Techno is a type of electronic dance music played on synthesizers and drum machines featuring often dark menacing robotic-sounding melodies with squelchy synth and deep bass lines set to a four on the floor beat. In 1980's Detroit, the Belleville three, first Juan Atkins (Cybotron, Model 500) and later his friends Derrick May (Rhythim is Rhythim) and Kevin Saunderson (Inner City, Reese) began experimenting with synthesizers to create electronic dance music. Derrick May described it as sounding like George Clinton (of Parliament and Funkadelic) and Kraftwerk stuck in an elevator. Atkins' early tracks were akin to the emerging electro of Hashim, Herbie Hancock and Man Parrish, and also shared an emphasis on drums found in the freestyle of Freeez, Shannon and Paul Hardcastle combined with the deep bass and danceability of British new wave synthpop (eg. New Order, Simple Minds, Pete Shelley) and the spacey sound of italo disco (eg. Rizo Ortolani, Laser, Charlie). There was also a lot of crosspollination between Detroit techno artists and Chicago house artists particularly noticeable in Saunderson's work with Inner City. Chicago acid house by Steve "Silk" Hurley and Lil' Louis sounds particularly close to techno. In 1988, Atkins, May and Saunderson released a compilation album, 'Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit.' The word or prefix 'techno' had been used by or about the Techno Twins (1977), Kraftwerk (1978 in Japan's 'Rock Magazine'), Yellow Magic Orchestra (1979 single Technopolis), but Detroit Techno had a darker sound with more bass, and was often played at a faster more 'danceable' tempo. Skinny Puppy is another early band that had been described as 'techno' (e.g. in Billboard 1985), but they were perhaps closer to the ebm of Front 242. In the early 1980's, the Sheffield band Cabaret Voltaire went electronic, and moved into a funkier direction, and came to be classified as techno. In Saunderson's Reese band, he was influenced by and influenced Belgian new beat
| Source | Entry Name | Confidence | Link | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| edit.music library | Techno | Derived from data | — | Imported from genre-map.json; variant: techno |
| Last.fm | techno | Derived from data | — | |
| Wikipedia | techno music | Derived from data | ↗ |
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