Photo by Alexander Popov on Unsplash

I’m thinking of taking up Techno again! So I’ve given some thought as to what Techno actually means for me and I think I’ve figured it out and discovered my purpose in this musical endeavor.

I want to define what kind of Techno that I like exactly, to listen to and to play because Techno has become somewhat of a vague concept that people use to refer to electronic music in general. I really like what I guess we could call hardtechno. So that would mean high bpms, 135+ and preferably in the 140 range. Then I also appreciate techno with hints of more specific techno genres or other genres altogether. So I like it when there are traces of industrial techno, EBM, acid, trance, rap, and trap. I like both dark beats, and funky beats along with general punk style and occasionally melodic breaks. And then, I don’t know if there is a corresponding musical term for it but I like music that provokes emotion, it makes you feel something. A lot of people claim that techno is soulless and repetitive but I don’t agree with that at all. My enthusiasm comes from the desire to present to my listeners a multidimensional emotionally charged audio experience. And my own most intense musical experiences have in fact been with techno. My favorite DJs so far have been Hector Oaks aka Cadency who more than satisfies my passion for punk techno, and I Hate Models who has an amazing talent of enchanting the dance floor with his very emotional style. He actually posted something on Spotify describing his conception of his music and it was beautiful:

In a scene choked by formulae, we need voices that cut through the noise to present something unapologetically true and devoutly non-conformist. In his singular path as an artist, I Hate Models swerves standardised structures and instead focuses on emotional response. The energy of club music serves as a vessel for his own feelings and a tool to manipulate others with. The spectrum of moods expressed — in his productions, DJ sets and on his label Disco Inferno — veers from nostalgia and passion to loneliness, melancholia and brutality, often juxtaposing darkness and light in the same pulse as an authentic conduit of his own artistic self-assesment. … At every turn, his disregard for expectations and conventions has resulted in dynamic, ambitious music that feasts on the flesh of techno, industrial and trance without ever becoming beholden to one source. Within the microcosm of one track, the energy can shift from bruising rythm to swooning ambience and back again — cascades of pearlescent melody giving way to shards of sheet metal, thunderous percussion offset by soflt sculpted sine waves. That the further adventures of I Hate Models feel entirely open-ended is completely by design — generic construction is the enemy of genuine catharsis.

And that’s what listening to him is, it’s catharsis. I unfortunately only got the chance to see him perform once but it was one of the absolute best experiences I’ve ever had, I can’t tell you how much I admire him. When I read this I was not surprised, what he says is something you actually feel, and so grateful that he had put this experience into words.

I have quite a similar approach to techno and want to say more. Art is not just the concrete physical thing that is. Techno is not just sound, it carries meaning and represents a certain culture that I believe should be backed with visual and spatial design as well. As you may have noticed from my other work, I have problems with modern society and the neoliberal ethic that permeates every aspect of it. Whatever bothers me in society has its roots in either the neoliberal, patriarchal, or xenophobic order. I have decided to devote my life to understanding social problems and contributing to their eradication. And to me, that means that capitalism, patriarchy, racism, these have to go. You can imagine how frustrating it is to constantly learn more and more about all the things wrong with the world and how deeply embedded these problems are in society. Most times it’s quite discouraging and makes me feel out of place. People make me feel irrelevant and misunderstood. At best they think these are interesting topics to discuss over a drink but forget about completely the next day. I feel so alone in my struggle, and have to find company in what I read rather than the people I surround myself with. I’m labeled “naive” and an “idealist,” people think I’m out of touch with the real world which is so ironic. So this leads to a lot of emotions that I don’t know what to do with. I have a destructive rage inside me at the hopelessness of the situation and I don’t know where to direct it. There isn’t any person I can blame. There isn’t anything concrete that I can blame, it’s an abstract system with so many dire consequences. If you were to wage a war against capitalism, how would you do it? How do you destroy an idea that lives in everyone, especially when most people seem to love it? What do you attack? Well, all of this bottled-up energy flows so beautifully into music. My friends sometimes say my music sounds like war beats and I know that, it's not by accident. I am metaphorically waging a war. It makes me feel like I get the chance to awaken these feelings in others although I doubt most people actually think about these things on the dancefloor.

I try to challenge the unnatural, inhumane, masculine ideal of rationality that I believe stems from the desire for predictability, power and control. I challenge it by bringing up the emotions that we have to repress in order to deal with the society we live in. I challenge the concept of masculinity by embracing the kind of music so many people define as masculine, as a woman. And I like to think that I bring in a feminine touch. I challenge the ideal of individuality by trying to create a collective experience of bodies moving together in sync, united by the music they are listening to. I challenge the artificial and arbitrary boundaries that divide people by playing a kind of universal music that no one needs to know any language to understand. I challenge the hierarchy because I see a proper underground club as an equalizer. I challenge the sluggish stillness of modern life by inviting everyone to a space where they can move their bodies in any form they want. And just look at the names of techno tracks, they are so interesting and packed with meaning! Techno is accused of being associated with drugs, well I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I believe drugs have an enormous role to play in revolution, and the soundtrack will be techno! :)

Now before I get caught up in daydreams of revolution, I must say this is all the ideal concept of techno and its culture but in reality techno can disappoint. The reason I gave up in the first place was that in Istanbul techno is still a very marginalized and male-dominated area. I desperately tried to realize my idea of what techno should be by trying to organize events and forming a techno collective but I was always discouraged and rejected because I wasn’t profit-oriented at all. The techno scene in Istanbul is dominated by either rich people who have a very capitalistic idea of the whole thing or men who organize underground events but use the stage to promote themselves and other men, rarely providing that opportunity for women. I knew so many people who were quite nice to me and called me a “friend” but didn’t think giving my music a shot was worth it. And I was never one to persistently promote myself. Also, they usually gave women the chance to perform as the warm-up if they gave it to them at all, a position none of them would accept being in because apparently there’s a hierarchy depending on how late you take the stage. The few times that I was given the opportunity to perform, I had various men interfere with the music I was playing, somehow think they can come up to me and tell me what I should play. I’ve even had men directly interfere with the setup and do something without even consulting me. I say men because it was only men who did this. And I can’t imagine them ever doing that to another male DJ. How is that something they take to be extremely offensive is completely okay just because I’m a woman?

Well, I feel like I might have a more fulfilling techno experience in Germany so I want to start over and this time with a purpose. I will design my music not randomly but intentionally, to provoke emotions and thoughts that hold a purpose. Music that will hopefully awaken something inside those who actually listen. I’m thinking I could use samples from historic/modern events that I believe hold meaning. I’m gonna have to put a lot work into it but it was always something I loved working on and it actually aligns very well with my work. I’ve been reading about the concept of hauntology which I believe refers to elements of the past that are not completely gone and come up in modern life. I want my music to have that purpose, we are not over the discussion of the abolition of the patriarchy or capitalism and I want to remind people of that. I’ll be the haunt of all the great thinkers that tried but were defeated by their mortality before they achieved their aims.

Photo by Alexander Popov on Unsplash

I’m thinking of taking up Techno again! So I’ve given some thought as to what Techno actually means for me and I think I’ve figured it out and discovered my purpose in this musical endeavor.

I want to define what kind of Techno that I like exactly, to listen to and to play because Techno has become somewhat of a vague concept that people use to refer to electronic music in general. I really like what I guess we could call hardtechno. So that would mean high bpms, 135+ and preferably in the 140 range. Then I also appreciate techno with hints of more specific techno genres or other genres altogether. So I like it when there are traces of industrial techno, EBM, acid, trance, rap, and trap. I like both dark beats, and funky beats along with general punk style and occasionally melodic breaks. And then, I don’t know if there is a corresponding musical term for it but I like music that provokes emotion, it makes you feel something. A lot of people claim that techno is soulless and repetitive but I don’t agree with that at all. My enthusiasm comes from the desire to present to my listeners a multidimensional emotionally charged audio experience. And my own most intense musical experiences have in fact been with techno. My favorite DJs so far have been Hector Oaks aka Cadency who more than satisfies my passion for punk techno, and I Hate Models who has an amazing talent of enchanting the dance floor with his very emotional style. He actually posted something on Spotify describing his conception of his music and it was beautiful:

In a scene choked by formulae, we need voices that cut through the noise to present something unapologetically true and devoutly non-conformist. In his singular path as an artist, I Hate Models swerves standardised structures and instead focuses on emotional response. The energy of club music serves as a vessel for his own feelings and a tool to manipulate others with. The spectrum of moods expressed — in his productions, DJ sets and on his label Disco Inferno — veers from nostalgia and passion to loneliness, melancholia and brutality, often juxtaposing darkness and light in the same pulse as an authentic conduit of his own artistic self-assesment. … At every turn, his disregard for expectations and conventions has resulted in dynamic, ambitious music that feasts on the flesh of techno, industrial and trance without ever becoming beholden to one source. Within the microcosm of one track, the energy can shift from bruising rythm to swooning ambience and back again — cascades of pearlescent melody giving way to shards of sheet metal, thunderous percussion offset by soflt sculpted sine waves. That the further adventures of I Hate Models feel entirely open-ended is completely by design — generic construction is the enemy of genuine catharsis.

And that’s what listening to him is, it’s catharsis. I unfortunately only got the chance to see him perform once but it was one of the absolute best experiences I’ve ever had, I can’t tell you how much I admire him. When I read this I was not surprised, what he says is something you actually feel, and so grateful that he had put this experience into words.

I have quite a similar approach to techno and want to say more. Art is not just the concrete physical thing that is. Techno is not just sound, it carries meaning and represents a certain culture that I believe should be backed with visual and spatial design as well. As you may have noticed from my other work, I have problems with modern society and the neoliberal ethic that permeates every aspect of it. Whatever bothers me in society has its roots in either the neoliberal, patriarchal, or xenophobic order. I have decided to devote my life to understanding social problems and contributing to their eradication. And to me, that means that capitalism, patriarchy, racism, these have to go. You can imagine how frustrating it is to constantly learn more and more about all the things wrong with the world and how deeply embedded these problems are in society. Most times it’s quite discouraging and makes me feel out of place. People make me feel irrelevant and misunderstood. At best they think these are interesting topics to discuss over a drink but forget about completely the next day. I feel so alone in my struggle, and have to find company in what I read rather than the people I surround myself with. I’m labeled “naive” and an “idealist,” people think I’m out of touch with the real world which is so ironic. So this leads to a lot of emotions that I don’t know what to do with. I have a destructive rage inside me at the hopelessness of the situation and I don’t know where to direct it. There isn’t any person I can blame. There isn’t anything concrete that I can blame, it’s an abstract system with so many dire consequences. If you were to wage a war against capitalism, how would you do it? How do you destroy an idea that lives in everyone, especially when most people seem to love it? What do you attack? Well, all of this bottled-up energy flows so beautifully into music. My friends sometimes say my music sounds like war beats and I know that, it's not by accident. I am metaphorically waging a war. It makes me feel like I get the chance to awaken these feelings in others although I doubt most people actually think about these things on the dancefloor.

I try to challenge the unnatural, inhumane, masculine ideal of rationality that I believe stems from the desire for predictability, power and control. I challenge it by bringing up the emotions that we have to repress in order to deal with the society we live in. I challenge the concept of masculinity by embracing the kind of music so many people define as masculine, as a woman. And I like to think that I bring in a feminine touch. I challenge the ideal of individuality by trying to create a collective experience of bodies moving together in sync, united by the music they are listening to. I challenge the artificial and arbitrary boundaries that divide people by playing a kind of universal music that no one needs to know any language to understand. I challenge the hierarchy because I see a proper underground club as an equalizer. I challenge the sluggish stillness of modern life by inviting everyone to a space where they can move their bodies in any form they want. And just look at the names of techno tracks, they are so interesting and packed with meaning! Techno is accused of being associated with drugs, well I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I believe drugs have an enormous role to play in revolution, and the soundtrack will be techno! :)

Now before I get caught up in daydreams of revolution, I must say this is all the ideal concept of techno and its culture but in reality techno can disappoint. The reason I gave up in the first place was that in Istanbul techno is still a very marginalized and male-dominated area. I desperately tried to realize my idea of what techno should be by trying to organize events and forming a techno collective but I was always discouraged and rejected because I wasn’t profit-oriented at all. The techno scene in Istanbul is dominated by either rich people who have a very capitalistic idea of the whole thing or men who organize underground events but use the stage to promote themselves and other men, rarely providing that opportunity for women. I knew so many people who were quite nice to me and called me a “friend” but didn’t think giving my music a shot was worth it. And I was never one to persistently promote myself. Also, they usually gave women the chance to perform as the warm-up if they gave it to them at all, a position none of them would accept being in because apparently there’s a hierarchy depending on how late you take the stage. The few times that I was given the opportunity to perform, I had various men interfere with the music I was playing, somehow think they can come up to me and tell me what I should play. I’ve even had men directly interfere with the setup and do something without even consulting me. I say men because it was only men who did this. And I can’t imagine them ever doing that to another male DJ. How is that something they take to be extremely offensive is completely okay just because I’m a woman?

Well, I feel like I might have a more fulfilling techno experience in Germany so I want to start over and this time with a purpose. I will design my music not randomly but intentionally, to provoke emotions and thoughts that hold a purpose. Music that will hopefully awaken something inside those who actually listen. I’m thinking I could use samples from historic/modern events that I believe hold meaning. I’m gonna have to put a lot work into it but it was always something I loved working on and it actually aligns very well with my work. I’ve been reading about the concept of hauntology which I believe refers to elements of the past that are not completely gone and come up in modern life. I want my music to have that purpose, we are not over the discussion of the abolition of the patriarchy or capitalism and I want to remind people of that. I’ll be the haunt of all the great thinkers that tried but were defeated by their mortality before they achieved their aims.