Good Techno Still Exists

a.k.a. In a time when the genre's classic sound is frequently written off as stodgy and unimaginative, it's worth noting that quality tracks can still be found—if you know where to look.

Techno is in a weird place right now.

On the one hand, the genre is arguably more popular than it’s ever been, to the point where its biggest stars can now routinely be found In Ibiza, Tulum and pretty much all of dance music’s most commercial hotspots. Even a gargantuan festival like Tomorrowland, which last year drew 400,000 people and for years has been Europe’s premier assemblage of EDM theatrics and stadium-ready trance, has populated its 2024 line-up with a sizable contingent of techno artists, including several with long histories in the genre’s more “underground” corners.

The term “business techno” is often credited to a 2018 tweet from Guy Brewer (who at the time was still making music as Shifted, but has since adopted a different moniker, Carrier). In the years since then, it’s become a sort of generic descriptor thrown at anyone—including many artists who don’t actually play or make techno—who seems to be promoting themselves in a soulless, blatantly commercial, style-over-substance fashion. In that sense, it’s a sort of successor to the term “sellout,” but the irony is that as techno continues to grow on the global stage, “business techno” becomes less of a pithy insult and more of accurate assessment of where the genre sits in the contemporary electronic music landscape. Techno might have started in Detroit, where the city’s marginalized Black, brown and queer communities first brought it to life, but in 2024, it’s big business.

Not surprisingly, that’s prompted something of a backlash. While techno can still be heard in plenty of supposedly “underground” scenes and spaces, the variant that’s gained the most traction in that world post-pandemic is far faster—and goofier—than what the genre has typically sounded like during the past 30+ years. Can a 150 bpm remix of the Vengaboys still be classified as techno? I’ll leave that debate to the angry dudes on Reddit and social media, but I do think it’s fair to say that during the past few years, it’s been a lot easier to spot young DJs wearing Underground Resistance t-shirts than it has been to hear them actually playing Underground Resistance records.

That kind of intergenerational posturing happens with all genres—think about how many teenagers are wearing Nirvana and Tupac Shakur tees these days. (This isn’t a new phenomenon; when I was in high school, an inordinate number of kids were rocking Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin shirts on a regular basis.) Young people may want to worship the icons of the past (sometimes solely for fashion purposes), but that doesn’t mean they want to straight-up repeat what their elders did. They’ll pick and choose the bits they like while casually discarding the rest, and if that upsets prior generations, it’s almost like a bonus.

In the realm of techno, this explains why many young DJs still desperately want to play at places like Berghain, but then make a point to publicly boast on social media about how they went in there and played anything but techno. The traditional form of genre, at least in its present state, just isn’t that cool right now, and has come to represent a certain stodginess that’s long been present in electronic music circles. Add in the fact that contemporary techno’s most successful artists overwhelmingly tend to be white, male, straight and European (or British), and it’s no wonder that so many of dance music’s newer arrivals are either steering clear of the genre or looking to subvert its norms altogether.

This, predictably, has left techno purists—especially those whose involvement predates both the pandemic and “business techno”—feeling somewhat adrift. While their most vocal ire is usually directed at Zoomers, whose gabber-adjacent pop edits and endless social media preening they see as ruining dance music, it’s not like they have much love for the Ibiza circuit, or the faceless, funk-free strain of techno that’s become increasingly popular in that sphere. If you’re a “serious’ techno fan who first fell in love with the genre at warehouse raves, relatively intimate clubs or even at a place like Berghain (before it was added to the to-do list of seemingly every single tourist who comes to Berlin), you’re most likely not longing to go to a Circoloco party or spend a night at Drumsheds, the 15,000-capacity London nightclub that opened last year in building that formerly housed an IKEA. Regardless of who’s playing, something about techno gets lost in those environments, and on a purely practical level, only certain kinds of tunes are going to work with crowds of that size.

That sort of big-room fodder is all over Beatport’s various techno charts, which is probably why their contents are often more functional than genuinely interesting. Bandcamp should, in theory, dig deeper and provide a more compelling snapshot of what’s happening with the genre, but the site’s list of techno best-sellers mostly turns up releases that were improperly tagged as being part of the genre.

What about the actual music press? Surely they are still making an effort to highlight the good stuff, right? As it turns out, not really. Resident Advisor is the only major electronic music outlet still publishing reviews in bulk online, although the word “bulk” ought to be taken with a grain of salt. When the site’s genre filter is set to “techno,” RA averages about five album reviews per month, while the monthly complement of single reviews is usually somewhere between six and twelve. That’s not bad, particularly during a time when reviews have largely ceased to be reliable drivers of web traffic, but scanning RA’s offerings does reveal another issue: much of the “techno” section is devoted to releases that are only tangentially connected to the genre.

As with Bandcamp, some of that can be chalked up to improper tagging, but it’s also a natural byproduct of a music ecosystem in which hybridity is increasingly the norm. Pushing against established boundaries is something musicians have done for decades, but during the streaming era, when most people have easy access to almost everything, that subversive impulse has gone into overdrive. Fewer and fewer contemporary artists are doing “just” one thing, let alone one sound, and in a time when genres seem more fluid than ever before, it makes sense that RA’s techno reviews would be populated with everything from UK bass mutations to jungle deconstructions and quasi-ambient compositions.

At the same time, by choosing to devote its relatively limited resources to these hybrids, RA—and the electronic music press in general—is implicitly sending another message: “traditional” techno isn’t all that interesting or innovative anymore. And on a macro level, I can’t say that I disagree. Speaking as someone who routinely goes through 100+ new releases each week, and is often sent hundreds more, I feel pretty confident in saying that most contemporary techno is pretty goddamn boring.

“Most,” however, is the key word there. From a creative standpoint, techno might be lost in the wilderness right now, but that doesn’t mean quality tunes aren’t still being made. To prove my point, I’ve assembled a list of some of my favorite new-ish techno tracks, all of which dropped during the first six months of 2024. They come in various shapes, speeds and styles—fast, slow, dark, melodic, soulful, sci-fi, etc.—but they’re all proper techno cuts; those hoping for bass hybrids, trance flirtations, booming breakbeats or repurposed dembow riffs should look elsewhere.

Are some of my selections objectively derivative, or at least highly reminiscent, of techno’s more celebrated eras? Probably. But considering how much electronic music on the whole routinely feels like one big recycling plant, there are worse crimes than artists referencing the likes of Jeff Mills, Robert Hood or whatever other techno icons they find inspiring. (That being said, I do wish that the genre was less of an overt sausage fest; gender equality is still a long way off in the techno realm, which of course doesn’t help to make it more attractive to younger generations.)

“Traditional”- or “classic”-sounding techno may not be en vogue right now, but it’s far from dead. Finding the good stuff isn’t always easy, but for anyone who needs help knowing where to look, these tracks are a solid place to start.