Juan Atkins helped invent techno. Statements like that usually feel hyperbolic as you write them, but in this case it's difficult to overstate just how much of modern electronic music traces back to his work. His passing leaves an immeasurable hole in the culture he helped create.
Born in Detroit in 1962, Atkins later moved to the suburb of Belleville, where he met Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. Although he had already been playing guitar and bass in local funk bands, his musical trajectory changed when his grandmother gifted him a Korg MS-10 synthesizer.
His roots in funk and growing relationship with his new instrument helped establish a defining element of his sound: an absolute mastery of the bassline. Atkins initially described Cybotron's early music as "high-tech funk," capturing the intersection of his musical upbringing and technological ambition. Funk, disco, and electronic music became the foundation of a sound that both honored and challenged its influences.
Atkins was equally fascinated by the future. Inspired by Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock," Atkins began exploring the transition from an industrial society to a technological one. Synthesizers and drum machines represented that emerging world, and his music became a way of contributing to its development.
It's in that conversation between musical inheritance and imagined futures that we find the hope present in Atkins' work. While his early music wasn't necessarily conceived as an Afrofuturist project, it belongs in that conversation. By carrying Black musical traditions into his vision of the future, Atkins gave the pioneers who came before him a place within it.
Perhaps his greatest contribution was creating a musical language that allowed others to imagine what might come next, and begin making it themselves. That possibility remains, even as we learn to live without his presence.
Cosmic Raindance
"Cosmic Raindance" announces the beginning of Atkins and Richard Davis's collaboration as "Cybotron." Atkins remembered it as the first piece they created together, an experiment that would become the B-side to "Alleys of Your Mind."
There is something ebullient and joyous in that beginning: two musicians learning the boundaries of their craft together, before the music itself acquired the historical weight we now give it. It's an extraordinary, and grounding thing to realize that two musicians' curiosity became part of the foundation for an entire culture.
Night Drive (Thru-Babylon)
Released under Atkins' Model 500 alias, "Night Drive" brings together the fantastic and the mundane by chronicling the everyday experience of driving through Detroit after dark.
The car, the radio, and the promise of somewhere else become part of Atkins' personal science fiction in an expression of technological imagination connecting to ordinary life.
Skyway
1998's "Skyway" belongs to a seminal period of Atkins' work. By this point in his career, the musical language that he helped to establish had developed into a global cultural force.
With new alias Infiniti, Atkins reestablishes his place in techno's continued evolution by delivering what would become some of his most beloved compositions. 15 years into his career this is an artist still actively contributing to the musical conversation he had helped begin.
Track Ten
Released through New Religion in 2004, "Track Ten" offers another point of entry into a catalogue often discussed solely through its earliest achievements.
Its soulful character carries a central part of Atkins' musical sensibility, more than twenty years after his first releases. This release serves as a through-line to a body of work that deserves to be understood beyond the moment of invention.
Riod
On "Riod," Atkins' and collaborator Moritz von Oswald allow their musical imagination to breathe. The project's patient development and expansive approach came to define the aesthetic of their Borderland project.
Released in 2016, the record speaks to the importance of collaboration throughout Atkins' career. This exchange between musicians became an integral milestone in Atkins' ethos of imagining what could come next.
Juan Atkins leaves behind a body of work that will continue to shape how we make music and imagine its future. There is still so much to learn from what he gave us.
For a deeper look into his ideas and creative philosophy, watch this excerpt from the documentary Universal Techno and hear it from the man himself.