VIA PRESS RELEASE | The 30th anniversary edition of Plastikman’s Musik, the groundbreaking second studio album by Richie Hawtin, has been announced for release on NovaMute on December 6, 2024. It is manufactured with environmentally-conscious packaging, pressed on bio-vinyl.
The album, originally released via NovaMute / Plus 8, followed 1993’s Sheet One and propelled Hawtin into new levels of international success. On its initial release, in November 1994, Hawtin was central to a burgeoning underground scene in Detroit, and the album, which expands on his unique and innovative minimal techno world, was launched with Plastikman’s first ever live performance in Aug 1994, at the derelict Packard Plant in Detroit, in a room encased in black plastic sheets.
Before the full album hit the shelves, “Plastique” (later described by Q as “… the flipside to Hawtin’s early singles, all ticking percussion, feline acid tweaks and cushioned sub bass”), set the stage for a more dance floor friendly album, albeit one with an unsettling and sinister side.
Musik, which featured tracks such as “Freek,” “Kriket” (which Raf Simons used earlier this year in the Prada Men Spring/Summer 2025 show), “Fuk,” and “Marbles” was soon heard by a much wider audience. Plastikman live appearances at Glastonbury, Tribal Gathering and a headline slot at Megadog followed soon after, prompting NME to declare Plastikman to be “Fiercer than Orbital, funkier than the Prodigy and more insatiably danceable than anything else on the bill.”
The album, described by The Guardian as “music as you’ve never heard it before” and by The Wire, who made it one of their Albums of the Year, as “… a masterpiece,” defined a moment in techno that still echoes today. Now, 30 years later, to mark its anniversary, the album has been remastered from the original tapes, reminding us why Plastikman is a name that still resonates and that the album’s intensity, on and off the dance floor, has lost none of its potency in the intervening years.
Born in Oxfordshire, Hawtin’s family moved to Canada when he was nine. Growing up he was heavily influenced by both his father’s diverse record collection and his own acute curiosity for everything electronic, watching from an early age as his father dismantled various electronic devices, rebuilding and modifying them in front of his son’s eyes. It was inevitable that his passions for music, technology and computers would be finally drawn together, and upon hearing the early sounds of Detroit Techno and Chicago Acid House on Jeff Mills’ late ‘80s Detroit radio show, he found his direction. Traveling between his hometown of Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Plastikman helmed some of the most intense, mind-bending parties underground electronic music has ever known.
Last year was the 30th anniversary of his debut album as Plastikman, Sheet One, and Dimension Intrusion by his alter ego F.U.S.E. for the Artificial Intelligence series on WARP, another incredible milestone for Richie Hawtin. His award-winning, prolific career to date has seen him become one of the most important techno DJs globally, a technological wizard with decades of innovations behind him, a label head for both Plus 8, with John Acquaviva and M_nus, the PLAYdifferently mixer / technology company, as well as a growing career in the sake industry with his ENTER.Sake brand and the Sake 36 emporium in Berlin. Over the last thirty years, and often as Plastikman, Hawtin has collaborated with some of the cultural world’s leading creative figures including Raf Simons, Anish Kapoor, Andreas Gursky, and John Gerrard.
