In my first year at uni I made a peice of work titled “playlist”. It was a book of white card hand bound with zip-ties . It was decorated with lino printed letters, the front read “playlist” the back, “fuck techno”.

Inside I had printed the names of various tracks and their producers, there was some varied and overlapping genres- but at the time, the clear implications was it was techno.

Flipping through the book today, I can be fairly confident that these tracks would suffice within a collective of sub-genres, that calling them techno was naive, reductive. How come I was so eager to “fuck” something i barely understood in the first place?

The hand cut letters, which I still use today, were Helvetica. Like most amateur designers, we had our day in bed together.

The book had been based off of a real playlist, one I had made at the request of my then soon- to-be but now ex, boyfriend. He was going to teach me how to mix.

I bought a DDj 400 off of Depop and bastardised the thing everyday until I learned about phrasing. Everyone was a DJ, and I was just happy to be involved. Prior I had accepted a club PR job for a (now defunct) weekly night in La Cheetah. At this point, I didn’t know what a dj actually was. I was under the impression that everyone was playing live. I was the idiot in the room. I didn’t mind.

There was techno, bad techno, real techno, pure techno, minimal, industrial, dub. Naturally, I was just waiting for the right moment to play Cuba by the Gibson Brothers or Mr Saxobeat. I was a bit miffed at having to pick one and answer the question of what do you play so I was just like honestly fuck techno, in that case.

Eventually, it became time to put out a mix- talk to promoters- network- press pics! I was horrified. Reduced to stats of clubs played, I floated onto lineups often told because I was female, a lack of diversity had started to awaken outrage in local feathers, at least the relevance of my gender was implied.

I began to feel that it was not enough to be present, to enjoy, share a perspective, however limited or wide.

Seemingly, you had to have your personal music taste vetted before entering the subby. God for fucking bid someone enjoys walking into a club for the first time.

Since when did it become unacceptable to just like music? I do not intend to strip the craft, shit on its technical masters; yet I sense you know this isn’t what I’m talking about.

The social media gamification of community has inspired a mutiny of careerist, with focus on optics and numbers, information asymmetry and ego. I no longer subscribe to this point of view. I have never really thrived in the realm of technical language. There’s limited capacity for language in what I’m talking about.

Eventually, I realised my participation in this to be as much of a choice as anything; and to have any chance of brushing up against the type of creatives who see their attitude not as a right, but as a tool for the agent, I had to start putting those muscles to work. I had to find the conditions they thrived in.

Free (as I can be) from the cultural rot that was proliferating, I sought what I truly desired- a sense of community. A group or a person, or a place, a day of the week. Whatever. Just something that gave me some purpose, somewhere I could show up and people could be present, connected with me.

I seek praise from my friends and I am who I should be.

After I met Hamish, I had a dream of a malnourished highland cow chasing me from an undisclosed beach to the river Kelvin. Where I hid out in a burger van and then eventually jumped in a taxi. I gave the driver a £50 note and told him to drive until I had ran out of money. We made it all the way to Bersden before I had to get out, when I did the road was full of some Highland Cow Event. The driver looked at me assuredly, like this was a totally normal thing. There was a huge procession of cows running down the road. The dream ended.

Looking into things like this, begging for symbols for my brain that thirsts for narrative, for a satisfying story- I connected Hamish and the dream. Perhaps it was because I’d had it shortly after our meeting. Perhaps it was something else entirely. Perhaps, without that dream, I wouldn’t be writing about Supertouch or my lack and need for community.

That starved cow, however, echoes something myself and others are feeling. The atmosphere in Glasgow borders on oppressive, it is a deprived, guilt ridden city. As Lauren puts it, Central Belt Symbol, or Riddy Culture, as it’s locally known, has us doing fucking handstands to avoid just standing up and being (fucking get this) a little bit weird or something.

Bring Risk Back To Techno. The Supertouch adage. In my mouth, it sounds like “Fuck Techno”. The slogan personifies the same thing, there is a message, better put by Hamish I must say, but there is a message there anyway. I find a slogan is a means of collectively identifying with something, and it’s why techno in itself has become *such* a point of contestion. Everyone is scrambling to be under the same umbrella term, instead of just giving in, getting soaking, like god intended.

It doesn’t make sense to me. I think we’re a hardened people- it pishes rain all the time here and this fate is accepted. The sun will hide behind clouds for days and weeks at a time.

Stood outside Supertouch 2.0, Hamish half jokes that people don’t mind being in a club all day. It’s not like the sun is out here.

Everyone seems to agree with the statement.

Written after Supertouch at Exit on 25th January, 2025. I addressed the haggis, wrote a poem, and not long after began design long the Supertouch posters. This led to more working together, what I believed to be an unfinished writing has completed itself in some physical standard, so in that I can find success.