Juan Atkins, Who Coined Techno, Dies at 64: The Songs That Built a Genre

Juan Atkins, the Detroit D.J. and producer widely acknowledged as techno's progenitor, has died at 64. Kevin Saunderson, his fellow member of the Belleville Three, confirmed the pioneer's standing in a social media post on Sunday.

"Juan was the originator of Techno," Saunderson wrote. "A true visionary who opened the door for so many of us, myself included."

The New York Times, in an essential-recordings survey by Mike Rubin, frames Atkins as the member of the trio whose conceptual vision and bootstrapping determination willed the genre into being. Atkins even coined the word "techno" itself — the genre's name is his invention, not a label applied from outside.

Where did the sound come from?

The mechanism is simpler than the mythology suggests. In the early 1980s, before post-disco house music emerged from Chicago, Atkins took funk and pumped up its electronic content. He then layered on a forward-thinking, defiantly cosmic worldview drawn from two sources: the writings of the futurist Alvin Toffler and his own ruminations.

That combination — machine-funk plus futurist philosophy — is the seed of everything that followed. Atkins attended high school in the Detroit exurb that gave the Belleville Three (Atkins, Derrick May and Saunderson) their name, and the trio's innovations remain forever linked in techno's early development.

What does 'Alleys of Your Mind' tell us?

The founding document is Cybotron's 1981 single "Alleys of Your Mind," and its origin story is a study in self-reliance.

Atkins was a 19-year-old attending music class at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Mich., when he met Richard Davis, a Vietnam veteran a decade older. Davis, who recorded as 3070, had already self-released a 1978 single, "Methane Sea" — an electronic fugue of what he called "multitrack noise."

The pair bonded over synthesizers and formed Cybotron. Davis used his military earnings to finance a seven-inch single released on Atkins's own imprint, Deep Space. That detail matters: the first techno record was funded by a veteran's paycheck and put out on a teenager's label.

Musically, Rubin notes a synth melody in "Alleys of Your Mind" lightly resembles Ultravox's 1980 track "Mr. X." But Cybotron's song carries decidedly more paranoid stylings. Davis's ominous arpeggios and Atkins's hypnotic handclaps and bouncy bass lines combine into sinister-sounding electro-funk — pop's electronics pushed somewhere darker and more restless.

What does this change for the genre's history?

Atkins's death at 64 arrives with techno a global institution, but the source's core point stands: the genre traces to one teenager with an imprint, a synthesizer-obsessed partner, and a name he invented himself. Rubin's piece promises a sampling of Atkins's most crucial work — "no Akai MPC needed," a nod to the sampler that later defined production — though the published portion covers only the Cybotron beginning before the paywall cuts in.