In the early eighties a trio of pioneers in Detroit began merging the sounds of synthpop and Italo-disco with funk.They listened to an influential radio DJ, The Electrifying Mojo, who played European imports alongside Prince and the B-52’s. In 1981 Atkins and Richard Davies, aka 3070, started releasing records as Cybotron. Techno was born.Around the same time, the infant hip-hop community picked up elements of Kraftwerk’s music and later created electro. Electro relied heavily on synthesized beats and computery vocoder voices.Techno, electro, and house were made possible by new, inexpensive technology.In the late eighties and early nineties, Techno and house, which had failed to gain mainstream success in the United States, became a huge phenomenon in Europe—especially in Great Britain.