“I’ll never do New York. America is not ready.”
That’s what Steffen Charles, the owner of German techno festival Time Warp, told New York City dance event producer Rob Toma more than a decade ago, with Charles thinking the U.S. market wouldn’t quite understand the brand of dark, pummeling techno that’s been Time Warp’s signature since the festival launched in 1994.
But eventually, Charles had a change of heart, and Time Warp launched in NYC in 2014, bringing the pummeling, relentlessly heavy genre to a country then riding the wave of kandi-colored EDM boom.
Nine years later, techno is one of…