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

Juan Atkins, one of the founders of Detroit techno, has died at 64. His management company, Green Smith Artists, confirmed the news on Sunday, November 1.

Atkins was in Mexico City, where he was due to DJ at Yu Yu Club on Halloween night. Complex and MusicTech report that he was found unresponsive in his hotel room before the set and was pronounced dead at a hospital. No cause of death has been given.

He was born in Detroit on September 12, 1962, and grew up in nearby Belleville, Michigan. There he met Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson as teenagers. The three became known as the Belleville Three, and between them they built the sound that went out from Detroit to the rest of the world.

In 1980 he formed Cybotron with Richard “3070” Davis. The duo’s electro records, including “Clear” and the 1983 album Enter, drew on Kraftwerk, funk and the futurist writing of Alvin Toffler. Cybotron split in 1985. That year Atkins launched his own label, Metroplex, and a new project, Model 500. Its first single, “No UFO’s,” took the Detroit sound across the Atlantic.

He’s widely credited with giving techno its name. When the 1988 UK compilation Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit introduced the city’s producers to Europe, his “Techno City” was on it. He kept recording for the next four decades as Model 500, Infiniti and under his own name, and he kept DJing around the world.

Kevin Saunderson paid tribute on social media: “Juan was the originator of Techno, a true visionary who opened the door for so many of us, myself included.”

Tributes have also come from Derrick May, Sven Väth and Tiga.