The world of electronica might have become overcrowded since their first release more than a decade ago, but Autechre are still burrowing through microscopic cracks into the cranium on their new Warp album Draft 7.30. David Stubbs meets the curators of this month’s UK All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, and finds out why their future sound hasn’t gone stale. The world of electronica has become overcrowded. With the expansion and availability of hardware and software, and the relative ease with which new music can be produced and distributed, we’re awash in a worthily colourised sea of Ambient, avant Techno, blips and blissfully concussive beats, reconstituted samples and soundwaves, not every digitally enhanced moment of which seems absolutely necessary.

Sorry to put a spanner in your kraftwerks but Techno, in case you hadn’t noticed, has got fuck all to do with technology. The sounds of Detroit were made with cheap boxes with less complex wiring in them than the average pocket calculator. Derrick, and his Gary Numan obsessed mates couldn’t afford anything else at the time. Yet over zealous fan boys insist on making simple music signifying a vague futurist agenda. Little wonder then that the now antiquated equipment used by the pioneers of techno has become over-valued and overworked in bedrooms and studios across the land. Can’t keep up with the counter bores at your local record store? Feel like a girl when the lads are talking techno-twaddle? Then read on for an instant guide to the machines they all want for Christmas.

First there were a few more club flyers boldly proposing a shift from Acid, if not nationally, at least amongst that ficklest of fraternities, the London club scene. Then came the news filtering through from the States of obscure 12"s on independent continental labels cropping up in weekly dance charts. Top House producer Kevin Saunderson started name checking the discs, Red Rhino started importing them, London Records suggested the inevitable compilation and every A&R man in the land jumped aboard a Sabena airline flight to check out the new talent. A disjointed, subsonic dance pulse is causing the biggest shock waves ever to grace European ears. The sound is New Beat and it's coming outta Belgium. Belgium? C'mon, what the hell is going on?

It's hard, at first, to see how a story about a building could also be a story about memory, status, nostalgia, money, madness (in)experience, simple greed (and saintly generosity), youth, life, death and violence. Even music. Not really a story at all then. More like a soap opera. As far as most people are concerned, the story of a building which became a club, an idea and even a lifestyle begins in the middle. And the end? Well, there isn't one yet. Because this story is a cultural autopsy with the death certificate lost forever in the post.

At the dawn of the 1980s, Juan Atkins began recording what stands as perhaps the most influential body of work in the field of techno. Exploring his vision of a futuristic music which welded the more cosmic side of Parliament funk with rigid computer synth-pop embodied by kraftwerk and the techno-futurist possibilities described by sociologist Alvin Toffler (author of The Third Wave and Future Shock), Atkins blurred his name behind aliases such as Cybotron, Model 500 and Infiniti -- all, except for Cybotron, comprised solely of himself -- to release many classics of sublime Detroit techno. And though it's often difficult (and misleading) to pick the precise genesis for any style of music, the easiest choice for techno is an Atkins release, the 1982 electro track "Clear," recorded by Atkins and Rick Davis as Cybotron.