Quote Originally Posted by DannyBlack View Post
This is probably just projection on my part but they stood for everything. When I first got into techno it felt faceless and exciting. Not driven by image as much as the rest of music had become, but driven by passion. Art I suppose. Maybe this was me projecting what I wanted out of it onto it. I dunno. But the minimal entity seemed to suck it out.
Nah, because it was "faceless" you projected onto it what you wanted.
There has always been commercial techno, vip, champaign, sunglasses in the dark image conscious people making it.
The acid techno side of things was connected to the free party scene, so it had a more fringe society ethic, but as soon as people had to use it to pay the mortgage I think it changed a bit. But it was still part of (more so than all other brands of techno) something that stood for something. Anti establishment, political anarchy, freedom etc
You could even say, apart from squawtin and his fragrance brand etc that minimal is even less image driven, as there is less physical image.
Hardwax releases being generally white label and anonymous, and they very much drive the sound at the moment.

When techno was at it`s height, and Beyer and the like were doing their commercial loop-techno thing. That was no more or less lifeless than minimal is now, there was an underground in techno that was reacting against all that, in the same way that people are reacting against minimal.
The difference is that the people that were into that loopy sound, are now reacting against mnml, but for me, a lot of the stuff that gets raved about now with all the "techno was better in 199*" was quite commercial and predictable at the time.

Horses for courses.
Minimal means as much now to those who generally believe in the music, and not the scene, as it did for any previous incarnation of techno.

Personally I feel more passion in some, not all, minimal being made today, because there is obvious investment of time going into some of the music.
Musicality has been brought to the game as opposed to mashing any old loops together and calling it techno, you can feel the work that has gone into the production values. The music seems to be getting more musical, and less DJ-ey, if that makes sense.
Techno in the past has been kinda looked down on by some as having low production values and a culture of anyone can throw it together. Which has both positives and negatives.

I`m not a massive fan of mainstream minimal, but I`ve never really been much of a fan of mainstream anything, so I`m still finding creative, passionate, interesting and futuristic music.