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Juan Atkins
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Juan Atkins is an American producer and DJ from Detroit, born in 1962. His father was a concert promoter. As a boy he played guitar and bass in funk bands with friends. After his parents' divorce he moved to Belleville, a suburb of Detroit. There he got to know Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, and at fifteen he bought his first synthesizer. He listened to Parliament and Funkadelic, to the radio shows of the DJ The Electrifying Mojo and to Kraftwerk.
Music and breakthrough
In 1980 Atkins founded the group Cybotron with the older Richard Davis, a Vietnam veteran with a great deal of knowledge about synthesizers. Their track Clear was released in the early 1980s and is often seen as the earliest forerunner of techno. In 1985 the duo split up. Atkins started the label Metroplex and continued alone as Model 500. With No UFO's (1985) he sold thousands of records, and the style he himself called techno. Later he worked a lot in Berlin, including with Moritz von Oswald in 3MB (1992) and Borderland (2013).
Influence
Atkins is called the godfather of techno. He combined the cosmic funk of Parliament with the tight computer pop of Kraftwerk and ideas about the future from science fiction. Together with May and Saunderson, the Belleville Three, he made Detroit the city where techno originated, a style of music that then spread across the whole world.
Listening
Discography
Studio albums
- 19923MB
- 2013Borderland
- 2016Transport
- 2017Mind Merge LP
In School of Rock
The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.
- Mixtape 8: Electronic MusicNL Reader
Mentioned in other articles
- Detroit techno Genre
In Belleville near Detroit, Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson grew up with the radio show of The Electrifying Mojo, who played Parliament alongside Kraftwerk.