Techno’s history is a brief one compared to the likes of rock ’n’ roll, reggae or soul, beginning to gain popularity in the early 1980s in raw, underground basements and warehouses as opposed to commercial dancehalls or mainstream radio. For world-renowned musician Richie Hawtin, the brevity of that legacy allowed him to pen a new one. As a pioneer of Detroit’s seminal techno movement, Hawtin helped define the sound of a generation, rewriting the rules of electronic music from the late ’80s into the 1990s through to today.

The parties Hawtin threw are the stuff of legend – orchestrated by those in the know, everybody was invited, yet not everybody found it. Before the days of Resident Advisor and Instagram, when parties weren’t plotted out months in advance, getting into Hawtin’s Spastik nights meant being part of the right crowd – the ones chasing the pulse of 120 BPM, willing to bask in the serenity of the ambient room, ready to dance into the early hours and lose themselves in fleeting connections with strangers that might last a lifetime – or just a single track. Hawtin’s performances still resonate today, drawing in up-and-coming filmmaker Michigan-based Luke Jaden.

After years immersed in the Midwest’s club scene, Jaden came to understand just how pivotal Richie Hawtin’s presence had been in shaping the sound and spirit of those nights. A chance encounter with Hawtin sparked a collaboration: a short film built around one of techno’s most mythologised moments: the Spastik party Hawtin threw inside Detroit’s derelict Packard Plant on August 13, 1994. Promoted through cryptic flyers, street signs, and last-minute hotline numbers, the party drew in true devotees of the underground. That night becomes the heartbeat of Kids Like Us, a short film written and directed by Jaden, with Hawtin as executive producer. More than a retelling, the film captures a defining decade – a portrait of a subculture that offered escape, connection, and meaning in a time of economic turmoil and social fragmentation.

In conversation with one another, Hawtin and Jaden discuss the importance of accurate representation, the shifting landscape of techno and the beauty of connections built on the dancefloor.

Richie Hawtin: Hey Luke, how’re you doing?
Luke Jaden: I’m good. It’s raining here.

RH: Berlin’s raining, Detroit’s raining, and we have a beautiful sky here.
LJ: Where are you?

RH: I’m in Lisbon. How did we meet? I’m trying to remember.
LJ: I think the first meeting was when I got connected through a mutual friend of Ben’s [Turner] and then Ben invited me to the 25th anniversary of Paxahau at Bert’s Warehouse. 

RH: Let’s just say it was a bit foggy. [laughs] It was a while ago because we’ve been talking and trying to make this film happen in some way for quite a while.
LJ: I remember before the party we first met at The Foundation. There was something so magical that happened in that room, it’s crazy. I looked up to your music for so long, listening to Sheet One was really life-changing for me. Being able to explore the stories and the realms that you created in the 90s, this pivotal iconic moment and being able to knock on the door and say, “Hey, I think there’s something really deeply emotional and cinematic within this world that hasn’t been explored yet.” I remember feeling really warm in the room.

RH: Right. One of the things that’s always kept me going and interested in techno since the very beginning was this idea of futurism – looking forward. Looking back at the 90s now, although techno had been around with Cybotron for ten years, or even 30 years if you look at Kraftwerk, it was still so fresh that you could kind of say there was no history. There was so little of it compared to every other musical genre. We weren’t thinking we were creating history, but that’s what we were doing, building the narrative, building the manual of what techno is about, what this whole culture is about. Nothing was written. It was looking forward, pushing forward and then suddenly ten years have passed. Suddenly we’re in the 2000s and thinking, “Wow, the 90s were ten years ago,” then you look around and the next moment you’re like, “Woah, the 90s were 20 years ago.” Then, when we met, it was like, “Holy shit! The 90s were 30 years ago!” [both laugh] 

What was amazing about that meeting, it was really interesting to hear somebody so enthusiastic about those moments and seeing and feeling that there was a story to tell, that there was something cinematic. 
LJ: I definitely saw the magic. I have been to countless techno parties but I wasn’t alive when you threw Spastik, so I think coming at it as an outsider from a new generation, I had this fear of, “I don’t know if I’ll be taken seriously. I have to build my oeuvre to even be invited to the party.” But then I started thinking about it, and if there’s anything I’ve learned about the techno community, it’s one of the most accepting, welcoming communities across the world. There are so many deeply profound moments that are discovered in the conversations outside of the club. After going through your Arkives book and diving into so much research, talking to people who were at that party in 1994, I was like “Wow, this was a really pivotal, life-changing moment in so many people’s lives.” I felt like I could really come at it from this perspective of a documentarian, even though we’re making a cinematic, narrative film. When you strip back the technology we have today, there was the Info Line back in the 90s, and you had to find the party. It’s not something where you could go to Resident Advisor and see that there’s a party, there was real secrecy and mystique about finding these parties.

“We weren’t thinking we were creating history, but that’s what we were doing, building the narrative, building the manual of what techno is about, what this whole culture is about.”

RH: That’s a key line about being invited to the party. Everybody was invited to the party, but not everybody found the party. There was this threshold, you had to go out of your way to connect to like-minded people and somebody would say, “Hey, here’s the number you need to call,” or “You need to go to this record shop to find the number.” There were filters that ended up bringing the right people together in that room. That’s what I also felt that first time we met, because that first meeting opened up the door, it connected us and we both felt excited, but there was still a lot more to learn about each other and to learn about those times. Right away, it was important for me that if we were going to peer back, there was going to have to be some truth to it.
LJ: It’s all about opening a door. With this type of film, this type of story, there are years of research that have to go into it to be able to pull it off correctly and do it properly.

RH: For me, it was like, “It would be great to bring this to the forefront of this generation’s attention.” We realised it was pivotal to everybody who attended in some respect, we had to be respectful of that. You were never afraid of being like, “There’s something else to learn,” or, “I didn’t think about this person, I should talk to them.” It was like archaeology, to go back, brush off the dust and find the paperwork, going through the microfilm files at the old library. [laughs]
LJ: One door leads to the next, and because we’re telling the story from the perspective of the people who were attending, everyone had a different journey and it was so subjective. My goal was, how can I take breadcrumbs from each of these that feel still personal in a way that comes across so that the person might remember that very moment?

RH: I’ve actually spoken to a couple of friends since they saw the movie and you can already see the different perspectives of what happened at those events. At Spastik, we even had a moment where somebody set off pepper gas and it cleared the room. For some people, that was the end of the party, and for others, that was the beginning. There’s this like, “Well, were you there before the pepper spray or after the pepper spray? How deep did you go?” [laughs]
LJ: That’s the beauty of it, there are so many memories from this moment in time that it’s all a blur. It’s a beautiful kaleidoscope of all these different moments that occurred within this specific era of time.

“There was real secrecy and mystique about finding these parties…”

RH: There was something that brought us all together, this feeling of community, but it felt like we were just a bunch of misfits who found each other.
LJ: I’m curious too, I’ve only been to a few parties that have had it, but it almost seems like a rare thing if a party now has an ambient room. I know your brother would play in the ambient room. I’d love to hear more about this and why they’re not as present today. I really miss the ambient room.

“I know it was magic… we all realised it was pivotal to everybody in some respect”

RH: I think there’s a resurgence right now of ‘ambient’ music online. For us, we didn’t have them at every party because JACK 1 and 2 were one-room tiny parties, but everything else, like the Hard Series and Spastik, all had both rooms. They were the perfect contrast and actually a very visual contrast of one being dark and black, and one being white and colourful. It gave people a place to take breaks between the music, the people, the temperature and the ambience. It was all these different components that built the mystique of those events – and allowed everyone to find their safe space. For me, a safe space in those parties was usually behind the DJ booth because I didn’t have to talk to anyone, I just played and let out whatever was in me and took people on a trip. I wasn’t there to necessarily please anybody other than myself. If I weren’t behind there, I would usually go onto the dance floor where I would dance by myself and close my eyes. For other people, lying there being washed in ambient sounds or having a chat to somebody you just met… Everyone had different reasons for being there.
LJ: That’s awesome. I’ve always felt it’s that nice place where sometimes you need to take a break. You’re so immersed in the journey of the sound and textures of everything you’re hearing that sometimes it’s a nice moment to come above water. 

RH: Also, those events weren’t as long as the parties that happen now. Especially in Europe or Germany, they’re two or three days long, it’s like, “When does it end?” During those days in Detroit, my favourite time of my set was the last hour and a half, people felt like they had just loosened up, the music was flowing, the tempos would start to change, there was more room on the dancefloor and people would just start to move in ways where you’re like, “Woah, did that person just move their arm like that?” No one was thinking, it was just involuntary and intuitive. I wasn’t overthinking, I was just performing. You’d go to the ambient room and it would be quiet, it was still glowing and there were some colour wheels moving. You would release people slowly back out into the outside world instead of hammering it into the last song and saying, “OK, everyone, get out of here.” 

I remember one of the weirdest and most aggravating things for me in those days was going off to tour the world and playing in clubs, when the club ended, the club ended, and there were bouncers pushing people out. I was like, “Hey, have some feeling for these people, we’ve just been on this journey, it’s light outside. Let’s open the door and let the light come in, not shove people out with their ears still ringing.” Because we were in control of those events completely, from the decoration, the timing, the type of invite, and if we needed to go five or ten minutes longer or finish ten minutes earlier because the vibe was right. It was all about starting and ending something together and all going back to the reality of the world in the smoothest possible way. It was respectful to begin and end these journeys as softly and sensitively as possible.
LJ: That’s beautiful. I was going to ask you if there was a pivotal moment during the Spastik party, I remember talking to Ben and he said the Blessed Madonna was there to experience the light coming in when the doors opened. Every time I hear that moment, I get chills.

RH: There was another moment in Spastik. Because of the pepper spray we lost half an hour or forty five minutes and then we continued, then at some time – which to me felt like it was 10am but it may have not been that late – right behind the DJ booth where the Plastikman live set-up was there was a garage loading bay door and it opened, the light came in and there was two or three police officers. They were as blinded by the darkness as we were blinded by the light, and everybody just looked at each other. From what I can remember, the police officers just smiled and nodded their heads, then we all shut the door and continued. It was beyond comprehension. That for me was a moment because it was like a second or third restart, and it just gave people so much power, it was like, “Oh, reality is there… Oh, reality is gone, let’s get back to what we were doing.” [laughs]
LJ: Did you go back to playing the set?

RH: Yep!
LJ: That’s iconic. 

RH: You didn’t hear that story, so it’s not in your film. It’s too bad because in the film, I could be the police guy now. [both laugh]
LJ: We’ll put you in as one of the DPD officers for sure.

RH: Totally, that’s my cameo right there. 

Kids Like Us is streaming now on NOWNESS, here.