done because we were sitting down thinking through logically, it was done because we were in a creative mood working on sounds that inspired us…”
In the years following techno’s initial breakthrough, a new name rose to prominence in Detroit. Originally known by his radio DJ moniker The Wizard, Jeff Mills became popular for his mixing style, initially marked out by quick mixes between records, and later evolving to create live edits using a combination of three turntables and drum machines.
Mills explained the origins of the setup to us in 2009 (CM Special 36): “For years it had been the dream of DJs to search out really minimal tracks... things that would allow you to extend. That comes from hip-hop, where you want a fairly simple break or groove so you can then do things to it. The three decks thing came as a direct result of music becoming more minimal. The idea was that if it was that minimal, you could layer it together the way you’d layer tracks in the studio, and that would give you more options to create something for people to hear. I could layer three or four turntables together, because the music doesn’t change if there are no breaks, bridges or choruses. You realise that you can juggle the minimal tracks or mix them together to create a whole new track.”
Mills backs up the idea of techno being heavily inspired by the gear available at the time. “A lot of it has to do with the machines themselves,” he told FM in 2018 (FM338). “Making the analogue sequencer more regularly available and cheaper played a big role in shaping techno music – we started using these random sequences to create a certain type of sound. We’re influenced by what these machines can do, which comes down to what people design for us.”
In 1989, Mills formed Underground Resistance with Robert Hood and ‘Mad’ Mike Banks. The group became known for their distinctive style, which was sonically hard