Yep! I saw him a couple of times too, and each time was excellent. However, there are tons of other REALLY good people making and playing Techno.
Richie Hawtin for one.
Also how far in either direction do we allow for? Electro? A bit of Chicago House? It’s pretty techy. Acid? Minimal, hard, whatever. There’s a lot of just Techno sub-genres not to mention other full genres that intersect.
There are really good people doing things in all those arenas.
See aforementioned threads for some of my picks for those. It’s COMPLETELY silly to assign a genre to one person. No matter how good, forward-thinking etc. he was (and still may be).
I think everyone in this thread knows this already.
it’s true, for long time (after ~98/00) I couldn’t listen to psytrance anymore and when Zenon came up it was different, never heard sounds like that and it brought me back, started going festivals, parties, etc.
and they felt different because inside the label, at the time, almost every producer had different style/sound, which was amazing to me, because not a lot of larger psytrance labels had this, most of them were already sounding pretty much the same, so when I heard zenon at first it was different in that sense, but when they took the traditional path of “this is our sound and we focus on it” I was really bummed out, imo there should be more minimal and slow psy style music rather that techno that going into psy prog area, I don’t judge them, they need to make a living and all that, it just bummed me that the only “innovating” label in the genre I’ve loved from my youth is no longer going into the innovation territory but doing what everyone else’s doing - expanding on the success of this zenonesque sound…
btw there are some real gems in night/hitech, check out Irgum Burgum, beasts! and hitech really expanded in the last years and it’s very nice, lots of japanese artists doing nice hitech stuff…
That is just my opinion and relates specifically to his live performance.
It’s more in his attitude and outlook to forward thinking in music making.
To me Techno is about the future not the past.
I had a similar thought when I saw Kraftwerk live back in 2003. After hearing their catalogue in a 2 hour performance I realised how many seeds that paved the way for whole genres that exist today.
Mills was there at the start of the U.S wave, set up Underground Resistance worked with Robert Hood and continued to push his shows forward. Just my thoughts really
My feeling is similar with Gerald Donald and his contribution to Electro.
Not forgetting Drexciya but after his Dopplereffekt album came out the sound of electro fundamentally changed and is hard to decouple this fact with what everyone enjoys today.
You go to a DIY non-commercial place in some abandoned building/area or illegal/tolerated raves centered around a motivated community. You‘ll get to know people playing there over time. They may or may not be on social media and may or may not have released music. Don’t know where you live, but even in a pretty commercialized German city like I live in, we still have all of these things.
Totally agree with you and not discounting any of those Artists. My comment was aimed more for the OP who was looking at contemporary DJ’s with lots of Spotify streams, just trying to give them context.
Looking from it now those Artist’s particularly Atkins are more connected to Electro - a Proto Techno if you will. Craig the more musical house end of the spectrum
Mills is a bit closer to the Berlin blueprint of contemporary Techno.
The first wave of Detroit Techno was without doubt the Belleville 3 mid 80’s. The second wave was people like Marty Bonds, MK, Carl Craig etc late 80’s, the third wave was Jeff Mills, Mad Mike etc early 90’s, who came up right around the inception of Tresor. That’s how I remember it anyway.
It could be argued that Kraftwerk invented Techno. Not taking anything away from Atkins think he mentioned to be influenced by Kraftwerk but perhaps a matter of opinion.
Like I said in the original post that I am no Techno Expert so standing down.
…taz, the temporary autonomy zone…rave on, U are the rave, with ALL the others around u…
move ur body in all directions…dj’s are no gods…embrace the moment…raves are NO concerts…U are the paaaaaaartyyyyyyyyyyyy…
and hey…all sorts of rave music is made to rave out loud, to be enjoyed TOGETHER…not really for listening home alone…
Well you are on point about Kraftwerk, Atkins and May both cited them as influence back in the day.
Note also that I said “Detroit” Techno, but as most people would acknowledge Techno at least conceptually if not in name existed long before, and even Atkins has said at least once in an interview that Klien and MBO did the first Techno track “Dirty Talk” from 1982.
There are some interviews in Music Technology magazine between the years 1988-1990 with various Techno and House artists, you can find them here https://www.muzines.co.uk/mags/mt
For those interested in understanding the real history of techno, I highly recommend the book “Techno Rebels.” It’s very well written and researched. Read it a few years ago and it was a blast.
Really enjoyed this thanks. The first 3 tracks are super slick production wise, the bass is deep and they feel unique to the stuff i have heard over the last 30 years.
I don’t feel drawn to dance floor stuff anymore as i feel its all been done but this restores some faith in new and interesting ideas being out there. Its just harder to find it when you are not part of a scene or don’t go clubbing.
When the music is good It draws you in and you don’t care what’s being used to make it.
Not a bad set of tracks. I don’t play techno vinyl all that often, but every once in a while, I will sit and listen to it in the living room that way.
I usually play more industrial, funky stuff, (Matt Johnson, Steely Dan, Beastie Boys, etc.) ambient (Future Sound of London style, or Mort Garson and other old synth people) and more metal type stuff when listening to vinyl, but once in a while I want a beat on in there.
False nostalgia is endemic (especially to those calcified in their 17y/o record collection and live experience.)
I get it, it’s hard to discover and find joy over comforts, algorithms push dogshit “content” at us from a firehose, and the good stuff takes work in a different way than sifting through import releases and crate digging disappoints & glory.
It’s vital to separate the “I’m not getting good music easily in a time when it’s never been easier to find music” from the “there are no good artists after I graduated”.
We definitely share some musical tastes with the Matt Jonson, FSOL and bit of the Bestie Boys stuff. Very tempting to buy that LP but I never learned to mix but have a lot of vinyl already, It comes from an era of living with friends and taking it in turns to put records on (mixed in badly) . A lot deep listing sessions staring at a silent TV with other mind altering substances helping to add to the absorbing journey. Describing this now sounds like government agency brainwashing sessions.
Back in the 90s it was so hard to find out what tracks were that people played and if you managed het copy you felt so privileged. I bought a lot of things i wanted and missed in the 90s when became regarded as dated and unfashionable in the early 2000s. It is hard generate the feeling of that era with digital music when its available all over the internet. Represses of records has changed how i feel about records. In way it has democratised the record collecting world so everyone can have a piece of the music which is great but as a result for me the rush of tracking down the music you crave has passed.
Opportunity is unequal in the world. But we are all unique as individual human beings and we should appreciate this fact. A lot is used to divide us but music and other creativity should unite us.
. A lot deep listing sessions staring at a silent TV with other mind altering substances helping to add to the absorbing journey. Describing this now sounds like government agency brainwashing sessions.