Richie Hawtin

Hawtin was born in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England,[9] and at the age of nine moved with his parents to LaSalle, Ontario, a suburb of Windsor, Ontario, where he was raised before spending time in Detroit, MI.[10] His father worked as a robotics technician at General Motors and was a fan of electronic music, introducing his son to Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream at an early age. He has one brother, Matthew, who is a visual artist and ambient music DJ. Hawtin attended Sandwich Secondary High School in LaSalle.[11]

He began to DJ in clubs at 17. He was mentored by Scott "Go-Go" Gordon at The Shelter in Detroit and his early style was a mix of house music and techno.[11] With Canadian DJ John Acquaviva he formed the label Plus 8 in 1989 to release his own tracks under the name F.U.S.E.[11] He dropped out of the University of Windsor, where he was studying film, and Plus 8 went on to release material by artists such as Speedy J and Kenny Larkin. Hawtin adopted his 'Plastikman' incarnation in 1993, releasing the single "Spastik" and parent album Sheet One, going on to release a number of albums and touring a live show for the next decade.

Richie Hawtin @ Fabric, circa 2008.

Hawtin was among pioneers of the Minimal techno movement that emerged in the early 1990s, where he represented a "second wave" of American producers, such as Daniel Bell, Robert Hood, Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Kenny Larkin, and Mike Banks, associated with Detroit techno.[12] In 1996, he released a series of monthly 12-inch singles, entitled Concept 1, which, alongside the work of Robert Hood and other producers, explored minimal techno. His M-nus label also pursued this direction. In 1999, the Decks, EFX & 909 mix album, the first in a series of three, included 38 tracks molded via effects and drum machines.

In 2001, Hawtin performed at Life Fest in Windsor.[13] He spent part of 2002 and 2003 living in New York City, before opening a label in Berlin, Germany, where he focused on his M-nus label, developing the careers of DJ-producers such as Magda, Gaiser, Marc Houle, Hearttrob and Troy Pierce.

In 2006, he collaborated with choreographer Enzo Cosimi on a composition called "9.20" for the Winter Olympics opening ceremony. He said, "Enzo and I are very much interested in pushing boundaries, both as artists and for our audiences. Working together for the Opening Ceremonies of the Winter Games delivers the creative endeavor to not only entertain a huge audience, but to also introduce them to sights and sounds that they may have never experienced before."[14]

In 2012, Hawtin worked with Loco Dice and Ean Golden in promoting Electronic Dance Music on a tour of North American universities entitled CNTRL: Beyond EDM, which included music production seminars, lessons in the music business, and live music performances.[15]

In July 2015, Hawtin was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music Technology by the University of Huddersfield.[16][17]

Hawtin composed and scored music for the XXth Olympic Winter Games Opening Ceremony[18] and 1928 silent French film Brumes d’automne.[19]

Richie Hawtin circa 2010

Hawtin co-founded Plus 8 Equities, a music technology fund along with John Acquaviva, Rishi Patel, Ben Turner and Pete Tong, where Hawtin serves as chairman. According to Billboard, the funds main goal is to advance music technology and collaborate with the startups engaged in developing new technologies able to advance music industry".[26] Hawtin's established his own music technology company, called PLAYdifferently, in 2016. The first release was the MODEL 1 mixer, co-designed with the award-winning Andy Rigby-Jones. The mixer has been adopted by DJs such as Carl Cox, Jamie Jones, Loco Dice and many others.[27]

In 2014, Hawtin launched ENTER. SAKE, a sake brand in USA and Europe.[28][29] The same year he was awarded a title of Sake Samurai.[30]

In 2016, Hawtin released his own proprietary DJ mixer called the PLAYdifferently MODEL1 with help from Andy Rigby-Jones, a former Allen & Heath engineer. Loco Dice, Nicole Moudebar, Chris Liebing and Dubfire were among the early ambassadors of the mixer.[31]

In 2019, Hawtin launched his CLOSER App, allowing fans to deconstruct the audio from his own live performances while toggling multiple camera angles of the performance.[32]

The DJ List Ranking

The DJ List has approximately 1 million members who rate DJs in different EDM genres, these are the statistics for The DJ List as of 6 November 2015.[34][35]

Top Deejays Ranking

Topdeejays is a global DJ database founded and operated by FM Agencija. It uses an algorithm that measures general social media influence of a DJ by combining their Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, SoundCloud, MySpace, Last.fm and YouTube fans, subscribers and followers TDJ calculates and applies TDJ points to in order rank artists global, national and by genre influence. These are the statistics for topdeejays as of 6 November 2015.[36][37]

DJ Rankings The Official Global DJ Rankings is calculated according to an advanced algorithm, compiled to give an accurate, independent and fair ranking of all DJs. It considers the following criteria

of DJ earnings, media presence, chart data from music releases and remixes, airplay data from radio stations, public data about royalties collected from copyright associations, followers on major social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. and polling and rating data from various sites, such as dj-rating.com and djmag.com.[38]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Richie Hawtin.

• "Plastikman". Future Music. No. 76. November 1998. ISSN 0967-0378. OCLC 1032779031.