Richie Hawtin — Sónar Festival, Barcelona, 2024

Filmed at the Sónar festival in Barcelona in June 2024, this live set presents Richie Hawtin with his new show “DEX EFX X0X.” A historic figure of Detroit and Windsor techno, active since the early 1990s under his own name and as Plastikman, Hawtin returns here to a fully real-time practice: turntables, effects and drum machine manipulated live, with no fixed setlist. The result is an organic techno performance built from gradual builds, minimal textures and controlled breaks, framed by a scenography of strobing lights and shadows that revives the original club aesthetic. Presented in Europe for the first time at Sónar, this set filmed by ARTE Concert documents the music as much as the performer’s gesture, often left in half-darkness to focus attention on the sound. For electronic music lovers, this roughly 70-minute filmed live concert distils Hawtin’s vision: a cerebral yet physical techno in which improvisation takes precedence over effect.