A History of Techno - Transcript and Sources

Transcript and sources for this video: https://youtu.be/7fx0JvKeLrA
Many of the tracks in here are from the excellent compilation I was part of here: https://mmxximnml.bandcamp.com/album/mmxximnml

TRACK ID: Altinbas - Tide (Original Mix)

I believe Techno is one of the most important genres in electronic music. I also think it’s maybe one the most misunderstood. If you ask someone who listens to electronic music in passing what techno is, their response is going to be completely different from the answer of someone who DJs or produces one of its many, many subgenres. Maybe that’s why it’s so misunderstood: since its inception in 1980s Detroit it’s undergone so many splits and shifts that certain subgenres of techno are unrecognizable compared to others. But in its diversity lies its strength, a testament to the transformative power of music. And make no mistake: in all its forms, techno is powerful. From surreal electro-afro cyber funk to brain-melting minimal to apocalyptic storming warehouse beats, techno is meant to be felt through every cell of your body.

TRACK ID: Stewart Walker - Red Sun Over Tobin Bridge

I wanted to make this video not only to share the history and diversity of techno music with you but also to educate myself. I went into this knowing the tip of the iceberg when it came to this genre, and now I feel like I have a better understanding and respect for this type of music.

If you’re ready, I’d like to take you back to Detroit in the 1980s, introduce you to techno’s roots, and then across the world over the next 4 decades as techno morphed and grew into what it is today.

This is a history of techno.

The Origins of Techno: 1980s Detroit

TRACK ID: Jeremy Blake - Trunc

To understand why Detroit became such fertile soil for techno music, we have to understand the rise, and unfortunate fall, of the city. 

Detroit was once a shining jewel of American industry. Henry Ford created the assembly line in his Highland Park plant in 1910, which just was the beginning of the city’s dominance and flourishment under the automobile industry. During WWI Ford started hiring African Americans to work at his plants to close the labor shortage, and the combination of good work and relatively high pay led to a massive population boom in the city. Post-WWII saw high levels of prosperity as the auto industry had its most profitable quarter-century. 

Through a combination of housing policies and transportation planning choices, Detroit was largely segregated racially in and around the 1960s. Wealthier whites who could obtain home loans lived in the suburbs, and the working blacks lived in inner-city communities. 

Around this time the auto industry was undergoing a shift as General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler started buying up all the smaller automobile manufacturers. As “the big three” consolidated, they also decentralized away from Detroit, moving the manufacturing jobs away from the city where hard-fought union battles for high wages had made business less prosperous. Between 1945 and 1957 the Big Three built 25 new manufacturing plants in the metropolitan area, not one of them in the city itself.

As the remaining plants shut down, so did the businesses that catered to their workers. This process was cumulative, sending an economic shock across the city that would only get worse as the leadership of Detroit failed to diversify the city’s industry beyond the automotive industry.

Racial tensions in Detroit were high. Racially motivated sabotage of housing opportunities for Blacks and other complex factors led to multiple large-scale riots, including the Detroit Race Riot of 1943, which took Federal troops 3 days to get under control, and the 1967 riots, which lasted for 5 days and claimed the lives of 43 people. Hundreds were injured, over 2000 stores were looted or burned, almost 400 families were rendered homeless or displaced, and over 400 buildings were burned or damaged enough to be demolished.

With compounding economic insecurity, constant racial and economic tensions, and a steady outflow of businesses, Detroit was in a great deal of pain. A shell of its former self, it became notorious for violent crime, empty buildings, and crumbling warehouses. However, it’s within this bleak frame of urban decay that gave rise to and nurtured the flame of one of the most important genres of electronic music ever created.

The Belleville Three

TRACK ID: Jeremy Blake - Layzy

Belleville is a suburb of Detroit, located about 30 miles southwest of the city’s downtown. In the 1980s, three school friends would meet up and become the creators of techno’s original sound. They were Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson, also known as The Belleville Three.

Juan Atkins and Derrick May first met in 1981 when they were students at Belleville High School. Atkins was already experimenting with drum machines and synthesizers, inspired by bands like Kraftwerk. Juan was the son of a music promotor and is widely regarded as the “teacher” or “initiator” of the group. He and Derrick started trading mixtapes, which included some of their early inspirations such as Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, and Parliment. From there they formed a DJ collective called Deep Space Soundworks and started DJing at High School Parties. Later, Kevin Saunderson would join the group with a shared love of music, especially the eclectic mix of soul, funky, new wave, hip hop, and rock being spun on the radio by DJ The Electrifying Mojo.

Atkins had been a musical kid, playing guitar in bands and convincing his grandma to buy him a Korg MS-10 at the age of 15. He bought his own Pro One a little later. Reading the book Futureshock by Alvin Toffler led him to think about escape from what Toffler called an inevitable “super-industrial society”. Toffler argued that an accelerated rate of technological and social change leaves people disconnected and suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation"—future shocked. Surrounded by the urban decay of Detroit, I can imagine that Atkins already felt that stress and disorientation, and it led him to experiment with creating music inspired by a vision far removed from the crumbling Motor City around him.

Deep Space Soundworks started DJing Detroit’s party circuit, and by 1981 The Electrifying Mojo was playing the mixes recorded by the trio. They also traveled to Chicago to investigate the house music scene there, which had emerged from the disco scene before it. This influence also got folded into the sound the Belleville Three started experimenting with. 

Funk, soul, and disco had always had a place in Detroit, and Atkins started channeling that energy into drum machines and synthesizers. 

TRACK ID: Cybotron - Alleys of Your Mind

One of the first singles from this period is Atkin’s “Alleys of Your Mind” released by Juan Atkins and Rick Davis in 1981. This was under the group name “Cybotron”. Atkins had met Rick at Washtenaw Community College and the two went on to release tracks together as Cybotron and separately, with Rick releasing under the alias 3070. The two subsequently signed to a label and then split, leaving Atkins to release tracks as Model 500 on his label, Metroplex.

TRACK ID: Model 500 - No UFOs

In 1985 Atkins, as Model 500, would release the groundbreaking track “No UFOs”. Uptempo, funky, confident, banging, heavy on percussion, and repetition, with a huge bassline and unrelenting vibe, this track is considered by many to be one of the earliest pure techno recordings. This track is also responsible for helping launch the Detroit techno sound from obscurity into the public consciousness. 

TRACK ID: Rhythm is Rhythm - Strings of Life

While most early Detroit techno used science fiction imagery to articulate their vision of a transformed society, Derrick May offered up an explosive alternative in 1987 with the track “Strings of Life” under his artist name “Rhythim is Rhythim” with collaborator Michael James. A now classic-sounding uplifting house piano groove is punctuated by a galloping beat and soaring string riffs. The piano groove was based on a piano sequence by James, who had been working on a piano ballad and played the riff into May’s sequencer. May took portions of the riff, chopped it up, and added the rest. 

This track exploded, and not just in Detroit. It hugely hit Britain during the country’s 1987 / 1988 house explosion. Detroit techno had just gone international in a big way. The city that burned and crumbled gave way to a new vision of the future. The soul of funk and disco transmuted through drum machines and sequencers and a gleaming afro-futuristic sentimentality into a sound that was ready to take the world by storm. 

TRACK ID: Cybotron - Techno City

Before we jump across the pond, let’s talk about the word “Techno”. Where did it come from? According to one source, it was Juan Atkins himself who coined the term when he released the track “Techno City” as Cybotron in 1984. I really like the way Jon Savage talks about this track in his article for the Guardian: 

It begins with a brief synthesized fanfare. Then comes the rhythm: choppy, insistent and clonky. A soulful solo vocal extemporises, before the hook comes in: "Ooh, techno city." A Detroit radio announcer robotically states "the time is 6.57am": sampled, sped up, slowed down and cut up, his voice will repeat on and off throughout the next six minutes.

The mood is straight out of We, Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian novel: you wake up, one of millions in the cold, regimented technopolis. Or you could just as easily be seeing in the dawn after an all-nighter, or at an insomniac/stoned night drive. The first verse doesn't kick in for two minutes, and it's simple: "Ooh, techno city, hope you enjoy your stay; welcome to techno city, you will never want to go away."

"You can look at the state of the city as a plus," Atkins told me in 1993. "When the new technology came in, Detroit collapsed as an industrial city, but Detroit is Techno City. We're at the forefront here."

"The idea was that a person could be born and raised in Techno City, the workers' city, but what he wanted to do was work his way to the cybodrome where artists and intellectuals reside. There would be no Moloch, but all sorts of diversions, games, electronic instruments. Techno City was the equivalent of the ghetto in Detroit, which is overlooked by the Renaissance Tower."

I love these quotes because it distills the essence of the inspiration for techno music as it formed in Detroit. Motor City had to die so Techno City could live. 

Techno in Europe: The 1990s

TRACK ID: Silicon Scally - Amino

While rooted in Detroit's underground, techno exploded in popularity across Europe in the late 80s and early 90s. The success of Chicago house music paved the way for techno to find a devoted audience. House music took root in Europe, especially in Italy, the UK, and Ibiza, creating an audience and infrastructure for electronic dance music that techno could tap into. 

You might be thinking “Hey, there was electronic music in Europe before that” and you would be right. You also might be thinking that a lot of the early Detroit house sounded a lot like Parliment mixed with Kraftwerk, and you would also be right. But Kraftwerk wasn’t a solitary phenomenon. From this New York Times article: “Europe was incubating its own nascent electronic-dance-music scene in the nineteen-seventies and eighties...Microgenres started sprouting as musical pollen spread across the continent: new beat, synth-pop, electronic body music."

One of the things I think is most interesting about Techno is its diversity in sound and as we saw the rise of regional techno scenes in the early 1990s, so did we start to get regional styles of the music. 

TRACK ID: Unique 3 - The Theme (Original Chill Mix)

Widely considered the first bleep techno single is Unique 3’s “The Theme”, released in 1988.

TRACK ID: LFO - LFO

“The Theme” opened the floodgates to a slew of new producers of the sound, eventually leading to the formation of the now hugely prolific and respected Warp Records in 1989. 

TRACK ID: Sweet Exorcist - Testone

If you want a perfect time capsule of bleep techno of the time, check out The Warp compilation Warp 10+2: Classics 89–92, released in 1999

TRACK ID: Chris Liebing - The Real Shranz (Part 1)

Meanwhile, Germany was putting its spin on the genre. Shranz, or “Hard Techno” is described as having faster tempos, between 140 and 160 bpm, and aggressive "whooshing" beat patterns, heavy compression, and straightforward song structures. Listening to the tracks on 1999’s release “The Real Shranz” by German producer and  you can hear far more industrial and minimal influences, with whooshing, crunching, driving percussion over unrelenting kicks and throbbing bass. 

TRACK ID: Chris Liebing - The Real Shranz (Part 2)

In part 2 of The Real Shranz, the atonal percussion assault is replaced by an atonal acidic synth line, on repeat to the point of hypnotism. This music would destroy you on a huge sound system. 

TRACK ID: New Scene - Out of Control

As an aside: while I believe techno as a genre and term should be attributed to the people of Detroit, it was also a term used in Germany even before some of the major Detroit releases. According to Wikipedia,

“In 1982, while working at Frankfurt's City Music record store, DJ Talla 2XLC started to use the term techno to categorize artists such as Depeche Mode, Front 242, Heaven 17, Kraftwerk and New Order, with the word used as shorthand for technologically created dance music."

TRACK ID: Cybotron - Industrial Lies

When you listen the Cybotron’s seminal album “Enter” you can hear so much more than the industrial pulse of Shranz. You can hear funk, guitar solos, Prince, Parliament, Gary Numan, and so much more. It was a condensation of genres into a new form that later refined itself into leaner, more abstract electronic forms.

TRACK ID: Matthew Dear - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)

If I had to pick an artist today putting out albums that hit in the same way as early techno I would be looking to Mathew Dear, whose work is always forward-thinking while also coming across as a box of crayons melted together with LSD sprinkled on top. It’s good shit.

TRACK ID: Ski Mask - 60681z

Anyways, Germany experienced a huge rise in club and rave culture during the 80s and 90s. Clubs inspired by the Chicago sound bumped acid house across the city and paved the way for techno to take root. In Munich around this time, the Negerhalle (1983–1989) and the ETA-Halle established themselves as the first acid house clubs in temporarily used, dilapidated industrial halls, marking the beginning of the so-called "hall culture" in Germany.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 opened up East B erlin to underground techno parties. It was also the first year for Berlin’s now-infamous Love Parade. Paul van Dyk once said that techno was the first area of ​​social life in Germany as a whole in which reunification took place.

It was during the 90s that Germany saw some of the most influential clubs in the history of electronic music open. Tresor in 1991, is the only one still open today, but others included the Planet, the Bunker, and E-Werk. Berghain, infamous in part for its door staff’s selection process, opened in 2004 and still throws parties that can last for days.

TRACK ID: Cabaret Voltaire - Sensoria

German producers started increasing the tempo and aggressiveness of the Detroit sound, developing their styles which went on to create other important genres of their own, like Hardcore and Trance. In the early 1990s there was a split between the Frankfurt techno crews and Berlin techno crews as to what the genre even was anymore. Producers and DJs in Frankfurt asserted that techno had already existed in Germany and had roots in groups like DAF, Cabaret Voltaire, and Suicide, while Berlin techno learned less about EBM acts and more about acid house and what it mutated into under the club scene there.

Listening to a track like Cabaret Voltaire’s “Sensoria” from 1984 you can hear much more of a kinship with tracks from Cybotron’s “Enter” than you can with the Shranz of Chris Leibing, but that’s the magic of techno: as the times and politics change so does the music.

TRACK ID: Joey Beltram - Energy Flash

One great example of differing 1990s styles of techno that were influencing regional techno subgenres in Europe is these two tracks by Joey Beltram and Jeff Mills. Joey Beltram's "Energy Flash" with its slower tempos, throbbing low end, acid-drenched stabs, and moaning vocal scream summer of love Berlin to me.

TRACK ID: Jeff Mills - The Bells

Jeff Mills’s “The Bells”, on the other hand, drives forward at a faster tempo with a distorted kick, stripped-back arrangement, almost atonal chord stabs, and a repeating structure reliant on contrast in timbre as opposed to any sort of harmonic diversity. The latter baffled me when I first heard it on headphones and didn’t make any sense until I FELT it at a club. This is music meant to vibrate you, this is true electronic body music.

TRACK ID: Green Velvet - The Percolator

Other styles were percolating (no pun intended) across Europe. 

TRACK ID: T99 - Anesthesia

Belgium was developing a subgenre of abrasive hardcore and the “neuro” style of techno. Belgium’s take blended New Beat, EBM, and techno into what’s been described as “apocalyptic, almost Wagnerian, bombastic techno"  due to its use of dramatic orchestral stabs and menacing synth tones that set it apart from earlier forms of electronic dance music. T.99’s Anasthasia, released in 1991, has all the hallmarks of what we associate with cheesy radio-play dance artists like C and C Music Factory, but way before it hit the airwaves in the US. 

TRACK ID: Frank de Wulf - Reforced

Frank De Wulf’s Reforced mixes show clear EBM influences with a dark repetitive beat and what’s becoming a hallmark of early techno: almost atonal acid riffs.

TRACK ID: Setup System - Fairy Dust

 Setup System’s “Fairy Dust” gives classic Belgium screech with what sounds like a thoroughly abused portamento riff and carnival nightmare orchestral bits.

In the background of this track, you can hear the beginnings of hardcore, which gave way to jungle and then drum and bass. In case it’s not clear: techno is one of the mother genres. 

TRACK ID: Jeremy Blake - I Feel Small

During the 90s Berlin’s love parade became a yearly pilgrimage for people from across the world and helped mint DJ superstars like Richie Hawtin, Sven Väth, and Carl Cox. Founded in 1989, the same year the wall fell, the event cemented Berlin as the techno capital of the world, in my opinion. It was originally conceived as a political demonstration for peace, but rapidly grew into a massive internationally-renowned electronic dance festival, attracting over 1 million attendees by 1997. Sadly, overcrowding became a serious issue, and in 2010 a crowd crush occurred that resulted in 21 deaths and over 500 injuries. This tragic event led to the event being shut down for good.

I Love Minimal Techno

TRACK ID: Orbital - Halcyon, Underworld - Born Slippy, Juno Reactor - God is God

Now that we’re in the 2000s, we can finally catch up with my first interactions with techno and how it rewired my brain in terms of thinking about what music can be. 

I didn’t know it until researching this video, but I had already consumed a fair amount of techno and techno-adjacent music before discovering minimal techno during the 2000s in San Francisco. 

TRACK ID: Members of Mayhem - Sonic Empire, The Immortals  - Mortal Kombat Theme Song

As we’ve seen so far, techno has worn so many faces that it’s almost impossible as a fan of electronic music to not like at least one of its sub-genres, or feel its influence on every other subgenre.

TRACK ID: Richie Hawtin - The Tunnel

It wasn’t until I discovered minimal that I really could say without a doubt that I loved techno, but it still baffled me until I felt it in the clubs in San Francisco.

My partner at the time was an old-school raver. He had lived in Berlin during the years the love parade was still happening, and had a huge collection of classic techno and trance vinyl he would spin at parties. He introduced me to Richie Hawtin’s music, first through his 2001 release DE9 - Closer to the Edit, and then later to DE9 - Transitions.

TRACK ID: Richie Hawtin We (all) Search

The DE9 series was Hawtin’s version of a “DJ Mix”, but to call them that was a disservice. These were continuous mixes that deconstructed the original tracks down to their quanta and rebuilt them as something completely new, and oh my god they were unlike anything I had ever heard before.

Deep, subtle, weird, hypnotic, fractal, groovy in ways I couldn’t possibly begin to understand. This was music that, under the influence, built entire worlds for you to live in. The music felt so small in so many ways, but on the right sound system, you LIVED in it. It was smart, it was fascinating, and I loved it so much.

We would spend nights at the End Up, 1015 Folsom, temple, public works, and whatever shitty hole in the wall had a sound system and a good DJ and soak in this stuff. I realized that these tiny sounds had a huge impact on the dance floor, and it led me to discover the world of minimal techno and its adjacent artists. Shout out to Claude Von Stroke, the Mothership crew, and all the DJs from the OG Konrol Crew. 

Let’s put on Robert Hood’s Minimal Nation and take a quick dive into the genre.

TRACK ID: Robert Hood - Minimal Nation

The two artists who are often credited for pioneering the style in the 90s are Robert Hood and Daniel Bell. Both artists are from Detroit, and it’s interesting because you can hear the influences of OG Detroit techno in these tracks while the rest of the techno world was pushing towards harder and harder genres like Gabber. They wanted to bring the groove back into the tracks, stripping them down to the bare essentials. 

TRACK ID: Kassel - Stations

In Germany, labels such as Kompakt in Cologne,  Rich Hawtin’s M-Nus, and Ellen Allien’s Bpitch in Berlin were championing the minimal sound. 

TRACK ID: Project 32 - Pastels

I lived and breathed everything coming from Kompakt in the 2000s and if you’re looking for an amazing collection of listening, check out the Kompakt Total compilations from that time.

Other hugely influential artists in minimal are Richardo Villalobos, who is still going strong today with a fantastic mix of minimal, house, and classic techno, Dubfire, whose remixes and originals were always absolutely insanely good, Basic Channel, Ellen Alien, Stephan Bodzin, Surgeon, and Wolfgang Voigt. 

I still have my original mixes up from that time in my life with some of my favorites over on Mixcloud if you’re interested, but a quick search for these artists on YouTube will give you TONS to listen to.

TRACK ID: Rod Modell - Cloud Over (Original Mix)

Like with all techno, minimal eventually had to grow out of being an insular genre and incorporate itself with newer styles, but it’s still going strong even though it looks and sounds a little different.

What Are The Genres?

With that said, let’s take a moment to just list the genres of techno you might encounter, where they started, and what they sound like. I can’t promise this is a definitive list, but it should be enough to get you started:

https://music.ishkur.com/

Detroit Techno

Already went over this, this is the motherland and origin of techno, so let’s take a look at Detroit techno in the last couple of years: 

As One - AsOne² (2023) - Neptunium

Edge Of The Visible Universe - Terrence Dixon - Mood Wings

DJ Bone - Further (2023) - Predestination Paradox

Shoutout to the now legendary Claude Von Stroke’s Who’s Afraid of Detroit as well

Bleep Techno

Late 1980s - Yorkshire, England - Britain’s attempt to make detroit and failing in a good way. 

Forgemasters - Track With No Name (1989)

LFO - LFO (1990)

Orbital - Chime

Acid Techno

Late 1980s, hailing from Chicago and Detroit

Frankie Bones - Baby Wants to Ride

Phuture - Acid Tracks

David Clarke - The Compass (Wink South Philly Acid Pass)

It's Not Intelligent…And It's Not From Detroit…But It's F**king 'Avin It

Hardtechno \ Schranz

Early 90s - Germany and Switzerland, eventually everywhere as it became the official music genre of rave culture at the time.

DJ Rush - Maniac (1997)

Robbert Mononom - 8bit Mayhem

Spiral Tribe - Probably Taking Drugs

The Real Schranz by Chris Liebing (1998)

Luke Slater - Sea Serpent (1993)

Industrial Techno

Early 1990s - UK

This was the genre I was into before I got into more club-oriented dance music. I will rock the fuck out to this stuff any day of the week. 

FINAL CUT - I Told You Not To Stop

Mindphaser - Front Line Assembly

Nitzer Ebb - Join in the Chant

This entire Mix from Dark Modulator is worth checking out

Ambient Techno

Early 1990s - Detroit, UK

Bio Dimension - B12 (1993)

Psyche / BFC - Elements (1996)

Aphex Twin - Xtal (1992)

Peter Namlook, FSOL, The Orb, the Black Dog and others

Minimal Techno

The early 1990s, Detroit made it as a response to what Europe did to techno and Berlin was like yeah we hate that too. Made as a rejection of TECHNO.

Station Rider - Robert Hood (1994)

Spastik by Richie Hawtin (as Plastikman) - 1993

Plasticman - FUK

DJ Qu - Times Like This

Thomas Brinkmann - Auszug

I want to take a quick moment to point out that Minimal Techno also has some of the funniest tracks I’ve ever heard on the dancefloor. Like the Hawtin take on Detroit Grand Pubah’s Dr. Bootygrabber, Or RU OK? By Ambivalent. These tracks completely fuck with you on the dance floor and it’s great.

Dub Techno

Early 1990s - Probably Berlin - Take minimal techno and add dub. Add basslines, add minor chord stabs, and 7th chord sweeps.

Basic Channel - Octagon (1994)

Monolake - Cyan (1996)

Deep Chord - Deep Chord 01-06 

Octave One - Terraforming

Mention Octave One live set - Octave One (Live) | 909 Festival | Amsterdam (Netherlands)

One of my hugely enormously favorite albums that straddles dub techno and minimal techno is Stewart Walker’s Live Extracts. It manages groove, melody, and heady depth perfectly. I used it as the blueprint for my live techno album, Cast In Amber.

Banging Techno

Mid 1990s - Literally Everywhere

I grabbed this one from the amazing Ishkurs Guide to Electronic Music which you should check out for tons of great information about all genres of electronic music. I thought it was important to include mostly because it seems to be a crossroads for literally every type of techno that exists, with paths to and from Detroit, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Latin America. If I had to go out on a limb I would say that Banging Techno was because the scene finally went truly international and this was the inevitable result of that kind of cross-pollination. It’s not just the geography that expanded and paved the way to an international scene, it’s the sounds themselves that lay the groundwork for what techno would become in the mainstream.

Ricky Effe - Rectifier

Switch - Bumpy Ride

Richie Hawtin - 002-A B1

Peak Time Techno

The early to Mid-2000s, still going strong today

The rise of drop-based music and EDM festival shlock affected every genre, and techno is no exception, but it’s not at all bad. These tracks combine the slippiness of techno with the undeniable energy of builds and drops.

Adam Beyer - London (2009)

Nicole Moudaber - Bad Boy (2009)

Christian Smith - Opus One (2010)

TRACK ID: Closer Musik - Maria (Original Mix)

Again, this isn’t an exhaustive list or even a comprehensive one depending on how well versed you are with the genre. I was honestly overwhelmed a bit doing research for this video because once techno left Detroit and hit Europe, it was like walking into the Shimmer in Anihlallation: the genre mutated and refracted so quickly and thoroughly it was almost impossible to pin down. 

TRACK ID: 

Gregor Thresher - A Thousand Nights

Modeslektor - Evil Twin

Einmusk - Pheasant

Booka Shade - Dear Future Self

Oliver Huntemann - Rotlicht

SuperFlu - Udi (Didschn)

Cobblestone Jazz - Traffic Jam

What does Techno look like now, in the 2020s?

https://soundcloud.com/magnetic-magazine/sets/the-15-best-techno-361514042

Adam Beyer - Legend (Progressive, Mainroom, Trance, Epic, Drop Based)

Ignacio Arfeli - Feel the Bass (Progressive, Mainroom, Trance, Epic, Drop Based)

Sebastian Voigt - B1 Egone5 (Hardtechno, Schranz)

DJMinx - The Throne (Extended) (Detroit, Minimal, Mainroom, Peak Time)

Kolsch - Environ (Melodic, Trancey)

Len Faki - Hymn (In The Name of Freedom) - trance elements, progressive, uplifting, which is super weird

AIROD - Golden Pills (Old School Hardtechno)

Alan Fitzpatrick, Reset Robot - Alpha (Minimal, Acid, Detroit)

Rex the Dog - Change the Pain for Exstasy (Perfect Track, House vocals with epic / peak time techno)

Adam Beyer - Desert Queen (Pulsing, trance build, storming, epic festival destruction)

2023 saw a mix of old heads like Carl Cox and Adam Beyer still dominating the chats alongside newer artists like Belgium’s Charlotte de Witte and Amelie Lens, Siberia’s Nina Kraviz,  UK’s Blawan, and Italy’s Deborah de Luca. The playing field is diverse, sonically. Adam Beyer is putting out what I consider a very classic “Beyer” style of main room, drop-based, almost progressive style with tracks like Legend and Desert Queen. Amelie Len’s storming, stab-heavy offerings remind me of old-school Belgian trance. Charlotte de Witte’s sound pulls peak-time evolution with her tracks, pulling from Acid old-school bleep, trance, and Belgian techno. I love the darker, more minimal side of Nina Kraviz with her tracks Hace Ejerciclos and Taxi Talk. Boris Brejcha’s stuff is complex, techy, dark, and funky, and one of my favorites of the whole bunch. Blawan  is killing it with more experimental, noisy, forward-thinking tracks that straddle the line between cerebral and devastating on the dance floor. Daniel Avery’s Drone Logic and On & On couldn’t be different from each other, the former being an acid-soaked THROB monster.

The Top 10 of Beatport’s Raw / Deep / Hypnotic Techno right now features minimal stormer Endless Love with its dope vocals and a huge cocoon of a drop, tweaky, almost housey, Manic Room with a 2-beat locked groove that makes my stank face twitch. There’s Steady, by Marcal, with a deep hypnotic feel like you’re lost in the jungle on every variation of a hallucinatory drug. Tweaky destructive and menacing, Tide by Altinbas ramps up tension, while Woo York’s Atlantis gives us extremely chill acid grooves bordering on ambient techno.

TRACK ID: 30 Former - Forsynthia

My impression of techno in 2024 is that the entirety of its history is there for you as a producer and as a listener. You can mix and match whatever you want, and you should, especially if you’re making this kind of music. Techno has proven itself powerful enough to stand the test of time, mutate when it wants, and then still come out the other side as relevant as it was before. It can be weird, it can be emotional, and it can rip your face off.

Outro

I came into this video with a little bit of knowledge about a genre I only knew one facet of, and came away with so much more respect and inspiration than I ever expected. I want you to feel the same. If you’re a producer trying to find your voice, please just do what you want. Push deep into what makes you unique, and stop asking if it’s the right thing to do or if people will like it or not. 3 kids in Detroit did something nobody had done before and changed the world, and so many of the producers and djs in this documentary did the same.

Thank you, techno, for what you’ve taught me, and for how you’ve brought the world together in ways we never could have imagined. From the ashes of Motor City to the fall of the Berlin Wall. From millions upon millions of people together at Love Parade, to 20 together in a dark basement somewhere having the night of their lives. From the warehouses of Berlin to the main stages of Tomorrowland, the pulse of Detroit techno continues to drive the sound of dance music culture worldwide. Techno's raw, underground spirit and quest for future sounds will continue to influence and inspire generations of artists to come. Techno is here to stay.

TRACK ID: Project 32 - Pastels

Sources:

https://imusician.pro/en/resources/guides/history-evolution-electronic-music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techno

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