spastik

Spastik is a track by Plastikman, the electronic music project of Canadian producer Richie Hawtin. It was released in 1993 as part of the album Sheet One on the Novamute label, a sublabel of Mute Records. The track is one of Hawtin’s most widely recognized works and is frequently cited as a landmark in the development of minimal techno.

Musically, Spastik is a percussion-driven piece that foregrounds rhythm and texture over melody. The composition relies on tightly edited, rapid, and repetitive percussion patterns that create a hypnotic, machine-like groove. The focus on sparse, precise sounds and sparse arrangement exemplifies the minimalist approach associated with Hawtin’s Plastikman alias during that era.

Reception and influence have been strong in techno and electronic music circles. Spastik helped popularize percussion-centric minimal techno in the early 1990s and has been cited by producers and critics as an influential example of the genre’s potential for hypnotic repetition and atmospheric austerity. The track has appeared on various compilations and retrospectives that survey the history of techno, and it remains a reference point in discussions of Plastikman’s work and 1990s minimal techno.