well it's not entirely the distro's fault for how thing's are, if producers keep knuckling under the pressure as it were and keep churning out what the distro's want, then the distro's will just demand more. What's known as a vicious circle. Make the break and find a distro that's smaller, and will allow free near free reign for what you want to do. Wether or not you own a label, just get in touch with the more smaller independant distro's, and if what you have to offer is truely something awesome id bet more often than not the bigger distro's will take what you have. I know exactly how it works re the "they wont take a chance on smaller names" argument, i've had my share of those troubles believe me, but so does everyone, and if you wanna get past that you gotta keep cracking at it. Either that or hook up with a bigger name who does have a bit of clout with the distro's, but even then it doesnt gaurentee sales or a popular ep.

I think too much thought just throws up more problems, and ultimately will make your tracks sound more and more like the sound your trying to get away from. I find it nice to have a serious think about old memories, club nights, magic weekends etc ive had in the past and use this as insipiration for tracks that capture emotions. Get some real music in there with the hard loops, throw out this rulebook that seem's to do the round's that states it has to be 140bpm, distorted and just consisting of uberschall loops. I mean, they are good loops in places, but they were great 5 years ago, know what i mean?

just throwout that rule book, put all your fave artists out of your mind for a few hours and thinkin that so and so is the future of hard techno, he or she is the future of hard techno and just open your sequencer, and get working. I personally dont think those names mentioned above are the future, they've been around a few years now and in all honesty their older works are much much better than what they are doing now. The point being, no one knows the future of hard techno. There could be a little guy from the back streets of darkest Russia or somewhere with these sonically blinding hard techno tracks just waiting to turn the whole thing around. I bet 6, 7 years ago people didnt think things would be how they are now, so its practically impossible to say how things will be in the future. We can all make a good estimation based on current trends of course, but no one can know for sure.