Techno
A genre invented by Black teenagers in Detroit and its suburbs on machines the Japanese companies that built them considered commercial failures. Juan Atkins put out "Alleys of Your Mind" in 1981; the word was in local use by 1984, and a British label fixed it to the market in 1988 after the Detroit artists voted down a plan to sell them as house. Radio carried it first: the Electrifying Mojo was playing their mixes on air by 1981, inside a Black Detroit format that ran Kraftwerk next to P-Funk, and Jeff Mills was The Wizard on WJLB before he was Jeff Mills. It reached Europe and found rooms that suited it, in a Frankfurt club from 1984 and a West Berlin one from 1988, before the Wall came down and handed Berlin a city full of empty buildings. Since then: a vault under a department store, a parade that grew to a million people and ended in twenty-one deaths that no court ever assigned responsibility for, a power station in Friedrichshain, and a German heritage listing in 2024 that most of the press reported wrong. This archive runs from 1981 to 2026 and treats Detroit as the centre it actually is.
A chronological documentary of 994 moments spanning 1981–2026 on Loreline.
Curated by Olivier · last updated 2026-09-20
Eras
- Radio, The distribution mechanism that the club-centred telling loses. In Detroit the Electrifying Mojo was on air from the late 1970s, running Kraftwerk alongside Parliament and Prince in a Black radio format, and was playing the future Belleville Three's own mixes by 1981; this archive holds dated airchecks from 1981 through 1992 of a man who is rarely filmed. Jeff Mills was The Wizard on WDRQ and WJLB, Derrick May had a WJLB slot, and Stacey Hotwaxx Hale was on FM98. In West Berlin, Radio Mars announced where UFO was that night. Mixshows, pirate broadcasts, station studios, and sets made for air rather than for a room.
- Records, The objects and the labels. Sleeves, centre labels, runout grooves, catalogue numbers, the shops and the pressing plants. Cybotron's "Alleys of Your Mind" on Deep Space in 1981, "Clear" as a 1983 single on the album Enter which the 1990 reissue renamed, Model 500's "No UFO's" as Metroplex M-001 in April 1985. Then Transmat, KMS, Underground Resistance, Warp and the Sheffield bleep records, R&S in Ghent, Basic Channel and Chain Reaction in Berlin, and Hard Wax as the shop that functioned as an institution.
- Machines, The instruments, most of which failed commercially before they were repurposed. The Roland TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines, the TB-303 bass line that was built to accompany a guitarist practising alone and instead produced acid, the SH-101, samplers and sequencers and the modular rigs that came later. Roland discontinued all three of the famous boxes; the used market and the people who could not afford anything else decided what they were for. Objects rather than nostalgia: this is the best documented material in the whole subject.
- Crowds, The people it was for. Dancefloors, fields, warehouses and free parties, gabber in Rotterdam, hardcore, the fashion and the sound systems. Also the parts that get sanded off in retrospect: the drugs, as documented social history rather than instruction, and the policing. The music was made for rooms full of people and this segment is the only place they are the subject rather than the background.
- Detroit, Where it was made, and the largest segment here. Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, who met around Belleville High School, plus Eddie Fowlkes, who says of the label attached to the other three that "it's four originators and not three". Cybotron from 1981, Metroplex from 1985, Transmat, KMS, and Underground Resistance and Submerge on East Grand Boulevard. Then the generations after: Carl Craig, Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, Drexciya, Moodymann, Theo Parrish, Mike Huckaby, Kelli Hand, DJ Minx and Stacey Hotwaxx Hale. The city itself is here too, Hart Plaza and United Sound Systems and Eastern Market, because free photography of the originators barely exists and the honest answer is to show the place and let them speak on video instead.
- Berlin, The city, and why it suited this music. Not a birth: UFO was running in the West from 1988 and Frankfurt had a techno club from 1984. What the Wall's fall supplied was space, a vacant middle of a city with power still connected and nobody clearly holding the deeds. Mitte and Friedrichshain, the vault, the power station, the squats, the river, Hard Wax, and the closures and rent rises that keep taking rooms back. In March 2024 "Techno Culture in Berlin" was added to Germany's national inventory of intangible cultural heritage, administered by the German UNESCO Commission, which is not the same as UNESCO's international list however the headlines ran it.
- Parades, Techno in the street. The Love Parade began in West Berlin in 1989 and grew from a few dozen people to a crowd in the hundreds of thousands, then over a million, before Berlin ended it in 2007 and it moved to the Ruhr. On 24 July 2010 in Duisburg, 21 people died and 652 were injured in a crowd crush at a ramp that was the only way in and out. Charges were brought against ten city employees and organisers. The case was rejected in 2016, reinstated in 2017, and the trial ended in May 2020 without a verdict: nobody was convicted and responsibility was never legally established. Also the Techno Parade in Paris, Zurich's Street Parade, and Rave the Planet, which Dr. Motte founded and which filed the heritage application.
- Clubs, Rooms and doors. The Music Institute on Broadway in Detroit, which lasted about fourteen months in 1988 and 1989 and of which no footage survives. UFO in West Berlin from 1988, before the Wall fell, with no sign on the door. Tresor from 1991 in the vault under the old Wertheim department store. Ostgut from 1998 and Berghain from 2004, whose interior is essentially unphotographed because the no-photography rule is enforced at the door, so what you see here is the building. Frankfurt's Omen and Technoclub, Ghent's Boccaccio, Tokyo's Maniac Love. Note a sourcing artefact: the photographs skew to Munich and Nuremberg venues because that is what German contributors uploaded, not because those rooms outrank the ones above.
- DJs, People playing records to rooms. Booth footage, sets, back to backs, and the craft itself: mixing, programming a night, reading a floor. Held deliberately to under a tenth of this archive, because DJ set footage is effectively infinite and would otherwise crowd out everything that explains where the music came from. What is here favours sets with a documented time and place over generic recent uploads.
- Studios, How the records were actually made. Sequencing, sampling, mixing desks, studio walkthroughs and gear talk, much of it published by the artists themselves. This is where the machines in segment two stop being objects and start being decisions: which drum machine, how quantised, how much of the 303 to let through.
- - The Electrifying Mojo - Midnight Funk Association (December 1981). The Electrifying Mojo hosting the Midnight Funk Association in December 1981. Charles Johnson's late-night Detroit show mixed Kraftwerk, Parliament, Prince, the B-52's, Ultravox, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Italo disco across the racial format lines US radio otherwise enforced. By 1981 he was playing mixes recorded by the future Belleville Three.
- - CYBOTRON "Alleys Of Your Mind" Deep Space Records (1981). "Alleys of Your Mind" by Cybotron, released on Deep Space Records in 1981 and backed with "Cosmic Raindance". This, not "Clear", is the first Cybotron record and the earliest candidate for a founding Detroit record. It reportedly sold well in Detroit off the back of local radio play.
- - Cybotron - Cosmic Raindance (1981). "Cosmic Raindance", the B side of Cybotron's 1981 debut single.
- - THE JOURNEY FROM DETROIT TO MESOPOTAMIA THEY LAID DOWN THA LAW.AIRED SUMMER OF 82 ON WGPR 1075 FMDET. A Mojo broadcast from the summer of 1982 on WGPR 107.5, the Detroit station whose call letters recur through this history.
- - Cybotron - Cosmic Cars ( Fantasy Records 1982 ). "Cosmic Cars", Cybotron's second single, 1982.
- - "Don't Say Damn, Say Whoa!" Electrifying Mojo - Midnight Funk Association 1982 (720). The Electrifying Mojo and the Midnight Funk Association, 1982. Mojo is missing from most tellings of techno's origins, but in Detroit radio rather than clubs was the distribution mechanism for the first several years.
- - Electrifying Mojo - B-52s Mesopotamia played live on show April 1982 Part 1. Mojo plays the B-52's "Mesopotamia" live on air in April 1982. The originators did not receive European electronic music as high art; they received it inside a Black Detroit radio format alongside funk.
- - ELECTRIFYING MOJO LIVE ON THE RADIO ON JANUARY 18, 1983. WJLB FM 98.. The Electrifying Mojo live on WJLB FM 98 on 18 January 1983.
- - Cybotron Clear (Juan Atkins 1983). "Clear" by Cybotron, a 1983 single on Fantasy that appears on the album Enter. The 1990 reissue renamed the album Clear, which is where the date confusion comes from. Its main documented afterlife is in electro and hip hop rather than techno narrowly.
- - Cybotron - Industrial Lies "DJ Mix" ( Fantasy Acetate 1983 ) Unreleased Remix. "Industrial Lies", the B side of Cybotron's "Clear", from a 1983 Fantasy acetate.
- - Legendary Jeff Mills-The Wizard 1983 -The Super Scene Mix. Jeff Mills as The Wizard, the Super Scene mix, 1983.
- - Cybotron - Techno City (Vocal) (Fantasy | 1984). "Techno City" by Cybotron, 1984. The word techno was already in use among the Detroit producers by this point, four years before the compilation fixed it as a market label in Britain.
- - ELECTRIFYING MOJO LIVE ON THE RADIO DURING THE SUMMER OF 1984 LOOKING OUT AT THE CITY JAMMING!!!. A Mojo broadcast from the summer of 1984, the year Cybotron released "Techno City" and the word was already in use among the Detroit producers.
- - A LIVE RADIO SHOW ON A HOT SUMMER NIGHT N 1984 WITH SWEAT POURING FROM MY BODY ON A HOT FRIDAY NIGHT. A live Mojo radio show on a hot summer night in 1984.
- - Yamaha DX Performance Demonstration - DX7 / DX9 - Audio Cassette (1985). A Yamaha DX7 and DX9 performance demonstration issued on cassette in 1985.
- - Happy hour, sunshower, 808's gives you power 💪. An analogue drum machine manufactured from 1980 into 1983. Its significance is that it let users program their own rhythms rather than select presets, and that its sounds are synthesised rather than sampled, so they do not resemble a real kit. It is more central to electro and hip-hop than to techno narrowly, reaching Detroit largely by way of Cybotron and electro.
- - Cybotron - R9 (1985). "R-9" by Cybotron, 1985, the year Juan Atkins left the group over creative differences with Richard "3070" Davis. Davis continued under the name.
- - Model 500 - No UFO's (Metroplex | 1985). "No UFO's" by Model 500, April 1985, Metroplex M-001. It is the first Metroplex release and is frequently described as the first techno record, which is a claim about reception rather than chronology.
- - THE MIDNIGHT FUNK ASSOC. CIRCA MID EIGHTIES WITH THE MUSIC OF L. L COOL J THE MFA ROCKED THE BELLS. A mid-eighties Midnight Funk Association broadcast.
- - Jeff Mills aka The Wizard WDRQ, Detroit 1985. Jeff Mills as The Wizard on WDRQ Detroit in 1985. Mills's mixshow radio work preceded Underground Resistance and his solo career entirely.
- - Power 96 FM Radio Electrifying Mojo 1985 - 1986. The Electrifying Mojo on Power 96 FM, 1985 to 1986.
- - Power 96 FM Radio Electrifying Mojo 1985 - 1986 Part 2. A second Mojo aircheck from Power 96 FM, 1985 to 1986.
- - ELECTRIFYING MOJO LIVE ON THE RAD.IO JUNE 7 1986. Dedicated Laura D. Shalamar Hicks, The Candy Crew.. The Electrifying Mojo live on air on 7 June 1986.
- - Akai S900 Sampler Video Manual (1986 High Quality 60FPS VHS Live Instructional & Demonstration Tape). The Akai S900 sampler's own 1986 instructional video manual, transferred from VHS.
- - Model 500 / Bang The Beat (1986). "Bang the Beat" by Model 500, 1986.
- - JEFF MILLS AKA THE WIZARD WJLB DETROIT 1986. ONLYTEKNO COLLECTION 872. Jeff Mills as The Wizard on WJLB Detroit in 1986.
- - (Jeff Mills) The Wizard mix (1986) @WJLB [old school Electro Hip-Hop House]. A Wizard mix from 1986 on WJLB, mixing electro, hip hop and house.
- - Jeff Mills - The Wizard Mixes - Live @ WJLB Detroit, 1986 to 1989 Parts 1-7. The Wizard mixes, Jeff Mills live on WJLB Detroit across 1986 to 1989, collected in seven parts. This is the radio work that made Mills before any record did.
- - Jeff Mills Live On WJLB Detroit Jul 1986. Jeff Mills live on WJLB Detroit in July 1986.
- - 1986.06.07 Prince - Detroit , Electrifying Mojo Radio Interview (& Wendy's message on 1986.06.08). Prince interviewed by the Electrifying Mojo in Detroit on 7 June 1986. Prince is one of the influences the Detroit originators name that the standard Kraftwerk-centred telling leaves out.
- - WHAT IF THE CHILDREN OF THE CHILDREN OF 1986 COULD HEAR THEM ON LIVE RADIO, WINTER OF 86.WHYT-96.3. A Mojo broadcast from the winter of 1986.
- - Miragefantasy #1 (Ensoniq Mirage Demo) (1987). An Ensoniq Mirage demonstration recorded in 1987.
- - Rhythim Is Rhythim - Strings of Life (Original Mix). "Strings of Life" by Rhythim Is Rhythim, Derrick May's best known record, released on Transmat.
- - Detroit Techno 1987- 1988 - Vinyl Only. A vinyl-only set of Detroit techno records from 1987 and 1988.
- - Rhythim Is Rhythim - Strings Of Life (Original 12" Mix). The original twelve inch mix of "Strings of Life" by Rhythim Is Rhythim.
- - DERRICK MAY 98.0 FM WJLB 1987. Derrick May on 98.0 FM WJLB Detroit in 1987.
- - THE ELECTRIFYING MOJO &THE BELLEVILLE THREE. 1987 96.3 FM DETROIT. ONLYTEKNO COLLECTION 727. The Electrifying Mojo with Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson on 96.3 FM Detroit in 1987. Mojo had been playing their mixes on air since about 1981, years before any compilation named this music.
- - Jeff.Mills.Live.On.Wjlb.Detroit.1987. Jeff Mills live on WJLB Detroit in 1987.
- - History of Rave video from 1988 - Acid House Raves. Footage of acid house raves from 1988.
- - Inner City "Big fun" - Archive INA. "Big Fun" by Inner City in the French national audiovisual archive.
- - BIG FUN Inner City 1988. "Big Fun" by Inner City, 1988. It was reportedly nearly left off the compilation Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit and became the crossover hit of that autumn. The compilation itself lost money; its accidental pop hit paid for the attention.
- - ELECTRIFYING MOJO LIVE ON THE RADIO DECEMBER 2,1988 ON WTWR MONROE/TOLEDO IN MEMORY OF BRUCE LESNICK. The Electrifying Mojo live on WTWR Monroe and Toledo on 2 December 1988.
- - Jeff Mills aka The Wizard - WJLB Mixshow Detroit - 1988 - Part 1. A Jeff Mills WJLB mixshow from Detroit, 1988.
- - Derrick May mix (1988) @WJLB [old school Techno House]. A Derrick May mix on WJLB in 1988.
- - Mayday Mix (Derrick May) @ FM98 WJLB (Detroit) 31 12 1988. Derrick May, as Mayday, mixing on FM98 WJLB Detroit on 31 December 1988, the year the compilation fixed the word techno in Britain.
- - Derrick May @ 98.0 FM WJLB Radio (Detroit, USA) 1988. Derrick May on 98.0 FM WJLB Detroit in 1988.
- - Derrick May 98 FM WJLB, Detroit 1988. Derrick May on 98 FM WJLB Detroit in 1988.
- - Jeff Mills Live On WJLB Detroit Feb 1988. Jeff Mills live on WJLB Detroit in February 1988.
- - Derrick May (Mix 4 of 5) on FM98 WJLB Detroit 1988. A short Derrick May mix from a five part WJLB Detroit sequence, 1988.
- - 🎶 Coldcut Crew & Juan Atkins Interview | Kiss 94 FM, London | 2 December 1988 | DETROIT TECHNO HOUSE. Juan Atkins interviewed with the Coldcut crew on Kiss 94 FM in London on 2 December 1988, the year the compilation fixed the word techno in the British market.
…and 944 more moments.
Full text archive: /loreline-text/techno.md
