Model 500 is Juan Atkins, a very important person in the world of techno. Often credited with being one of the Godfathers of the genre, his fame diminished as new upstarts took the techno mantle for themselves during the 90s. His career floundered for a while, which led to depression and over-eating. Determined to reclaim prestige for his name and his waistline, Atkins developed a bold new diet, which focused on the consumption of high amounts of protein to stave of hunger cravings. Wait, I’m getting my Atkinses mixed up. Damn you, Webcrawler!
Yeah, me getting into el’ Juan’s techno legacy is pointless. With online essays, published books, and video documentaries about techno’s roots out there, more than enough material is available for the curious. I don’t see much talk of Model 500 though. Why is this? It’s not some obscure alias. No UFOs was a techno hit, back when the term ‘techno hit’ wasn’t even a thing. Maybe Cybotron was the sexier moniker.
Or perhaps there’s some merit to that nonsense I wrote in the first paragraph. Atkins never released a proper Model 500 album until the mid-90s, when much of the new Detroit blood was dominating talk. This here Classics collection was released a couple years before Deep Space (the Model 500 debut proper), and as a round-up of his 80s material, Classics is interesting, but not the most engaging listen.
The problem I have with this is it sounds too 80s for me. Hey, I like me some 80s, but when I throw on a techno album that has the word “classics” as the only word in the title, I go in with preconceived expectations. I want to hear proper futurism, and Classics simply doesn’t have that, no matter what the cover art suggests. I’ll grant it’s not Atkins’ fault that Yello forever dated “chiki-chikah” to the 80s, but there it is in Electric Entourage, and I’m left feeling “eh.” That said, cheers for tracks like No UFOs and Sound Of Stereo, which meet those stupid expectations (but jeers for making them the bookends of the whole album, muddying what little album flow there is further).
One of techno’s ongoing appeals is the sense that, no matter how advanced in technology we come, the music will always remain at least one step ahead - the best of what 80s techno has to offer still retains that. These tunes, however, don’t, instead coming off like 50s depictions of the year 2000: definitely futuristic in attempt, but now quirkily retro. Go in with this in mind, and Classics is a fun enough throw-on.
ACE TRACKS:
No UFOs (Remix)
Off To Battle (Remix)
Sound Of Stereo
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