Time Traveling Ravers: The Love for Science-Fiction and Futurism within Techno Culture

Time travel has been a common theme in western culture for at least 100 years.
There are some songs about it, too.

But there is hardly any genre that is so focused on the topic of time travel than techno and its subgenres.

Yeah, most former youth movements of the 20th century probably thought they were the future (with the exception of punks and goths, who thought they represented - "no future" [1] ).
And it's true in the most literal sense.
If you are the youth, you will be the future of society.

But with Techno, there's the idea that the sounds itself are a mirror of future music, that they precede the things to come in sound and culture of upcoming decades.
Or even beyond that, that they are a vision of the future, sent from the future through a time tunnel, or that the DJs themselves would be aliens from a future time that a) stepped in this world through a portal or b) crash landed here and got stuck.

Of course, few ravers believed in these things in a literal sense (outside goa and psytrance), but it's a story they liked to toy with.

While rock or pop artists that present themselves as technocratic time travelers do exist [2] , but are, yeah, quite rare.

So why is it like that?
Well, techno itself was done on new tech, new studio methods, new concepts in music. So in a sense, the sound really was that of the future.
Many production methods that are standard today emerged in techno tracks three and a half decades ago.

Also, I guess we can see some sort of "future cascade" building up in 20th century youth ambitions.
Rock'n'roll already had a sweet tooth for futurism, as seen in songs like "telstar" [3] or car models that looked like they just arrived from mars [4] .

Jerry Lee Lewis might have been the devil [5] in disguise [6], but Elvis Presley was an alien, I'm telling ya!

Then the hippies came and with them, LSD, Ayahuasca, and Psilocybin, the idea of musicians being able to "get messages from another time" was born [7]
Still, despite the hippie futurism, they also had a craving for the good old times, living on a farm with crops and weeds and country music, and without the need for society, conservative morals, or clothes.

So things were still *split*.
And with prog rock we get further albums with a Cassandran claim [8], only to be followed by very boring tropes related to the plights of middle aged dads [9] .

But with techno music - there is finally pure futurism.

Future shock straight into your head, man.

There are no hillbillies or squares or traditional dads, or any other relics of the past on the 1992 techno dancefloor. [10]

Everything is brand spanking new, everyone looks as being from a different species of alien.

The clothing, the clubs, the sound, the dance moves, even things like gender and sex - with 90s techno, they appeared out of time and space.

Men might be from mars, women might be from venus, but ravers, they were coming from some place beyond pluto [11].
I'm telling ya.

There might be more and different reasons, but we close this chapter, for now, for a while...

...and will open it again... at another time. [12]

List of 11 early techno and techno-adjacent tracks that deal with time travel.

1. X-101 - Rave New World (Underground Resistance)

2. The Horrorist - Year 4010



3. The Future Sound Of London - Papua New Guinea



4. Cyborg Unknown - Year 2001 (now a date in the past)



5. The Mover - Time Traveller



6. Dj Hooligan - Sueno Futuro



7. Model 500 - Time Space Transmat



8. Jam & Spoon - The Age Of Love



9. The KLF - What Time Is Love? (Live at Trancentral)



10. Phuture - Acid Tracks



11. The Horrorist - Flesh Is the Fever (tale of a trip into the future)



Further suggestions:

1. Model 500 - Future https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeHCd3NdgQg
2. Immaginazione - La Musica Del Futuro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dhkLNdZDCI
3. Alien Factory - Destiny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VUQ_4KWPVs
4. Titanium Steel - People Of Tomorrow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrKfCv3SE28
5. Freez-E-Style - Awake in Neo Tokyo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKHiDP9XEC0
6. The Overlord - Future Of The World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck6QUHMUn-0
7. Mescalinum United - We Have Arrived https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL5xh-wt3Vc
8. Reign - Enter 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHVzPW4RJr0
9. Pascal II - The Future Is Ours https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP04JHjpl9s
10. Final Dream - The Future is Dark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGeGgCEKZHM
11. Lory D - We Are In The Future
12. Pablo Gargano - Everyone's Future https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDUQaE-nUAM
13. Jens Lissat - The Future https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItAy3-fA6_g
14. Base Force One - Phuturist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEypiakVcSU
15. Future Viper - Paranoid Beauty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8qgnJtLCQQ
16. I-F - Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIAZTV_sYtk
17. Space Trax - Deduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mThQm4rcnGI
18. Beverly Hills 808303 - Signals...The Acid Planet Is In Sight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BN8J2gN6BI

Footnotes:

1: "The ice age is coming, the sun's zoomin' in, engines stop running, the wheat is growin' thin, a nuclear error, but I have no fear" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Calling_(song)
2: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Ziggy_Stardust_and_the_Spiders_from_Mars
3: The Tornados - Telstar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar_(instrumental)
4: "Woke up this morning and the streets were full of cars. All bright and shiny like they'd just arrived from Mars" https://genius.com/Shakespears-sister-hello-turn-your-radio-on-lyrics
5: "Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true. Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil." - https://genius.com/Ministry-jesus-built-my-hotrod-lyrics
6: Elvis Presley - (You're the) Devil in Disguise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(You%27re_the)_Devil_in_Disguise
7: In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus) - Song by Zager and Evans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Year_2525
8: "I have a message from another time" https://genius.com/Electric-light-orchestra-prologue-lyrics
9: "The concept was originally envisioned by Waters in 1977 and refined in the early 1980s. In its completed form, it rotates around a man's scattered thoughts during his midlife crisis." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pros_and_Cons_of_Hitch_Hiking
10: "No More Fucking Rock N' Roll" https://www.discogs.com/release/301562-WestBam-No-More-Fucking-Rock-N-Roll?srsltid=AfmBOoo8qpT6ABNQIiyDoMgTyknQT2Y7GEhWJ7Fln20-bCie-qL6HJ_q
11: Beyond Pluto by Scarlet Fantastic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarlet_Fantastic
12: "I sent a message to another time [...] I sent a note across another plane" https://genius.com/Electric-light-orchestra-yours-truly-2095-lyrics