Detroit techno type DJ Bone dismissed DJ Mag’s annual Top 100 poll as a �popularity contest’ based on marketing and hype last week, and had an even bigger pop at DJs using laptops.

“I developed my three turntable technique to specifically create two things that I think are missing in most DJ sets… excitement and the unknown,” he told Chinese portal Shanghaiist. “I felt that there was always a lack of action, that the DJ was just acting as a human jukebox or вЂ?record-player’. They drop the needle and start cheerleading to the crowd to cover up the lack of excitement they could produce physically,” he moaned.

Definitive superstar DJ Paul Oakenfold saw it somewhat differently when he chatted about the secrets of his success in an interview with Mixmag earlier this year, pointing out the legions of DJs copying his arm waving antics in recent years. “Mixmag used to slag the DJ off for having their arms in the air and now EVERY DJ does that,” Oakey suggested. “Of course it’s about the performance. At the end of the day we’re all up there doing a show,” he added.

US superstar Christopher Lawrence (who was excluded from DJ Mag’s Top 100 last year over voting irregularities) spotted a different aspect chatting to Skrufff in an interview in 2002, suggesting that national characteristics played a bigger role. “I was playing at Cream a while ago and was chatting to an American couple and they asked me ‘Have you noticed that everybody here dances with their arms? ‘Watch, when you go back to the States, people use their arms and their legs but over here they only use their arms,” he said.

“I’d never thought of it before, but I saw that people would throw their hands in the air when they liked something whereas in the States people like to move their legs more; maybe because we’re used to having more open space. Maybe it’s a cultural thing,” he suggested.