Grammys to introduce ‘Best Techno Artist’ category in 2018
Big news for techno fans: today, April 1, the National Academy of Recording Arts (NARA) announced that they would be introducing a new category for “Best Techno Artist” at the 2018 awards ceremony.
NARA President Neil Portnow said of the news, “We have decided to recognize techno in our forthcoming ceremony because of the increased interest in dance music throughout the US that we’ve seen over the past few years.”
“Clearly, techno is the hottest new genre sweeping the nation right now,” Portnow continued, without regard to the fact that the genre first arose in the country some three decades ago.
The NARA President noted that mau5trap prodigy REZZ is the group’s first nominee for “Best Techno Artist,” and his personal prediction as a frontrunner for the honor. “Deciding the nominees proved to be rather tricky. We at the Academy listened through the top-selling Beatport tracks in the genre from the past year and could not discern any differences between any techno songs or artists.”
In discussing NARA’s process for compiling nominees for the award, Portnow elucidated the following:
“So, we pored over dance music blogs across the Internet and found that REZZ was often referenced as the ‘dark queen of techno.’ Comment sections on the Facebook posts which correlated to these articles were filled with readers attacking the publications for referring to her as a techno artist.
However, we found that when considering artists such as Adam Beyer, Cirez D, and Maceo Plex as nominees, techno fans were swift to pass judgment upon labeling these artists under the genre as well. Many listeners seemed extremely eager to point out that the latter two artists were ‘really more dark progressive than anything,’ or simply, ‘progno.’
Eventually, we decided that techno fans themselves seemed unable to agree upon an exact constitution of the genre, so we just went with our guts on REZZ’s nomination. At the end of the day, she sounds kind of like Gesaffelstein, so that was good enough for us. He’s techno, right?”
Techno devotees across the country are livid with NARA’s announcement, with fans of artists such as Chris Liebing, Marco Carola, and Ben Klock debating on how to take action against the institution’s malfeasance.
26-year-old techno listener Corey Johnston told Dancing Astronaut, “Personally, I think it’s an outrage. You have REZZ with a nomination, but no mention of Rødhåd or Âme? You have to wonder if they even listened to Recondite’s Essential Mix…”
Johnston continued, “We’re all pretty heated up about this gaffe, but probably won’t do anything about it. Protesting the Grammys would honestly endow the mainstream awards with a legitimacy they don’t deserve. They’re just lame philistines at the end of the day.”
Noted Grammys critic Kanye West chided the awards show for their snubbing of techno legends such as Kevin Saunderson and Carl Craig. “Another clear instance of racism from the institution. I won’t be showing up again this year, so they might as well cancel the Grammys.”
West added that NARA should strongly consider nominating Future in the category for “contributions to the music industry that not only transcend genre, but time and space as well.”
Happy April Fools’ Day, from your friends at Dancing Astronaut.
Categories: News