MOTORMOUTH'S TOP 5 JUAN ATKINS TRACKS

I'm generally not a fan of ranking an artist's songs, especially when the artist at hand has had a massively influential career. It often feels like a fool's errand, pitting groundbreaking songs against each other. For instance, when The Guardian ranked Kraftwerk's 30 greatest songs, I struggled to understand how they could possibly rank some of the most influential songs in future-pop history-- "Trans-Europe Express" or "Autobahn"? "The Model" or "Computer World"? Clearly, songs of this caliber shouldn't be hierarchically ordered. And yet, I find these lists captivating, often devising my own. 

Lately, I've been reflecting on Juan Atkins' vast discography and the landmark releases scattered across his four-decade-long career. Atkins, one of the pioneers of techno, has a body of work that spans numerous aliases and styles. I've wanted to write about what I believe are his top 5 songs, but instead of focusing on the order I'd like to prioritize this electro-archictect's evolutions and mutations. I'd invite readers to see this list as a way to conceptualize 5 landmark moments in Atkins' storied career. Each track represents a different phase in his artistic journey, illustrating his versatility and innovation. 

I've selected only one track per Atkins alias, mapping out a sonic trajectory that reverse-engineers how he has evolved and transformed his sound over the years. So, let's put aside the objectivity and dive into 5 of the greatest songs from this originator of techno.

5. Lightyears - Borderland (2016)

Juan Atkins had been friends with German techno titan Moritz Von Oswald since the 1980s when the latter visited Detroit looking for vintage gear and great records. Their friendship, spanning across the Atlantic has led to several fertile collaborations. Namely, their 3MB project with Thomas Fehlmann, where Atkins was repping his "Magic" Juan alias. Atkins and Von Oswald also collaborated on 1995's "Starlight", a magisterial record that found Juan putting his own spin on the dub techno sound that Von Oswald was pioneering with projects like Maurizio and Basic Channel. 

Their friendship and artistic collaboration continued into the 2010s with the founding of Borderland, a project that finds two old masters boiling their sonic contributions down to their finest distillations. Like an aged wine that begs to be appreciated by a developed palette, the Borderland records are exercises in subtlety for the deeply appreciative techno connoisseur. The apotheosis of this is the ambient, dubby thump that is "Lightyears," the magnetic standout track from Borderland's sophomore release on Tresor, Transport. For those who know Juan as a more straight-to-the-point, iconic electro producer, this track will challenge preconceptions in the best way. 

4. Track Ten - Juan Atkins (2004)

Released under his own name, "Track Ten" finds Atkins utilizing breakbeat to brilliant effect. The single inaugurated his Back to Basics series, and as that name implies, this single features synth-pad flourishes that recall the earliest days of Atkins' Detroit techno glory. The track sparkles and glistens, perhaps recalling the work of one of Juan's greatest disciples-- James Stinson of Drexciya. One of Atkins' most iconic cuts, Track Ten remains a staple as it sits at the intersection of techno's electro-influenced past and its atmospheric, blissed-out future. 

3. Skyway - Infiniti (1998)

By the late 90s, Atkins' techno godfather status had been solidified, and with the second wave of techno musicians-- Underground Resistance, Drexciya, Octave One-- blazing more militant and conceptual trails, it would have been easy to chalk Juan's status up to "Old Legend No Longer Capable of producing the future-shocks that made him such potent force in the 1980s." But, in actuality, nothing could have been further from the case. 

Toiling away in zenned-out focus with Terrence Dixon, Atkins returned in 1998 on Tresor with Skynet, a record that reflects the Soma-fueled blitz and brilliant architectural aspirations of a sleek, cyberpunk society. Here, the future is present in skyways and electric circuses, while the old creature comforts of sipping on a cup of joe, Edward Hopper Nighthawks style, at a coffee shop in Detroit are still part of everyday life. 

From within this postcard from the future arrives the dialed-in album opener "Skyway," a gritty, detail-oriented techno diamond in the rough, complete with a dirty, blown-out kick. No doubt, this Tresor touchstone would influence future wiz prodigies like Ricardo Villalobos, Marcel Dettmann (who played the track on his DJ Kicks mix), and Mathew Johnson to name only a few.

2. No UFOs - Model 500 (1985)

The greatest bassline in techno history? It's arguable. 

This is it folks. The song that, perhaps more than any other, crystallized techno as a force that was both epochal and distinctly Detroit. Brimming with intergalactic aspirations and social realist despair, this is industrial speed rush at its finest. A zeitgeist-defining track that can still kick a party into overdrive 40 years after its release, it remains disorienting and exciting with its chant-worthy hook, if you can call its resplendent robo-vocal repetitions a hook... "No UFOs" challenges the idea that there is no longer a future, while also addressing the Reagan-era austerity that left Detroit depopulated, but a Metroplex all the same. 

Ubiquitous in Detroit upon its release, danced to on the public broadcasting program The Scene (if you haven't seen this you must), the song was no underground novelty, but a bonafide hit that took the city by storm. If you wanted to know where the future was being born all over again, you needed to look no further than the burned-out core, the auto-capital of the world. But now, instead of cars, Detroiters were ready to be whisked away on UFOs to a world more brilliant than the sun. 

1. Clear - Cybotron (1983)

Sure, this slot could have been allotted to Cybotron's Detroit-update on Kraftwerk, 1981's afrofuturist masterpiece "Alleys of Your Mind", but it wasn't until 1983's "Clear" that Atkins and Rick "3070" Davis blew the whole thing open, locking into place the sonic machinery for a cultural revolution. Providing a soundtrack to the cyberspatial future awaiting humanity, this was music inspired by Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, music that one could imagine the cyberspace cowboys in William Gibson's prophetic Neuromancer partying to. Or perhaps this is music that the replicants hunted in Blade Runner would compose if tested to make music: human, but not quite. 

If any one song remains Atkin's most time-tested and true, it is "Clear". Remixed and sampled a hundred times over, its bouncing bass still drops on the dancefloor like a bomb. It sits among the greatest electronic songs of all time, alongside tracks like Kraftwerk's "Numbers" and Donna Summer's "I Feel Love". This is the company Juan Atkins sits with, Detroit's number one producer and all-time greatest. When the originator comes through, clear the way.