Richie Hawtin talks to Xpander about CTRL, his new look and more

Richie Hawtin is rightly known as one of the worlds leading DJ/producers. He began his career over ten years ago in the Canadian city of Windsor (near Detroit), influenced by listening to a Detroit radio DJ called 'The Wizard', who (he later found out) happened to be none other than Jeff Mills. In the early 90’s he started producing tracks under the moniker 'Fuse', but soon changed this to 'Plastikman', with the typical dancing ghost with the trademark white and red colours. Together with John Acquaviva he launched the label 'Plus 8' (a name referring to the pitch range of the popular Technics turntable), which featured releases by Kenny Larkin, Dan Bell, Juan Atkins and Dutch techno producer Speedy J.

In the early days his musical style as Fuse was quite hard with a high BPM count. The Plastikman productions became much more minimal using hypnotic loops with minimal changes and abstract sounds, and this became the Plastikman trademark as heard on one of his earlier albums - ‘Musik’ - released in 1994. When Hawtin released his much-vaunted masterpiece ‘Decks, EFX & 909’ in 1999 he entered the international arena with a bang. This unmatched piece of work captured the energy of his live sets and demonstrated his often copied but never paralleled hypnotic mixing style with three decks, a drum computer and an effect box.

Around that time, Hawtin’s star was still rising as he became one of the earliest worldwide ambassadors of the Final Scratch system, and his name became synonymous with advanced DJ’ing and production technology. On his ‘DE9: Closer To The Edit’ release in 2001 (M-nus/ Nova Mute) Hawtin mixed an astonishing 300 loops, beats and noises taken from 70 different tracks and glued them together using Final Scratch, proving that he was in total control of mixing analog and digital sound. His latest CD release ‘Closer’ is supposedly his most personal album to date. Hawtin goes exploring once again and escapes into sounds that are so minimal, some will not care to listen twice, although a more refined look at ‘Closer’ is needed to understand its own beautiful contradiction.

[Anomaly]

I was really let down by "Closer". I was kinda under the impression it supposed to more along line of the Musik or Sheet One type of stuff.
I would still love to see the CTRL tour hit Dallas.

[Anomaly]

BTW, this is CTRL

[physix]

i guess this is what happens when you sleep with
euro trash (sven vath) and do alot of 'caine.... (re: his new look)


heh!


actually, it's cool that he was able to step out of
his image... it really was beginning to take control.

at every club or party, you'd see at least 10
"richie" clones... bald, skinny, pale, glasses.


it was getting old.


the new richie seems to be, at least, having fun.


i had the pleasure of witnessing him at the TASTE OF
DETROIT, a free Detroit event celebrating the dif't
things about Detroit, including electronic music.

i've managed to see him about 3 other times before
and never saw him smile and laugh and play around
as before.... he actually seemed to be (gasp) having
fun.

so, kudos for him.

he's set a certain standard... now, at least he's
enjoying it all again.

[lush]

well what da ya know Im listening to Mr. Hawtin right now

[downlow]

Originally posted by Anomaly
I was really let down by "Closer". I was kinda under the impression it supposed to more along line of the Musik or Sheet One type of stuff.
I would still love to see the CTRL tour hit Dallas.

I will have to concur with mr. Anomaly on this one. We got it in at Illmatic last week and it was boring as hell! Still wouldn't mind catching richie dj though...he is still an excellent dj and I hear he is playing less Monotonous Hard Shit these days and more minimal deep grooves like for instance the excellent new Ricardo Villalobos album on Playhouse.