Written for Clash magazine, October 2005 issue

How do you maintain your position at the top of the techno pecking order in 2005? The answer, if you’re Richie Hawtin, is to reinvent the mix CD – for a third time. After establishing Plus 8 as one of the defining labels of Detroit techno’s second wave in 1990, then taking minimalism to the max under the guise of Plastikman, the latest milestone in the bespectacled Canadian’s distinguished career is now upon us. DE9: Transitions is the third chapter in the mix CD series which started with 1999’s Decks, EFX & 909 and leapt forward with 2001’s DE9: Closer To The Edit. Both discs reimagined the DJ mix album – introducing drum machines, effects, and digital audio manipulated using Ableton’s Live software and Final Scratch – so it’s no surprise that the latest instalment marks another quantum leap. Making full use of four years’ worth of audio software innovation, Hawtin has once again dragged electronic dance music kicking and screaming into the future.

Blurring the lines between DJ mix and sample-based artist album, the 35-year-old has taken literally hundreds of tracks – from the fresh Euro minimalism of Sleeparchive to the vintage techno soul of Robert Hood – and sliced and diced them on an almost microscopic level before weaving them into an entirely new multi-dimensional sonic collage. Some are allowed to flow in near-entirety while others are reduced to a single note – and the whole mix has been constructed in 5.1 surround with accompanying DVD visuals for a completely immersive experience. So radical is the transformation of the original material that a conventional tracklisting is impossible – instead Hawtin has given his own titles to the various sections of the mix.

Born in the UK but brought up in the Canadian city of Windsor, a stone’s throw from Detroit, Hawtin has been based in Germany since 2003. At his state-of-the-art new Berlin studio, the softly-spoken musician explained the laborious process behind the project. “The first thing I did was to figure out which tracks I was going to use, which was a little more complicated than finding 12 or 15 tracks for a normal mix CD. It took about two months to go through about 1,000 different tracks, working out what might work at different points of the mix, and cutting that down to about 500 possibilities. Then we had to go out and try to get clearance for all those, which took another six weeks – it was important that the labels were going to allow me to cut and splice and re-manipulate everything.”

“Once that was done, I spent a month or so digitising the files, or obtaining the digital masters, and bringing them into Ableton Live, which was the main software I used to lock all the beats together and time-align everything. I also used it to categorise things using colour codes according to different characteristics and group tracks to see what would work together.”

Ableton’s pioneering software has revolutionised music-making, DJing and performance, allowing the user to synchronise countless fragments of audio and recombine them at will. Hawtin explained: “I used Live as a kind of scratchpad for seeing what kind of things worked together, and constructed a rough version of the final mix before piping the audio into Digidesign Pro Tools using ReWire to mix down the final version in surround sound. The hardest thing was trying to find a start, but once I had a good beginning I just built in a very linear way - I wasn't jumping all over the place, I just started building blocks, allowing the mix to grow naturally and organically.”

It’s notable that despite this ultra-high-tech approach the end result is not too far removed from a conventional dancefloor-based DJ set – there is a constant 4/4 heartbeat underpinning the digital pyrotechnics. Hawtin agrees: “I wanted it to sound modified and cut-up and sliced and diced, but I also wanted it to feel like a smooth, continuous mix. I wanted to have people lock themselves into a groove, but with enough stuff going on that it doesn't get boring. I think there’s a nice balance - one note of a song here and there, and lots of small loops, but combining that with longer pieces that tie different sections of the mix together. It's not as though you just step from point A, to B, to C, to D - you could be at point C but still hear elements of A fading out, then re-occurring at other points in the mix.”

But Hawtin readily admits that the painstakingly-constructed DE9: Transitions is not an accurate reflection of his live DJ performances. “It's definitely not as spontaneous as a live mix. When I DJ now I’m using Ableton Live, Final Scratch and my effects, but the sheer amount of information I’ve used in Transitions is really hard to handle in a club environment. With version 5 of the Live software it’s certainly possible to get closer to this kind of approach, using this number of loops and tracks, but it's really just a matter of organisation - being able to find and control all those bits and pieces when you’re on stage in front of 500 people or 5,000 people. You also need to try to remember that you’re supposed to be performing and entertaining, not just looking at a computer screen.”

He’s confident that more mix albums will follow – though not necessarily as part of the DE9 series. “I like threes, so I kind of feel like the Transitions project is the end of a trilogy. Each of the DE9 albums marks a specific point in my own career and also where DJ technology is at that time – I think they all encapsulate a certain moment. But it seems that technology keeps coming up with new questions, so I’m sure that in a couple of years time there’s going to be more to say.”

© Tom Churchill 2005