Free tekno, also known as tekno, freetekno and hardtek, is the music predominantly played at free parties in Europe. The spelling of the word tekno is made to deliberately differentiate the musical style from that of techno. The music is fast and it can vary between 150 and 185 bpm and is characterised by a pounding repetitive kick drum. Nevertheless, bass drum distortion by clipping is used less often as in the related genre of mainstyle hardcore. Nowadays, some tekno producers also use drum sets that rather sound trancey, since many members of the tekno subculture as well as the psytrance subculture frequently attend the same raves and the two scenes are closely connected. History Tekno evolved in tandem with the teknival movement in the early 1990s since many of the teknival organisers and DJs were also making music. The music drew on influences such as hardcore, rave, jungle, early hardcore and techno, with the producers taking the sound in a darker direction. Spiral tribe were the first to start making and widely disseminating this genre taking it to France and Eastern Europe after the Criminal Justice act was implemented in the UK. An emphasis is placed on samples from TV shows, films and popular culture which are placed at strategic moments in the tracks. The music was produced with whatever was available: drum machines, synthesisers and keyboards as well as computer programs such as audio/MIDI sequencers and Trackers, sometimes even hitting a random table with a pen. Starting from year 2001 there has been a trend using laptop and laptops for live performances, because the capabilities of both the hardware and software were improving very quick. With the evolution of the genre it has come to be known by a number of names, including spiral tekno, hardtek, tribetek, tribe and lately evolved in many other subgenres like pumping tek, hardfloor and Frenchcore which is a sort of mixture between mainstream hardcore and hardtekno, with funny and pumping samples taken from different media supports. Tekno producers come from numerous places, particularly in Europe, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Some of the most active artist who from the early 1990s up till the mid 2000s were Spiral Tribe, Crystal Distortion, Lego, Liqitex, 69db, Ixy, Kaos, Jack Acid, Curley, Unit Moebius, Les Boucles Etranges, Yale, FKY, Babyon Joke, Arobass, Gotek, Frank@, Floxytek, Suburbass,