I think there's a bit of difference in outlook between thoses across the Atlantic and those of us stuck in the US.
In general, the hard-loop techno type sets aren't really too popular here in the states. I think perhaps those who are exposed to these sets ALL THE TIME are naturally bored of them a little quicker. However, I personally almost never get to see sets like these. That being said, I think it's really an art form making a good hard techno set, and it really has to be programmed well in order to keep things bumping without slipping into boring. I personally am a fan of mostly playing hard but throwing in the odd Detroit electro record or more "soulful" Detroit record, at just the right moment. I actually think such records have the most impact when they are in contrast to the harder stuff, rather than in a set of all melodic or deeper stuff. The latter type of site often ends up being a little too mellow as a whole (unless mellow is what you want to hear at the moment). I think that to over-use the elements of "soul" and melodicism, string parts, etc., is in bad taste, kind of overly-romantic and emotionally manipulative. I like the idea of mostly getting rid of all that, so that if you finally bring it in after half an hour it has some kind of meaning and impact, in contrast to what has come before. BTW, I think some of Samuel L Sessions stuff sounds VERY Detroit infuenced if you ask me, some of these tracks have little melodic things and synth parts that are extremely 313. He's not my favorite producer but I think it's a bit unfair to say that he just produces the same 1/2 bar record over and over, not all his records are like that. .dave -----Original Message----- From: Brendan Nelson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 7:40 AM To: [email protected] Subject: (313) The techno/trance divide - reprise? A lot of this talk of Drumcode, Adam Beyer and so forth has put me in mind of when trance completely split off from techno. I remember that, for a while, the snare rolls, big breakdowns, 303 lines and druggy chords that later came to characterise trance had permeated deeply into more "pure" techno. That "Access" track would get played at proper techno nights and, for the first few months at least, no-one would particularly bat an eyelid. Now these techniques were all very effective on the dancefloor, and after a while audiences were demanding to hear that sort of stuff all the time. Some techno DJs I know pretty much capitulated, with snare rolls every five minutes, but they still saw themselves as being "techno". "Because this works better on the floor and is more popular with club audiences", said some of these guys, "this is the stuff that will stick around. That noodly stuff you play isn't really techno at all!" What are these guys now? They're trance DJs. What started out as a kind of tendency among techno producers eventually hived off into its own sound, and a newly reinvigorated and purified techno scene went on to drop a number of bombs, such as Minimal Nation, in which those "trancey" techniques were rejected outright. Today, we have a similar situation. The Samuel L Sessions-style records all employ a limited range of tricks and techniques to maintain this continual flow of pounding rhythm and half-bar loops. Because it works better on the dancefloor than, say, that Delsin record or this Keith Tucker record, spw feels that *it* is the stuff that will stick around, the stuff that now represents what "techno" truly is. But I'm saying that we've been here before. A more populist variant of techno becomes successful; its advocates eventually perceive themselves as being the true agents of progress and start to direct their criticism at the "old guard", the pure techno scene. It happened in the early 1990s and it's happening again now. Brendan
