SouthFlorida.com | City Link Magazine

Like the wayward misfits who populated the sitcom Cheers, a musician sometimes wants to go where everybody knows his name. Several years ago, this desire led Richie Hawtin from Detroit to Berlin, a move that corresponded with a positive change in his life.

A composer of spare, visceral beats, Hawtin helped pioneer the intelligent-dance-music genre more than 15 years ago with his own releases, many under the moniker Plastikman, and those issued by Plus 8, the label he co-founded with DJ John Acquaviva. Now, after a quiet period in which the DJ boarded up the Plastikman franchise and replaced Plus 8 with the Minus label, Hawtin is spinning and releasing CDs under his own name. He released his latest, DE9: Transition, this past fall.

"For the kind of minimal music that we're doing, it's the most exciting time I've seen in Europe in 10 to 15 years -- maybe ever," Hawtin says in a phone interview from Berlin. "It's awe-inspiring. The label is doing well because of that, and maybe the label also has something to do with why it's exciting. � It's very hard to say what is inspiring you and what you are inspiring. It's all interwoven in my everyday life: my DJing, production and the label."

Hawtin says he has seen many artists and friends recently make the trek to Europe. While cities such as Berlin openly embrace dance music, the DJ says they also offer a more open atmosphere and attitude toward life than the United States does.

"Although there are a lot of electronic supporters in America, and especially in Detroit, I found that I didn't have as many people I could relate to and live with in comparison to someplace like Berlin," explains Hawtin, who was born in England and raised in Canada. "America is not the land of free will. It's hard if you're different and you want to say or make something different. People in Europe are more welcoming of different ideas and thinking, whereas I think they are more ostracized in North America. And I think since 2001, under the banner of protecting people, even more freedoms have been taken away, some which have directly impacted the electronic music scene."

Hawtin laughs off a comparison between his exodus and that of the Left Bank American expatriates of the 1920s. But he does admit understanding the impulse that drew writers such as Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway to Europe.

"I don't have a job. I don't punch in from 9 to 5. This is my life and has been for 15 to 17 years. And unfortunately, I found more people in Europe who were living this kind of lifestyle 24-7 than elsewhere in the world," he says. "In America, people into electronic music are few and far between, especially the producers, so you may have a couple of them in Detroit, a couple in New York. But it's hard to keep up a conversation and a connection, and here you have dozens and dozens of people not only in that field but creative fields that overlap."

Interaction was also the impetus behind Hawtin's involvement with FinalScratch, software that allows DJs to manipulate multiple digital music files at the same time while operating them like a turntable, but with the capacity to mix far more than two tracks at a time. Hawtin and Acquaviva were involved practically from the start.

"We could see clearly before many people in the music industry that digital was going to come and it was going to come fast. One of the problems that we saw was that there needed to be something better than CD players for controlling digital files, because no one was ready to see a performer behind a single computer," Hawtin explains. "What's sexy about any performer is an interaction between man or woman and machine. But the computer loses some of that, so this was a great way to regain part of the old paradigm and introduce a new one at the same time."

Although some DJs still don't trust all their music to computers, Hawtin says acceptance has finally reached critical mass. "You just have to get to where people start to trust it enough to overlook some of the problems," he says. "Look, turntables skip and sometimes needles scratch. In any technology, there are inherent dangers."

He suggests that FinalScratch is just a prelude to what promises to be even more interaction and interconnection between performers and artists in the future. "The whole digital revolution is allowing musicians to perform, create and act more spontaneously, and that makes for something more interesting," Hawtin says. "There are further possibilities for spontaneity via the Web, where you can perform and grab the files off the Web and grab files as they are being made and share files as they are being made. I think there will be much more bidirectional communication between artist and fan or consumer in the future."

Hawtin is looking forward to the Winter Music Conference this week in Miami Beach, where he plans to announce a 28-date American bus tour to begin in May. Hawtin, Troy Pierce, Josh Wink and other DJs will roll through Middle America to offer residents a much-needed taste of the underground. Hawtin says the tour will focus on the music and its fans. He praises the WMC for embracing a similar philosophy after years of focusing on the business and technical sides of the electronic-music industry.

"It's a very important thing for the American market," Hawtin says. "It's great especially now that it's turned less into just a conference with the DJs and business people and more about kids coming down to Miami and hearing some music they've never heard before, having a good time and also seeing the DJs enjoying themselves. It's a good coming-together moment."

Richie Hawtin will perform 10 p.m. Friday at B.E.D., 929 Washington Ave., in Miami Beach. Tickets cost $25. Visit Bedmiami.com. He will also appear Saturday at the Ultra Music Festival at Bicentennial Park, 1075 Biscayne Blvd., in Miami. Gates will open at 11 a.m. Tickets cost $66. Visit Ultramusicfestival.com.