Juan Atkins, Detroit techno music pioneer, dead at 64

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Set us as preferred Juan Atkins, the Detroit club music producer who pioneered techno as a genre, has died.He was 64.Atkins’ death was confirmed in a social media post by his management firm Greensmith Artists.

The post did not include a cause of death, though Greensmith said in a statement to Resident Advisor that he was found unresponsive in his hotel room in Mexico City prior to a planned performance.Atkins had suffered from diabetes-related complications in recent years.Atkins, raised by a concert-promoter father in the shadow of Motown, formed his taste on the progressive Black-owned radio station WGPR-FM.

As an artist, he rose to prominence as a teen in the early ’80s with the duo Cybotron, with Richard “3070” Davis.The pair, infatuated with Kraftwerk, Afro-futurism and acid-fried psych rock, retrofitted Detroit funk in the post-disco era with rigorous synthesizers and science-fiction themes on tracks like 1981’s “Alleys of Your Mind.” They carved a new style of club music that echoed their city’s industrial legacy, and captivated the city’s Black teenage middle class.

They scored a major underground hit with “Clear,” famously sampled by Missy Elliott and others.Music After earlier stadium shows in New York, London and Paris, the 56-year-old rap superstar touched down in Inglewood for a set overflowing with hits.After leaving Cybotron, Atkins also conjured a new alias, Model 500, for his solo records in 1985.

The same year, he founded his longtime record label Metroplex, which released scores of his singles like “No UFO’s” along with 1995’s LP “Deep Space,” 1999’s “Mind and Body” and 2015’s “Digital Solutions.”Atkins formed deep friendships with two other proto-techno producers, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, who became locally known as the Belleville Three (named for t...