After the rise and fall of prog house, club trance and the big dance bands the indie kids crossed over to, Techno is about the one form of dance music left with any credibility. Techno rode out the "death of dance music" all the pseudo style journalists proclaimed a few years back, and now they are bandwaggoning back on it. When Jeff Mills played at Lost last year it got a "knowing" reference in a 'whats hot whats not' syle barometer in the fashion section of the guardian.

When we went to see him my missus spotted two really uncomfortable looking peeps in the crowd, and accused them of being guardian journalists, to which they sheepishly responded that they were.

Whilst I personally dig the 'minimal' scene (for me represented by M_NUS, Hawtin, Villalobos, Magda etc) you can argue that it is a little faddy. People like hawtin turn in an excepetional performance and have mass appeal. There are a lot of people listening to techno now who probably will drop out again in a year or two...

I don't think you can understate the importance of techno surviving the fall in popularity of ecstasy. Drugs have and always will be important, but I don't think people appreciated that people listened to techno for more reasons than just having beat to get fuked up to. In the words of Derrick May:

"I don't take a pill to feel the funk"