We got a techno reviewer

[Andy P]

After much bothering Francesco, he finally accepted and bowed into pressure. So i:Vibes.nu has a techno reviewer and this lad eats, sleeps and breathes techno, so keep out watch and give the guy a warm welcome. He is pushing TECHNO now....as usual i:Vibes.nu giving you more.

[davehart]

Good to see we have someone with a focus on techno.

Its a style I like but know little about.

[Steven H]

I like techno but never got exposed to it enough! good to have someone on the team to add some techno to the site

[inrsoul]

well it's about time

bring it on!

[Francesco]

thanks for the welcome folks, I look forward to writing for you guys!

[QbIx]

To be honest I know or heard very little of Techno so it will be good to find out a little more.

[Viceroy]

I'll keep my opinion of techno to myself but welcome Francesco to i:Vibes.

[Andy P]

fack off viceroy, gets us more visitors, more members, helps me kill the site I want, gives us more variety......

[torley wong]

Bring out the 909s! I understand "techno" as a specific style as opposed to an umbrella term for it all, and I accept them both, as this is techno-logy based music. I look forward to these reviews by Francesco.

[Viceroy]

OK, I have a question: how would you define techno? And what are some example artists?

[RayvinAzn]

[davehart]

Listen to some of Fergie's sets off radio 1 as he plays Techno.

[Francesco]

techno is a very hard thing to define! Techno is so wide ranging, for instance you have hard techno (sometimes reffered to as schranz), people like wittekind, dj amok, frank kvitta and carl max.

There is a huge scandanavian techno influence at the moment with dj's like adam beyer, cari lekebusch, henrik b. This techno is relitively hard but has much more of a groove to it the likes of schranz techno where it's pretty much hell for leather.

People like richie hawtin who is a legend are pushing forward minimal techno along with the likes of aquaviva(sp) and vilalobos. basically techno that is stripped right down and often consists of clicky sounds and deep deep melody (check out richie hawtins bbc set from maida vale - it was on John peels show a few months ago).

Then you get the detroit techno, this is where the foundations were layed for the majority of edm that you hear today with producers like mills and saunderson etc. It has very little melody and a dj set from mills can mean him mixing anything up to 100 songs in 60 minutes.

fergie is not really a techno dj he is more of a hard house dj who ocassionaly plays techno records, the same can be sadi for the recebt techno converts like picotto.

Dj's i'd recommend

jeff mills
adam beyer
sven vath
laurent garnier
dj rush for hard techno
dave clarke
richie hawtin
billy nasty
kevin saunderson
umek


hope this helps

[Viceroy]

Thanks for that.
Would it be fair to say that techno has no synth-inspired melody, but relies on percussion to convey a melody of sorts?

[Andy P]

do I have to write the history of techno again?

[torley wong]

"Techno" is both a blanket term for me, as in TECHNOlogically-based music which makes obvious sense no matter what way you slice it -- but it's a more specific family of styles too.

Now there is an exception to every rule. Viceroy, it's interesting a track like "Knights of the Jaguar" is considered to be techno and in fact dropped by Jeff Mills and many other "techno heavies" in their sets, and yet it has a VERY prominent melody as well as the percolating percussion you mentioned. Jeff Mills himself has said he enjoys melody in techno, and of all people he would know.

I'm just going to go with the "there's a lot of overlap" line of thought, but techno (as in the specific kind) usually focuses more on robotic/synthetic/bleepy instrumentation than house.