Quote Originally Posted by tioneb

the early techno tracks sound nowadays badly produced etc, but they are still lengendary. WHY ? just because the founders of techno (whoeveru think they are) used some drum machines, some synths in a total different way : they just throwed to the bin the manual and started programming un-probable combinations of paramaters, creating one of the most innovative and influential music in the last decades.

since that time, techno producers have just copied the same formula, trying to make people they have the "distinctive" sound becasue of some mastering skill or some philosophic background erm erm

now with the new synths and all the free vstis / vst, its just time to create new combinations and push them over their limits, and im sure techno, though staying some patterned music, will sound a lot newer !
well, you probably know by now that i'm a HUGE fan of the old chicago and detroit stuff, but to be fair, you hear a lot of the same juno and dx7 sounds in those old tracks. almost all tracks had 808 and 909 drums, etc. so i really don;t think, from a purely sonic perspective, that sounds were more diverse back then.

what i do think is that techno in its infancy was more open, less defined. since no one knew what techno was--aside from that it was futurist, electronic dance music--artists just made what came to them, and people played it in clubs. i think there are artists out there who still do that, but maybe fewer than before.

the other problem i see is that when a new sound comes out, it's almost instantly institutionalized...case in point, ghostly/spectral. i've been close to those guys for years, and watched the label grow from an out-of-the-living-room operation into what it is now, but also seen the parameters of what music they put out shrink at the same rate that the label has grown in popularity...