When Juan Atkins is walking through Berlin airport, he’ll often spot someone out of the corner of his eye, approaching cautiously before plucking up the courage to ask: “Are you Juan Atkins?” But what they’re really asking the diminutive 61-year-old is: “Are you the man who created techno?” Atkins, speaking to me from his Detroit home, elaborates: “They’ll tell me, ‘Your music changed my life.’ It makes me want to cry, man.”
Despite being the genre’s ambassador and elder statesman – his first record was released in 1981 – Atkins is not slowing down. He has just got back from playing Berlin’s clubs, recently had a slot at Detroit’s Movement technofest, and this week he will hit the UK’s Houghton festival.
