Like garage rock, that ironic Pavement/Archers of Loaf/Cap’n Jazz honesty, I miss the bedroom jack-off-itness of early ’90s electronic. That “I’m doing my own thing in my own room, people may or may not even be able to dance to this or know what the fuck I am doing, I don’t give a shit”-ism.

But Richie Hawtin proved to a generation of people that didn’t care about Steve Reich that techno mininalism was still definitely a thing, including a 1999 Y2k-dystopic reveal that promised sandbags and sushi for attendees, in that nearly catastrophic (in retrospect, much less poignant post-911) moment between living and not livng after the millenia, an amazing 303/909 performance and a gift of 3″ CDs for each of the 999 atendees that New Year’s eve. It was the end of a decade of alternatey-used synthesizers and actually-made music and the beginning of a thought much more fantastic, wonderful: we might actually survive.