who or what is forward thinking techno?

im constantly reading about how techno is stale, dead on its arse etc..

so who is making forward thinkin techno? what trax are so out there at the moment that they're "future".

i have a funny feeling i know who is gonna name certain artists and people could very easily guess what artists i'd probably name..

so does it not all boil down to individual choice of sub-genres/styles? ie: if i'm a minimal fan then surely im gonna cite a minimal artist or if im a hardtechno fan then surely my idea of forward thinking is gonna be a hardtechno artist?

what i really wanna get to by people naming artists is - is the scene really stale and unimaginative or are we just hearing opinions of people that might not like the style that we might like?

just a thought..

is it jus me, or are all the 'its boring' crew all long serving older heads, while the kids are still up there with the grins & smiles ?

I don't know. There's very little 'straight' or conventional techno that's "forward thinking". This whole forward thinking ideal is a stupid romantic illusion that techno fans have wallowed in for too long now... to the point that it's total garbage. Techno as a genre is not very innovative anymore, and a lot of times the producers taking chances or experimenting don't sell, or get very limited media interest. Inigo Kennedy for instance, is a good example.

Personally I think the whole focus on techno only is a waste of time, techno won't sound interesting anymore unless combined with other non-(traditional) techno elements. The original wave of techno producers weren't wondering about how to make the future sound or any of that, they just did it and the name was born. But techno has run its course, only the less sentimental and daring will be willing to see this, and perhaps try to make something different of their own which might not be techno at all, but is 'techno' in spirit, i.e. different/new blah blah. People have got too hung up on the word "techno", to the point that it has to sound a certain way or else it's not techno - which turns out to be a very contradictory view or stance to have. Techno has had its day in the sun, it's now up to people to form hybrid styles and perhaps stumble upon something new, maybe even with a new name! There's always going to be room for techno, but I think now above most times...it needs to be combined with something else.

Anyway, at the end of the day, techno is also just about making a good tune that will rock a dancefloor... and once that's still happening and the quality is there, then everything cool :)


Regarding producers, here's a few off the top of my head...

Adam X : Pushing industrial techno in a new direction.
Surgeon: His material almost always has a twist or edge.
Neil Landstrumm: Techno to the core.
Richie Hawtin: Like it or not, he has spawned a whole new movement in minimal, and is still an innovator.

Oh, and possibly the two greatest techno tunesmiths of recent times: Chris McCormack and Luke Slater... but they don't do too much anymore :disgust:

some good points there sunil.. but it just seems to emphasise my point. we both know that you dont find techno very effective anymore. thats your own personal thing and you're perfectly entitled to that opinion. but if there are people still digging techno and still getting excited by it then surely its doing its job?

there are soooo many genres out there now that to really push boundries in one often means falling into another. 10 years ago a techno producer gettin a little funkier than most was still making funky techno.. these days he's liable to be labelled as tech-house or something entirly differant so it ceases to become techno. which is why "People have got too hung up on the word "techno", to the point that it has to sound a certain way or else it's not techno" - because to step outside it is to not be making "techno"

case in point - davethedrummer.. i've seen the guys records labelled as hard techno, techno, club techno, hard house blah blah.. how can we expect to have a foeard thinking scene if everytime we try we're pushed into a differant scene?

rant over.... for now.

I still love techno, I'm just not that excited by much new stuff, however I still find enough to keep me going... hell, I even managed to muster a chart last week! In general though, most techno is going over old ground, as it has done for years... the thing now is that I don't need to have all the new records, as I already have mountains of them at home, that were released in better times. Again though, I'll re-iterate... I still find new techno records I like, just not as many.

Re: Dave The Drummer - I don't think he's ever been in the bracket of "forward thinking" except for maybe the early days of the London acid stuff, when they were genuinely onto something new - but he has certainly been at the forepront and pushing the London style sound more than most over the years. I wouldn't worry too much about the labels put on his music, and perhaps he doesn't either... at least he isn't being totally pigeon holed, which is a bigger problem for some producers.

not classing him as forward thinking (although some of his latest stuff is getting quite weird and "out there") , just using his releases as an example of how a "techno" producer can be pulled across many genres when he does something thats not totally "techno"

Well, sub genres are an annoying sometimes alright - although sometimes they're necessary. I think the biggest annoyance in this regard would be caused by certain music being labelled as something that it is not... or in general with new pointless sub genre names being thought up of, for the sake of it.

Personally, I've wanted for a long time to have a "Total shite" section at Spindizzy, but we haven't got around to it yet :)

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Originally Posted by Sunil

Personally, I've wanted for a long time to have a "Total shite" section at Spindizzy, but we haven't got around to it yet :)

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:lol: :lol:

just re-label all that chart shit you got on the wall and problem is sorted :lol:

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Originally Posted by rhythmtech

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Originally Posted by Sunil

Personally, I've wanted for a long time to have a "Total shite" section at Spindizzy, but we haven't got around to it yet :)

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:lol: :lol:

just re-label all that chart shit you got on the wall and problem is sorted :lol:

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Will do ;) Did you enjoy those Robbie Williams and Craig David singles you bought last time you were in by the way?

i only bought them to look at the pics of the boys chests!!

The future of techno is in the people who have a genuine love for it.

well said..

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The future of techno is in the people who have a genuine love for it.

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Exactly.

My post in Holotropics' Feel the Pressure, Love the Pressure' topic kinda relates to this thread...

in so much as, & to add to Antonio's, you have to have a deep heartfelt desire to want to create music, in the genre you have chosen, with a forward thinking perspective...

Setting yourself this task generates a pressure of it's own which can either be capitalised on or leave you with a sense of futility...

You can march into the studio with a sense of strength and/or purpose...

Or you can meander in hoping for the best...

All depends on the desire to produce...

I can see the point of the thread, there being the difficulty of using different influences and combining these with what is classed as Techno elements, which can be your only starting point, and then this being classified in the other genre and not techno even though this was your initial building block...

Doing it and finding out is party to the innovation process... (imo)

Really enjoyed the posts in this thread by the way... gets you thinkin about the future... :pray:

A quality like 'forward thinking' surely doesn't exist in the music itself? After all music doesn't think...but its creator does...and in my book any truly creative imaginative and talented producer of any sort of music is probably going to be 'forward thinking' by default

So I dont think that techno is automatically forward thinking , theres loads of crap techno records which are anything but. It is however nice to have a genre of music I love so much associated with the concept of forward thinking...however accurate it is!!

I think its up to everyone to keep on coming up with truly original new ideas, try things which havent been done and "shouldnt", by the popular collective yardstick of the moment, work...then more and more techno can be honestly spoken of as truly forward thinking


On a side point it is interesting that people are talking about techno going minimal again...it reminds me of a few years ago when everything went a bit loopy...eventually punters got turned off and a whole new wave of techno came through which kicked ass

im with Sunil on this one really, some excellent points made there. Of course there are always new people getting into techno but more often than not the newer heads getting into it get that excited by what they are getting into, understandably, that any of them trying their hand at the more productive side of things usually end up borrowing too much from their influences. I truely believe as a producer, you dont really come into your own for a few years until you've realised that alot of the ideals that techno stands for, or should stand for, are indeed a big crock of shit. The saying itself "forward thinking" is pretty much null and void these days, as there really is no one genuinely throwing amazingly new shit up in the air that made people stop and think like they did when say Mills was on fire, or when Luke Slater was pumping out the Plannetary Assault stuff.

another saying like that is "next level shit" that seems to get bandied around alot here. Again, certainly imo, its such a worthless and non-sequential saying, as i truely believe there is no one doing "next level shit". There are people moving on from their own sound sure, but this is just purely boredom on their part, or in worst parts there are people cashing in or moving genre's totally. Using guy's like Dave drummer maybe isnt the best example, because whilst being really good at what they do, some of these guys happily release on Hard house labels and do hard house remixes and stuff so there's no point really getting confused when their records end up in the Hard house sections on websites or in records stores. I personally dont see anything "techno" in doing records for hard house labels, or doing mix cd's for Tidy Trax like Mark has, im not saying its a wrong thing to do, by all means anyone can do what they want really, but just dont be confused or annoyed when the line between something like hard house and techno gets thinner with things like that going on.

in terms of producers i honestly dont think anyone is "forward thinking" at the moment, but there are still people who are keeping it fresh at least, off the top of my head i would include Landstrumm, Bill Youngman, Jamie Lidell just in terms of performance and originality really, but there are artists out there who are not labelled techno but are more "forward thinking" than about 90% of techno out right now.

check out the Burial album to see what i mean. Or even something lighter like Jackson and his computer band

There's ton's of fresher music that still has the ideals and potential to excite like techno used to as a whole, just a case of looking outside the usual suspects and having a good look

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Originally Posted by eyeswithoutaface

There's ton's of fresher music that still has the ideals and potential to excite like techno used to as a whole, just a case of looking outside the usual suspects and having a good look

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Very true indeed.

I went to a Monza night in Space and heard someone dj techno that I've never heard before.
Just very futuristic sounding - the sounds used, the space, the way melody and rhythmn worked together. It was remarkable. I don't know who it was playing as well, which pisses me off no end.

There's so much techno about that if there isn't someone stewarding you its easy to get lost.

Forward thinking techno to me is anyone who is pushing a new sound, rather than rehashing a tired old one or playing comfortable classic material to please crowds.

right.. i've just been listening to a good bit of stuff the last day or two trying to figure out what artists are forward thinking and unfortunatly i couldnt pick out any one in perticular BUT i found myself picking out single tracks rather than artists so heres my "forward thinking" trax.

1. glenn wilson - the return - planet rhythm (i love the abstratness of it)
2. sebastian marx - no lyricz - open source (the sounds are so differant to anything else at the moment
3. glenn wilson - salvation - arms (i choose this as i think its the best arms release and it really brought about a change in wilson's sound IMO)
4. davethedrummer - hotwire - infectious USA (totally took the acid sound in a new direction and im still not sure if it was even meant to be acid!!)


some will probably argue with these choices as they're very 4/4 but for me these have been the most forward thinking releases in the past year.

Its a narrow slice of techno, but I can see where you are coming from.

Not sure how forward thinking a single release can be.
A series maybe - because it means that someone is pushing something new (eg Beyer's mad eye work) but I think a single track can only really be judged as a single track.

Just my 2c though...

forward thinking music would be defined as that which
reflects an ideal
represents a heartfelt attitude
is a voice that reaches out
at any given moment or cycle...

...irrespective of market analysis, fads, trends or bandwagons.

techno is fluid, it changes, it keeps changing.
New styles within it come along, and remain in favour for a while, then everyone tries to make it, then it becomes more mainstream, then the stragglers catch up, then some creative people get bored and move on, while others latch onto said sound and rinse it for eternity.

there`s nothing wrong with this. the need to move on is a natural response from any creative and explorative artist.

Some techno gets given a new name, so people don`t consider it to be techno any more
It`s not really about forward thinking for me, more about change and trying not to stand still.
Although there`s nothing wrong with keeping old and good stuff with you at the same time.

there are some people who have never heard a techno record before who may hear some and think it is the most amazing futuristic, forward thinking music there is, so in a way, it`s all relative.