My 2023 "Worst Label" of the year is...
Whatever the fuck "bigroom techno" is supposed to be!
in 2015, we started hearing more and more producers experiment with the EDM Template established by the popularity of bigroom house. one of those experiments was something i like to call "techroom" -- a very minimal variety of bigroom house that exchanged huge kicks and singalong hooks for housier percussion, addicting hi-hats, and spoken word samples. it's one of my favorite EDM subgenres, and when a truly great techroom track comes along, it feels special.
what techroom is NOT is "what if we just made 130bpm EDM with techno soundkits". bigroom techno is somehow simultaneously bad bigroom AND bad techno, which is an accomplishment! there's something about hearing the traditional hard techno kick on template EDM that is just... a huge turnoff to me. and yet somehow it was a dominant force on both the festival and netlabel scenes this year. but if i know anything about fads like this, they get abandoned once every other year if they don't catch on. and considering the rise of DnB, and the continued advance of midtempo "cyberpunk" music on second stages, i highly doubt we hear any of it on mainstages by 2025.