Afternoon all...
Now that the summer months have settled and we’ve all stowed our flip-flops away in the wardrobe for the foreseeable future, we can sit back and reflect on what’s been another great summer of Dance. For me at least, this summer has been all about the Techno. I’d like to go on record and state that this isn’t because of a disinterest in House (or any other genre for that matter), far from it... it’s just that I seem to have tagged along to quite a few Techno events. Now i’m going to commit the unthinkable, and say that i’m not really the biggest fan of Techno in its current guise. I find a great deal of it to be quickly produced tedium, made all the worse by some DJ’s not knowing how to mix it (not naming any names). From my point of view, a substantial amount of the technorati have embraced the laptop as a preferred medium, and i’m all for it... Hell, why not use technology to create something amazing, rather than stick our noses up at it in some form of misguided traditionalist snobby protest? My problem arises from the fact that, considering most have no need to beatmatch anymore thanks to Traktor’s internal clock, a sizeable number of turntable-botherers still can’t muster anything more interesting than mixing one 10-minute record into another.... for 3 hours. I’m sorry, but seeing as though beatmatching (by nature) is a task that even primates could perfect, the fact that you need a computer to do this for you means that you’re not really a DJ at all are you? Just a thought.....

For the rest of you, I apologise for racing off on a tangent there, my intention was not to have a rant. No sir, what I was aiming to touch upon was that I always considered myself a devout fan of techno up until recently. I used to adore the driving loops of Italian producers like Rino Cerrone, and the relentless flow of class music that seemed to pour out of Slovenia. For what it was worth, the highlight of my walk to lectures consisted of sticking on a Sven Väth live mix and taking the scenic route to Uni.... I was late for class quite a lot of the time. It’s worth noting that it was around this time that I took the plunge and bought my first set of turntables. It’s also worth noting that I spent a great deal of my student loan on shipping hard-to-find vinyl EP’s from all over the world, to facilitate my insatiable hunger for Techno. Now it’s no secret that, just recently, i’ve been re-discovering this passion. I’ve gone as far as hosting my own night in Oxford just to give me a platform to share these tunes with the world, as I think it’s a crime that so many of these hard-fought-for gems are simply sat collecting dust on the shelves at the moment. Indeed, i’d much rather they’re shunned back into the limelight, for no other reason than it’s just nice to have a look where we were not so long ago... and whether that music has weathered the ravages of time. With that in mind, may I present to you a small selection of some of my favourites from the archives: