im with Sunil on this one really, some excellent points made there. Of course there are always new people getting into techno but more often than not the newer heads getting into it get that excited by what they are getting into, understandably, that any of them trying their hand at the more productive side of things usually end up borrowing too much from their influences. I truely believe as a producer, you dont really come into your own for a few years until you've realised that alot of the ideals that techno stands for, or should stand for, are indeed a big crock of shit. The saying itself "forward thinking" is pretty much null and void these days, as there really is no one genuinely throwing amazingly new shit up in the air that made people stop and think like they did when say Mills was on fire, or when Luke Slater was pumping out the Plannetary Assault stuff.

another saying like that is "next level shit" that seems to get bandied around alot here. Again, certainly imo, its such a worthless and non-sequential saying, as i truely believe there is no one doing "next level shit". There are people moving on from their own sound sure, but this is just purely boredom on their part, or in worst parts there are people cashing in or moving genre's totally. Using guy's like Dave drummer maybe isnt the best example, because whilst being really good at what they do, some of these guys happily release on Hard house labels and do hard house remixes and stuff so there's no point really getting confused when their records end up in the Hard house sections on websites or in records stores. I personally dont see anything "techno" in doing records for hard house labels, or doing mix cd's for Tidy Trax like Mark has, im not saying its a wrong thing to do, by all means anyone can do what they want really, but just dont be confused or annoyed when the line between something like hard house and techno gets thinner with things like that going on.

in terms of producers i honestly dont think anyone is "forward thinking" at the moment, but there are still people who are keeping it fresh at least, off the top of my head i would include Landstrumm, Bill Youngman, Jamie Lidell just in terms of performance and originality really, but there are artists out there who are not labelled techno but are more "forward thinking" than about 90% of techno out right now.

check out the Burial album to see what i mean. Or even something lighter like Jackson and his computer band

There's ton's of fresher music that still has the ideals and potential to excite like techno used to as a whole, just a case of looking outside the usual suspects and having a good look