40 YEARS OF TECHNO PRODUCTION

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.

“DEEP SOUND PROGRAMMING PLAYED A BIG PART IN DETROIT’S SOUND”
KEVIN SAUNDERSON

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