Richie Hawtin

As a teenager growing up in Windsor, Ontario, Richie Hawtin would often sneak out at night and cross the Ambassador Bridge from Canada into Detroit to attend that city’s underground nightclubs. By seventeen, inspired by techno pioneers such as the Belleville Three — Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson — Hawtin started deejaying at clubs like the Shelter, blending together a mix of early techno, house and industrial music. In 1989 he founded the Plus 8 label with fellow Canadian John Acquaviva and released seminal techno tracks by Speedy J, Dan Bell and Kenny Larkin, as well as a slew of his own productions, establishing himself as a key figure in Detroit techno’s “second wave.” Hawtin launched a second label, Minus, in 1998, as a vehicle to push forward a more minimal strain of the genre. Today he resides in techno’s nascent capital — Berlin — and remains one of the biggest names in electronic music.