Many wise producers have said that if you cannot put a label on the stuff you make, you won't be able to market it properly, which in the end probably means that you will have problem selling it.

While my 2007 project Deepjack didn't attract any interest from anyone except other artists, it did result in me getting a copy of Native Instruments Komplete as the best reader demo in Future Music. While this was an unexpected and wonderful surprise, the last phrase in the motivation perfectly pinpointed the problem of that particular project.

“Easily our favourite Electro Pop New Wave Art House Disco track of the month.”

So until Beatport to open up its EPNWAHD-genre and I finally can start rejecting Madonna to please please remix her, I would assume using more defined styles in music is a good thing, right? Stamp it minimal techno and you know what it is. Yeah. Sure.

From the perspective of a consumer I cannot help getting tired.

Can anyone please tell me what 'minimal techno' really is? Sure, the definition according to the all-knowing Wikipedia is that it “is a form of electronic dance music that is considered a minimalist derivative of techno” – but how many artists or producers of sample libraries follow that gospel? One of my all-time favorite sample libraries is Minimal House by Vengeance. This library inspired me to create a handful of songs which in turn formed a Swedish-Japanese collaboration of happy unicorn-trance-pop.

I mean – come on. Happy. Unicorn. Trance. Pop. Where is the minimalistic about that? The same goes for the old Loopmasters sample library 'Deep Trance & Techno Producer'. A solid good library with some really nice bass and drum loops, but is nowhere near my definition of deep. I don't know how many hundreds or even thousands of megabytes of samples with less than relevant labels.

I won't hit you with more wisdom until after the holidays, so here's the last words of this year:

"Sample libraries are like sausages. The butcher stuffs it with all kinds of meat and call it something. It might be called Bundeswurst, Parasztkolbasz or Blommig Falukorv, but you still don't know what it is until you've tried it."

Never forget it. It's the best advice you'll be getting for the rest of this year.
Sample libraries are like sausages.