Techno women
I've been thinking more about music recently. I suspect this is partially because I'm a little more relaxed, but I'm also wanting to prioritise understanding my own equipment more: currently Logic Pro, a Volca Drum, and another Korg product, the Minilogue analogue synth.
I've noodled around with these, but to be honest I really haven't got my head around the full extent of what can be done, or even all the relevant concepts. I spent quite a few hours last week going down the gear-lust rabbithole, eventually deciding that I absolutely need to obtain a Drumlogue (I guess I must like how Korg makes stuff?), but I caught myself in time. I expect I might still end up convincing myself I need to buy a very cool drum machine, but for now I'm going to get to know my existing gear better.
This got me thinking a bit more about what I listen to. I've written about this before, and I think I wrote about Trance as being the style of electronic music I mostly gravitate to. But in the last year or so that's not really true - I've gotten more and more into the harder styles of minimalist techno. What I was thinking about more recently is how – contrary to what one might expect from such a seemingly harsh and aggressive style of music – this is a field where women either hold their own, or dominate, depending on your perspective. Now admittedly I haven't drowned myself in a massive research project, so this is only my anecdata, but arguably the two biggest superstars of minimalist techno right now are Amelie Lens and Charlotte de Witte.
Charlotte de Witte on Soundcloud
Beyond these two superstars there are other big names like Aurora Halal and VTSS (who, interestingly, are both into "EBM", which I had to look up.)
I could go on. It would be a massively biased account, since it's probable that overall the techno scene is dominated by men. I also have some fairly obvious theories about what _kind_ of women are _allowed_ to have a career in techno, or really in any kind of music. But nevertheless, I still find it interesting that there seems to be something about minimalist, hard, techno in particular that sees women pushing forward the style, the decks and ultimately what gets played and danced to.
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