People that have had frontal lobotomy procedures neither like nor dislike techno. (despite what the drool may indicate)
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Pick any genre of music you’ve dug into independently and found some interesting stuff that tickles your fancy. Go to Instagram and compare what you’ve dug up and enjoyed over a period of, say, 6 months to a year, and compare it to what you see on the highest trending posts. This is presuming you have ears.
I’d bet in any genre you’ll find a pretty big disparity.
Like almost any genre (in the wide sense of the term) the stuff that rises to the top in the quick, easy, friction free, zero effort world of social media popularity will usually be the most production line like version that is easiest to swallow.
It’s like comparing good punk records to Green Day, John Coltrane to pop jazz, etc. Nothing wrong with them if people like it.
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Sometimes people want junk food for the brain too. Which is also fine. The same people may also like to think and scratch their chin to the absolute masters of their field. It’s all completely ok. I love Scott, Kubrick and Lynch, but I can also enjoy Lester (Commando 
) Hehehehe.
Same with food. I can eat gorgeous French pastries, or a roll of SweetTarts. 
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I am by far no techno expert but have listened and been out to a fair few nights over the years.
What has struck/confused me of late with some current big DJ’s is that their taste seem to be stuck in the past, playing 90’s/2000 underground tunes and often appearing on the same bill as Jeff Mills, playing music associated to him.
I know Mills is an obvious reference but I feel Techno starts and ends with him, especially live.
He is 60 but his sets are so alive, controlled yet chaotic and often sections of improvisation - stopping the beat live and doing a 10 minute 909 workout alongside playing new music
His DJ sets are shows in the true sense a performance should be.
The last time I saw I him play I was floored which certainly put him up in my top shows I have experienced along with Prince, Kendrick Lamaar, and Kraftwerk.
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have you seen Kink?
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LOVE Mills. He’s not all that’s out there that’s good though…
More minnimal, possibly blended genre, tech-stuff:
Harder tech-stuff:
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People travel the world to see them.
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Exactly. We may be pickier than the average party-goer (for many reasons) but people like what they like. They also like liking what they like in places that they like with like-minded people, liking the same thing. It’s like it’s ok to like different things or like the same things. That’s like, rad and shit!
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I generally agree, but I don’t think drugs are necessary to get into the hypnotic state for dancing yourself into a trance. I‘ve never done hard drugs, yet when I‘m in a club or making electronic music, I get sucked into this state and zone out easily. I think humans did that for thousands of years with or without substances and it unlocks something buried deep in us.
I second that it’s hard to judge that music from your couch, like others have pointed out. I would hate most of the stuff I sometimes freak out to in a club, but when you feel that deep bass in your ribcage and see the people around you really excited, it‘s just another thing altogether. This communal enjoyment of dancing is the reason why club music persists I think, as it gives us back something deeply humane which got kind of lost in a lot of modern societies.
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Kink is absolutely ballistic. Chorus is an all time favourite track of mine.
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If Matrix was here, he’d laugh too.
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Good one!
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People just need to “blow off some steam”.
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Yeah for sure, me too. Lynch and Lester are both great in their own way. I love a lot of dumb pop music too.
I don’t think that popularity is necessarily an indication that something is worthless at all.
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Agreed! Granted I don’t listen to much pop music that isn’t 80’s pop. The same applies though. Lately though I’ve been listening to a lot of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. Gypsy Techno.
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I have a box set of most of Django Reinhardt’s stuff, the man was a machine. Really swinging too.
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Like 10 or 20 years ago I had some understanding why some act in some “scene” is popular or not.
Then EDM wave emerged and I have no idea what are the current stars in techno and why.
The Unsound festival line-up is also a mystery to me in this department
I can understand why Mills, KiNk or Ancient Methods are popular… The rest requires raising my Insight stats.
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I think this kinda happened to psytrance en-masse, everybody just starting copying a few types of tracks and it got mega stagnant. it had its heyday in the early-mid 2000s and now its just reams and reams of the same stuff imo. I never really got into dark/night psy but i did like sensient, my friends were nuts about tetrameth.
Weirdly enough I find a lot of “mainstream” techno is starting to sound like average psytrance from 10-15 years ago unfortunately.
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Nice! I love that style, and more modern takes on some of it. There’s a band called Hot Club Sandwich that does some playful takes on that material.
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