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The New Sonic Frontier? The Power of Techno Music.

Techno is a burgeoning music genre that offers listeners a sonic escape. In this piece I reflect on the spiritual power of techno music and my own experiences. The article concludes with a special interview with the one-and-only techno lover, Ava Aguiar.

Illustration by Kayla Martinez

At the beginning of December, I had a profoundly spiritual experience with techno music. I felt a profound transcendence while dancing to the DJ’s beat. The experience was cathartic to such a high degree that I have come here to synthesize my own experience, others’ stories, and scholarship to understand the spiritual revelations I had that night. 

Shaking Hands with Techno: An Introduction

Techno music, short for technology music, is a subcategory of Electronic Dance Music. Very similar to hyperpop, an emerging music genre that has seen a surge in popularity, Techno musicians employ electronic and technological instruments to compose tracks. Pillars of the techno music genre include synthesizers, sampling, and various electronic beats.

Technological music tools originated in Germany in the early 1980s. However, techno as a contemporary music genre was created around the same time by African-American youths in Detroit, Michigan. Shortly after, a variety of subgenres emerged around the world. The United States embraced techno music in the 1990s when rave culture, which persists today, entered the mainstream.

Raves are sites where people gather to dance to techno music. Though they have never been as popular in the United States as in Europe, raves have been fixtures in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York since the early 1990s. Detroit and Chicago are key cities where raving subculture took shape. Scott R Huston, a rave journalist, summarizes the post-modern definition of rave culture, arguing it is

“geared toward fascination rather than meaning, sensation rather than sensibility; creating an appetite for impossible states of hyperstimulation.”

Hutson, Scott, “The Rave: Spiritual Healing in Western Subcultures,”

While Scott argues that techno is a substanceless fascination, I beg to differ. Scott, my experience was anything but vapid.

My Story

Before visiting Berlin, I had a hollow relationship with techno music. Over the years, I enjoyed various trending Cyrstal Castles songs but had deemed techno culture too intense for someone who preferred the light, wispy vocals of Clairo or Julia Jacklin. However, my aversion to techno music weakened when I moved to Italy during the Spring semester of my junior year. Many of my closest friends, who were also abroad, gushed about their experiences with techno culture in Berlin. They repeatedly told me I “would love it so much” as their eyes stared longingly at the sky. Experiencing techno in Berlin had seemed to become integral to studying abroad, and I’d be damned if I were left behind.

Having been convinced, I called my dear friend Ava Aguiar, who was studying abroad in Berlin. Ava is a bold, thoughtful, and tenacious friend. Whether it be our matching majors, an affinity for fashion, or being the only two who volunteered to make TikToks for UC Berkeley’s music club, Ava and I have always found ourselves in the same places with the same ideas.

Quickly, plane tickets from Florence to Berlin were bought, and in the blink of an eye, I was standing in Ava’s closet wearing one of her lace tank tops, preparing to embark on a sonic journey.

Facing Techno Head-On

My two nights in Sisyphos, the Berlin techno club, were intense. Sisyphos is designed to be a utopian commune, with everything a techno-lover may need throughout a weekend readily accessible. There was a cozy coffee shop and Koi fish swimming the perimeter of the space. There was a pizza shop and various dimly lit rooms that held secrets I was too bashful to explore. Overwhelmingly, there was a sense of community, as Sisophus promised everyone a night of pleasure and movement. 

While I enjoyed the music, the novelty of the experience overwhelmed me. As I danced, I realized that rather than feeling weightless or euphoric, I felt a profound mental clarity. The harsh and methodic beat forced me into a state of existence that was much more raw than I had anticipated. The music was wiping me clean. I felt control slip through my fingers with each passing minute. I began to tumble down alleyways of thought, such as: Who am I? What do I want? What is important to me? While these lines of thinking can lead to positive realizations, I was unprepared to face them. After four months of non-stop traveling and learning, to be placed into a state of reflection was jarring.

Do It All Again on Night Two

On our second night in a row going to Sisophus, the music made me feel so fragile that I spent most of my time sitting by the Koi fish. I waited there until the sun came up—the world’s signal that it was time to retreat to our beds and showers.

It was strange to sleep through the day and fill my time by dancing all night. A lot of things felt strange. My body felt strange after dancing all night, and my psyche felt exhausted. I felt a fragility that halted the empowering abroad journey I had been having before Berlin. The following morning, while sitting on a bench in a park, I wrote in my journal, 

“Berlin has made me fragile. Underneath the lights, I become nothing but the beat and my thoughts. The music becomes my heartbeat, and I feel painfully real. Last night, I experienced a clarity that forced me to grapple with my experiences and desires. I was not expecting the music to do that to me. Despite this, the dancing has been euphoric. This is not how I expected to react to Berlin.” 

My experience in Berlin was a very potent moment in my journey abroad—one that I reflected on well past, saying goodbye and thank you to Ava. 

The Catalyst

Fast-forward four months and Ava and I are back in Berkeley at the tail end of our Fall semester. Ava and I’s friendship continued to grow after Berlin. She had been exploring the Bay Area’s techno scene and was adamant about taking me out to dance with her.

This semester, especially, I had piled on a host of responsibilities that demanded my utmost care and attention. These responsibilities made me a big dark nebulous of stress and tension. Despite having a tough time in Berlin, a part of me also saw the benefits of techno’s effects, and I was eager to re-enter the space. While in Sisophus, I was unprepared to release control. That was all I wanted to do now. I needed a space to let go of expectations and external pressures. Ava sent me a link, and tickets were bought for an artist named Alpha Tracks.

Dancing the Stress Away

The night I shared with Ava and AlphaTracks was incredible. To great surprise, techno did not leave me feeling hollow as it had done that second night in Sisophus. For five hours, I planted myself directly in front of the gargantuan speaker and luxuriated in my physicality. The music commanded my body to move as though it were casting spells. In front of the speaker, I was nothing but the beat and my arms, legs, face, chest, torso, and toes.

I have danced before. I have danced before to techno. However, this dancing was different. I was not worried about how I looked or controlling my movement. No, this was not a space for control. This was a space for liberation. The moments when I would stop and look around, I saw faces of people thinking and doing the same thing as me: dancing without inhibition.

Repeatedly, my friends and I took breaks. We would sit in silence at the back of the venue under harsh red lighting. We would sit and breathe. Dance, breathe, dance, breathe. I felt extremely human sitting with them. I felt extremely connected to my body dancing to the music. This combination of feeling and physicality took me to a heightened sense of consciousness, where I felt secure and self-actualized.

At the end of the night, multiple people came up to us saying they admired our dancing. They told us we looked unabashed and asked for our numbers. “Unabashed” is not typically what you want to hear after a night of dancing, but that was exactly what was happening: shameless expression.

After the Fact

We left the venue with our ears ringing, rambling about the spiritual transformations we had experienced. Alpha Tracks’ masterly level of skill allowed me to shed the pressures that had been tangling deep inside my psyche. I felt a distinct sense of peace, ease, and joy as his music flowed through my body, demanding me to move in ways that impressed and surprised me. With the music as my guide, I had transcended into a higher plane of existence, one where my body and sound married to place me in a state of euphoric authenticity. The next day, in my journal, I wrote, 

“Friday, I danced all night to techno with Ava, Kristina, and Nellie. It was an attempt to take back my experience in Berlin. The experience was spiritual. The music took everything from me, leaving me in a natural and pure state of existence.”

I do not understand why my experience in Sisophus night two—my feelings of emptiness—contrasted with my experience in San Francisco. Perhaps two nights in a row in Berlin was too much. Perhaps I was uncomfortable in Berlin. While it could have been a number of things, I am positive that dancing to AlphaTracks changed my life.

At one point, I remember saying to myself, “If I always have this space, then I will be happy forever.” With my friends and the music, eternal joy felt possible. I felt an amplified sense of life that gave me hope that told me everything would be okay. I would look over at my friends and see them having a similar experience, and we would all share a smile, recognizing that something special was taking place. 

Embracing Science

Following such a moving experience, I turn to my resources to help me understand. Guide me, scientists!

In an article done on techno in Rock and Art, they state, 

“Techno music allows you to exist in a fantastical reality where your body becomes a vessel of movement and sound, and you are able to ascend into a higher plane of existence.”

Huckabee, Sawyer, “Techno-Logic: The Future of Electronic Music and Its Impact on Culture

In “The Science Behind Your Love for Techno,” by publishers, 6AM, asserts that most techno songs are marked with hi-hats every second eighth note and bass drums on the quarter note which sets the genre apart. When music varies between 120-150 beats per minute increase, this aids the body in increasing heart rate, blood pressure, adrenaline, and even anxiety. This explains why I felt so alive and human while dancing to techno, as the high BPM hyperstimulated my body.

A key tactic of techno and Alpha Tracks’ set is incorporating “peak times:” sonic moments that start small and lead gradually to a climax.

“Tracks with peaktime elements are in a way mentally rewarding and pleasurable because of the length of intensity and anticipation that is building up — even better, after the peal, the neat and sounds are like the cherry on top. Overall, peaks can be a sonically emotional experience because mentally, the brain is thinking, ‘“Oh my God, what’s next? That’s what next? I didn’t expect that… I love it!”

Six AM, “The Science Behinid Your Love of House and Techno

This makes perfect sense. Each time Alpha Tracks hit a peak, it felt as though I was surfing on a wave of pleasure under the brightest sun.

A separate article, The Science of Sound: How Techno Music Affects the Brain by Techno Airlines, dives deeper into the correlation between techno and spirituality. The article discusses how the “relentless” beats create a sense of momentum, moving listeners into a state of heightened concentration.

“The science behind this lies in the entertainment of brain waves to the rhythm of the music. In this phenomenon, the natural frequencies of our brain activity synchronize with the beats per minute of the music we’re listening to… It’s as if the brain, entranced by the rhythm, find a groove in which thoughts and ideas can flow more freely..” Since the brain reacts to certain frequencies in music, neuroscientific research states that techno can induce a state of “relaxation, meditation and heightened creativity. Thus, techno music can act as a conduit to deeper, more reflective states, offering listeners a pathway to explore their minds and potentially unlock new realms of thought and perception.”

Techno Airlines, “The Science of Sound: How Techno Music Affects the Brain

My concentration was so high, it felt as though I could accomplish anything, or hold the happiness in my heart and body forever.

Academic Discourse

Raves and the culture surrounding technological music have limited academia surrounding it. Much of the discourse on raves focuses on the rave as a temporary, hedonistic escape from reality. As aforementioned, this does not reflect my experience with Alpha Tracks. In support of my testimony, Scott R. Huston argues that much of the academic discourse surrounding raves is incomplete. Huston looks at first-hand testimonials of ravers to make his point.

“Based on these testimonials, the rave can be conceptualized as a form of healing comparable both to shamanic, ecststic healing documented in ethnogrpahies of small-scale western societies, and to spiritual experiences in modern western subculture.” 

Hutson, Scott, “The Rave: Spiritual Healing in Western Subcultures”

Interestingly, Huston forges a connection between religion and the rave experience. One raver, Megan, exclaims, “The rave is my church. It is a ritual to perform…After every rave, I walk out having seen my soul and its place in eternity.” Huston points to how the analogy between rave and religion manifests itself in Nashville, where a club known as “the Church” hosted raves named “Friday Night Mass.” Further, other raves held in churches had DJs operating from the altar. In a piece on rave culture, Brian Behlendorf refers to the DJ as a ‘high priest.’

Technoshamanism

The ravers’ explanation of why they interpret their experiences in spiritual terms centers around technoshamanism, a term coined by Fraser Clark, who organized two prominent London dance clubs. Technoshamanism refers to the DJ as a “harmonic navigator, in charge of the group/mind.” The DJ “senses when it’s time to lift the mood, take it down, etc, just as the shaman did in the good ol’ tribal days.”  

“With the help of the DJ’s ecstatic techniques, ravers like Edward Lantz claim to enter “areas of consciousness not necessarily related to everyday ‘real’ world experiences.. In this sense, raves are similar to the trance dances of the Dobe Ju/’hoansi.. In both cases, altered states of consciousness are stimulated by a combination of upbeat rhythmic drumming, exhaustive all night dancing, and flickering light.”

Hutson, Scott, “The Rave: Spiritual Healing in Western Subcultures”

Huston touches upon dancing, a major theme in my night with Alpha Tracks. He introduces the idea of dancing as “flow.” “Dance as flow merges the act with the awareness of the act producing self-forgetfulness, a loss of self-consciousness, transcendence of individuality, and fusion with the world.”

Interview with Ava Aguiar, Techno Lover

In conversation with Ava Aguiar, I dove deeper into what it means to love techno.

  1.  What draws you to techno?

“I think first and foremost, the music itself is arguably scientifically designed to want to make you dance. So I feel everything about it, the rhythm, the lights that go on the club, is revolutionized to make you want to move your body.  I think the second biggest thing that draws me is the community. It’s such a queer-heavy community and I feel like not only that, but it’s a community that is very non-judgmental. 
And so for me, also as a woman, it’s a space where I feel like I’m respected in a lot of ways. I was kind of tired of going to spaces where I felt like my space wasn’t respected, my body wasn’t respected, and I feel like techno is a very fair playing ground, you know who everyone is and and I mean in most cases, everyone respects your body and your space.” 

Aguiar, Ava, 12 January 2025
  1.  In three words how would you describe techno and what it means to you? 

Community, freedom, and therapeutic. I mean I’ve met so many people through techno and I think that’s one of the great things about it. I’ve met people that I now live with, you know what I mean? It’s not only about dance. You go and there’s a sitting area and you talk and meet people. It’s a very kind exchange. I mean, people go just to dance and stuff, but everyone’s there to kind of like enjoy each other’s presence. You really bond over the music. Everyone’s super excited, everyone’s happy, everyone’s hyped, like, and it’s just a great space to be in. As for freedom, techno is a great way to just get out of your body. It’s one of the ways that I am able to be more of an entity rather than, you know, different parts. It allows me to get out of my my head and and not think about things and just, you know, kind of connect my mind and body or, you know, also disconnect them at the same time. Lastly, therapeutic. I feel like sometimes when you’re in this trance or this is one of your favorite DJs, like you’re able to quiet your thoughts—you’re just moving your body and your mind is free to kind of travel where it wants. And I get very existential when dancing. It’s a time where I can focus fully on the present moment. For me its very therapeutic.

Aguiar, Ava, 12 January 2025
  1.  How do you feel when experiencing techno? 

“I definitely think it depends on the techno. When I go to more hardcore techno, that’s where I really feel locked in. I cannot stress enough the importance of a good DJ, like a DJ that will keep you locked in and make the minutes feel like seconds.

Techno, for one thing, is a phone free space. Most techno spaces will cover your phone. I respect that. Obviously, it’s a space where people are engaging in sexual acts, and again, it’s such a freeing space. I cannot stress it enough that this is one of the biggest things I love about it is that people are not on their phone. There is no other space where people are not constantly on technology. To me it feels as though nothing else is in that room except for you and the music. You don’t have to worry about anything that’s going on. It allows you to focus on the present moment which I think is really unique.

Aguiar, Ava, 12 January 2025
  1.  Would you recommend everyone tries out techno? Do you think anyone can enjoy it?

“Now, this is an interesting question because I think techno absolutely hands down is for everybody. Again, like I can not stress it enough, it is about respect. So, you know, there are instances where people should not try techno if they’re not ready to uphold that respect. I see people enjoying techno of all sexualities, races, and ages. So, yeah, I definitely recommend everyone tries techno. In regards to if anyone can enjoy it, I mean I don’t see why not. I think the world would be a much better place if everyone had just a little techno in their lives! It’s such a euphoric experience and it’s been so nurturing to me. It’s been one of the most important things in my life based on the community that I’ve made, you know? Again, as a woman, it feels awesome to have this space and community in my life.”

Aguiar, Ava, 12 January 2025
Kristina, Nellie and I at Alpha Tracks' set in San Francisco
(Image: Ava Aguiar) Kristina, myself, and Nellie sitting under the red lights in the back of the venue.

Get Dancing!

If there is one thing to be taken from this article, it is that we need to dance! Get up out of your seat, play your favorite song, and let the music whisk you to a space where you are nothing but sound and movement. The world would be a better place if we could all meet in this space and breathe and dance and breathe and dance and breathe and dance. See you there!

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2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. Tech no more

    January 26, 2025 at 11:59 am

    I’ve been involved in the dance music scene since 1996 and after reading this I want to quit. Thanks

  2. No mo techno

    January 26, 2025 at 12:02 pm

    I’ve been involved in the dance music scene since 96 for more than half my life. Now I want to find something else after reading this. Thanks a lot.

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