Right so I'm taking this discussion over from the 30th minimal thread this week. I said there wasn't too much for good, solid hard techno coming out these days. For me and my tastes, this is still the case. Looking up at those lists, there are some great labels on there...some are legendary. Unfortunately, a lot of those great labels are finished, or haven't put a release out in a year or two. Another good portion of the lists are labels that have popped up in the past couple years that have done some impressive stuff, but lack the proper beats to achieve that legendary status as some of the labels of yesteryear.

While I'm not completely disillusioned (sp?) with hard techno, I just can't find enough worth buying these days. When I was younger and into the record-buying binge I'd buy like 10 hard techno records a week. Right now I'm broke and I guess its kind of fortunate (for my wallet) that I am lucky to find 10 good records every couple months. Now, when I think of good, hard quality techno I imagine names like Heiko Laux, Steve Rachmad, Petar Dundov, Surgeon, Holy Ghost, Jeff Mills, Beyer in a pissed off mood, Patrik Skoog in top form, etc. For me, not enough of this stuff is coming out as much anymore. Yeah, there's a lot of primate-ish, oliver giacomotto type shit coming out lately and from time to time there is a good one but if I'm going for the hard party techno I'd rather just stick to all the bad ass records I bought from 99-2003. I will say that one of my favorite sources for hard techno right now happens to be audio assault and I'm not trying to be biased here. They tend to hit all corners of the harder side of the spectrum.

Now with the congo bongo techno like Ben Sims, Paul Mac, yadda yadda yadda, I'm also have troubles finding stuff as well. It seems the only techno of this style that really catches me lately is coming from that UK stable, or Joris Voorn, etc. A lot of the rest of it coming out, for me anyway, kinda seems faked or the producer tried too hard. For the Ingoma crew you can tell its in their blood. Plus they do a great job of slowing the bpm's down a bit to get that swing and funk going, but you would think its a tad faster without getting a proper bpm count.