[2] When moving to Belleville, Atkins started playing the keyboard and convinced his grandmother to buy him a synthesizer.

[2] Atkins became entranced with the sound of the machine and making electronic music demos by the time he was starting his college education.

[4] 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.

[5][6] The group broke up shortly after with Davis wanting to pursue a more rock-based approach to music, leading Atkins to develop his own solo project as Model 500.

[4][6] As Model 500, Atkins created his own music label called Metroplex to release what he described as "more funk and bass-heavy electro tracks.

"[2] The tracks for the first Model 500 release were done in the basement of Atkins mother's home on the East side of Detroit.

[8] Mark Jonathan Butler, in his book on the history of electronic dance music, stated that "No UFO's" was "frequently described as the first techno 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.

[9] The instrumentation is entirely electronic with Butler describing it having stark drum machine rhythms as its prominent feature.

"[9] 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's 1980 book The Third Wave.

The New Dance Sound of Detroit based on the Model 500 song that was included on the compilation called "Techno Music".