Article from a Toronto newspaper:
Pomp and the Plastikman
Windsor's Richie Hawtin is bringing his challenging brand of techno to Turin, writes
Ben Rayner
Feb. 10, 2006. 01:00 AM
BEN RAYNER
POP MUSIC CRITIC
An element of Olympian endurance, any Richie Hawtin fan will tell you, is often required to make it through his more punishing techno sets.
Until recently, though, that was about the only reason one might ever have felt compelled to link the Windsor-raised, currently Berlin-based electronic musician's name and the Olympics in the same breath.
Not so any more. Today, a typically challenging Hawtin composition entitled "9:20" infiltrates the pomp, circumstance and flag-waving of the XXth Winter Games' opening ceremony in Turin in tandem with a grandly scaled modern-dance piece by renowned Italian avant-garde choreographer Enzo Cosimi.
Hawtin's the only Canadian besides closing-night concert star Avril Lavigne contributing music to the Games, and he's part of a roster of talent tapped for the event that includes considerably more mainstream types such as Andrea Bocelli, Whitney Houston, Duran Duran and Ricky Martin.
No one, perhaps, is more disbelieving of this fact than the sometime Plastikman himself, who received a call from the Olympic committee out of the blue 10 months ago asking him if he was interested in taking part.
"I didn't know who Enzo was or that he was a fan of mine, but they contacted me on his behalf," recalls Hawtin, 35. "Suddenly I was on a quick flight to Milan sitting in front of the Olympic committee and watching these tapes of previous opening ceremonies.
"I don't own a TV. I don't watch the Olympics. I don't watch anything. And they were, like, `Well, do you want to do it?' I really had no idea what I was going to do because this is totally out of my ballpark. But you can't really say no."
Thus ensued months of "back and forth" between Hawtin's Berlin studio and Cosimi to come up with a mutually satisfying work that would help illustrate through dance and acrobatics the ceremony's theme of "rhythm, passion and speed."
Cosimi, who's been hastily hammering the work into shape in Turin for the past 10 days, says he's "forbidden" to discuss the specific content of the nine minutes of the 2 1/2-hour event granted him and Hawtin.
The choreographer — whose fascination with how electronic music affects human nerves and movement has led him previously to collaborate with avant-gardists like Robert Lippok and John Duncan — will allow that it involves more than 300 participants ("dancers, body builders, martial-art boys and more") performing alongside Italian dance star Roberto Bolle.
"I can tell you it's connected with the Italian history of arts and its relation with the future," Cosimi revealed in a hasty email between rehearsals. "Both Richie and I come from contemporary field research on art, and in this production we've tried to put our vision into a pop language, to get a huge audience."
Pop might be stretching it a little, mind you.
Cosimi's work (and his website design) shares an oblique sensibility with Hawtin's cold, creepy electro-minimalism, and the snippet of "9:20" previewed on the Minus Records site (http://www.m-nus.com) — 45 seconds of eerie ambience, orchestral synth stabs and martial tympani rolls — doesn't suggest Hawtin felt pressured to turn in a version of David Foster's Calgary Winter Games theme.
"I'd rather be the new David Cronenberg than the new David Foster," laughs Hawtin, who says it turned out to be an excellent working situation. "Enzo is the one they invited and he had the clout and the idea to ask me. We had to find a balance between what he wanted and what I wanted and also what the Olympic committee thought it should all be about, but that was the interesting part. The committee was, like: `Go for it. Do it as crazy as you want.' But their definition of `crazy' and ours was a little bit different. Again, though, because of the way the whole situation happened, I was brought in to do what Enzo wanted, and what he wanted me to do was what I do.
"The music is a bit all over the place, but it has to be because it's designed to help tell the story the choreographer had to tell.... Originally, it was going to be all original, but then we found some of the stuff we'd done didn't work as well as some place-holders I was working with. One of my old tracks, `Substance Abuse,' worked really well for him, so we left that in there. It's like a mini-soundtrack. It's very Hawtin-esque in some parts, but in others it's quite a departure."
Until a dress rehearsal Wednesday night, the entire piece was "all theoretical," envisioned by Hawtin only through Cosimi's verbal directions, pictures and diagrams. Mercifully, he says, his contribution to the work is pre-recorded so he can just sit back and watch the spectacle unfold once again today.
"I'm just a spectator, thank God," he says. "Timing and choreographing that many people in the whole Olympic thing, there isn't so much that's live even when it's presented like it's live. I really don't want that task. I don't even wanna press 'play.' I don't wanna mistime that."