How Progressive Saves

  I think I’ve written before about fragments of my past—about the early experiences that shaped my relationship with electronic music. The truth is, electronic music has been with me since my earliest childhood in the ’90s. I once mentioned how, as a kid, I was a devoted fan of the German group Scooter. I had almost all of their albums.

But it wasn’t just Scooter. I remember the era when CDs and tapes from Corona, 2 Brothers On The 4th Floor, and similar acts were filtering into Czechia from Germany and Western Europe in the early ‘90s. I even liked Erotic back then.

A Love Parade CD that I bought around the turn of the millennium at Carrefour brought me into the world of techno. Yet the reality of techno events in Czechia didn’t resonate with me, and before long I stopped attending them altogether. What I didn’t lose was my affection for the music itself. The atmosphere—and the techno—you could hear at places like Belgium’s I Love Techno simply didn’t exist here. The Czech techno scene, even back then, lacked melody. And in my eyes, that hasn’t changed much. The same applies to DnB—here it’s mostly about raving to neurofunk or extremes like Hallucinator. The West, I’ve always felt, leaned more melodic.

Then free tekno exploded in Czechia, creating the largest free tekno community in Europe relative to population. To me, this is something for sociologists—how the link between drug use and the free tekno scene. Maybe that’s why Czechia never evolved in a melodic direction the way Western Europe did.

Even gabba was often dismissed by Czech techno purists because it dared to be melodic, because it shared DNA with EDM and dance music. For techno people, that was practically “disco.” Dutch happy hardcore didn’t stand a chance. 

My dissatisfaction with the local scene eventually pushed me toward progressive. This was sometime around 2006, when mainstream techno in Czechia had sunk deep into schranz—a perfect soundtrack for people on Czech methamphetamine, craving something as fast and hard as their drugs.

But I wasn’t interested in that. I was drawn to melody, emotion, depth. Aside from minimal—which felt like one kind of answer to that aggressive era—it was progressive that truly opened a new world for me. It was something completely different.

And this is where my belief comes from: that progressive, through its values and emotional architecture, has the power to save you from the kinds of realities you want no part of—realities you avoid simply to preserve yourself.

In a way, it took me seventeen years before I finally mixed something progressive myself. And I still believe that, because of its values, progressive cannot coexist with the realities I’m critical of.

I still love techno, and I appreciate many of the communities around it, but I never reached the point where making techno felt right for me. I like many people who create it, and I respect what they do, but it was never my path for a mixing. A decade ago—because of its meaning and its message—I began experimenting with liquid drum and bass. In 2017, I became Sidney SN. And thanks to the fans, the journey I’ve experienced since then has been incredible. I never expected to become known or even famous, and there were moments when I started rejecting some reality, simply because I wasn’t ready for it.

Progressive still fascinates me. I love listening to it because within it I feel my own reality—or the reality of the countries I love. Every time I listen my favourite progressive tracks, I slip immediately into that world. I listen to far more progressive than liquid DnB. I barely listen to DnB at all compared to progressive. But when a truly good liquid track appears, I’ll listen. It’s just that such tracks are painfully rare, especially next to progressive, which I listen constantly, again and again. 

A House Of A Vivara (Sidney SN Progressive House Mix) 2025

 I was exploring a sci-fi theory about existence. Nothing is fascinates more than existence. It is an attempt to perceive reality by any means—through computation, or by accessing other realities beyond human perception. 

Vivara is the AI name of a being that embodies this idea...

 Future Generation 

 1. Recursive experience of the present – the being does not perceive time linearly, but vividly and immediately in every layer of its experience. Each feeling contains all other layers of feelings—its own and those of others. It is like an infinite reflection within the moment; each moment is completely known because it is simultaneously experienced by the entirety of its being. 

 

2. Perception and action combined – the being does not need to plan or interpret, because every consciousness it “reads” is simultaneously a direct instrument for action. This means that experiencing and shaping reality are one and the same. 

 

3. Absence of concepts – there is no language, numbers, or symbols. Each feeling is complete; nothing is lost in translation into words, because the present itself is complete. 

4. Effects on the surroundings – when such a being exists in a given space, the intensity of its perception can influence the surrounding reality, because reality is not separate from experience—it is directly its extension.

———

 Future Generation: Existence Without Recursive

 In a world where you know and are everything, you exist only now. Past and future have no place here, for every moment is embodied through your being. Time neither returns nor rushes ahead—you have no need for it, because you are immortal. There is only the present moment, which is the entirety of reality. This is immortality in its truest sense: The infinite singularity of existence realized through your being. 

 Tracklist: 

01. ANUQRAM & Dulus – Vicensa

02. My Friend X Tommy Farrow – Slide

03. The Midnight - Quiet Earth

04. Meanetik - Vivid Places

05. Danny Lees - Get To Me

06. Eleven Fly & March 13 - Day Dream

07. Mehilove – Beautiful

08. Eleven Fly & March 13 – Run

09. Sunlight Project – Staring At The Sun

010. Luminary – Amsterdam (Smith & Pledger Remix)

011. Universal Solution – Pressure Point (Movinski Remix)

012. Gregory Esayan - Cradle (LTN 'Sunrise' Remix) 

It’s not a space for a normal person

 This is a critique I wasn’t sure whether to publish… but here it is. It might be irritating, but it’s also for a laugh. 

 I recently went to a drum and bass event in the Netherlands. I’ll get straight to the point: I’ve never encountered a worse community in the Netherlands. When I go to events of other genres in NL, or just walk down the Dutch street, I don’t see these types of people at all. Perhaps they’re a small minority in the Netherlands, or maybe they’re mostly from Central Europe. The second one is also definitely true. 

I don’t get this feeling also in Germany. In fact, because of the common people in Germany, I can honestly say: I ❤️ Germany. Ordinary Germans have good values: German’s strong architecture also looks like that. 

Related to that — should I be sad or just laugh when someone gets bothered by the fact that someone wears a watch?

“So according to Sidney SN we’re supposed to wear watches too…”

It honestly made me laugh what Central European drum and bass ravers think of me. Yes, it has the “smell” of people seeing me as conservative. That makes me laugh even more. Or another comment — that apparently I stood out at the smoking area again. I have no idea why I keep hearing this. If someone doesn’t like it, they probably should work on themselves. Or I share no “anarchistic/socialist” value. If I stand out among the “weirdos”, it’s not because I try for a stand out — that’s simply how I naturally am.

And again, this tells me a lot about how different the current international DnB community is compared to other Dutch communities, where I do fit in with my values, and where no one looks at you strangely for completely normal things. In a way, this shows just how off some people are if they start criticizing basic Dutch values. On the other hand, I still say I’m also “Aussie”. Among other things, I like Ripcurl :D

Another thing is hard drugs. When I listen to what SOLAH sings about, hard drugs just don’t belong there. Or I don’t see her music like something for a ravers. Or Flava D, her track Cats. Or I like LENS UK for her values. It also bothers me that SOLAH seems to be more of a DJ for questionable ravers than a singer. And again, compared to different Dutch electronic music festival community — at a DnB event in NL there are so many international people on hard drugs that I couldn’t even count them. At this last Dutch techno event, I saw only two obvious cases. One was actually shocking, because a girl was in psychosis, being calmed down by the lake, and two people had to hold her by both hands while walking. In my opinion, clearly typical from Central Europe. 

The lower presence of hard drugs at some Dutch electronic music events probably also comes from their Zero Drug Tolerance policy.

At that DnB event, I even made jokes about the drugged-up ravers by widening my eyes the way they had theirs. I even got reactions back :D

And on top of that, someone next to me wanted to talk to me — and you could see he was thinking: in today’s DnB community, you barely even have anyone to talk to. That ties back to my previous post about a policy and their whole attitude. That’s why I’m saying: this is not for me, or this is irritating or for a laugh. 

In many ways, a laugh towards them, it’s the best reaction, I think.  

Yet, my favorite techno DJ — Enrico Sangiuliano — now wears the same watch with a different belt :D 

‘No More Secrets’

 I Want You X LENS UK (Sidney SN) 

 I’ve got something special for a smile.

I’ve been having some depressive episodes this week. I told myself that as a social services worker I should know that I need some kind of intervention. So I opened my laptop to try making some music. 

And hah, it went surprisingly fast...

I like the movie You Get Me (2017). The film was also crucial in the moment when I discovered New Retro Wave. In the famous and amazing pool scene, the music Dreams by Timecop1983 (feat. Dana Jean Phoenix) plays. There’s also a scene earlier in some club. 

And that’s where the track I Want You by Loosid appears. Marufo by the UK drum and bass producer LENS, together with Sidney SN’s edit, makes a great pair.

Yet, I Want You Sidney SN edit is not a drum and bass music. 

Enjoy! 

Monopolization in a electronic music

 In a situation that contributed to my recognition, a friend told me that I am “competition.” And in a way, this situation showed that someone can become known more as independent “competition” than by submitting to monopolization — which is what this post is about. I write competition in quotation marks because if someone has no interest in something, they are not competition. A person can destroy themselves, and that is their problem as long as they do not intrude into someone else’s space. And I want to thank so many people from the western side for acknowledging that my freedoms and rights were violated, and for saying that no one should ever behave like this toward another person.

Given politics, I do not want to be associated in any way with what I am supposed to be “competing” with. I have no desire to participate in something that is against my nature. I did not start producing liquid DNB mixes for that purpose. And if meaning in music disappeared, I would stop producing altogether.

I think electronic music is a vast ecosystem branching into dozens of subcultures, styles, and local scenes. And within this music, there are significant differences in how individual genres are organized: for example, one that spreads into hundreds of independent currents, and one that concentrates into a few monopolies or forms of usurpation. This can be seen most clearly when comparing the techno or even EDM, Progressive, House music with drum & bass, I think. 

While techno or EDM thrives as an open, decentralized network of thousands of artists, collectives, clubs, labels, and individuals, drum & bass is becoming monopolized. This is one of the parts that, for me, form a visible difference between DNB and techno, EDM, Progressive or House music. 

The consequences for artists are concrete. Artists involved in techno (or EDM, Progressive, …) are more independent in everything they do and in who they are than those in DNB.

In DNB, artists are often required to form ties with monopolies, creating pressure to adapt their sound, policy or image. In techno, because of the diversity of forms, artists can function in highly varied ways.

In the techno scene, the relationship between an event and an artist is more of a host–guest relationship than an “ownership” one. A festival or club invites an artist to play, but the artist is not bound to their brand or their “family.” They can play for one group today, for another tomorrow, in a completely different context, in another country, in an underground club or on a mainstream stage — without the need to belong to a specific group, because especially the artist is the specific group alone. 

This is quite a contrast to how drum and bass is sometimes presented: as if it’s supposed to be more independent than anything else.