Last night in London a young techno fan was heard to express misgivings about a mix his friends were listening to until he was told who the mix was by – at which point he decided that he liked it.
“Yeah the mix didn’t sound great, there was sort of nothing going on but a steady rhythm, it was kinda bland and run-of-the-mill,” explained Gavin Chambers. “But, when I inquired who it was, the lads said it was Rodhad so now automatically I like it because I read somewhere that he’s good.”
Gavin claims he was all set to express misgivings about the set if it was by someone who he didn’t like or someone irrelevant but claimed that “everyone seems to think Rodhad is a big deal so now I do too, despite the fact that I didn’t really like the mix initially and thought it was a bit repetitive”.
Friends of Gavin’s who witnessed his dramatic turnaround claim that he had a kind of disapproving look on his face for the first 30 seconds or so of the mix – “you could tell he wasn’t feeling it and would prefer to listen to something else but once I told him who it was, he perked right up”.
“Most of us don’t actually like techno all that much to be honest, but we like liking whatever’s cool and relevant despite it not appealing to our particular tastes, so when someone plays a mix by a DJ who is purportedly good, we’ll go along with it despite how we feel,” explained one witness. “For instance I’d much rather listen to some early 00s electro-clash and throw shapes in front of the mirror, but that’s not very techno so I suppress that urge to be myself and replace it with Blawan remixes, ear stretching and ironic baseball caps.”
“Being into techno isn’t about techno so much as being seen to be into techno and disparaging anything not techno,” he added.
