Juan Atkins, Godfather of Detroit Techno, Dies at 64

A Foundational Figure

Juan Atkins spent more than four decades recording and touring after helping launch Detroit's electronic music scene. His booking agency announced his death Sunday. The techno legend was 64.

Atkins was found unresponsive in his Mexico City hotel room before a scheduled performance on October 31. No cause of death has been announced.

The Belleville Three

Raised in Belleville, a small town west of Detroit, Atkins befriended Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson as teenagers. The three became known as the Belleville Three, the group most often credited with building techno's foundations in the 1980s. Although the genre grew into a global institution with festivals, superstar DJs and countless subgenres, Atkins remained a fixture of its underground.

He also recorded electronic music as Model 500 and released a slew of influential records via Metroplex, a label he founded to put out his own work and that of his friends. He stayed active for more than four decades, touring extensively and releasing new material including Deep Space, his landmark Model 500 debut on R&S Records.

Tributes Pour In

Tributes from fellow musicians and fans have poured in from Carl Cox, Sven Väth and other influential techno artists.

Cox wrote on Facebook that hearing about Atkins's passing left him with a heavy heart. "From back in the day of a track, called Cybotron Clear in 1983, has never left my soul," he wrote. "For the Techno community this is a great loss, of a pure legend, I had the pleasure of receiving a remix, he made for me, of which I will never forget."

Väth called the news "heartbreaking" and wrote that the techno community has lost "one of the true visionaries and founding fathers of electronic music."