Looking for techno music... - by the_grip
Kuuso on 20/10/2010 at 23:09
Techno is electronic music that's tempo sits above 100 (120 more so) beats per minute and has a solid 4/4 beat. It's quite vague, because it has descended into million subgenres. But it's pretty much house on acid. Usually incorporates futuristic themes and tends to sustain from using vocal samples.
If you want some dirty electronic music, you might want to delve into breakcore. Usually involves "bad" themes - violence, sex etc. - some of it go way overboard to noise. It's also messy music in the sense that it uses high tempo and various time signatures and isn't afraid of hopping form one to other.
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That's from Venetian Snares' Detrimentalist, it's a good album. If you want something that has lower tempo and clearer structures, do say.
demagogue on 21/10/2010 at 00:38
Naughty can mean multiple things too ... like a swanky attitude, or a really dirty & crunchy low bass, or hiphop or jazzy influence like deep house if slower tempo is ok ... which I personally love, but think is more badass than naughty, lol, Such subjective categories. Or another end of the spectrum is stuff that's evil & disturbing or dark ambient.
I'll just stick to electric groups I like and just say YMMV: (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnZVY7ksMr0) Squarepusher (glitchy, swanky at times), (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NINOxRxze9k) Air (profound to swanky), (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q25Zx6B5HJA) Orbital (classic electric band), (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCGo7Ve8qdQ) Booka Shade (Deep House), (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Az_7U0-cK0) Aphex Twin (evil; edit: haha, looking back at this video, I think Aphex Twin is your winner.)
You might not like (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7bKe_Zgk4o) Boards of Canada, they're zone-out ambient electric, not dark but (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQEmaj9C6ko) unsettling at times, but I love them.
Muzman on 21/10/2010 at 05:03
Quote Posted by Tonamel
A few suggestions, after checking a couple youtube videos from Tao Beach...
Oddly, most of the clips I found on a quick search landed me with a lot of LMFAO and that's about it. I don't know what that stuff is called exactly. I'll concoct a name right now : Latino Lap(top)-Hop. Try not to puke.
I'm kinda stuck on 'beach music' and keep ending up with Hed Kandi sort of fare (which I think is mostly a lot of Euro & Latin House and Disco) and (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoO-DT4Dp-w) This
Which I doubt is what's being asked for.
Vernon on 21/10/2010 at 10:15
Quote Posted by "Aja"
Does anybody know what techno actually is?
Yes.
*rolls up sleeves*None of the stuff in this thread is strictly techno, but it is also not
not techno. If you want a decent book on techno, get Dan Sicko's
Techno Rebels (In fact, it is the authoritative text on techno). He basically traces techno from Stockhausen through to Kraftwerk then across to Detroit's industrial scene, back to Germany then once again to Detroit before finally splintering into a million different colours, globally.
I believe the confusion over the definition of techno stems from purists who say that anything that isn't from Detroit or Berlin is not real techno. Whilst they have a point when they are referring to their own navel-gazing minimal and schranz etc. (which is sort of pure by definition), in the wider world they have all the legitimacy of some nerd who thinks that anything other than linux/unix is not actually an operating system.
There's really no point trying to define what techno is because it isn't really possible, other than with the use of some very ambivalent guidelines such as USES BLOOPY BLEEPY NOISES, GOES BOOF BOOF BOOF BOOF, which obviously applies to a lot of music. Nowadays, techno describes a lot of different strains of electronic music but again, there's the purist problem.
Quote Posted by "Muzman"
But mostly it seems to refer to the more poppy and mainstream sound.
This is something that a casual techno purist would disagree with. I don't, because I don't dig monopolies of language. Call whatever you like exactly what you feel like calling it, but I'm just flying that up the flagpole. You're spot on with your recognition of the so-called misuse of the label "techno" when describing rave, house, etc.
In the foreword to
Techno Rebels, Sicko cites a Bjork quote from when she was somewhere in Iceland looking down into a volcano from the rim, seeing all the crazy explosions and shit coming up from the earth and later described it as "so fucking techno." For me, that kind of sums it up - it is electronic music that is strangely organic
Let me now just regress six years to my techno nazi phase and fling out some names that get bandied about when discussing REAL TECHNO (aka Detroit techno and its derivatives)
Roots (1951-1981)
Kraftwerk
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Giorgio Moroder
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeF0xTdHPfA) A Number of Names <-- This is widely believed to be one of the first pieces of modern techno - LISTEN TO THE KRAFTWERKIAN INFLUENCE BUT OMG IT'S ALL DIFFERENT AND SHIT WHAT IS THIS. It's techno.
The Detroit Trinity(1981-present) (the founding fathers of techno as we know it. yes, techno is black music just like all the other good shit)
Juan Atkins
Derrick May
Kevin Saunderson
Post-Industrial thru Second Wave thru Electro (~1990 onwards)
Jeff Mills
Carl Craig
Moodymann
Drexciya
The British Invasion
Regis (Karl O'Connor)
Surgeon
James Ruskin
The Bedrock of Today's Techno (Global)
Ricardo Villalobos
Richie Hawtin aka Plastikman
Chris Liebing
monolake
And this is the kind of thing I used to dig - there's quite a lot going on in these tracks if you give them time. They are solid classics with a Detroit pedigree:
TURN YOUR SPEAKERS UP OKAY
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcOyaVvScVk) Jeff Mills - Reverting
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaewidK8FXQ) Surgeon - First <-- AMAZING
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THSTcybsH8U) John Arnold - Respectall <-- All this minimal getting a bit heavy for you? here's some colour
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzMvX7vIXRM) Paperclip People - Steam (If you are just flicking through these, don't miss the part after 3:10)
(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsct-e-HVE0) Plastikman - Spastik <-- This is fucking famous as shit and a Really Big Deal. Every techno DJ worth his salt owns a copy.
Looking back on all of this stuff it is heavily self-indulgent, much like this post, but when you are hearing these tracks from the dons of techno in a converted Berlin jailhouse, it is really something else.
Anything from (
http://www.tresorberlin.com/) this label or (
http://www.m-nus.com/) this label is definitely techno.
Also, you could do worse than reading (
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.07/techno.html) this article - decent, albeit brief.
Okay I'm done with my history lesson thanks for listening
tl;dr: There's techno, which is any old shit with synthesisers and drum machines then there's DETROIT TECHNO
Kuuso on 21/10/2010 at 11:51
I'd say techno is DETROIT TECHNO (or berliiiin). Other stuff that sounds like techno is just EDM (electronic dance music). Why use techno label, if it doesn't mean anything? At least with Detroit scene it can be traced to certain attributes.
SubJeff on 21/10/2010 at 12:07
Quote Posted by Vernon
None of the stuff in this thread is strictly techno, but it is also not
not techno.
oh shi
I just came in here to say
exactly this. Muz, I'm not so sure that Orbital is really techno and Halcyon is one of the least techno-ish tracks of theirs (much as I love it)!
I don't think there is a lot of mainstream techno really. Most of the stuff that gets called techno is house or trance, both of which are sub-genres. Check out Digitally Imported for a ton of free electronic music channels and you'll see how hard it actually is to distinguish between all the different types.
As an aside re: electronic music - I'm getting into Carbon Based Lifeforms atm and I recommend the new album "Interloper" (just dropped the title track into the TTLG Spotify playlist). And give Infected Mushroom a go for some good hard trance that many people (I know) would class as techno.
Muzman on 21/10/2010 at 17:43
Halcyon's not a great example, it's true (I dunno what you'd call that). (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXU5Rxc3vBQ) Chime would have been the canonical example.
I don't know how much stock you'd put in it but it is true that Orbital was given the label 'techno' by the fairly literate music press, long into their career and after they had diversified their sound rather a lot (or at least rhythms. Orbital's production techniques make them fairly distinctive even when dabbling in other genres) where other acts could be slotted more easily into other sub genres/movements.
This, while potentially meaningless, definitely did not refer to them as 'Techno' in the sense popularly found in Aus or the US (and perhaps the bulk of the UK for all I know) where it's a blanket term for electronic dance music (or anything low on guitars, according to some bogans back in the day).
I can't remember who else had the label thus applied at the time but, now I think about it, I think it was part of some small journalistic movement to stop or slow the endless sub-genre-ising of music. (eg Sargeant Pepper's does not, for a great deal of its run time, resemble any Chuck Berry, yet is still rock & roll. On the other hand, the movements of Jazz are very musically distinct and have distinct audiences as well. Yadda yadda)
I'm sympathetic, but sub classifying stuff is too much fun also. So Vern's history is great, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's someone in England charting the continuing life and evolution of Techno as a genre, and more than a catch all term, to this day. I'll be damned if I know what it is though
Aaaanyway, what shall we call what The grip is looking for?
SubJeff on 21/10/2010 at 18:29
I think it's house actually, and variants of: hard, deep, etc. Oh and a bit of dub, and variants of.
