Future paths for techno

[Amøbe]

The not caring attitude leads to zero effort music and that's where we are now.

but those customers aren't really representative of the general populace. The people who care about good food simply don't go there any more.

I thought you only ate smoked herring on Bornholm

But I think there is something very true to what you say, and it reflects back on some of the stuff others are saying here. Community is important to drive experimentation, maybe more so than just taking in influences (or maybe both can work?).

I think one thing that I keep hearing as a frustration among some of the other producers in Copenhagen (which is a community I'm not that much part of) is that studio spaces keep getting more expensive, or they are a limited time only, so that you easily gets sprawled all over the city. I would like to just have a floor with maybe 9 studios, and they should be around a shared space, where you could get a beer or a cup of coffee and talk together. That would be healthy.

[td3l]

Pretty much everything is a rip off now in that you can listen to it for 10 seconds and already that is enough to know what you are hearing. "Yep, that`s a basic channel clone/mills clone/regis clone etc", combine that with the absolute lack of any connection to any kind of artistic or philosophical or political movement, or even any real emotional honesty due to people relying more and more on the kit to make music than the ideas, it has just become this kind of empty bourgeoise soundtrack to hedonism.
Anything that now pushes the sound forward is sort of "not techno" as the walled garden has gotten smaller and much more retro referential.

I agree with this assessment, but also feel like some of the fundamental causes are pretty simple:

1) Younger generations in techno are outnumbering the older folks who were around when BC/Mills/Regis/etc were all at their height -- they find this seminal music and want to experience something similar within their own time. Same thing with all the 90s trance throwbacks happening right now. I think to a large extent we have to just accept that "stagnation" is going to be a natural, inevitable feature of people wanting to experience what came before their time.

2) Electronic music is traditionally rooted in futurism -- but I suspect that futurism doesn't hold the same general appeal to most people in 2021 as it did in the 90s. I find it hard to blame folks for looking over their shoulders for inspiration/escapism rather than forward, when the latter involves staring down the barrel of catastrophic climate change and other societal pressures.

So while I personally agree that techno in 2021 is pretty damned stagnant, I don't really know what the solutions are except for those of us with a mind to push things forward to quietly keep doing our thing. In my mind these are fundamentally intractable root issues.

[Lost to the Void]

. nobody in the public cares if you created this tom by knocking your cat over the head with a bag of crisps or if it's from a decades old drumcomputer

at the same time it's art, which also should not be about how things are made but what the end result is.

Not true, but also not relevant. Some people care, but the main thing is the artist caring. Otherwise it's just product.
Content. The not caring attitude leads to zero effort music and that's where we are now.

Art is also about how things are made and so why. It's not all about the end results, again, unless it's product.

I'm not so sure, if it's made with love and care the tools should not really matter.

I think we both agree that mindless formulaic music sucks. but I have to disagree that something that is made the difficult way, is per se better than something simple.

on the other hand, something can be made with a lot of skill and craftmanship and polished to perfection but still suck (i.e. most modern pop music). which is what you refer to as product, I guess.

I don't even know what the "difficult way" even means or how it even relates to the conversation.

This is about intent and methodology, not difficulty.
The work of Andy Goldsworthy for instance, is interesting partly because of how it is made and what it is made from.
It is intrinsic to the art.
People DO care about this stuff.

If the main concern is simply to make people dance, then all you need is a kickdrum. Even a metronome click will do.
Why even bother with anything else?

[Amøbe]

If the main concern is simply to make people dance, then all you need is a kickdrum. Even a metronome click will do.
Why even bother with anything else?

I have to disagree with this part. Different types of groove and pacing definitely impact the way people dance (and want to dance) differently. The bodily part of how music impacts you (to dance) can be just as much a dignified artistic pursuit as anything else. But it is not an excuse to not push on and making stuff interesting.

Music works on different levels, and the different levels are hierarchized differently in different cultures.

[Críoch]

Got a brilliant Korg metronome here. No messing.

Has different sounds.. including a voice saying numbers. You can kinda play the rhythms & it's very easy to get into a groove.. as limited as it is

[Lost to the Void]

If the main concern is simply to make people dance, then all you need is a kickdrum. Even a metronome click will do.
Why even bother with anything else?

I have to disagree with this part. Different types of groove and pacing definitely impact the way people dance (and want to dance) differently. The bodily part of how music impacts you (to dance) can be just as much a dignified artistic pursuit as anything else. But it is not an excuse to not push on and making stuff interesting.

Music works on different levels, and the different levels are hierarchized differently in different cultures.

I have literally seen people dance to a generator mate
We aren`t talking nuance here, you are making up stuff I`ve not even said or suggested, I`m a drummer, of course I understand the nuance of different rhythms, I`ve literally been working with the fundaments of rhythm and post african rhythm for my whole dance music career. This is not the conversation we are having right now. (ALthough it kinda is because doof tish seems to be maximum effort to some people)
I`m saying if ALL your concern is, is making people dance, then you can just settle for a metronome and be done with it.

[Lost to the Void]

Got a brilliant Korg metronome here. No messing.

Has different sounds.. including a voice saying numbers. You can kinda play the rhythms & it's very easy to get into a groove.. as limited as it is

And at the end of a 48 hour rave, people would dance to that too

[Amøbe]

If the main concern is simply to make people dance, then all you need is a kickdrum. Even a metronome click will do.
Why even bother with anything else?

I have to disagree with this part. Different types of groove and pacing definitely impact the way people dance (and want to dance) differently. The bodily part of how music impacts you (to dance) can be just as much a dignified artistic pursuit as anything else. But it is not an excuse to not push on and making stuff interesting.

Music works on different levels, and the different levels are hierarchized differently in different cultures.

I have literally seen people dance to a generator mate
We aren`t talking nuance here, you are making up stuff I`ve not even said or suggested, I`m a drummer, of course I understand the nuance of different rhythms, I`ve literally been working with the fundaments of rhythm and post african rhythm for my whole dance music career. This is not the conversation we are having right now. (ALthough it kinda is because doof tish seems to be maximum effort to some people)
I`m saying if ALL your concern is, is making people dance, then you can just settle for a metronome and be done with it.

Yeah sorry I probably didn't read you fairly. My point is that even if your only concern is to make people dance that shouldn't be used as an excuse for not making forward pushing music. (I have a personal hobby horse that is about not only seeing the value in conceptually interesting music - but that's partly due to my own professional career)

[speen]

Not true, but also not relevant. Some people care, but the main thing is the artist caring. Otherwise it's just product.
Content. The not caring attitude leads to zero effort music and that's where we are now.

Art is also about how things are made and so why. It's not all about the end results, again, unless it's product.

I'm not so sure, if it's made with love and care the tools should not really matter.

I think we both agree that mindless formulaic music sucks. but I have to disagree that something that is made the difficult way, is per se better than something simple.

on the other hand, something can be made with a lot of skill and craftmanship and polished to perfection but still suck (i.e. most modern pop music). which is what you refer to as product, I guess.

I don't even know what the "difficult way" even means or how it even relates to the conversation.

This is about intent and methodology, not difficulty.
The work of Andy Goldsworthy for instance, is interesting partly because of how it is made and what it is made from.
It is intrinsic to the art.
People DO care about this stuff.

If the main concern is simply to make people dance, then all you need is a kickdrum. Even a metronome click will do.
Why even bother with anything else?

easy - use tom sample
difficult - synthesize tom using bag of crisps

my main point is that good music can be made with whatever. and that many dope records have been made with very simple tools, maybe even without putting much thought into it, and that is totally ok with me. it does not discard the fact that it can be awesome. for me music does not always have to be high brow art.

but I guess this is all a bit off topic now

[Críoch]

Got a brilliant Korg metronome here. No messing.

Has different sounds.. including a voice saying numbers. You can kinda play the rhythms & it's very easy to get into a groove.. as limited as it is

And at the end of a 48 hour rave, people would dance to that too

Aye.. & if you're slumming it without Sound, being alive is all that's required. Observed that too.

[jordanneke]

Fuck it. This thread has inspired me to add some chord progressions to techno.

I was gonna post a new thread about whether or not I should try and incorporate things into 'techno', but I have decided that I'll try it. If it fails and the gate-keepers decide it's not defined as 'techno' then, well, I've lost nothing.


Time to experiment (for me anyway)

[speen]

Fuck it. This thread has inspired me to add some chord progressions to techno.

I was gonna post a new thread about whether or not I should try and incorporate things into 'techno', but I have decided that I'll try it. If it fails and the gate-keepers decide it's not defined as 'techno' then, well, I've lost nothing.


Time to experiment (for me anyway)

You mean early nineties detroit techno?

[jordanneke]

Yep, but without the style and class

[over9000]

Iam torn between some of the oppinions here..
Ofc sophisticated music is nice and valuable from an artistic view
When iam in the zone at a party, also a simplish tune will make me dance (even more if its a banger with a nice groove)

That said the techno scene atm is cringe level 9000
It has nothing to do with anything.. i know a few techno chaps that are 10 years younger than me and they are nice persons, but techno is just pure unpolitical rave time for them. Thats not neccesarily bad but i would wish for more..
Ive been to a club lately where you could purchase the droogs at the bar (credit card only) and then the house pusher would approach you and hand over the goods.
I wonder how they do their accounting

[Lost to the Void]

Iam torn between some of the oppinions here..
Ofc sophisticated music is nice and valuable from an artistic view
When iam in the zone at a party, also a simplish tune will make me dance (even more if its a banger with a nice groove)

That said the techno scene atm is cringe level 9000
It has nothing to do with anything.. i know a few techno chaps that are 10 years younger than me and they are nice persons, but techno is just pure unpolitical rave time for them. Thats not neccesarily bad but i would wish for more..
Ive been to a club lately where you could purchase the droogs at the bar (credit card only) and then the house pusher would approach you and hand over the goods.
I wonder how they do their accounting

I don't think the choice is between simplistic and sophisticated.
It's about original and derivative/cloned.~ You can still do simplistic and original. The whole mnml scene did that to the Nth degree and there were plenty of original records that came out of that movement.

The point really, is that the guys who just threw a 909 and SH101 through a fucked mixer, got away with it because it was fresh at the time.
Now people are doing the same but it`s false. They are trying to reproduce the lack of access to good gear and desperate determination of artists operating in a vacuum, but without the latter, it`s just repetition of an already established trope.
I don`t need your Jeff Mills copies. I have the original, so your (the colloquial you, not you specifically) spacey blips and raw 909 are just a really bad Led Zeppelin cover band. It`s like Alien compared to Aliens vs Predator.

[Evert]

Interesting topic.

I feel like a possible future path might be more of a hybrid between "purist" techno and other genres.
Instead of looking inward and copying a working formula for cookie cutter tunes, I think it would be better to look outward.
The artists I follow and look up to seem to do this anyway.

Also, what even is techno these days? In Belgium, every track that has a four to the flour kick seems to get this genre label.
That's a topic for another discussion though.

[Críoch]

Carbon tax techno.

Send it away t'fuck & be done with it.

[subvers^v]

...pure unpolitical rave time.

Very much so. Like back when you could make tracks on the playstation with preset samples, good fun for five minutes but ultimately that's all it was and all it ever would/could be...cartoon techno...

[over9000]

Though what has to be said about todays techno parties, is that you have alot more safe spaces and awareness teams etc. Dont know how that is with big festivals, long time that ive been to one..

Musically ypur probably right void, it has to be a good mix of artistic concepts, simplicity, groove and drive
And thats rare to find in the vast mass of tracks being produced..
But the gems are and have been always there imo

[subvers^v]

Though what has to be said about todays techno parties, is that you have alot more safe spaces and awareness teams etc.

That in itself is sad, imo, as it suggests a lack of togetherness that should really be a key element.

I was reading about a girl who got jabbed in the leg while queuing for a nightclub. Nobody picked up on it and she spent the night in hysterics. It was only when she went to doc the next day that it was picked up.

If that happened back when I was out clubbing, someone would have got a kicking and it wouldn't happen again ..