Retracing history to predict where techno is going.

[MARK ANXIOUS]

You know I went through lots of old stuff recently. From early 90's Plus 8, to R+S to Midtown to Industrial Strength to Lab Works to Communique to even Transmat to all the Jack Trax and acid house shit. I looked at the music as a progression, rather than a particualr style and I was blown away by a few things.

1st of all. Let's take this minimal thing. It's a buzz word, but if you look back on 90's techno, most of it was minimal - just a little less well produced and with more innocence. For those minimal haters out there, i don't get you. Can't you see that it's just a progression and is pretty much the same shit as the ppl you're influenced from???

2nd: The schranz thing and even minimal is for sure taking things to an extreme. And if you look at techno or even house from the 80's and 90's, you'll see that ppl take the thing that is the most in fashion and totally go to an extreme.

God I could go on but I'm dying to get back into the studio to play some of this early stuff. Hehehe.

Let's get your own comments! Do any of you have any other observations????? Looking forward to reading them :)

[koma]

I wrote something similar months ago.
when people get tired of something or frustrated, they tend to go extreme - not only in music. you might notice the same tendency in, let say, politics...

screw the hate, why poison your heart with hate when there's so much things to love - again, not only in music. :cheese:

minimal, house, techno, speedcore, jazz, soul, rock, metal.. whatever... you can find quality in any genre if you really want to. :)

[Aratron]

You know I went through lots of old stuff recently. From early 90's Plus 8, to R+S to Midtown to Industrial Strength to Lab Works to Communique to even Transmat to all the Jack Trax and acid house shit. I looked at the music as a progression, rather than a particualr style and I was blown away by a few things.

1st of all. Let's take this minimal thing. It's a buzz word, but if you look back on 90's techno, most of it was minimal - just a little less well produced and with more innocence. For those minimal haters out there, i don't get you. Can't you see that it's just a progression and is pretty much the same shit as the ppl you're influenced from???

2nd: The schranz thing and even minimal is for sure taking things to an extreme. And if you look at techno or even house from the 80's and 90's, you'll see that ppl take the thing that is the most in fashion and totally go to an extreme.

God I could go on but I'm dying to get back into the studio to play some of this early stuff. Hehehe.

Let's get your own comments! Do any of you have any other observations????? Looking forward to reading them :)

even im loving more minimal at the moment dude.
mutate to survive.

[Tiptoe]

its funny me and my freind were discussing this the other day everything seems to go round in cycle's doesn't it with music. look at all the minu's getting re released. they even have some in HMV in leeds. In fact hmv has a full section selling anything fromm player to stuff on miditional!!!! And they even label it as wonky techno ha ha.
I think what happens is when someone gets nored of things they go back to their roots, back to the early stuff they bought and because they haven't played if for a long time they forget how good it actually was.

[Clit Commander]

I'd say the Detroit bug has caught on again in a new form. It's in the spotlight quite a bit lately partly due to the Detroit influence on new mnml music. Some tunes are just straight up Detroit jams like Martin Buttrich's Planet E record. Others are just bastard attempts at Detroit techno.

[Lag]

i never was hating the music
but i hate the trend
and i hate stupid forcing of stuff
my image of a perfect scene would be lots of people making lots of music
not 50% of people making minimal and 50% making the rest
and i ****ing hate i cant listen to techno anywhere cause minimal and prog is in every club
and the people who come to these parties dont dance
they just stand around, nod their heads, drink their beers, and talk to people
and i hate when people get overexcited about some stupid song (which is good but not THAT good) who go "u dont like it? ure weird"
**** the trends
i didnt listen to techno neither when grindvik & hardcell, redhead and hertz style got popular :\

[Ritzi Lee]

I wouldn't agree minimal techno in the begin 90s is not so well produced. Minimal nowadays is too clean produced. This doens't count for all minimal releases. There are some records that still have that industrial cutting edge.

[holotropik]

Well as for retracing the past to predict or expect the future...

....cycles that refer to current environment is all you need to know.

[MangaFish]

For those minimal haters out there, i don't get you. Can't you see that it's just a progression and is pretty much the same shit as the ppl you're influenced from???

Sorry but I think that's grossly unfair - it's like saying I should prefer my coffee black because my mum drinks black coffee.

I don't like minimal. I don't like it because I just don't like it. I can't help not liking it and nor should I have to justify why I don't like it (in much the same why minimal fans shouldn't have to justify why they do like it).

It's just a personal preference - like saying some people like their coffee black with two sugars and others like it white and without sugar.

[SlavikSvensk]

who does minimal techno like basic channel, rob hood or maurizio nowadays?

the new minimal, IMO, has nothing on the minimal techno classics

[The Overfiend]

I think trying to track trends is a negative.
Or more of a means to figure out what will sell.
People should be doing what the feel.
If someone does minimal with a hard techno kick and a tribal rhythm
It should just be categorized at techno

[Ritzi Lee]

I think trying to track trends is a negative.
Or more of a means to figure out what will sell.
People should be doing what the feel.
If someone does minimal with a hard techno kick and a tribal rhythm
It should just be categorized at techno

and also i'd like to see some diversity on one record,
like it used to be on an EP. not strictly one kind of sound,
or strictly bound by certain rules.
i think with this in mind, people would take more time to make a record, but if the result is there.... it's there!

[prozac]

i think music has become too pigeon holed. Too many producers releasing the same sound over and over...
diverse eps is a great idea.
unfortunately its the same with most nights out. warm up dj plays the same as the main dj. it can get really boring.

This is a problem with techno at the moment I think, cause I do go to other gigs where there is a nice mash up (usually resulting in end of night breakcore!).

[MangaFish]

I think trying to track trends is a negative.
Or more of a means to figure out what will sell.
People should be doing what the feel.
If someone does minimal with a hard techno kick and a tribal rhythm
It should just be categorized at techno

too right

[MangaFish]

i think music has become too pigeon holed. Too many producers releasing the same sound over and over...
diverse eps is a great idea.
unfortunately its the same with most nights out. warm up dj plays the same as the main dj. it can get really boring.

This is a problem with techno at the moment I think, cause I do go to other gigs where there is a nice mash up (usually resulting in end of night breakcore!).

It's a problem with EDM throughout.

[fac]

one of the main problems is that a big part of the crowd is not open-minded. an example:

bitstream played here last june. berghain is a techno club and there is always played 4/4 stuff. so i quite wondered they had invited bitstream. the dj who played the warm up (i really admire him cause he always plays fantastic stuff) made a really big mistake. he played 4/4 stuff all the way although he should have known that bitstream were an electro/idm act. so when they began their set after 5 minutes almost the whole floor was empty. only cause the played (really brilliant) electro. i mean it is ****in electro. its not so far away from techno like breakcore for example. how stupid can people be?!

lots of the (local) djs dont have the nuts to play some different stuff. one of the reasons is the little story i mentioned above.

[SlavikSvensk]

i always end up saying this on the "techno going forward" type threads, but the key is

fewer tracks
more songs

make more music of lasting, rather than fleeting, value.

ignore trends unless you use them strictly as a frame of reference to make music that has value outside a given tiny substratum of techno or a particular year.

[force]

SONGS??????

You'll be saying 'Make it more R&B'ish' next!!!

[dirty_bass]

one of the main problems is that a big part of the crowd is not open-minded. an example:

bitstream played here last june. berghain is a techno club and there is always played 4/4 stuff. so i quite wondered they had invited bitstream. the dj who played the warm up (i really admire him cause he always plays fantastic stuff) made a really big mistake. he played 4/4 stuff all the way although he should have known that bitstream were an electro/idm act. so when they began their set after 5 minutes almost the whole floor was empty. only cause the played (really brilliant) electro. i mean it is ****in electro. its not so far away from techno like breakcore for example. how stupid can people be?!

lots of the (local) djs dont have the nuts to play some different stuff. one of the reasons is the little story i mentioned above.

this can be a problem, people as a whole aren`t too open for change, until that "diference" is popular enough to be acceptable.
Which is a double edged sword.

However, you can never predict where a music will go, and hopefully should never be able too.
I don`t think the comparisons to early minimal techno productions and the stuff made now stand up.
What is called minimal now is closer to house really in groove and tempo, and has a certain style, rather than just containing less sounds, and therefore being minimal.

Even then, when you talk about predicting where techno is going, really what you are talking about, is what the majority of techno fans will consider cool to listen/dance too.
Techno is already going in a hundred different directions, but unfortunately somewhere in the chain, the promoters, DJ`s, or party goers, really seem to want monochromatic sounds at their events.

I hope for the future that the fans will want to embrace the backlash against stagnation that has caused lots of producers to fly off in all sorts of directions, and that we will see events with a good cross section of techno sounds.
Really the sound in you average techno club hasn`t change that much in the last 4-6 years. New records, same sound.

So where techno goes is not really a question for me, I hope it goes everywhere, I just wish/hope, that the fans open up to more diversity.

[SlavikSvensk]

SONGS??????

You'll be saying 'Make it more R&B'ish' next!!!

the point is simple: make music that's a lasting statement. not just bang-bang-blip-blip like all the rest so no one cares in 2 years.

listen to old basic channel records. they were minimal, they were repetitive, but they were SONGS. and they STILL sound better than any "minimal" made today.