Since we have a chimney contributing to this (Professor Genius aka Cloud Chimney), I thought I'd post. I don't think anyone would agree with it all, but certainly an interesting read!

"Dance music has plenty of rules-- some of them good, some bad, all of them unwritten-- but where are the manifestos? Inspired by Pearson's column and Matthew Herbert's "Personal Contract for the Composition of Music", I decided to solicit similar manifestos from a number of DJs, producers, critics, and label owners. Out of 100 or so artists contacted, only about two dozen got back to me; I don't know whether the low voter turnout stems from a sense of complacency, a distrust of manifestos, or neither. (Thinking about the quantity of unanswered emails in my own inbox, I can hardly get mad at the non-responders.) Those who did reply, however, offer valuable insight into contemporary dance-music culture. Their answers are variously perfectionist, prejudicial, economic, historicizing. At least one of them, I suspect, is viciously ironic. (You decide which.) But what I appreciate most is the way that all their answers underscore the ethical dimension of aesthetics-- the belief that a track is never just a track, a reminder never to take anything for granted."

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/142152-the-month-in-techno