JT hit on the crux right here:
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"well it was at the time, to him, it used to be to me, sometimes it
still is, maybe not to others, etc -- my point is that it has a lot more
to do with where your head is at than with the music itself."
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My two cents, before I pass out:
Techno isn't about pushing into new production techniques and textural
styles for the sake of staying on some fleeting compositional cutting
edge. It's about humans and technology and the imagined future.
It's the musical equivalent of science fiction and space opera. Techno
is Syd Mead and Frank Frazetta and Joe Kubert and Katsuhiro Otomo.
It's the smell of sweat in your spacesuit, the green whores of venus,
and sex in zero-G. It's about wanting to get the hell out of wherever
you're stuck here on Earth.
As retro as techno from '85 sounds, it's still futuristic, the same way
Metropolis is texturally old, but remains thematically relevant.
Good science fiction doesn't have an expiration date.
The only kind of techno that dies is the kind that didn't have a soul to
begin with.
Maybe all that sounds presumptious coming from a young white guy born in
the desert, but that's the chord techno stuck with me, and it's why I've
spent the last decade in love with it.
It didn't matter that Cosmic Raindance came out while I was in diapers .
. . the first time I heard it when I was a teenager, it did what it was
supposed to do.
-bp
