The Plastikman Edition

Colin here. When you’re looking at the history of techno music, there’s no shortage of innovation. It’s a genre that was born from bold thinkers, incredible musicians, and cross-pollination—evolved as a global dialogue bridging places like Detroit, Berlin, London, Tbilisi, and beyond. But within the evolution of techno, there’s one figure that stands out as driving the culture and sound forward, as well as audio-visual experimentation: Richie Hawtin. 

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Originally from Windsor, Ontario, he brought massive creative energy to the second wave of Detroit's techno scene and has since grown into an ambassador of the form. He’s had an incredible impact, both with the music he’s created under countless guises (including the super reductionist Plastikman), the music that he’s released from the Minus label, as well as the live performances that have redefined what can be done with an in-person electronic music experience. He keeps up a breathtakingly impressive creative metabolism: touring and releasing music as well as advising on synth, hardware, and mixer companies—always bringing a Japanese sense of kaizen, or continual, gradual optimization. 

One of his recent songs, a collaboration with noted pianist Chilly Gonzalez, stopped me in my tracks while driving. I heard the familiar tones and textures of Plastikman: moody, brooding, and elegantly reductionist. But, in what I thought was an accident or a DJ blending tracks, there was also a delicate, beautiful piano playing across the top. It just worked, in the most delightful and unexpected way. It was gentle, dissociative, and quite simply, inspired.

Why is this interesting? 

Turns out this was the entire idea! According to the label’s Youtube page: 

Turbo Recordings presents its grandest achievement yet, a reimagining of Plastikman’s 1998 magnum opus ‘Consumed’, TRANSFORMED as a new collaborative composition between original artist Richie Hawtin and sad musical genius Chilly Gonzales… This is the story of an album three decades in the making, brought into the world by Executive Producer & co-visionary Tiga.

‘Consumed in Key’ is born of the obsessive love of a timeless work of art, an obsessive fascination untempered by fearful reverence. It is the result of a 30-year cycle of musical evolution and inspiration, a touch of Canadian kismet (all three are from Canada) and artists finding common ground where others would see none.

The juxtaposition of Chilly Gonzalez and his beautiful piano playing, and Hawtin’s bare-bones, lumbering techno just managed to work. 

According to the Arts Desk: 

The original album Consumed was one of Hawtin’s finest works: a late-Nineties dive into the void after his rocket ride through the great international techno explosion of the middle of the decade, it was all texture and dissociation, like an experience of falling into the heart of Rothko’s darkest canvases rendered in atomic detail. 

Now, 24 years later, Beck [ed: not the other famous artist; Gonzalez’s real last name] has added some piano to it. Really: that’s pretty much it! But while techno / classical crossovers can be deeply dispiriting, and while Beck’s solo piano playing can often be a showboating affair, he has for almost the entire album pared his playing down to match the sombre tone of the original. Indeed, maybe thanks to Hawtin's steady hand on the mixer, he weaves into the mist and rumble of the electronics so perfectly, it’s hard to imagine it wasn’t always like this.

The piano sits atop the original composition so gently, and so beautifully, that it seems like it was there from the start. The magic here is one musician instinctively reacting to—and finding space within—another producer's already completed work. And in doing so, something new and immensely interesting is created. 

Listen to the track here. (CJN)