Juan Atkins, Detroit Techno Pioneer and Belleville Three Member, Dies at 64

Juan Atkins, the Detroit producer and DJ who helped create techno music, has died at the age of 64. His agency, Greensmith Artists, confirmed the death to Resident Advisor on Sunday, November 1. The agency said Atkins was found unresponsive in his hotel room in Mexico City, where he had been due to play at the YuYu Cine Club on October 31, and was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital. The Detroit Free Press reported that he died in his sleep on Saturday, October 31, citing his friend and fellow Detroit artist Eddie Fowlkes. No cause of death has been announced. The Free Press reported health problems in recent years, including complications linked to diabetes, alongside a busy touring schedule.

Atkins was born in Detroit in 1962 and grew up in Belleville, west of the city, after his family moved there. At Belleville High School he met Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. The three friends became known as the Belleville Three, the group credited with starting Detroit techno in the early 1980s. DJ Mag reported that Atkins played guitar and bass in a funk band as a child and got his first synthesizer at 15. His early listening mixed Kraftwerk and Parliament-Funkadelic with the Detroit radio broadcaster known as the Electrifying Mojo.

Cybotron, Model 500 and Metroplex

Atkins formed Cybotron with Richard Davis in 1980. The duo built a sound from synthesizers, electronic percussion and futuristic production. Their 1981 single "Alleys of Your Mind" was an early landmark, and "Clear" (1983) became one of the records that defined the Detroit sound. After he left Cybotron, Atkins began releasing music as Model 500. His 1985 track "No UFOs" became a foundational Detroit techno record, built on machine rhythms and science fiction imagery. The same year he launched Metroplex, his own label, an outlet for his productions and for other Detroit underground artists.

Atkins also gave the genre its name. His track "Techno Music" appeared on the 1988 British compilation "Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit," the record that introduced the Detroit sound to European audiences and fixed the word techno to it. As Detroit techno spread through clubs in Britain and Germany, his records helped shape the producers and DJs who followed. He kept recording and performing for four decades, returning as Cybotron and collaborating with Moritz von Oswald as Borderland. The Free Press reported that he was among the most frequent performers at Detroit's Movement festival in its 26 year history.

Tributes from the Belleville Three and Detroit

Kevin Saunderson paid tribute to his Belleville Three partner in a post on Instagram, quoted by DJ Mag. "Juan was the originator of Techno, a true visionary who opened the door for so many of us, myself included," Saunderson wrote. "I'll never forget how he showed me how to finish my first record, 'Triangle of Love'. That meant a lot to me then, and it still does today."

Eddie Fowlkes told the Detroit Free Press: "It's very simple: If it wasn't for Juan, there wouldn't be me, a Derrick, a Kevin. His dream was my dream in a sense." Jason Huvaere of Paxahau, the company that produces the Movement festival, told the Free Press: "He's the one person, without a doubt, that everyone in electronic music has been influenced by."

Speaking to DJ Mag in 2019 about the return of Cybotron, Atkins said: "I'm not looking at this as an opportunity to start where I left off. I wanna look at this as an opportunity to present new ideas, because that's what Cybotron has been from the start."