Techno Dating

If techno is the music you'd cross a city for, it helps to date someone who doesn't need it explaining. Techno runs right through Raver Dating, a dating site built around raves and electronic music.

Techno is a big family

Detroit, minimal, dub techno, acid, ambient, industrial, hypnotic, melodic, hard techno, schranz, tekno – and that's before the crossovers like tech-house and psy-tech. Classic techno tends to sit around 125 to 135 BPM, while tekno and the harder end can run from 150 to well over 200. Two people who both say they “love techno” can have almost nothing in common on a playlist, so the nights, DJs and labels on your profile say far more than the word itself.

Where it came from

Techno's origins are argued over to this day. Kraftwerk's machine music in 1970s Germany laid a lot of the groundwork – mechanised rhythms, sequencers, a fixation on the future – but it lacked the four-to-the-floor groove we'd now call techno, so it's best thought of as a forerunner.

The sound was crowned in Detroit in the early-to-mid 1980s, where Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson – the Belleville Three – took in Kraftwerk, Parliament, Italo disco, Chicago house and science fiction, and gave it a colder, more mechanical but still soulful edge. It was shaped by the city's industrial decline, its Black musical traditions of funk, soul and Motown, and an Afrofuturist vision of what music could be.

The word itself was being used in Frankfurt too: in 1982 DJ Talla 2XLC, working at the City Music record shop, used “techno” as shorthand for technologically created dance music.

How it spread

By the late 1980s Europe had picked it up, with Berlin and Frankfurt early adopters. After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Berlin became one of techno's great cities, and the 1990s brought minimal (Robert Hood, Basic Channel), harder sounds from Germany and Italy, Rotterdam's gabber, tekno and free party culture, and tech-house in the UK. Belgium's R&S Records released early classics, and France's Laurent Garnier bridged Detroit and Europe, while Underground Resistance and DJ Bone kept the flame burning in Detroit.

How Raver Dating helps you meet someone

When you join, you add photos and the things you're into. Each day you get match suggestions shaped by your age range, how far you'd travel, what you want and what you love – so the music on your profile actually counts. You can verify your ID for free and get a badge on your profile, and other members only ever see your town, never your exact location.

Making your profile work

• Name names: nights, clubs, DJs and labels say far more than “techno”.
• Say which end you're into – a dub techno fan and a tekno head may not be at the same party.
• Say what you're looking for – a relationship, someone to go to events with, or just a chat.

Meeting up

Keep the first chats on Raver Dating – if someone pushes you to move to another app straight away, you'll get a warning, because it's a well-known scam move. Blocking and reporting are built in. More on our safety page, and if house is just as much your thing, see house music dating.

Photo: Valentin Bolder on Unsplash.