"No UFO's" is a
techno
Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...
song by American record producer and DJ
Juan Atkins
Juan Atkins (born September 12, 1962), also known as Model 500 and Infiniti, is an American record producer and DJ from Detroit, Michigan. ''Mixmag'' has described him as "the original pioneer of Detroit techno." He has been a member of the Belle ...
under the alias of Model 500, released in April 1985 on Atkins own label
Metroplex. The song was the first track released after the split of Atkins' previous group
Cybotron. The music followed similar themes of the previous group with science fiction and alienation but featured less of a song structure than Cybotron's music leading the track to be often identified as one of the earliest techno songs.
On its release, the track was sold in Chicago where it grew to the popularity that was larger than that in Detroit. When music labels from England investigated the dance music in Chicago, they eventually mapped it back to Detroit leading to Atkins and his related musicians to agreeing to release a compilation baring the song "Techno Music" by Atkins on ''
Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit''. The song was re-released in 2017 with remixes from contemporary artists such as
Moodymann.
Production
Background

Prior to recording "No UFO's",
Juan Atkins
Juan Atkins (born September 12, 1962), also known as Model 500 and Infiniti, is an American record producer and DJ from Detroit, Michigan. ''Mixmag'' has described him as "the original pioneer of Detroit techno." He has been a member of the Belle ...
grew up in a musical family with his father being a music promoter. Atkins first began playing music with friends on his street initially playing bass and guitar until he became 14 or 15 years old, and his family moved to
Belleville, Michigan near Atkins' grandmother. When moving to Belleville, Atkins started playing the keyboard and convinced his grandmother to buy him a synthesizer. Atkins became entranced with the sound of the machine and making electronic music demos by the time he was starting his college education. Atkins was influenced by radio host
The Electrifying Mojo, that aired between 1977 and 1985 and played a wide variety of music ranging from funk artists like
Parliament
In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
,
Prince
A prince is a male ruler (ranked below a king, grand prince, and grand duke) or a male member of a monarch's or former monarch's family. ''Prince'' is also a title of nobility (often highest), often hereditary, in some European states. The ...
and
James Brown
James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, and record producer. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music, he is referred to by Honorific nick ...
as well as
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk (, ) is a Germany, German Electronic music, electronic band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk was among the first successful a ...
,
Peter Frampton
Peter Kenneth Frampton (born 22 April 1950) is an English-American guitarist, singer, and songwriter who rose to prominence as a member of the rock bands the Herd and Humble Pie. Later in his career, Frampton found significant success as a s ...
and
New wave music
New wave is a music genre that encompasses pop music, pop-oriented styles from the 1970s through the 1980s. It is considered a lighter and more melodic "broadening of Punk subculture, punk culture". It was originally used as a catch-all fo ...
.
In College, Atkins met Rik Davis who was ten years older than Atkins. Atkins later described Davis as being "like a father figure to me. He taught me a lot. We didn’t have so much in common. I was in awe of him. My father was in jail at the time." The two formed a group
Cybotron in 1981. Their singles released were "Alley of Your Mind" in 1981 which was played by The Electrifying Mojo regularly, and followed it up with "Cosmic Cars" in 1982. The group then signed to the California-based
Fantasy Records
Fantasy Records is an American independent record label company founded by brothers Max and Sol Stanley Weiss in 1949. The early years of the company were dedicated to issuing recordings by jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, who was also one of its inves ...
and released the album ''
Enter'' and the single "
Clear" which became a hit on
Billboard
A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...
's
Black Singles chart spending nine weeks there. The group broke up shortly after with Davis wanting to pursue a more
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...
-based approach to music, leading Atkins to develop his own solo project as Model 500.
Development
As Model 500, Atkins created his own
music label
"Big Three" music labels
A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and t ...
called
Metroplex to release what he described as "more funk and bass-heavy electro tracks." The tracks for the first Model 500 release were done in the basement of Atkins mother's home on the East side of Detroit. As Atkins was taking an audio engineering course at The Recording Institute of Detroit, he would return home to apply the skills he learned on his own recordings. They were recorded with an
8-track tape
The 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8; commonly called eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, and eight-track) is a magnetic-tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, ...
recorder and a 16 channel mixing board and using a
Roland TR-909 for the drum track sequence, and a
Korg
, founded as Keio Electronic Laboratories, is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic musical instrument
An electronic musical instrument or electrophone is a musical instrument that produces sound using electr ...
MS-10 for the synths. Atkins recollected that it took about two days to finish the track "Future".
Atkins felt strongly in his style of music and said that "setting up Metroplex was the only way to get it out there."
Atkins had previously attempted to send "No UFO's" to other music labels who turned it down.
Style
Mark Jonathan Butler, in his book on the history of
electronic dance music
Electronic dance music (EDM), also referred to as dance music or club music, is a broad range of percussive electronic music genres originally made for nightclubs, raves, and List of electronic dance music festivals, festivals. It is generally ...
, stated that "No UFO's" was "frequently described as the first
techno
Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...
record." stating that unlike similar earlier tracks like Cybotron's "Alleys of Your Mind" and "
Sharevari", the song had "no obvious relationship to rock or
pop music
Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, ''iarchive:cambridgecompani00frit, The Cambridge Companion to Pop ...
. The instrumentation is entirely electronic with Butler describing it having stark
drum machine
A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument that creates percussion sounds, drum beats, and patterns. Drum machines may imitate drum kits or other percussion instruments, or produce unique sounds, such as synthesized electronic tones. A d ...
rhythms as its prominent feature.
The song has no verse/chorus structure, with lyrics that chanted rather than sung that are first heard nearly two minutes within the song. Atkins spoke about the lyrics in the song as "The government always tries to cover up the fact that there could be other life in the galaxy. To me, the system is bent on keeping people in despair, hopeless, not wanting to achieve anything, so if you keep your head up high maybe you'll start realizing things that you never thought possible and seeing a UFO is probably the ultimate possibly." Like in Cybotron, Atkins and Davis were both interested in technology and the future and spent significant time discussing them philosophically and read works such as
Alvin Toffler
Alvin Eugene Toffler (October 4, 1928 – June 27, 2016) was an American writer, futurist, and businessman known for his works discussing modern technologies, including the digital revolution and the communication revolution, with emphasis on th ...
's 1980 book ''
The Third Wave''. These themes were also reflected in Cybotron's previous singles such as "Cosmic Cars" and "Industrial Lies".
Release
"No UFO's" was released in April 1985 on
Metroplex. "‘No UFO’s’ was popular in Detroit, with Atkins noting that it was released to the radio when
Jeff Mills
Jeff Mills (born June 18, 1963, in Detroit, Michigan), also known as "the Wizard", is an American DJ, record producer, and composer. In the late 1980s Mills founded the techno collective Underground Resistance with fellow Detroit techno pro ...
was hosting, and "as soon as
illsgot his hands on it, he put it in heavy rotation in his mixes, and it became an instant smash hit in his radio show. Also, this was the time of house music in Chicago, so DJs like
Farley "Jackmaster" Funk,
Bad Boy Bill,
Ralphi Rosario, Julian Jumpin Perez, and Fast Eddie, among others,
layed it therefore the record also became a smash hit in Chicago."
Carl Craig
Carl Craig (born May 22, 1969) is an American electronic music producer, DJ, and founder of the record label Planet E Communications. He is known as a leading figure and pioneer in the second wave of Detroit techno artists during the late 1980 ...
reflected on hearing "No UFO's" for the first time at 5pm on the radio on a weekday, noting that "It was drive time, so it really gave me the opportunity to hear this music as being more than just club music."
According to Atkins, the song was more popular in Chicago than Detroit. The song reached Chicago by when Atkins' associates
Derrick May and
Blake Baxter drove Baxter's pickup truck full of records to sell in Chicago, and then these records were exported to the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
. This led to record companies in England travelling to the United States to research the music, initially starting in Chicago where they were told the music was coming from Detroit. Arriving in Detroit,
Neil Rushton suggested to do a compilation album for
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a British record label owned by Universal Music Group. They were originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman (musician), ...
and call it ''The House Sound of Detroit'' which was later renamed to ''
Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit'' based on the Model 500 song that was included on the compilation called "Techno Music".
The song was re-released by Metroplex in 2017 with remixes from
Moodymann and
Luciano. Atkins stated that idea behind these remixes was "why reinvent the wheel when we can get the source material that created the wheel in first place and reworked?" and that he "wanted to incorporate collaborations with some major players nowadays, like Moodymann and Luciano. That will make it possible to reach a newer, wider, and more diverse audience."
Reception
In a 1992 article on Atkins,
Kris Needs wrote in the ''
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a "Rock music, rock inkie", the ''NME'' would be ...
'' that Atkins tracks "Ocean to Ocean" and "No UFO's" as "timeless classics."
Stuart Maconie
Stuart John Maconie (born 13 August 1961) is an English radio DJ and television presenter, writer, journalist, and critic working in the field of pop music and popular culture. He is a presenter on BBC Radio 6 Music where, alongside Mark Radc ...
also discussed "No UFO's" along with "
Big Fun", "When We Used to Play", "Nude Photo" and "Goodbye Kiss" as the recordings that "embodied the new sound of Detroit, a sound synonymous with the new labels
Transmat and Metroplex." In 2022, ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
'' ranked "No UFO’s" number 94 in their list of the "200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time".
Track listing
* 12" single (M-001)
# "No UFO's (Vocal)" – 4:17
# "No UFO's (Instrumental)" – 6:55
# "Future (Vocal)" – 4:45
# "Future (Instrumental)" – 5:01
Credits
Credits are adapted from the vinyl release sticker of "No UFO's".
* Marcellus 'Pete' Atkins – executive producer
*
Juan Atkins
Juan Atkins (born September 12, 1962), also known as Model 500 and Infiniti, is an American record producer and DJ from Detroit, Michigan. ''Mixmag'' has described him as "the original pioneer of Detroit techno." He has been a member of the Belle ...
– engineer, composer, producer
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
*
*
* {{cite web, url=https://www.insomniac.com/music/model-500-no-ufos/, title=Model 500 "No UFO's", date=October 25, 2018, last=Palmer, first=Tamara, publisher=Insomniac, access-date=May 19, 2020, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200813151757/https://www.insomniac.com/music/model-500-no-ufos/, archive-date=August 13, 2020
1985 debut singles
1985 songs
Model 500 songs
Songs written by Juan Atkins
Song recordings produced by Juan Atkins
Metroplex singles