I guess it depends on what we call an influence, and what we are influencing. It's always a loaded question, really.
Initially, my general "pusher" artists in electronic music that put me on this general path in the late '90s would be artists like NIN, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Meat Beat Manifesto, Front 242, Ministry, Infected Mushroom (I'm hesitant to mention those slags now), Prodigy, Psychic TV, etc. I also enjoyed some of the cheesier side of things, more mainstream house/downtempo, but many of the names escape me at the moment as they weren't truly, deeply influenced...more enjoyable due to freshness (well, fresh to me at least). I guess you could say Daft Punk, Bad Boy Bill, Azzido Da Bass, Dzhian and Khamien, etc.
As I picked up DJing in the early 2000s, I naturally became more involved in different sounds, more underground stuff. I found out about artists like Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills, Rob Hood, Surgeon, Steve Bug, Drexciya, Miss Kittin & The Hacker, Josh Wink, Adam Beyer, DJ Sneak, Christian Smith, Trevor Rockcliffe, Mr. G...
So, I kinda became infatuated with this crossover of techno and house. I loved techno...of any sort, minimal to the loopy hard stuff...and I really loved house, too. Funky, jazzy, deep, jackin'...just fun music. So I referred to myself as a "Tech-house" DJ, not necessarily because I listened to only music that fit into this narrow "sound" of "tech-house" but because I played everything all over the spectrum of the two broader genres of techno and house.
As the years progressed, and my tastes became more defined, more "refined"...I guess pickier you could say (although I have a love for really most electronic music, as long as it's quality...but I guess I'm more about cerebral and deep stuff in a way...not big on the "easy" hooks and big melodies)..I began producing.
These days, I'm still firmly in "tech-house" area, although I rarely find myself digging through the "tech-house" genres on Beatport, etc...don't find them to suit my tastes, often. The last couple years, big influences for me production-wise and for DJing have been (or continued to be) Mr. G, Levon Vincent, Ben Klock, Claro Intelecto, Rob Hood, Jeff Mills, James Ruskin, DVS1, Audion, Carl Craig, DBX, DJ Hyperactive, Heiko Laux, Kris Wadsworth, John Tejada, Losoul, Kyle Geiger, Marcel Dettmann, Soulphiction, Nina Kraviz, Prosumer, Speedy J, Shed, Steve Rachmad, Mike Dehnert...to name a few. This dubbed-out house, tech-house and techno sound. Juicy basslines, classic analog percussion, jacking "vibe" at times, spacey pads, tempos anywhere from 115-135. It's pretty awesome to hear so much of "my" sound bubble up to the surface lately. My last trip to Detroit in 2010 was awesome for a lot of reasons, but it was really amazing to hear some of my favorite big DJs dropping tracks that I picked up in my early years of spinning, from the late '90s to early 2000s, before the digital "klickity klack" m_nus minimal took over techno. So it's all come full circle in a way, and all sorts of producers are blowing up that fit this sound, and deservingly so.
So yeah, it's been a crazy road for me, but I'm very comfortable with what I do, and what my influences are. I feel like I haven't just latched on to trends, and generally stuck with what I love, and it's beginning to pay off. But yes, I still enjoy the occasional guilty pleasure of some big, grungy electro house from Proxy or the like at times
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