JJarvis wrote:
However, it featured very little in actual music. Disappointing because without a previous intro to Detroit Techno, there was very little to go on besides the interviews.
True, but on the other hand it gives you a nice insight about the city, how it formed the people and consequentially the music. High Tech Soul tells an interesting story, which is what most others fail at.
All in all I guess it's quite complicated to do a proper documentary about techno music, because the music itself, the creators and the clubbers have so diverse facets, backgrounds and intentions. And the other problem is that those documentaries are usually shot by outsiders. People who once had a funny night in a techno club, wake up and think they need to tell all others on telly. See, the Berlin documentaries I posted are all not very good. The first one about Tresor is in fact a complete nightmare. It looks like Tresor was a silly Trance club and not the cradle of Berlin's techno movement. Well, there were some trance parties at Tresor indeed, but most of the time it was rather proper techno, cooked up in a magical venue which you will never find again in this town (or anywhere in the world). This is surely not the picture you get here. The other one ("Techno City") was shot in 1993 and tries to draw a picture about those "crazy techno-people", a sub-culture which has always been smiled at - at least until they noticed that Berlin can earn some money and gain some prestige with them. "We call it Techno" is perhaps the only one which gets it right, although there are IMO still a lot of important things missing. Nevertheless it's fun to look at those videos as they bring back some lovely memories. Sheesh! Berlin has been so different at that time! So was the music and the people. Well, enough now....
