I had a tape of nothing but Kraftwerk, Telex, Devo, Giorgio Moroder and Gary Numan, and Id ride around in my car playing it. Atkins has also claimed he was unaware of Kraftwerks music prior to his collaboration with Richard 3. Davis as Cybotron, which was two years after he had first started experimenting with electronic instruments. Regarding his initial impression of Kraftwerk, Atkins notes that they were clean and precise relative to the weird UFO sounds featured in his seemingly psychedelic music. Derrick May identified the influence of Kraftwerk and other European synthesizer music in commenting that it was just classy and clean, and to us it was beautiful, like outer space. Living around Detroit, there was so little beauty. Detroit, and so we were attracted to this music. It, like, ignited our imagination. May has commented that he considered his music a direct continuation of the European synthesizer tradition. He also identified Japanese synthpop act Yellow Magic Orchestra, particularly member Ryuichi Sakamoto, and British band Ultravox, as influences, along with Kraftwerk. YMOs song Technopolis 1. Tokyo as an electronic mecca, is considered an interesting contribution to the development of Detroit techno, foreshadowing concepts that Atkins and Davis would later explore with Cybotron. Kevin Saunderson has also acknowledged the influence of Europe but he claims to have been more inspired by the idea of making music with electronic equipment I was more infatuated with the idea that I can do this all myself. School dayseditPrior to achieving notoriety, Atkins, Saunderson, May, and Fowlkes shared common interests as budding musicians, mix tape traders, and aspiring DJs. They also found musical inspiration via the Midnight Funk Association, an eclectic five hour late night radio program hosted on various Detroit radio stations, including WCHB, WGPR, and WJLB FM from 1. DJ Charles The Electrifying Mojo Johnson. Mojos show featured electronic music by artists such as Giorgio Moroder, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Tangerine Dream, alongside the funk sounds of acts such as Parliament Funkadelic and dance oriented new wave music by bands like Devo and the B 5. Atkins has noted He Mojo played all the Parliament and Funkadelic that anybody ever wanted to hear. Those two groups were really big in Detroit at the time. In fact, they were one of the main reasons why disco didnt really grab hold in Detroit in 7. Mojo used to play a lot of funk just to be different from all the other stations that had gone over to disco. When Knee Deep3. Despite the short lived disco boom in Detroit, it had the effect of inspiring many individuals to take up mixing, Juan Atkins among them. Subsequently, Atkins taught May how to mix records, and in 1. Magic Juan, Derrick Mayday, in conjunction with three other DJs, one of whom was Eddie Flashin Fowlkes, launched themselves as a party crew called Deep Space Soundworks3. Deep Space. 4. 1 In 1. Mojo and proposed that they provide mixes for his show, which they did end up doing the following year. During the late 1. Brats, Charivari, Ciabattino, Comrades, Gables, Hardwear, Rafael, Rumours, Snobs, and Weekends4. These young promoters developed and nurtured the local dance music scene by both catering to the tastes of the local audience of young people and by marketing parties with new DJs and their music. As these local clubs grew in popularity, groups of DJs began to band together to market their mixing skills and sound systems to the clubs in order to cater to the growing audiences of listeners. Locations like local church activity centers, vacant warehouses, offices, and YMCA auditoriums were the early locations where underage crowds gathered and the musical form was nurtured and defined. Juan AtkinseditOf the four individuals responsible for establishing techno as a genre in its own right, Juan Atkins is widely cited as The Originator. Atkins role was likewise acknowledged in 1. American music technology publication Keyboard Magazine, which honoured Atkins as one of 1. Who Count in the history of keyboard music. In the early 1. 98.