I tried to find some new good tracks on the big music portals this week and ended up majorly frustrated after 2 hours. There was that track coming with 1000 remixes, released by different artists under different names. Or am i just getting too old?

First off, i love Techno and its different faces, be it Detroit-, Dubtechno or rather minimalist grooves. To some i’m rather known as the guy that just spins the old hits but that’s just half the cake. The other part is the DJ who tries to keep in touch with latest developments in Techno and who’d rather love to play new stuff than the old stuff again and again. So here i am, longing for new tunes to put in my digital crate and damn, that task ain’t too easy these days.

Pheek (the guy running Archipel) recently put it this way on a forum:

“PLEASE to anyone producing and sending demos… Please PLEASE PLEASE, I beg you, STOP making that shuffling sine click/ rim / conga, arpeggiated or equivalent à la minus.

Please stop it. There’s already too much out there.

As a result, we are declaring Archipel has stopped taking demos, giving feedback and answering. We just can’t take it anymore. 80% of the demos we get are like that, it really is too much. Please delete all arpeggios from your worksheets in Ableton or other producing software.

Thanks!”

Those were the words i remembered when listening through ~500 tracks two days ago. Almost every track used the same or very similar sounds, those syncopated congas, clicks and glitchy fills summed up to one generic, random sounding 6 minutes trip into the thoughts of a one celled lifeform. 0 groove, nothing to stick with, nothing to remember. 100% disposable.

I wouldn’t have too much of a problem with that if one could have the slightest chance of finding what one’s looking for. But what makes this worse is the fact that all those tracks are always filed under “Minimal, Techno” or just “Techno”. Oh, what a great idea! One of both must be true, right? Are you Beatjunowebrecordsport guys just lazy or can the labels just do whatever they like without being controlled at all? I mean, why do releases filed under “Techno” sound exactly like those under “Minimal”?

There’s certainly good music (as in non-generic) in your stores but how am i supposed to find it if all actual labelling fails? Do i have to go to the recordstore around the corner, browse through the vinyls, take note and then go back to whatever digital store and buy it there? I guess i’d rather buy the vinyl then.

Or start downloading music from torrents, blogs, slsk and the likes in order to discover good music, later head to a digital store and buy what i dig? Now who’d do that?

So when will you, dear digital music store, finally fix your music categories? Or why don’t you just cut down the amount of generic krakaschlak tracks to a bare minimum? Who should buy all that music anyway?

Hrmpf.