Thank you. I've been kicking myself over this one. THis area of techno is undiscovered country for me. It requires so much extra thought than the usual "acidtrash" stuff which did live up to it's name. Before I was very much of the attitude "heres another f*ckin wicked acid riff" and sod the rest of it but having played it live I found myself bailing out of tracks two soon because I was getting bored of it and I've found that you can't really do many interesting things with vocals or basslines if you've got too much acid going on. It's just too busy to give it space. I'm finding with this osrt of techno I can make the basslines I want using the samples I want and theres still room for the noises I want to use.

I also got very tired of the "that's not a real 303" debate. Personally I don't much care if the acid line is good but the only way synthetic acid sounds good is when it's heading into hard house teritorywith the rest of the track being synthetic. Although I do like hard house or select examples I'm finding it just doesn't push any buttons in me for more than 10 minutes after which it gets too repetetive to bother with.

I'm much more inclined to experiment and follow my own ideas now I've ceased trying to emulate and I'm finding my techno experiments far more rewarding and certainly more challenging. I've booked a session with Mr Calver to see what I can learn from that should be interesting. I'm now making the music that's in my head and not what the acid line dictates so I've never been more excited to be producing. All I have to do is work out how the hell I make it loud enough to make it sit right with other peoples music I love. Instead of a track taking 8 hours I'm now on day three of the same track and I'm still not happy with it. No more creative conveyor belts.

If you need to say I told uyou so, please go ahead. I'm listening now.