But far from welcoming them, the tight-knit Detroit Techno scene initially turned a cold shoulder on the two renegade Canadians.
RICHIE HAWTIN LIVE PLUS
In 1989 he set up Plus 8 Records with John Acquaviva to release their own tracks and push new artists. He had his own show on Detroit’s 96.3FM – inspired by a late ‘80s Detroit radio DJ called The Wizard, now better known as Jeff Mills.Īs a teenager Hawtin, already into Breakdancing and Electro, was stirred by the radically beautiful machine music being fashioned by Detroit Techno pioneers like Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. By 17 he was DJing at The Shelter, a dark basement club where he mixed House and Techno with Industrial music by Nitzer Ebb and Front 242. By 15 Richie was creeping out of the house to cross the border and go clubbing in Detroit. His brother Matthew, who shares the Windsor fire station studio complex with Richie, is a visual artist. Richie cheekily borrowed his dad’s persona for his house alias Robotman. As Hawtin enthuses: “It feels and acts like a regular record.” He’s already using Final Scratch to play unreleased tracks by Josh Wink and Speedy J, and special re-edits of some of Hawtin’s classics and personal faves.īorn in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England, on June 4th 1970 Hawtin emigrated with his family when he was nine to Windsor, Ontario, where his dad Mick still works as a robot technician in the General Motors car factory (his mother, Brenda, is in real estate). You can access literally thousands of tracks, and scratch, cut, slow and mix them just like normal records using this special piece of vinyl. Final Scratch links up to the normal two-turntables-and-mixer set up, but lets you play tracks stored on a laptop using a special piece of vinyl as a ‘mouse’, or controller. Even though more and more DJs play tracks burnt onto CD, vinyl still rules because it’s easier and instinctive to control. Dance and Electronic music is the most technology-based genre of all, but to Hawtin’s frustration it’s still rooted in a music delivery system developed in the 19th Century: the gramophone record. So beyond “DE9…” he is championing a new DJ system developed in Holland called Final Scratch, with Plus 8 partner John Acquaviva. Hawtin believes the whole DJ thing is stuck in a groove. ‘Let’s take it to the extreme, to somewhere that’s it never been before’ “ “Some people think it’s about me using some extra equipment – a drum machine and some effects - but it’s a whole philosophy really. “I don’t like mix CDs, everyone’s being lazy, so I gotta do something different,” says Hawtin. I started to recreate and reinterpret each track and then put the pieces back together, as if an audio jigsaw puzzle – using effects and edits as the glue between each piece”.Ī classic like Carl Craig’s ‘4 My Peepz’ (under his Paperclip People guise) breathes in and out in less than a minute, like a lonely spirit lost on the hard drive. I ended up with over 300 loops, ranging in different lengths. Hawtin describes this unique process “I recorded, sampled, cut and spliced over 100 tracks down into their most basic components. The result is a mix album like you’ve never heard before.
RICHIE HAWTIN LIVE SKIN
His first mix album, for the Mixmag Live series, saw him use extra effects and drum machines as long ago as 1993, “Decks, EFX & 909” cut laser-style between tracks and now, “DE9: Closer To The Edit”, sees Hawtin use his sampler to tear the skin and the flesh from the tracks until there’s just a skeleton left, which he reassembles into a kind of Frankenstein’s robot. This time, he’s reconstructing the DJ mix album even further with “DE9: Closer To The Edit”, the groundbreaking new album set for release on the novamute label in September 2001. More of a decade into his career, it’s no surprise that the every-youthful Hawtin is up to something new.
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