Richie Hawtin (2013)

Todd L. Burns

I’d like to go ahead and introduce a man who needs little introduction to techno fans around the world, Mr. Richie Hawtin.

Richie Hawtin

Hi.

[applause]

Todd L. Burns

Most of your music is quite long and often times in the context of an album and needs to be heard in that context, as you have said in the past. However, we are going to go ahead and play a track anyway, and a track in full. So let’s enjoy a track before we begin. This is called “Spastik.”

(music: Plastikman – “Spastik”)

Richie Hawtin

Well, I wasn’t sweating before we started, now I am.

[applause]

Todd L. Burns

I didn’t play that full thing to be annoying or anything, or tedious.

Richie Hawtin

I don’t think I’ve heard it the whole thing like that fully probably since I recorded it. [laughs]

Todd L. Burns

Well, I wanted to ask you, recording that, you did that live as a live take. What was the process?

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, it reminds me of how hands-on the recording process was because it was, only, if I remember right, a 909 and an 808 drum machine, and probably some 707 in there. But that was it, so it was just me jamming with those three instruments. And you hear at the end that it’s, you’re playing with the tuning and decays of the different snares, and also, later playing with just the EQs and using every kind of knob and button and fader on the mixer, on those three instruments to try and make something that was engaging for what felt like 20 minutes. [laughs] But actually, the original song was like much of my music that I was recording at that point about a half-an-hour, 45-minute jam. Just press start, and see where it went. And usually, in those jam sessions, I would get a really good beginning and then somewhere in the middle I’d get a good jam part and then I’d have a good ending, and that’s pretty much what happened there. I think there was a little edit at the beginning, and then there was another edit to put the end on, but pretty much what you hear is what happened for those 35, 40 minutes in my studio.

Todd L. Burns

So a lot of the early stuff was completely live jams, and why was that the process, why were you going for 45 minutes?

Richie Hawtin

Well, there was a computer running the clock on that, like an old Atari ST, but… You know, you follow the people and the influences around you, by following what you see. I used to go to Detroit and see some people making music, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson and these guys and they all did their things by playing live and jamming. Again, most of the instruments you couldn’t actually sequence. You could only sequence in very simple terms, so there was really no way to sit on a computer screen and plan everything out. And later on, when I did try to do that it never felt actually real. It felt too manufactured. So I always just followed that thing of getting all the machines running, even when there was some computer stuff, having some loops on the computer screen, or whatever, but then just turning it all on, and doing most of the construction and the arrangement live by moving faders and muting or turning things on the machines. Like, I think a couple of times you can hear things coming in and you can feel that push and pull of the faders or the knobs on the 808.

Todd L. Burns

Definitely gives a dynamism that doing something not-live wouldn’t have.

Richie Hawtin

No, when I was listening to this, it reminds me of how I DJ now. Of course, there’s preplanning, but I do as much live as possible. I love having this controller ‘cause it has this knob on, and that controller, and I have something else over here, and I’m constantly manipulating and trying to work this energy level, and I’m just kind of flying by the seat of my pants. And that’s exactly what that was.

Todd L. Burns

So you said, this is something you saw people in Detroit doing. Where were you coming from?

Richie Hawtin

Well, yeah, it’s also the equipment. That was recorded in 1992, I think. It came out in ’93, so around that time. So again, I had an Atari ST, most of the equipment wasn’t fully MIDI, so there really wasn’t a way to plan everything out. I was traveling a little bit in the UK and some of the producers I met over there had more money and they had newer computers and they were putting everything out in these arrangement windows and I liked their records. But I didn’t always like the feeling of the records. And especially, if I tried to do what they were doing, it always lost the feeling of what I was trying to get to, so… And I love the feeling of all those Detroit records, you know? I used to go to Derrick May’s house, and he’d have [gesturing] his kitchen here and over here you’d have basically like this, actually, always on the floor, you know, a couple of 909 drum machines, some other things, and the mixer. And it was always running. Every time I went to his house there was something running. And then, sometimes he’d go over and like turn something off and bring something up, and I was like, “I guess that’s how he records.” You know, and the one thing that we all did was we had access to reel-to-reel 2-track tapes, so there was some post-production. We would record, like I said, for half an hour, 45 minutes. You know, I remember some of my other tracks were actually recorded over two DAT tapes, so they were like, 90 minutes long. And then I would just go back and find the pieces that I liked and turn that into an arrangement. But it was never like cutting and splicing so much that you started to take the life, it was always two or three edits, and kind of highlighting the best parts of what you had captured, where the live feeling really came out.

Todd L. Burns

So you’re in Windsor, Canada, and you’re going to Detroit to Derrick May’s house. So you grew up in Windsor, for the most part. When did you learn that there is this music happening in the city?

Richie Hawtin

Windsor in Canada is a very small place, so if you think you’re different, or you want to be different, you very quickly have to cross over into America and into Detroit for other opportunities. I started going there, I think, before it was for records, it was for like resale shopping, because there was really big places where you could find really cool clothes. And then that went from the resale shop and next door there was a place called Off the Record. There was a small record store in Windsor, but that cool group of… I don’t know, we thought we were cool. A little group of people were picking over those records, so if you wanted to have a record that nobody else had, you went to Detroit. If you wanted to have clothes that looked a little different, you went to Detroit. And so that just kind of became my weekend thing to do. I didn’t really find music being played in the nightclubs in Windsor. At that point it was actually more concerts. So I was into Skinny Puppy, Severed Heads, Front 242, these people were coming to Detroit and playing. So it was always going to Detroit. If you didn’t go there, it was pretty boring in Windsor.

Todd L. Burns

And it’s pretty close as well. It’s just right across the bridge.

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, it’s like North to South London, or like, Manhattan to Brooklyn. In about 15 minutes from my house, which was outside of Windsor, I could be through the tunnel or over the bridge. The people in that area call Windsor a suburb of Detroit, so it wasn’t like a big journey. You know, it was an adventure, though.

Todd L. Burns

You started DJing in a club in Detroit?

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, um… I was collecting these records, so I kind of was known in this group of friends in Windsor. There’s actually a lot of Windsor kids who wouldn’t go to Detroit.

Todd L. Burns

Why is that?

Richie Hawtin

This was like mid ‘80s and still, I think, up until 1979, 1980 Detroit was the murder capital of America. Which wasn’t a very good advertising campaign for Windsor moms and dads to go to Detroit. And so, you know…

Todd L. Burns

Convincing your parents to let you go there must have been tough.

Richie Hawtin

Yeah. You know, I was born in England. I went to Canada in 1979 and so when we got there, it was like, here’s Windsor, here’s Detroit. That was our area to explore. So even before I was going there by myself, my mom and dad would take us over there shopping, going to a mall, going to a cool breakfast place. You know, they just wanted to take in this whole new environment that we had just put ourselves into. And so that was my mentality too. You know, explore your surroundings. Whereas a lot of other kids, their parents wouldn’t go there, so, you had the rebels that would go there ‘cause their parents wouldn’t go there. But a lot of kids were just like, it was so “You don’t go to Detroit.” So, back to collecting records; there was a group of kids in Windsor who wanted to hear good music who wouldn’t go over there, and nobody would give me a job, so I was like, “Let’s put on a dance party.” It was like ’86, ’87… And all my friends came down to hear cool music. And the club owners were like, “This is amazing. You filled our club when we’re empty. You want to play every week?” So I said, “Sure, I’ll play every week,” and all my friends came for like the first week and the second week. And the third week some people didn’t come and the fourth week wasn’t so many people. And then the fifth week it’s, “Yeah, well, where are all my friends?” And then I didn’t have a job anymore.

[laughter]

And I wasn’t a very good DJ, I just had really good records.

Todd L. Burns

It’s half the battle.

Richie Hawtin

Which is half the battle, exactly. Especially, at that point, you know, music is so accessible now, at that point it was very hard to find those records. What it did teach me was that I was an introverted shy kid, I wasn’t very good at getting up in front of people and talking and all this stuff. But being in a DJ booth I could control this crowd and take them on this experience and just have fun playing cool music. And I was, in a way, the center of attention, but not completely the center of attention. It’s not like I was on stage with a guitar or something. So it was a really interesting dynamic for me. And those three or four weeks where we did these gigs, it really kind of pushed that home. And after losing the job, I basically went into my basement and just practiced to become a better DJ. But that was really the point of no return. I tasted something that I really, really, really enjoyed.

Todd L. Burns

What was the club in Detroit that really inspired you, to try to get another job as a DJ? Or were you just looking for anything at that point, where you could play?

Richie Hawtin

I probably was looking for anything. [laughs] But one of the clubs I used to go to, one of the venues was called Saint Andrew’s Hall. And that’s where I was seeing people like Nitzer Ebb and all that kind of electronic Gothic alternative music. And downstairs they had this club called The Shelter. I actually started going there before I was 18, they had a thing called teen night. So this was really cool, like a teen night just for weird kids who wanted to wear black and eyeliner, who were 15 and 16.

[laughter]

I still think that was a really cool thing. I don’t know if it exists anymore. Maybe I’m just so old that I don’t realize it. [laughs] But I started going to that, and then I got fake ID and then started going there and just going to listen to DJs. There was another club down the street called the Majestic Theater where Blake Baxter, another well-known Detroit producer, was playing. And just started being part of the scene. I didn’t, it wasn’t me who got my first job. I had a very beautiful blonde girlfriend who thought I was the hottest DJ in the world. I still couldn’t mix worth shit, but she thought I was a bomb. And she bugged the owner of The Shelter so much that he basically gave me a job or a tryout to stop her harassing him.

[laughter]

Todd L. Burns

Well, it’s important to have these types of people in your life.

[laughter]

A number of people can be very important later on.

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, but I think the point with that was that I loved doing my DJing, but I wasn’t that confident. I wasn’t the kid to say, “You need to book me, I’m the bomb,” or whatever, so it was if she hadn’t stepped in front of me and been my first cheerleader, fan club and booking agent I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.

Todd L. Burns

Who else did you meet there, aside from everyone, who else was very important later on?

Richie Hawtin

Well, there was a couple clubs like Majestic, Shelter, that were focused on electronic music, not just techno, not just house music, there was also Siouxsie and the Banshees, anything kind of alternative. So people were kind of gravitating there. Actually, there was this one crazy guy, he used to run around. He was my second biggest fan, his name was Kenny Larkin. My DJ name at the time was Richie Rich, so he would run around and I was playing the very beginning when nobody was there. So it was me playing to nobody except Kenny running around, screaming my name, Richie Rich, getting everyone hyped up. And then, later Kenny became one of the artists we signed to my first record label, Plus 8. At the same club John Acquaviva used to come down every couple of weeks, Daniel Bell used to come down. So the foundation was being laid by the people who were coming.

Todd L. Burns

Tell me about starting that record label. At what point did you know, “We gotta have a label”?

Richie Hawtin

I remember at that point there was a really important [remix service], it was called DMC, Disco Mix Club. It was a really big thing in the UK and they would have DJs… Basically, what that showed us what we thought was it didn’t matter how good you were as a DJ, if you wanted to make it in an international scene, you needed to do a record, or something. This DMC club took DJs and made mega-mixes, so that was kind of our fist angle. John had a studio, also in Canada, we started getting together to crete this Detroit techno mega-mix. Our plan was, we are going to make this mega-mix, get on DMC, the world’s going to discover us and we are going to make it to the next step. We never actually finished the mix but it got us into the studio working together, and starting to make music that we thought was really cool. And then I started to play it to some of the other people in the Detroit area. I don’t know if I actually ever played it to Derrick or Kevin or Juan Atkins, but their friends… Everybody had their circles. Kind of played it to some of those people and nobody was really that interested. And it just came back down at one point, if we didn’t do it ourselves, we weren’t really gonna go anywhere.

Todd L. Burns

Were people like Derrick, Juan and Kevin sort of like deities at that point? Or were they just guys that you knew from seeing around?

Richie Hawtin

I think that they were more well-known overseas. I remember at that point Derrick and all of them were going and playing Sunrise events in the UK, but it was pretty low key. Kevin used to come down and be like, “Here’s a pre- acetate of the new Inner City,” or something they were working on, “check this out.” So it was a really cool, relaxed time. You know, The Shelter held 200 people. Around that time Derrick and those guys opened The Music Institute, which was considered to be the kind of epicenter in the world of techno music, and that was about 150 people, so it wasn’t like there was a mass explosion of Detroit techno. You were hearing it on the radio a little bit with Jeff Mills and some other people, but it was still very underground or not so well-known.

Todd L. Burns

Why don’t we play an early Plus 8 release, just a little bit of one? This is called “Elements Of Tone.”

(music: States Of Mind – “Elements Of Tone (Richie’s Dream Mix)”)

What do you remember about recording that?

Richie Hawtin

Listening to it now reminds me that, you know, that’s one of the first tracks that John and I recorded. But it actually has all the elements that we reused or I reused in my F.U.S.E. records and built upon with Plastikman. You’ve got an 808, you’ve got some kind of choir, string and then you’ve got the 303 in the background. But what I remember is also, there’s a couple samples in there, and I think we had an Akai S900 samplers. I think we had one second or two seconds we were able to sample so it was really like, “OK, what can we do with that time?” And then, “What can we like play with one finger over a scale that sounds interesting?”

Todd L. Burns

You said the 303, which seems to be the instrument for you over the years. Is that the way you see it as well?

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, I remember those early sessions with John, turning on a Roland TR-909 drum machine which is also in there. And actually, the hi-hat pattern in there is totally me trying to do a Derrick May hi-hat pattern. So we turned on this 909 in and he’s like, “Play with this.” And as soon as I pressed start, it sounded like all these Derrick May records that I was totally in love with. I had a lot of those firsts, finding out, “Oh, this is a Juan Atkins machine. This is a Derrick May machine.” And then taking those machines and trying to imitate my favorite records by those guys. And then slowly finding that I wasn’t very good at that, and then maybe putting that machine away and then kind of taking missteps into a journey that ended up finding the right pieces, that I actually felt connected with. That’s what took me down to the Roland TB-303 machine, because at the same time I was really being into Detroit techno, which was mostly 909s, 808s, DX100s, ProOnes… I was also really into Chicago acid house, which was, again, some of those machines, but more 707 and 303s. And most of what Plastikman became was 303, 707, 909, a bit of the… In my mind, at least what I thought I was trying to do when I look back at it, kind of the hi-hats and clatter and futuristic notes of Detroit and Derrick, and Kevin more so. And the acidic hypnotic trippiness of Phuture and Bam Bam, and all that early stuff. And also, throw in some UK acid house there, ‘cause I was really into that. I used to have pants with smiley faces all over me. It was pretty bad.

[laughter]

Todd L. Burns

Plus 8 early on was really interesting, I guess, in the sense that it was very international quite quickly. Why did that happen so quickly? I mean, a lot of it’s accidents, I suppose.

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, it was an accident. I guess, what John and I noticed was that we were part of the Detroit scene, but we were always outsiders. So we weren’t from Detroit, but we were hanging there and doing our thing.

Todd L. Burns

You got into a little bit of trouble with the first release.

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, well, ‘cause we stamped on the first record, “Two White Kids From Canada,” with a red stamp saying “The Future Sound of Detroit.”

[laughter]

There’s still some people today that want my head for that.

[laughter]

At that point, when we did that, we felt very part of that scene. But after that, we did feel that, “OK, maybe we’re not as part of that scene as we thought we were.” And we could really see Metroplex and Juan Atkins had their camp, Derrick had his camp and his friends and so, it came back to us, “OK, who are our friends? What can we do here?” And Daniel Bell was another Canadian who was coming down to Detroit every weekend to play music and listen to music. You know, Kenny was from Detroit, but we were all bonded by our love of Detroit techno. We used to drive around the freeways, Kenny and I, listening to Derrick May tapes on repeat. Like, not talking, just like smiling, turning it up, and trying to feel part of what was happening. So, as we started to grow with Plus 8, we wanted to find our own family and we wanted to find other people around the world who were in the same boat as us. Perhaps not from Detroit, but heavily inspired by Detroit. So that first few records, you know, Kenny was from Detroit, so we were like, “OK, Detroit on the label.” John was from London, Ontario, so we put London – most people thought it was London, England – and then, we started to get demo tapes from around the world. One of the first demo tapes we got was from Holland, from a guy Speedy J, Jochem Paap, and so Rotterdam was on the label. So very early on, where most labels at that point, were very regional, you had this Plus 8 record that said, London, Detroit, Rotterdam, and there is probably something else on there. So, it was like that, you know?

Todd L. Burns

Why did you decide to put those things on the label? Why was it important to say, “Gosh, this is a worldwide thing”? Were you even thinking in that context?

Richie Hawtin

It wasn’t like we were just sitting by ourselves in Canada, we had our eyes out on the whole international circuit. Derrick and those guys were going back and forth. You know, there was this massive explosion in 1988, 1989 at the Summer of Love in the UK. You know, Germany had this whole crazy techno scene going, so we felt that we wanted to be part of that. And we wanted to be an international label. Maybe it was just because we didn’t know enough people around, but I think it comes back to that point, we were… John is also an import into Canada. He’s Italian, I was British, I had just moved to Canada not so long before so we weren’t really from there, we just felt part of a bigger picture. And we, of course, wanted to project that too.

Todd L. Burns

You were also throwing parties at a certain point, yourself, throughout Detroit and Canada, in Windsor. When did it change from, “I’m playing in a club,” to, “I want to do my own thing and sort of control the environment”?

Richie Hawtin

There was a change in American radio policy, I think, in the very early ‘90s, where the programming was quite decentralized. And so in Detroit, in Chicago and New York you had really cool radio stations, but suddenly they were being bought up by multi-conglomerates and then the programming was done kind of nationally. And as that happened, hip-hop came in and suddenly took over the airwaves and that kind of destroyed part of the momentum of the scene in Detroit at that point. Because, even though I’m saying it was still underground, there was still a lot of radio access to cool electronic music back then. Even on the weekdays around noon, there was this guy playing a house mix for half an hour called the Midday Cuisine Mix. So when people had their lunch break, they would turn on house music. It was really, really cool. But suddenly, all these things changed. The clubs then wanted to have formats that was on the radio and so again, more hip-hop came in, techno was pushed out, and suddenly most of us were out of jobs. Derrick and Kevin and some of the guys who were well-known, and people who could go overseas, went overseas more. So we were left a little bit with a void.

Todd L. Burns

So the locals didn’t really have as many places to play on a regular basis?

Richie Hawtin

Exactly. So it was like, “Well, do we give up? Or do we start programming our own parties?” The backend of a terrible history in Detroit is that there was tons of vacant land and buildings. And so we were able to appropriate these places for nothing or really cheap and load a soundsystem in, and start doing parties. And that all started to happen, I think, Plus 8 and myself we were starting to find our specific sound. So we were finding a sound, we’re starting to throw parties. That sound and this certain environment started to kind of attract a certain type of person. And that whole resurgence of, say, underground electronic music in America started to happen.

Todd L. Burns

What type of person was going to a Plus 8 party back then? Or can you say what type of sound you were playing, if that’s an easier question?

Richie Hawtin

Well, what’s great about Detroit and the Midwest is that whole area has always been very open to an alternative type of sound, you know? You also had Wax Trax and the industrial sound in Chicago. You know, Toronto which wasn’t so far from us. Montreal… So we’re in a really sweet spot in the Midwest. So we’re attracting people from all over, you know? Whether it was 500 people, or later a 1000 or 2000, you would have 50% from the greater Detroit area, and then people driving 10, 12 hours to the parties. The sound was, at that point, very, very techno. Faster than it is now, but… Intense. I never thought what we were doing was really aggressive, but it was very intense, you know? You had massive sound, you had a dark warehouse, you had one strobe light, and you had like this pummeling. It’s like, the first track you heard, “Spastik,” was made for those soundsystems. That was what it was like, that was supposed to be kind of the peak of the night. You know, that peak kind of went for 8, 9 hours, you know?

Todd L. Burns

There was a particular soundsystem basically known as “The System” in your life. Can you talk about that?

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, that was a big sloppy Cerwin-Vega system. If you put some of the music that’s made today on it, it probably wouldn’t sound very good ‘cause it wasn’t very pristine. But “Spastik” was made for it. It had these killer low bottom ends, these scooped wedges that we would do these four-corner setups, and…

Todd L. Burns

The four-corner setup was quite a new mentality, right?

Richie Hawtin

Well, you went to clubs and they had these light, little speakers up there. Like, club systems today where you have, you know, like Output or most of the clubs here with Funktion One [soundsystems], man, these systems are f—ing killer. But clubs didn’t have that then, they were made for like ‘80s pop records, you know? So it was up to us to put a system in there that gave respect to the records we were playing. And we not only wanted it to have presence and to feel massive, we wanted it to look massive. We wanted to have these giants that were kind of ominous on each corner of the dancefloor, you know? With maybe lighting behind so it would nearly be like… Yeah, giants, or somehow alive, kind of encapsulating you, holding you onto the middle of the dancefloor. So, we spent a lot of time on that. There was very little… Actually, there was, in a way, a lot of decoration, but our decoration was made to take away all the senses from the people who were participating. We wanted people to walk into these locations, these warehouses and not be able to recognize where they were. Especially, if there was another party there a couple of weeks later or whatever. So we would cover everything in black plastic, you know? And so you’d walk in, you’d really be hard to figure out which was up, left, up and down. Then you’d see a shadow of this huge speaker and then you would be vibrating from the bass. Later I did, I guess, kind of a follow-up to “Spastik” and that was called “Sickness” because at one of the parties when I played “Spastik,” when the kick came in, some people were actually like “Bluh” [mimes throwing up] in the back of the room, which we found out later when we were cleaning up. That’s cool, that warranted its own track. But that kind of situation was like, “Man, OK, we hit it tonight.”

Todd L. Burns

And you are continuing to do this sort of thing, the kind of taking over a space and making it feel like it isn’t normally, and the night that you do in Ibiza, you were talking about it earlier, doing things to make this place that you go to feel different. Why is that important?

Richie Hawtin

Well, we saw the power of and felt the power of what we did in Detroit. I could play my best sets there and I could take people deeper into where I wanted to take them and we could control the whole environment. I think that also goes back down to starting your own record company. You know then, it wasn’t just about the music. I was doing all the graphic design. I was one half of the day in the studio learning 909s, and the other half of the day learning Corel Draw [software] on the computer, so that we could make sure that when someone went to the record store they’re like, “Wow, that looks like a cool record.” And then, when they put the needle down they’re like, “Man, that sound is what I was expecting.” So that went on to controlling the parties that we’re doing to present the music in the best way and that still is very important to me today, you know? Music has always been the underlining foundation of all the things I’ve been about, but when you’re trying to create experience for somebody, it goes way beyond just one sense. And that challenges me as an artist and gives me more potential to take people on a deeper experience.

Todd L. Burns

Is it all so-sometimes constraining, though once you have an aesthetic, and you push it, and then you become known for it, and then perhaps it becomes a stereotype or a cliché, for some people?

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, I guess that happens to people, maybe it’s happened to me. I think that one of the problems is to keep one-upping yourself and giving people new experiences. Sometimes it’s like, “Oh, it would be great to just show up and play some music and not worry about the whole infrastructure of the building.” So I painted myself a little bit into that corner, but that comes from the time when you couldn’t just show up at a club and put a great record on because probably it sounded like shit and the lights looked like garbage. And actually, soundsystems are much better now, but still, if I don’t look after how I’m going to be presented at a festival, who knows what lighting they’re going to put behind me? Who knows what visuals they’re going to put behind me? I really don’t want to take a chance at that. Out of respect to the music I’m trying to create, or the experience I’m trying to create by the music I play from other people, there’s a bigger thing happening.

Todd L. Burns

For some of the young artists out here, how do you navigate sort of controlling the environment but not getting club owners or other people angry at you for being some sort of diva?

Richie Hawtin

Well, I’m sure some people say I’m a diva, but I’m very hands-on. I think, a diva is someone who probably says, “We need this before I show up,” and then doesn’t show up until they play. I’m usually down there hanging the plastic. Maybe not as much as I used to but I see the whole thing, what’s happening on stage or at a club, as part of a greater thing, so you have to be aware of all these different points. Club owners, festival owners don’t always appreciate it, but I’m quite sure that, if we deliver what we’re able to deliver, we can make the experience better than what that club owner or that festival person had in their mind.

Todd L. Burns

And I’m sure, once you have success you can point to it and say, “This is what we’ve done here.”

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, but it’s still a struggle. Like, club owners and festival owners are usually only mostly considering the bottom line. Like, we’re doing this 13-week residency in Space in Ibiza, and it’s a constant struggle last year and this year to get the budgets that we want to be able to turn this [gesturing] into a sake bar, turn that thing into a cave; turn this into something else, and do that for just one night a week for 13 weeks and then go back to the promoter this year and say, “Well, we’re going to do this totally different.” “Well, can’t you just use what you used last year?” “Well, no, we’ve already done that.” So, you have to try to slowly find people who understand or respect or believe in your vision and want to be part of it. My, I think, steady momentum and climb over the last 20 years has been by having continuity in my ideas, sustaining interesting ideas, and slowly finding the right people to continue those ideas. It’s hard to find the right people.

Todd L. Burns

Telling the story of what you’ve been doing, where you’ve been in the past, is something it seems that you’re very passionate about. Especially now with the CNTRL tour you’ve done recently. It’s called CNTRL: Beyond EDM, right?

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, yeah.

Todd L. Burns

Basically, you went around, lecturing and playing a gig at night. The lecture was taking the form of sort of bringing together people and showcasing production stuff?

Richie Hawtin

It was talking about production and history. You know, the basic idea of that, was that, and why we called the first version “Beyond EDM,” is that there’s so much hype on this new form of electronic music, but there’s not so much depth. And I think it’s easy for our whole industry to get swooped under this EDM brand and suddenly it’s like some kid onstage playing the same songs every night in order and maybe not even hardly touching the equipment, so we wanted to bring depth, the story, the history and some integrity back into electronic music.

Todd L. Burns

And you’ve also been very interested in doing interviews and talks with people like Deadmau5 and Skrillex. Why is that something that you think is even worth doing? A lot of artists would say, “I don’t even want to be associated with something like that.”

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, well, I think there’s a lot of really bad electronic [air quotes] EDM artists out there, but I wouldn’t say Skrillex or Deadmau5 are two of those.

Todd L. Burns

Neither would I, but obviously, there’s a perception there sometimes.

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, well, you know… [laughs] There’s a greater world happening here. Electronic music sounds like it’s a huge thing now, but we’ve been slowly building that for the last – not just me and my gang, but a whole lot of people all over the world – for 25 years, and you never know which way it’s going to go, so bringing people and having conversations with Deadmau5, with Sonny [Skrillex], and showing the different facets of it, and how extreme different directions it can go in is, I think, valuable and important, just to again show the depth of history and also how far it’s come. You know, to see Sonny on stage with one laptop destroying 25,000 people, or whatever, we wouldn’t, I don’t even know if we would have even dreamed about that when I was listening to a Derrick May set with 200 people in Detroit 20 years ago. So that fascinates me and also to see why they’re doing things their way. There’s no real right or wrong way to make or play electronic music as long as you’re doing something creative. I hear of one or two of the other new big DJs who are like, “Someone showed me I just kinda play a song, crossfade, play another song.” To me, that really isn’t very creative; that’s just a selector. But I’m interested in people who are very deeply connected with these technological tools and kind of pushing their creativity through those.

Todd L. Burns

The interesting problem that, I think, you’ve faced in the past, and you’ve acrtually done a really great job of succeeding with this, is actually finding a way to showcase what you’re doing onstage, like something’s actually happening in that performative aspect. And it’s hard to figure out a way to get audiences, if they want, to know what’s going on and that there is a lot of things that you’re doing up there rather than just doing the crossfader.

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, I think everybody wants to look up on stage and see someone doing something. If they see someone who they think is just checking their email or just someone there without any computer playing a CD or playing a record, turning around, talking to his friend, having a smoke and then playing another record, that’s not very engaging. That’s downright boring. Even if the music is incredible, after a while you’re like, “Excite me, challenge me.” And so that’s the kind of the people I’m interested in seeing, and I want to find a way to connect to the people in front of me, to the audience. Maybe it goes back to the early days when people said, “Man, Rich what are you doing with this electronic music? This DJing garbage, that’s not real music, you’re not a real musician.” So the guy with a guitar is a real musician, more than me? I’ve done my 10,000 hours. That guy can’t go and touch and do what I do. So I guess that drives me too, I want any kid to be able to use technology, to be creative, and be seen as a true artist. It’s not the tool, it’s like what your intention is, and if you’re actually channeling something from deep within you, through that apparatus and coming up with something unique at the end. And that’s the people I wanna talk to or who I wanna support on my label, and why I would sit down and shoot the sh— with DeadMau5 or whoever.

Todd L. Burns

Talk about the Plastikman Live show because I think that’s probably the most large-scale show that you’ve ever done and showing people that you’re doing stuff.

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, well, I was kind of showing people that I was doing stuff, but I was actually, this Plastikman show, it was a large-scale thing which was a circular, well, half a circle LED screen. I was actually behind it, so no one could actually see me. But all the visuals you were seeing were actually synchronized and generated by what I was doing on my computers, and sometimes we would actually show images on the screen and show people cameras and what I was doing. And it’s also playing with that; in the heart of me I love getting into this because I was the introverted nerd who didn’t want to get on stage, that I could be in the basement of my parent’s house with this equipment and make stuff by myself. Playing with that in front of an audience, giving them some information, taking it back, it’s also kind of fun with that. There has to be some kind of like, what is it, wizardry when you’re watching an artist play. I don’t exactly know. But if it’s all smoke and mirrors and you can’t grab on to anything, well, then maybe that kid watching isn’t going to delve in deeper and may go off into something else. So that’s why I try to be engaged at quite a lot of points in my career right now. And also, for me my biggest push is to have full transparency to what I’m doing. We developed this software called Twitter DJ, which is a little program that runs in the background of my computer. When I’m playing Traktor, every time I play a record it actually posts it to my Twitter site, so that people can actually be on the dancefloor and see what I’m playing. And I would like to have even more transparency in the future, and say, “Hey, this is what I’m doing. Come on, check it out!”

Todd L. Burns

Did that change from an earlier time when you were a little bit more secretive about what you were doing or was that always kind of the goal?

Richie Hawtin

I think there was a time when everybody was more secretive, because the records… Actually, it makes no sense, right? ‘Cause at that time nobody could get the records, so tell everybody, you’re not gonna get it anyway. Now everybody can get it and I tell everybody. But I was shy back then, if people were standing in front of me, I had a hood up. It was really difficult to play. But I think why I’m doing this is that I really feel there’s some incredible artist out there using CDs or computers and doing incredible things and there’s still a greater world out there, that looks at our world and says, “Huh, just a bunch of dumb DJs.” They don’t take us seriously. They don’t feel that there’s any depth, there’s no integrity. And so, when I see something like EDM blowing up and seeing artists with no depth getting promotion and getting notoriety, then it’s important for people who are doing something interesting and creative to step up and say, “OK, there’s more than meets the eye to this EDM brand.”

Todd L. Burns

Why do you feel so compelled to, kind of, it’s not defending it, but at least explaining it, being out there in front? I mean, there’s a lot of artists who aren’t that compelled or interested in trying to raise the flag or something.

Richie Hawtin

Again, I was a kid sitting in front of the computer by myself and I found a way that that device could tap into my creativity. I never thought I was going to be a musician. I thought maybe I’d be a programmer or something but that innovation of technology allowed me to do something that was really beyond my wildest dreams. And I want every kid to have that experience and have that option of not having to become whatever, an accountant or the normal things that parents perhaps want you to be. To see this as perhaps a viable career or at least something to like spend a lot of time in and have fun.

Todd L. Burns

Let’s talk about New York. I mean, this interview is 12 years in the making, basically. The last time, you were supposed to be part of the 2001 Red Bull Music Academy, and that was happening during September, and something happened in September, but you were also living here around that time as well.

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, I was here on September 11th, waiting to do the Academy. I wasn’t living here then. About two years later I came to New York at what seemed to be a pivotal time. There was a lot of interesting events happening in Manhattan, and especially Brooklyn in the early Williamsburg days. So that was, um…

Todd L. Burns

What were some of those events that were happening that were so inspiring?

Richie Hawtin

Man, just weird warehouse parties and crazy loft parties on Wythe [Street]. [laughs] So it was shortly before I left North America to go live in Berlin. But after September 11th, there was like an initial thing where there seemed to be a lot of, like, people were ready for something new. But at the same time there was this change in freedoms of what you were able to actually do. And that’s what ended up pushing many of us, I think, over to Europe where we felt more connected to the scene and where there was more freedom to kind of express ourselves as electronic musicians, and to explore where we were going.

Todd L. Burns

And you’re living in Berlin still?

Richie Hawtin

I don’t really live anywhere. You know, I have my house in Canada and I have an apartment in Berlin. But I’m traveling so much. Someone said to me, “What do you do after DJing?” It was like, “Well, I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’d like to find something to do that I can make enough money that I can still travel around the globe, meeting cool people and visiting places I’ve never been,” because I love that part of it also. Like, just meeting people who are excited by the possibilities of technology and creativity and music, and all these… It’s never a dull moment.

Todd L. Burns

What technology is exciting you at the moment?

Richie Hawtin

Hmm. You know, touch technology and iPads and all this was kind of getting me for a while. But right now, coming back to this transparency point, I’m very interested how wireless technology, Internet technology can really bridge the gap between me and the audience, that can give further information, further insight to the creative moment. You know, like when we listened to “Spastik” earlier, that was a moment that I contained on a 2-track reel-to-,reel and we can play it back, but there’s very little data to that. I can’t even really tell you exactly what equipment I used or what effect settings there was… Which is nice, I like that. But when that creative moment happens, especially for me on stage, I would love to have people being able to visualize that and perhaps that will inspire them to do something with that.

Todd L. Burns

Why don’t we play another tune? This is from an album called Closer, it’s “Disconnect.”

(music: Plastikman – “Disconnect”)

Richie Hawtin

One of my happier tunes.

[laughter / applause]

Todd L. Burns

How do you get into the frame of mind where you are writing music like this? This is also a vocal tune, which is…

Richie Hawtin

Usually, when I’m recording, I try to get sucked into a certain frame of mind. We were talking here earlier, how sometimes you find the equipment you want to use and then you spend months with just that equipment until kind of an epiphany hits and everything comes together. I was trying to write this album, and I’d never done vocals before, and I was just making stuff that sounded like my previous albums. And then, for some reason, I started writing, and for about three months I was writing lyrics, I guess, and then everything clicked together. And once the recording process was done, which was like 2005, I didn’t think in lyrics anymore. It was really strange. It was really like my brain clicked and I couldn’t stop writing, and then one moment I couldn’t write for the life of me. So that’s what wanted or needed to come out on that album. With all the Plastikman albums there’s always a very… You know, the foundation is a 303, so there’s always a kind of exploration of, “Can I take that TB-303 into a new area?” So you have something like the early Plastikman albums, Sheet One, Musik, which are very acidic. And then you have the Consumed area, which is more about architecture and space and about the echos of the 303s. And on this one you kind of get nearly like you’re sucked into the middle of that machine and you are hearing it talk. So yeah, that’s why there are big gaps between all of my Plastikman albums. It’s not something that…

Todd L. Burns

It’s not a head space you want to live all the time.

Richie Hawtin

I don’t want to live this album all the time, you know, but I’m glad I lived it. And I’m glad each album really has its certain sound and that when I really feel there’s something to say with Plastikman and that project, I’ll record. So, it usually is four or five or six years in between. And then it’s an adventure for me and hopefully an adventure for the listener.

Todd L. Burns

Judging by my calculations, we’re overdue.

Richie Hawtin

[laughs] I’m definitely overdue. But I remember early on, after the second album, Musik, that came out in ’95, there was a big push or decision for me at that moment. It was like, “OK, do I make Plastikman my project and do I keep pumping out albums?” But I was like, “I don’t feel like doing another Plastikman album right now. Now I feel like at that point doing this experimental Concept series.” Then after that, I spent so much time in the studio by myself that I was like, “Fu—, I really want to get on stage and just DJ again.” And then I went on stage and I took some of the instruments that I used on the album, the 909 drum machine and my DP/4 effects processor, put it next to my turntables and then Decks, EFX & 909 was born. So these all, in my head, just have continuity, they all kind of organically happened. And the way I DJ now was something that I was really experimenting in late ‘90s and early 2000s with the DE9: Closer to the Edit album and especially DE9: Transitions, those albums were produced, they’re not live, but they kind of were the prototype of what I try do when I’m in front of you guys now.

Todd L. Burns

With the different aliases was there any mention that this was an idea that you could continue to pump out Plastikman albums. Was there any worry that, “All this momentum that I have built up with Plastikman, if I just stop doing it that it’s going to be a problem for bookings or whatever”?

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, with Plastikman I was working with Mute Records and had some partners with that project, and definitely some people were like, “Well, maybe you should just focus your attention on one thing.” But I think there’s like a Hawtin momentum, and under Hawtin there’s DJing and making records under Plastikman, and there’s this Ibiza thing, and there’s all these other dumb things I’m involved in but it’s what I like. If I like doing something, then I’ll spend hours researching or practicing – well I don’t really practice DJing, but I spend a lot of time on it – and usually I end up being pretty good at it, because I’ll just keep doing it if I love it, you know?

Todd L. Burns

What are the other dumb things that you’re involved in?

Richie Hawtin

Well, I don’t know. [laughs] I’m trying to think of what I’m involved in right now. I don’t know. [laughs]

Todd L. Burns

Why don’t we open up to questions from the audience? Does anyone have a question for Rich? Just wait for a microphone if you don’t mind.

Audience Member

I was curious to know if there are any territories that you’re interested in exploring in your musical universe?

Richie Hawtin

I guess I would like to explore a little bit more in vocalization, but not necessarily with me, like with a partner, and explore where that goes. Even with what you’ve heard today a lot of the music that I do is, of course, confined by rhythm and beats, because that’s what I’m good at, that’s what the people grab onto. So using perhaps voice would allow me to worry more about the atmosphere, and maybe go further into another area.

Todd L. Burns

Are there any other…?

Richie Hawtin

But just back to your [question], like where we were talking about other projects I’m in. I’ve always had a low attention span. I try to get involved somehow with everything that has kind of ties to music or technology. But for me, working on an album is a huge creative output, but right now working on the ENTER shows, the residency that we’re doing in Ibiza. You know, I’ve got 13 weeks to program four rooms musically, so I have to do all this research, who works in this room, who should play after each other. “OK, these guys are playing really deep and dark, how should that room look and feel?” So this is just another facet of delving into my mind and my creativity and trying to project it in an overall experience. That’s what, you know, when I did Sheet One, the first Plastikman album, the one thing that I remember, going to that studio, was like, “I’m going in to record an album.” At that point in electronic music history it was all about compilations. You know, you put out as many 12”s as possible, then you made an album, but all the album was, was all the A-sides from your singles. It wasn’t actually thought out as an album, it was more of a marketing thing. And that was to me so boring. I used to listen to Tangerine Dream or Kraftwerk and these were like, “Fu—, you can’t take “The Model” – well, you can take “The Model” out – but like Trans Europe Express, you can take those songs apart and they’re great, but if you listen to that whole thing, it goes to another level. So an album is like that to me, a project, a Plastikman live show, which is this immersive environment for the people. All these are, in a way, like multidisciplinary projects that keep me interested and engaged and excited and inspired.

Todd L. Burns

Did you have a question?

Audience Member

Yeah, so you were saying that earlier in your career you were doing shows that were just quite “dark room and strobe light,” but now, when you go to one of your gigs it might be there’s a lot of technology and a lot of audio visual stuff going on. What’s the difference now and why do you think that this is better than as opposed to just sort of boiling it down to the music?

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, I think it’s also the context I’m playing in. Like, it’s very hard to turn, say, a stage at EDC into a black room, especially when you’re playing in the day. So we’re trying to then tie different things together and present something in that framework. So then we start thinking about, “OK, well, we have lights to work with, we have LEDs to work with or projection, so can we do something that ties together with the music, which heightens the experience?” If I go to a club, sometimes I wanna see something, so I watch the show, but I can also have a very insular experience and go in front of the speakers and close my eyes and just lose myself. So I think that’s still there, but you’ve also seen the growth of electronic music has been that it’s also taken a step away from it only being an insular experience. It is now a kind of a group experience, you do have those lights, flashing lights and crazy animations. But for me it’s important that, if we’re gonna have all those components that they do make sense, and they’re cohesive. That was the big thing about Plastikman Live. For me, right now there’s a big problem in electronic dance music that everybody is trying to upstage each other and put as much flashing lights and animation in front of everybody. And most of it doesn’t make sense, and most of it’s garbage. So we try to bring something that was very cohesive, that you were watching something, if you kind of close your ears and you couldn’t hear the sound, you could nearly hear it by watching it. And if you closed your eyes and opened up your ears again you could nearly see it by listening to it. So that’s how we try to present something like that.

Todd L. Burns

Yeah, one of the things I was struck by when I saw the Plastikman Live show wasn’t the most enormous thing, but everything held together very, very well, and that there’s a lot of people working to make that happen.

Richie Hawtin

There’s a lot of people to make that kinda show happen and it’s sometimes much harder to make a reduced show like that than all these flashing lights. It’s very easy to order a thousand lamps and a couple of lasers and kind of flash everybody to death. But to actually have some depth and that people are still standing in front of you an hour later be like, “Fu—, there’s something more here.” That takes time, energy, design, creativity from, I guess starting with my ideas musically and then going through some of my team members and friends that we work with and creating something bigger than all of us. And also, back to the kind of the black-room thing. Actually, we have something like that in Detroit next week. We’re doing a Jack party, which is kind of back to those black-room things. It’s not just a strobe light, there is some lighting, but it has that kind of ethos involved in what we’re trying to do. So you can go back to, how do you revisit something and update it with the technology that’s available or just with your ideas because just going back and coating a room in black plastic and having a strobe light, you know, it’s then are you gonna ask me to play records too? It’s like, I did that, you know, it was great, but it doesn’t really turn me on so much now.

Audience Member

I know now you use Maschine as your drum machine, and now because of the question of going back, would you go and play with a 909 or 303 instead of having the Maschine?

Richie Hawtin

Not really. Jeff Mills is really good at using the 909, he can dial in that thing right on-beat. I was a bit more sloppy. [laughs] So you end up kinda pounding it a bit more, at least when I use that. And with the soundsystems today too, playing digital files, overlaying them with digital drums from Native Instruments, a Maschine, or something, it all kind of, again, is cohesive, makes sense together. So, it’s just one of the challenges, not only on stage, but also in the studio; laying old world analog and new world digital together. So, it’s much easier to sit there in the studio and have time to find that perfect thing, but on a live setting it’s a little bit more difficult, that’s why I choose to use Maschine. And with Maschine I can also tie that to my beats, my tempos, all my records, because as I’ve said before, I don’t really care about beat matching. I’m pushing and pulling some of the rhythms and some of the tempos, or the things I’m playing, but some of that stuff needs to be automated because I need to focus my attention on the other things I’m doing. The delays, the reverbs, the EQing, and to give attention to this wall of sound that I’m trying to create when I DJ.

Audience Member

And one more question, why is it called “Jack”?

Audience Member

The party.

Richie Hawtin

Why is it called Jack? Well, we did Jack parties back in the day. Really, it’s a hark back to the early Jack parties we did in ’94, ’95, ’96 in Detroit, which were these stripped down, black box, The System was there. This massive system, so it’s a Jack party. It’s in 2013. The System isn’t there, because The System actually, what we think it sounded like back then, you know, it’s a myth. It sounded great to our ears then, but it wouldn’t sound good to us today. So, now we’ve got new technology to create a system that sounds like what we think it should have. We’ve got an update of strobe lights, which is actually older technology lighting that we’re but to get this kind of disorientating, black-box feeling to the music that I’m playing. You know, most of those parties also, part of the beauty of using simplistic lighting design was that, many times, those on and off switches or a couple of faders were in front of my DJ equipment, and so I would be turning things on and off. You know, ‘cause I hate when someone hits a strobe light, you know? Luckily, my sound guy, Matias, he’s incredibl[e] for timing, and we’ve been traveling together for four or five years now, so he knows my timing, how I’m playing. But it sucks when those lights aren’t working at the right time. And so those early days of doing that myself were actually kind of me experimenting with what became Plastikman, 15 or 20 years later, with me controlling everything from the computer on stage.

TODD L. BURNS

Are there any other questions?

Audience Member

I know it’s hard to predict the future, but do you think about going back to the studio and stop touring for a while, and I don’t know, and put out a new record or something?

Richie Hawtin

Yeah, I would be as happy as a lot of my fans. I would love to go into the studio. We were talking earlier about this. Usually, I book time off every year. But what happens is that the momentum of… You say when the studio is all running, it’s humming. All the machines are going. You just need to walk in and take your idea and put it through there. But what happens to me the last few number of years is that I leave the studio, I come back six months later, after being on tour, and by the time I get everything humming again, it’s time to leave. So, I’m in a process right now, trying to find a very small collection of instruments that I like and use those and play with them more throughout my season. Having a little studio in Ibiza, so that when I do have my time off in October, November, December, January, which is a huge chunk that I have coming up, that I can kind of jump into the studio and maybe not start creating the first day, but at least feel like I’m not restarting everything. You know, sometimes that last couple of years it’s really been like eight months, or ten months and you go back in and it’s like cobwebs in my studio nearly. [laughs] So, that’s not the most inspiring thing to get you on the creative pathway. It’s hard though. I love traveling, I love playing new places, and cool new records coming out, and a new piece of equipment, I’m doing something new on stage and I’m also trying to also represent electronic music. We’re doing CNTRL, we’re doing these type of things. In the early days, I didn’t wanna do any of this stuff. I just wanted to be away from all you people, [laughter] by myself, in my studio. I was so happy there, but I am happy doing all these other stuff too.

Audience Member

Obviously, Ibiza’s an important place to you. You’ve played there a long time and now you’re doing ENTER for the second season. Is this something that you would see being able to do anywhere else? And kinda to that point, there’s been a lot of attention placed in America right now with EDM and everything like that, do you think there’s something special about America in its own place in, like, the musical spectrum that needs to be given more attention?

Richie Hawtin

You know, I think America has a huge potential there. You got Ibiza, which is this epicenter. You got Vegas here. You know, Vegas, there’s so much money there, and so many people getting thrown money just to play some records and actually do pretty much nothing very creative or interesting. But you also have companies there like Cirque du Soleil doing these crazy things. We would love to end up doing something there, where we can get a cool budget to do something really immersive and challenging and inspiring, for us and for the people who could come. So, right now we’re doing our [air quotes] ENTER stages at EDC and some other places. You know, as this tide of electronic music builds over here, we only hope that that’s gonna offer more potential to do more just club gigs, and more partnerships with people to do interesting cool events.

Todd L. Burns

Any other questions?

Audience Member

Obviously, you’ve had a long career by now and there’s been many ups and downs in electronic music, especially in the States, but all over the world, I feel like. Was there ever a point where you felt lost and you wanted to quit? And what kind of things do you do when you feel uninspired or just not into it?

Richie Hawtin

I never felt, like… I definitely felt lost at points, I never felt like I wanted to quit. I think one of the hardest moments for me was in ’95, ’96, after the second Plastikman album, and everybody was like, yeah, “Plastikman,” everyone was talking about me. I would start to get a little taste of people recognizing me and it was just like, “Wow, what is this all about?” You know, “Why do I have to do another Plastikman album now? And that means I just have to plug in the 303 and it’s always gonna sound like…?” It was really uninspiring. Actually, in retrospect at that point, I had some problems with the US, like, I wasn’t able to come into the country. And so it pushed me to reevaluate where I was, so I went into the studio, I turned all my 303s off, I decided I would only use three pieces of equipment, and I was gonna release a record every month for one year. Which, you know, lost some of my fans, but it gave me a time to experiment and find my realignment. I guess, another point like in ’98, after running Plus 8 Records for eight years with John Acquaviva, it became this huge company and we sat down at one point and I was like, “You having fun?” And he was like, “No, this sucks.” You know, we’re businessmen. So we basically kinda closed Plus 8. We took it back off ice later, but it’s like that hobby that’s turn into a career. And what I said about doing so many different projects all over the place, my hairbrain project is my love of Japanese sake probably right now, which is a small industry which is very much like the independent record industry. I see all these parallels so that I put part of my energy over there. That inspires me, reenergizes me, which goes back into spending hours with a new piece of equipment and it just kinda continues. So I guess the point is, yeah, you get lost. No, I never felt like giving up, I just like, “OK, I’m not having fun. What do I do to have fun again?” Leave from New York? Go to Berlin? Spend a couple of crazy summers on Ibiza with Sven Väth and the Cocoon posse? That was fun. That reenergized me.

[laughter]

I was also lost a little bit, but it was really f—ing fun.

Audience Member

I believe there are some videos on the Internet.

Richie Hawtin

So it’s a whole lifestyle. This is what I do. I’m really lucky to be surrounded by really cool, inspired friends and individuals and meeting always new people. I have a lot of energy, so it’s cool.

Todd L. Burns

Any other questions?

Audience Member

You have spoken a couple of times, even today, about how earlier in your career you were a lot more introverted, both in terms of being outgoing towards the audience and being a lot more focused in the studio, and over the last 10/15 years you’ve become a lot more extroverted. Can you maybe speak a little bit about how that change has taken place? Whether there was something in particular that happened and you said, “I want to go from this way to be more conscious about being this other way,” or whether it was a more natural transition?

Richie Hawtin

I think it was more natural. Like, I remember seeing at points, you know, Sven Väth is a good example. I spent a lot of time with him. He’s an incredible showman. He does a lot of crazy sh— onstage to engage with an audience. And so many other electronic people do that right now. So, “I can see he’s getting a reaction, he’s feeling connected, but maybe that’s too much. What can I do to connect to the fans in front of me that still ties to the music?” For a while I was stage diving but then I was like, “Maybe that’s not for me.” [laughter] Especially when I fell off and I really hurt myself. “OK, definitely not.” But this is an exploration. I didn’t think I was going to be some creative musician-DJ type, and so I’ve kind of started and got more used to making records in the studio, then playing them out because people wanted to hear them and were inviting me. And you just sort of grow into that role. And getting more confidence. That’s honestly why I’m trying to do more transparency right now. I want people to know all the tracks I’m playing. I want everybody to have all the music I play. I want everybody to try to play like me, because it’s not really important in the end about what I’m doing, the music or the equipment. It’s me, and I guess I’ve found a confidence level where I’ve tapped into me, you know? That’s what’s unique. All these artists, it’s about the human. And that’s what I want to explore and that’s what I want to promote by what we’re talking about and the technologies I’m developing. Yeah, man and machine. Or woman and machine. That’s an incredible adventure for all of us to go on.

Todd L. Burns

Well, I think that’s a good stopping place. You’ll be around for a little bit if anyone has any specific questions, but for now thank you very much, Richie Hawtin.

Richie Hawtin

Thank you.

[applause]