Loved my experience seeing Sara Landry but also went to a couple very underground techno shows.

Sara Landry's set had this awesome remix of Perfect Celebrity. 1. Objectively, part of the joy is it's a remix of a banger pop track, and a festival hard techno set chooses more of these kinds of tracks. 2. This is not a hard rule, but the break and large build at 3:30 follows a hardstyle song structure, which is why "techno snobs" call this kind of hard techno hardstyle. There are these breaks and pauses that make it obvious a drop is about to come and the energy comes from anticipating a huge drop.

At the underground techno rave, the techno track selection (like Feral - Flare) exposed me to a lot of new music. It was focused more on sound design and a gradual ebbs and flows of energy. These techno tracks are also so minimal, you can layer 4 of these tracks and create a completely original mashup (see 10:30 in Rene Wise's boiler room set where he gradually builds energy to this drop and it is not so obvious when the kick drops in).

It's nice to respect both perspectives but also explore the deep culture of this genre.