Quote Originally Posted by Geoff Dogma
Do you think so? I think it's just starting to really open up now .. there are techno nights on every weekend .. Sativae is back monthly, we're doing our thing, UTI are going strong, Pure just filled the Studio's to capacity, Digital are doing well, there's another two hard nights starting at the Venue which are being run by some of the free party crews, Slam vs Bugged Out is attracting some big names, something for everyone surely?

Are we really seen as purists? That's not our intention at all .. quite the opposite in fact.
Interesting - and good to hear! I haven't lived in Edinburgh now for 3 years, and I've only been back once in the last 10 months. Every time prior to that a lot of the people I knew from the Apex/Pillbox days (respect for Apex Geoff, another wicked night) said that the scene had lost it's fun, a lot of nights weren't doing that well, there was too many politics involved and a lot of people were just generally becoming very arsey about their techno. We were at a party where I overheard someone say "anyone who plays loops is shit" and another person slating the harder techno that the likes of Cluster and RAW put out. 3 or 4 years ago these would've rocked the dancefloor, and while I'll agree that non-stop loops becomes dull as hell after about half an hour, I think they have a huge role to play in the techno scene.

I don't see the Dogma promoters as purists - at the end of the day you're putting on a night that's showcasing what you want to hear, and bringing in different artists, and total respect for that. I get the feeling if you were purists you wouldn't have booked Chris Liberator a couple of years ago.

Unfortunately quite a few people seem to have seen your night as meaning "hard techno (in the conventional sense) is bad", which is obviously not what you're trying to achieve. As with a lot of purists, I think this is a case of people trying to look cooler than they really are.

The last Dogma I went to - DJ Rush (see, it's been a while) - had a very different atmosphere from what I was used to at the Studios. The dancefloor was rammed, but there just didn't seem to be the atmosphere and the friendliness that was there in the days of Pillbox. It's almost as if it had become untrendy to have a happy face and be civil. And techno is the last scene that would ever be trendy! It just compiled for me everything I'd been told by the people I knew up in Edinburgh who still went out.

But what you've said cheers me up a lot :) I'm gonna be up again in October sometime, so if you know of anything good on (what weekend are you doing Dogma that month?) let me know, and hopefully it'll completely shatter my current opinions of the Edinburgh techno scene.