Juan Atkins in his mothership.
 
Universal Techno is a very fine French documentary from 1996 on the Detroit techno music scene - chronicling its birth in the 1980s and its massive International influence into the 90s..

Drawing inspiration from artists like Giorgio Moroder, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Devo and Parliament Funkadelic, Detroit-based electronic musicians Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May developed a style of club music that, with its monolithic beats and mechanical funk, seems to have naturally risen out of the metal and concrete belly of a once grand city.

Part of what makes Universal Techno exceptional is in the way it gets at the roots of the music and its ties to the environment that spawned it. With grim fascination we watch as Derrick May walks through the ruins of the once magnificent Michigan Theater describing its former glories. But in the midst of the decay, music generates a sense of a future yet to be lived.