Quote Originally Posted by crime
It still sounds like pure product than anything else, and I think the popularity of this kind of stuff is down to the fact that it's easy to mix.. Fair enough having dj tools, but you've got to have the skills to go with it, and to be honest it ends up with every dj playing the same records, trying to do the mills imitation or blending trax together which is pretty boring... How many different styles of music can you incorperate into a banging loop? And before you start saying "Jazz" and "Funk" I don't really think stealing a one bar loop really indicates any diversity.. I like stuff hard, but it's gotta be interesting, and have movement and change... I've always wondered this with loop records, why bother to cut a whole side when just a lock groove would have done...
This is why we've ended up with a scene thats just full of people who all want to be up there djing, whilst the people who were just digging the music have all gone home... Nothing wrong with wanting to DJ, but I wouldn't really say that any of the hard loop producers are doing anything that wasn't being done 5 years ago.... The real innovative stuff is probably pretty unpalatable to most techno crowds unfortunatly, some would say it's unlistenable, but you would have never heard anything that sounds like it before.. That's TRUE innovation...
I agree with you on your lock groove point, many loop techno records need to only hang around for about a quarter of the time they do. What you are missing here though is the subject of this thread which refers to innovators and Lekebusch has undoubtedly been an innovator to some degree. Whether he still is is another story, innovative would probably not be the word, although he still makes some very good records. The hard loop was dismissed in the same way five years ago as well but it's still here, no-one claimed that it's all innovative and just because Mills started something doesn't mean that we all have to say that's a Mills imitation, that's like saying that all dub music is just a Lee Scratch Perry imitation and that they should all move on. Mills just happened to be the creator of it that's all, some people now make good stuff, others make shit stuff, many producers though have evolved.

Let the people who innovate stand up and be counted then, and if the music becomes more palatable to the techno crowds then great, part of the resposibility lies with DJ's playing and pushing new styles of techno or with labels who are willing to support new styles of techno, the rest just lies with the crowds and if they are willing to accept it. Hard looped techno is probably more popular than it has ever been, and if people are into it you can't really argue with that...