Woody McBride

"It's a really exciting time," McBride says of the current attention techno is getting from the mainstream. "It looks like electronic music is going to get bigger and bigger here." I remind him of a conversation we had less than a year ago, when he said techno would probably never explode in the United States the way it had in Europe. "Everything's moving so fast... And I was leery then. In a way I was hoping it wouldn't catch on, if it meant the music was going to get poppy. But now I'm confident that American kids will be into the more aggressive, underground stuff. I mean, look at the Chemical Brothers--that's like punk rock break beats."

Despite his relative fame in the techno world, McBride is a little nervous about the larger spotlight. "We're all basically bedroom studio musicians," he says of the U.S. techno underground. "It should be pretty interesting to see how artists deal with the public aspect. It's like a new era of music-making, where everything is inverted. Nowadays you start with equipment, then you make your music, then you start a label, and after that, you develop your act."

Woody McBride pauses again, weighing his words. "This music, this scene, is something really new. We don't often get a chance to see something, to live through something totally new--like when music changed from Bing Crosby to Elvis Presley. I feel really privileged."