warm up the backlash bus.isn't one of the reasons the current deep house fad emerged is because mnml had gotten so stale, repetitive and formulaic? well, it might be time to move on again pretty soon. listening to the new sascha dive RA podcast today was the final straw. the set is bland, flat and lifeless. and worst of all, it completely lacked personality. much of the sounds that emerged to combat the locked groove mnml got stuck into are now suffering a very similar fate. it seems almost every set i listen to these days has the requisite inclusions from oslo (johnny d or mara trax anyone?), sascha dive's 'annihilating rhythm', plus throw in some old school moodymann and dan bell to show off your old school chops. it all sounds good and the records they are playing are fine, but it is quickly getting very, very tiresome. my fellow ssg pete put this really well, "it really is the track selection. and, ironically, it's 'cos they don't have a deep understanding of house.' time to go warm up the engine. come get on board the 'house backlash bandwagon'. departing soon.
some of who and what i've been listening to lately:
- troy boy @ bar25 31.7.07: this set may be messy as hell, but troy pierce is a man who knows good music. so many great records in the hours and hours that he plays for (it is somewhat worrying how long the set is...).
- lots of marcel dettmann: i won't start repeating myself (again), but him and troy are definitely most the interesting djs for me right now.
- vladislav delay 'recovery idea (andy stott remix)': whoever thought of combining vlad and stott deserves a medal. what a match made in heaven. the ethereal bleeps and glitches of delay mould perfectly with the metallic chords of stott. this is a really amazing track. definitely one of the best things i've heard this year.
- métisse 03: one of the strongest records about at the moment. on the A you've got zander vt remixing mark august. i haven't heard much from zander vt yet, but i think i should start investigating as this is a great mix. warm, lush and builds nicely. in many cases, it'd be the standout tune, but here unfortunately the newcomers have to compete with the old hand tobias. his remix of tampopo 'helicopters got cameras' is absolutely brilliant. it just builds builds and builds. it kind of feels like the musical representation of a helicopter's blades swirling round and round as it lifts off.
- aaron carl 'crucified (rod modell like a river remix)': you may have heard this on anders ilar's recent RA podcast. given how much modell produces and that the majority of it exists within a reasonably defined sound palette, it is all the more impressive he can come up with a gem like this.
- radio slave 'no sleep part 5': it has taken me a long time to come round to mr slave, but i've finally overcome my unexplained prejudices. the preceding release, part 4, didn't work for me, but i do like this one. while the B works well and has that typical elongated feel to it, i haven't listened to it much because it the A side that i find myself playing. there is nothing particularly special about it, 'k-maze' just has a really nice warm, groove and build. it has nice light release and the female vocal sample reminds me of an old jeff mills record i can't remember the name of right now ('pacific state of mind' maybe?).
the bros are back? or is it me that left?
the new mix cd by the wighnomy brothers has been a bit of an enigma for me. it has taken me a while to reach a judgment, but i think i am there now. having been a former wighnomer and now jaded with their repetition, i was intrigued to hear what this would be like. after my first listen, i thought, 'wow. the bros are back!' what immediately excited me about it was that it sounded really unique. the mixing was different, as were the sounds and the composition. then i listened to it some more. and some more. and as i quickly tired of the mix it dawned on me, the bros aren't back, they've always been there. what changed was that i left. this mix isn't actually removed from what the wighnomy brothers have been doing, it is just different to what i've been listening to lately. indeed, it is pretty much the same thing the bros were doing when i got bored of them. the cd has its moments - especially in the opening 15-20 minutes, but for the most part it loses its shine and interest quickly. i guess they only have one trick. and again, i am tired of it.too much intellecto?
another new release i've given a lot of listening and thought to is the new claro intellecto album. what struck me - and at least some other listeners - is precisely how underwhelming it is, in terms of both length and content. considering the extremely high quality of claro's past output and modern love's releases, i think most of us were working on the presumption that this would be excellent. in this regard, while i find myself normally agreeing with the excellent test industries blog, i think he is giving claro too much benefit of the doubt. i doubt listening to this on repeat will allow for the 'intelligent design' of this album to make itself apparent, as my gut says it just isn't there. rather than over intellectualising and trying to discover the hidden brilliance or supposed 'meta narrative', it'd be more worthwhile just accepting that unfortunately someone who is capable of producing amazing music happened to come up a bit short this time.
that's it. thoughts and retorts welcome...
i mean, the problem with doing anything based on a simple formula (be it mnml or "deep house" as they are calling this new stuff, i'm not so sure) is that it is always going to be boring and predictable. playing hours and hours of the same kind of crap is boring no matter what it is. the same way hard banging shit was boring, the same way a set of nothing but generic melodic techno is boring.
ReplyDeleteit's all about mixing it up, that is the key to longevity and maintaining interest. i love dan bell and moodymann, and lord knows their records are effective no matter what. but theyre better when theyre jammed in between some disco, some jazz, some house, some 80's, some broken beats, some electro, some pop, etc. of course finding the good records in one of those genres is too hard for most deejays, much less all of them. that's why deejays like the Beatdown crew and the 3 Chairs are so good, despite being "deep house" deejays, they play a ton of different things in their sets that have nothing to do with the limits of "deep house".
where do we go from here?
ReplyDeletedoes the backlash bus have a destination or are we just driving blind?
i hope its an express cos i dont want to stop in trancetown or r'n'b-ville
some good points made here chaps. Generally agree with pipey here. If you can mix it up effectively it's a lot more fun.
ReplyDeleteSo Chris... what you're demonstrating is an incredulity toward Metanarrative (myuk myuk myuk). Sorry chaps and chapelles, woeful grad student joke.
ReplyDeleteYeah - this was my first thought: 'Freestyle will save us all!'
There's a fine line between exploring old ideas and running out of new ones.
To rephrase DJ Bone on Deetron's 'Life Soundtrack':
From innovation, to renovation… from renovation, to imitation… from something, to nothing... from nothing, to nothing much else... from nausea... to indifference... life soundtrack...
There are responses to problems, and there are answers to them. Dive et al is a response to 'the dreaded minimal', but it's not an answer.
Is it just that, in my jargon, 'we've given up on new'?
Perhaps postmodernism (indredulity toward metanarratives) is actually just a matter of running out of ideas. In fact, the Intelecto album is QED - it's a beautiful execution and arrangement of formulas I've heard a thousand times before.
If it's precious and little it's just because, in a way, there's precious little else going on.
In some respect, Troy Pierce playing the same records in a trashspace like Bar 25 is more honest, 'cos it reflects the truth of our holding pattern.
No offence, and you can like what you like, but championing mountain people and then decrying the death of modern deep house in the space of a couple of posts seems like you boys just need to lay off the hype.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletesome interesting thoughts, but i shall just respond to jacob's rather incisive reply for the time being. fair call on the contradictory posts. to try and explain myself, the 'backlash' emerged for a growing frustration with the remarkable similarity and formulaic-ness of much of what is being played, not so much with the music itself. the mountain people productions are fantastic, but they start losing their shine after being played for the million-th time. so this situation is a bit different from what arguably resulted in the shift away from mnml, where the production was getting very stale, bland and much of it quite mediocre. the production from the mountain people and plenty of others doing the deep thing is fine, but things get boring very quickly if every dj and his dog is playing 'i wish i was a cat'... what serafin and rozzo - and quite a few other suisse peeps - great as djs is that they are doing their own thing and not playing the latest oslo record like everyone else...
ReplyDeletei hope that starts to clear up the inconsistency...
maybe it' just the pocketbook pressure of the record store, but i've given each oslo release more than its share of listens and have yet to pick one up. and this is coming from someone who spends an inordinate amount of money on vinyls, so, yeah... i dunno.
ReplyDeletepc, good points. i think pomo is wearing out its welcome :)
also felt the same way re: the claro intelecto record, which i heard blasting on a drive out of the city last week. pretty "eh" was my gut reaction as well, and life's too short for me to try and validate/justify a poor release from an artist + label i've grown to love.
ReplyDeleteI think it's also that Chris and I listen to a lot of recorded sets, and one of the things that has been *striking* is how much everybody has jumped this bandwagon, and how quickly it has become a series of 'dogmatic sequences'.
ReplyDeleteJacob - sharply said, but I'm with Chris. It's not a diss of Mountain People, Rozzo, Miss Fitz etc per se, just the way their influence is being applied. I'm also reminded here of Pole's recent interview, where he said the following:
"Every club in Berlin plays exactly the same music. There’s not diversity or something. When you go to Watergate and stay there for an hour, and then go next door to Club 103, and from there you go to Weekend and then the Panorama Bar, you have the same sound in every club – you don’t have to go anywhere. You can just connect all of these clubs and put a big speaker on the central place in Berlin and let it play and we all are happy. [Laughing]
I have no idea why people are following just this. For me, the electronic music scene and how it was ten years ago there was a lot of diverse places and different things. Even in the same club you had a main room and an ambient floor where you heard something totally weird, and I have no idea why this isn’t existing anymore. In the end, if you want to be really negative, it is a commercial decision. You can see that some artists are successful at what they do even if the music is absolutely stupid and boring but it works. And because it works, so many people are following the same track and make the same music and become successful."
So maybe... to follow the curve of Betke's thought in that interview, this *does* connect with the last post about ambient, in an oblique way... it says a lot about distribution, functionality, and how these interact to produce bandwagons and backlashes...
...maybe the point is that this shit gets boring really, really quickly 'cos it gets flogged mercilessly, then left to whimper in the corner.
So... freestyle will save us all?
And another thing...
ReplyDeletewhen are we allowed to get bored without being accused of hypesterism?
I mean, how long are you supposed to remain enthusiastic about something that's boring you... and why is it boring so quickly...
...and should one be faithful to things one is deadly sick of?
I'm reminded of Spinal Tap's Japan tours... or the fact that Dream Theater actually DO tour Japan every year...
... for us (I hope I can speak for the other SSGS) it's about following our ears with openness, and speaking with openness about our boredom with where those paths lead us.
to take it back to the origins of deejaying dance music, different parts of the night were (and should continue to be) all about different forms of music. you build the mood earlier on, then you take people up and down through the peak hours, and then ultra late night/early morning the style would completely change to something more chill. this is all deejaying 101 but it doesnt seem that many people recognize this. and these nights were all done by a single deejay! it wasn't joker after joker playing the same style and same anthems.
ReplyDeleteyou wanna know how to fix dance music? go back to the basics and quit doing it wrong. 30+ years after the loft started, we have such a huge amount of records that they didn't have access to yet people continue to play in such hyper defined parameters of subgenres. MIX IT UP.
I think this also plays into the poverty of contemporary DJ culture - and Pipecock's #1 comment is totally on point here.
ReplyDeleteRecently I interviewed John Course, who's Australia's biggest mainstream DJ. A total veteran who's been playing 'to the masses' for two decades. He was in Baghdad when you were in your dad's bag, blah blah...
And here's the first two paras of the interview:
Coursey could teach you young punks a few things. This is, after all, a DJ who was already packing his own box when a fair portion of his current audience were still skipping rope, scribbling outside the lines, and nibbling on crustless vegemite sandwiches lovingly packed in a Décor Duo by their mums. And, unlike your mum’s, Coursey’s wasn’t the kind of box that would do just for play lunch, either. No, siree. Time was, ‘real’ DJs had to work the kind of hours that would make any school kid (outside Japan or Korea) drop off the swings onto the tanbark in a blubbering heap. “When I first started, I worked 8pm until 3am three nights a week, and two nights a week I worked 8pm until 5am. So I used to do around about 39 hours a week mixing in a club. My job was to play music from the time the doors opened until the doors shut. DJs these days, they might play two hours on a Thursday then two hours on a Saturday, something like that – that’s four hours a week, and I was playing nearly forty.” Result? Coursey’s got chops, and a box full of the tracks that pack clubs.
But the problem these days, Course argues, is that the short sets and guest DJ culture have created a general situation where such chops (and well-packed boxes) are sorely lacking. What this means, he argues, is that you get a lot of DJs playing anthem after anthem, which ruins the mood, wrecks the flow of the evening and often undermines the DJ who’s following. “Really, it’s all about programming skills, and that’s something a lot of the young DJs lack. A lot people can mix, a lot of people can practice, but there’s no replacement for the experience DJs have from playing out and creating a flow that works over the whole evening. And that’s why I think a lot of DJs who start out in commercial venues have the edge, because they really appreciate how hard it is to get people going when they’re not just there to hear you. That’s one of the most valuable things a young DJ can learn.”
DJ T also said a similar thing in an interview I did with him. T calls it the 'king discipline' (nothing crimson about it though):
"Laurent Garnier is still one of my greatest heroes - I heard him four or five months ago. I didn’t expect that much, but what he was playing at this last set was really great, really unique. He was a big, big influence on me. I heard him for the first time in 92 and 93. Especially in his mixing skills, he was really a big influence on me. His whole approach, his whole attitude, everything.
DJ Hell was another big influence - what he’s producing and playing now is not so interesting for me, but the period between 96 and 2001 was really inspiring for me. Always when I heard him I was so impressed how he could show 25 years of history in one set and still keep it sounding homogeneous. This is the art, if you can play 25 years of history and still have a flow and give the young crowd the impression that it all belongs together and to show them in this way that this is where the music is coming from."
I think the new house sound from Oslo & Sascha Dive etc is a trend that will fade away.personally i like it but i couldnt put up with hours upon hours of it.I think the Sascha Dive RA mix is more for home listening or for a trendy bar im not sure i would want to hear it 8 hrs straight in the club.
ReplyDeleteAlot of people round this way are just looking for something to fill the gap since they decided that "minimal" went stale.
I dont believe in formulas il play listen to a wide variety of music & like to mix it up.Already there's a huge hype about the Oslo crew in Leeds so much so there doing a label showcase at the end of the month! People will follow what ever is getting hyped.Next year everyone will be playing Acid house again? Who knows ?
i just like good music.
I think the interesting thing about this is that it's in part a by-product of the producer/DJ culture that has become the bread and butter of producer/DJs (by neccessity, at the very least).
ReplyDeleteI mean, the days of being able to earn a healthy living out of 'selling records' are over. I think our previous post on ambient highlighted how difficult it is for ambient/electronica/non-functional creators to turn a dollar these days.
The irony is that the DJs who are getting the gigs are not DJs with old-school chops; the DJs with old-school chops can't get big gigs, by and large, and end up languishing in their locality.
This also means that we're not getting to see the best DJs play in the best venues. I mean, classical cats don't pay to go and see composers play violin, do they? Yet the analogous situation is totally normal for dance music.
Perhaps clubs like Berghain and Fabric have gone some way towards remedying this by retaining residents - but this is the exception. Really, you have an entrenched culture of 'guest DJs', most of whom are producers who DJ cos they have to, because they can't eat off selling records. They have to 'appear'.
... and to some extent, we're committed to this path. Once things become entrenched and expected, you just try changing that... hmm...
Point the last (then I'll promise I'll step back)
ReplyDelete... this whole 'DJ who takes you on a journey' thing is a very 90s concept we've inherited through raves. So much of the mashup/nu-rave culture is a repudiation of that, and its replacement with other ideas of DJ, like 'DJ as mobile DJ' or 'DJ as label brand' or 'DJ as ipod shuffle'
etc...
This is already very big in Australia, outside house/techno, so you have 'Modular DJs' 'Cut Copy DJs' and 'Bang Gang DJs' and so on. And the kids seem to go for it.
Ajax (very popular DJ in Oz), said this: "“I think at the end of the day, I see myself as almost like a mobile DJ – I’m one of those ‘party for hire’ kind of DJs,” he says."
"... this whole 'DJ who takes you on a journey' thing is a very 90s concept we've inherited through raves."
ReplyDeletenope, thats a 70's disco concept that has been there since day 1. raving didnt invent it, it borrowed it.
any of these other lesser ideas is "deejay as cash making entity", nothing else.
The oldskool djs are still getting sets for eg Rob Hood is making his way to leeds this weekend.
ReplyDeleteThe whole issue got me thinking. Around the same time last year or the year before this "nameless" quite sucessfull independent music night were championing more M_NUS flavours even go so far as Argentinian techno they brought George Savarotti & Dilo etc.
Now its Johnny d & Molinari. I think its just a following they & others will just go for whats hype at the moment. I think alot of the music heads do the same follow certain djs who are getting named dropped.
You only have to go on Youtube to realise the full extent of it.ANY RECORD that Richie, Villalobos & Magda (to name but a few) Any record they play & it finds it's way onto youtube people will search high & low for it with track id after track id.Even if its the biggest pile of shite or if its never going to be released people go so far as making there own edits.
What im saying is if Hawtin etc never played that record the majority wouldn't care less about it. It's just following the heard & being a sheep.Il admit i trainspott DJ sets like a goodun but not to the extent that il follow music for the name or the label alone & not the music itself.
I think a name or label is more hyped about than the actual music thesedays. It was once a place where there was more music coming out on a certain number of labels now its more labels coming out & less music being produced on each label.I probably went off topic a bit here but i didn't stray too far...
Generally agree with pipey's remarks.
ReplyDeleteBut if we're talking in terms like 'minimal', 'deep' and all that, where's tech-house figure?
The Button Down Mind Strikes Back! comes to mind as superb example of top notch tech-house.
Minimal, but not mnml, deep without being deep house. And most importantly its jacking.
We need someone to come along and top this mix...
To state the bleeding obvious (it's a special gift, I know) what you are witnessing is homogeneity through immediacy, laced with a healthy dose of the relentless pursuit of the shiniest new toy. The result is faceless, relentless army of aural piranhas landing on a tasty morsel, chewing it to the marrow, then flitting off on the whisper of the next succulent treat.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but picture so many electronic music fans (myself included) with a few musical notches on their belt, standing around tutting in their very best Meryl Streep butchering Lindy Chamberlain accent, "the internet ate my baby."
As for Pipecock's comment re: 'the journey' being a 70s thing - I dispute this, in a way.
ReplyDeleteIf you're talking about the mixological notion of 'the flow', then yeah, I agree. But I don't think disco DJs hit the same vibe for hours at a time – seems like they mixed it up quite a lot more.
At the very least, it would have been impossible to just play loop tools within a disco framework. Musical/structural impossibilities aside, the techno/logical modularisation hadn't proceeded that far at this stage...
...and if you look at DJs still playing with roots in this, they don't play 'the journey' (I think of Francois K as an example).
What I was trying to nail was this idea of hitting one vibe, one bpm, and a narrow range of sounds/textures for 3+ hours (ie doof doof doof), with no song form, limited vocals, and an anthemic cresdendo that comes only after hours and hours of builds and side alleys made through a kind of loop labyrinth. I'm listening to that Tom Moulton mix now, and this idea seems completely alien to disco, although it might be its 'bastard offspring'. But I also say this as someone with very limited knowledge of disco and its genealogies.
Re Nik's comment: right on! That baby ate my Ernie Mandingo EP (w/ villalobos remix)! And we're all engaged in this process whereby electronic music is effectively captured by:
-Ableton
-Native Instruments/Beatport
-Apple
-Google/blogspot
-broadband
-Azureus/BitTorrent
-sendspace/megaupload
You can take out any number of other players and you still have the 'set', but these are all constitutive... without any of the above, 'electronic music' just wouldn't be as it is at this juncture. From a certain point ov view, this is all we're really engaged in.
Like I keep hitting, there is *much* less difference between electronic music and Warcraft than most people would prefer to admit. Really, it's just a question of aesthetic prejudices, cultural capital, armour class, and the ability to 'cast disco/fireballs (villalobos remix)' at your enemies....
Sorry, 'crescendo'... what would a cresdendo sound like?!
ReplyDelete"At the very least, it would have been impossible to just play loop tools within a disco framework. Musical/structural impossibilities aside, the techno/logical modularisation hadn't proceeded that far at this stage...
ReplyDelete...and if you look at DJs still playing with roots in this, they don't play 'the journey' (I think of Francois K as an example).
What I was trying to nail was this idea of hitting one vibe, one bpm, and a narrow range of sounds/textures for 3+ hours (ie doof doof doof), with no song form, limited vocals, and an anthemic cresdendo that comes only after hours and hours of builds and side alleys made through a kind of loop labyrinth. I'm listening to that Tom Moulton mix now, and this idea seems completely alien to disco, although it might be its 'bastard offspring'. But I also say this as someone with very limited knowledge of disco and its genealogies."
indeed you do. the ultra repetitive trance inducing vibe was not of the 70's, but it was definitely disco. you really need to listen to mixes by Ron Hardy, he basically invented this and pretty much every early chicago and detroit producer and deejay will give the credit to him. he is the most direct lineage to what is still happening today.
what Ron Hardy did is markedly different from say Larry Levan or David Mancuso, who also took people places that went beyond just the record playing. it's all part of disco music. as much as i love house and techno, EVERYTHING they do can be found in disco music. it is the roots in every way, not just the beginning of everything else, but it was the rule book as well. everything that has come since is a refinement or bastardization of the principles laid down by those disco deejays. people seem to want to grow beyond it, but i dont think it is possible. everything is indebted to disco.
it's funny you should bring up Francois K as he is all about the straight up techno in his gigs now, as well as the more Loft/Garage styles. if you want to see a deejay who really mines the roots, check Theo Parrish. loopy disco, clattering drum machines, soul, jazz, whatever. it all locks you into that groove. and of course he can slam you out of it and then back in. he is one of the most direct descendents of Ron Hardy's style.
"Like I keep hitting, there is *much* less difference between electronic music and Warcraft than most people would prefer to admit. Really, it's just a question of aesthetic prejudices, cultural capital, armour class, and the ability to 'cast disco/fireballs (villalobos remix)' at your enemies...."
nah, dance music is about the deejay letting the music flow through him, not unlike a jazz player but with a different set of tools at his disposal.
i'm not sure if i was clear about what Ron Hardy did: it was his use of straight drum machine tracks layered under disco jams as well as his own looped up to hell and back re-edits that he would beatmix in the club from reel to reel. you really need to listen to his mixes, check deephousepage.com for some. his edits and style ARE house and techno.
ReplyDelete'Everything is disco'
ReplyDeleteI think this is a quasi-arbitrary 'origin', 'cos as soon as you take it back to disco, I can take it back to p-funk, the JBs, Fela Kuti - and as soon as you take it back to "the ultra repetitive trance inducing vibe" I can take it back to early Kraftwerk (Autobahn) or Can (Soon Over Babaluma), which is most definitely a 70s thing. Is it about the use of edits? Well then, what was Miles' In a Silent Way? Electronic keyboards? Well, what about Stevie W and Tonto or Herbie Hancock's Sextant? There's even the opening bars of 'A New Career in a New Town' on Bowie's Low which are already totally techno... until it bursts into a rock song. I could draw an origin in any of those points, but it's always quasi-arbitrary... I mean, why not just say, 'it's all Robert Johnson'?
The *decisive* difference is technology.
So if there is a human originator, it is either Raymond Scott and Moog and the many almost totally obscure engineers of Roland, Linn, Korg etc. This is my claim.
There is a very strong tendency in music to look for a single 'human' innovator from whom all music (which then read as imitative) seems to flow. This is something which has theological roots. The originator is the prophet, and we are all his disciples. The 'chosen' and the 'faithful' are 'those that know', usually a minority who adopts a defensive posture towards those others (either ignorant or heretical) who fail to see the truth of what has been revealed by the prophet.
For me, the only true prophet was a synthesizer.
So, without disparaging Hardy's musical creativity in the slightest, I cannot accept that 'it all comes from disco', and I do make the claim that there are fundamental differences in terms of style, composition and intent between disco and contemporary electronic dance music.
For me, dance music can be about the deejay letting the music flow through her, but for me, the tools that mediate it make it fundamentally different from her friend the jazz player. A DJ isn't just a musician who uses different tools. To me at least, it's constitutively different.
But maybe this also says a lot about our own imaginaries, Pipecock, which are (after all), the building blocks of our musical understanding.
"I think this is a quasi-arbitrary 'origin', 'cos as soon as you take it back to disco, I can take it back to p-funk, the JBs, Fela Kuti - and as soon as you take it back to "the ultra repetitive trance inducing vibe" I can take it back to early Kraftwerk (Autobahn) or Can (Soon Over Babaluma), which is most definitely a 70s thing."
ReplyDeleteall of which were played by disco deejays, of course.
"Is it about the use of edits? Well then, what was Miles' In a Silent Way? Electronic keyboards? Well, what about Stevie W and Tonto or Herbie Hancock's Sextant? There's even the opening bars of 'A New Career in a New Town' on Bowie's Low which are already totally techno... until it bursts into a rock song. I could draw an origin in any of those points, but it's always quasi-arbitrary... I mean, why not just say, 'it's all Robert Johnson'?"
it is all just robert johnson in terms of the actual music itself! but this is not what is in question, it is the use of records by a disc jockey to form a coherent set. and nothing about that has changed since the first records were mixed together! if you want to take it back even further, you can go to nyabinghi and vodoun drumming which were of course a westernized version of african drumming. but that trance inducing technique was not done by a deejay! as soon as the deejay began, all the theory and ideas that we know today were invented. none of it is new!
also, i'm sure most of those records you mentioned here were played in discos. "disco" is not unlike house or techno, it was a style of playing other music before it became a simplified genre. "house" was a term before a single house record was made. same with disco. and techno may not have been named what it was, but it was a style as played by people like mojo and the wizard long before there was a record called "techno".
"The *decisive* difference is technology.
So if there is a human originator, it is either Raymond Scott and Moog and the many almost totally obscure engineers of Roland, Linn, Korg etc. This is my claim."
nope, their instruments were always used in conventional methods first, the fundamentals of dance music go back really before those instruments were even used outside of experimental music, which had its own influence but only in textures as compared to structure and purpose.
"There is a very strong tendency in music to look for a single 'human' innovator from whom all music (which then read as imitative) seems to flow. This is something which has theological roots. The originator is the prophet, and we are all his disciples. The 'chosen' and the 'faithful' are 'those that know', usually a minority who adopts a defensive posture towards those others (either ignorant or heretical) who fail to see the truth of what has been revealed by the prophet.
For me, the only true prophet was a synthesizer."
well i wish you alot of luck with that one. it's not just one person, it is a whole movement of people who discovered the power of mixing records together to get a constant dancefloor instead of having silence inbetween tracks. you can trace back certain ideas to single people, but it was a movement.
"So, without disparaging Hardy's musical creativity in the slightest, I cannot accept that 'it all comes from disco', and I do make the claim that there are fundamental differences in terms of style, composition and intent between disco and contemporary electronic dance music."
you would be wrong on all counts.
"For me, dance music can be about the deejay letting the music flow through her, but for me, the tools that mediate it make it fundamentally different from her friend the jazz player. A DJ isn't just a musician who uses different tools. To me at least, it's constitutively different."
what is different? the main difference is that jazz is about the soloist which differs from funk which is all about the groove above all. but dance is a combination of those two ideas.
"But maybe this also says a lot about our own imaginaries, Pipecock, which are (after all), the building blocks of our musical understanding."
there is a history out there, it was not for nothing. all you have to do is seek it out, it tells you everything.
Pipecock, I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think you're really engaging with any of my points. You just refute them, then re-state yours as 'the truth' that I'm ignorance of. All I learn from this is that you have a lot of faith in your own opinions and origin myths (not that myths don't have real effects), which appear to rely on the following:
ReplyDelete"As soon as the deejay began, all the theory and ideas that we know today were invented."
This, to me, is the theological underpinning of your argument, which is also why it relies on a kind of 'revelation' by an 'innovator'. I think this might be very important to your musical perspective, ie, 'the real shit for those who know'. What do you think about that?
Interestingly though, you talk about the innovator/origin, but this recurs against another contradictory part, as follows:
"It is a whole movement of people who discovered the power of mixing records together to get a constant dancefloor instead of having silence inbetween tracks. you can trace back certain ideas to single people, but it was a movement."
But this is a space that's implied once you have a city and disposable income and a PA and a mixer... so we get back to technology again.
And seeing as your argument appears to repudiate the creativity of technology, I want to ask directly what you feel the *value* of technology is, in the sense of:
-is it 'value neutral' (technology is 'just technology')
'cos this appears to be said (and implied in the silences) of what you're saying.
There appears to be this idea that 'innovators' (who must be human) have the necessary activity/dynamism/movement to lead 'movements' and that the technologies are just passive or neutral.
This is appealing because it simplifies everything down to a single, human origin (with a form and a voice and a history that's containable) and that way you can avoid talking about the larger 'tangle of wires' by which we're all connected.
If we keep talking about music as if it's just about music, then we don't have to talk about the broader economies it circulates in, and the kinds of sociability that its created by, that it creates.
You say you want to talkabout history, but a of what? Always the history of Hardy the prophet, not Juno the Prophet, Roland the Prophet, Fender the prophet.
But I ask: can you have Genghis Khan without the horse, or Shock and Awe without the FA-18 and the aircraft carrier?
I don't deny the movement and influence of people, but I also add the movement and influence of technology on people (and people on technology) – this is my claim.
So when you ask me 'what is different' all I can do is repeat (like a machine, through a machine, about machines):
"tools that mediate it MAKE it fundamentally different".
Because technology appears to be a 'dumb unit', we think of it as 'dumb'. It has a logic, it has a voice, it shapes, it influences, it facilitates. It is also an actor, it plays its role, and sometimes that is the decisive one in what we retrospectively recognise as innovation and revelation.
We are having this conversation on a blog, remember.
For people interested in an online ron hardy set (boompty boompty!):
ReplyDeletehttp://www.imeem.com/churchmusic/music/TdXLcJfO/dj_ron_hardy_mixes_ron_hardy_live_at_the_music_box/
"Pipecock, I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think you're really engaging with any of my points. You just refute them, then re-state yours as 'the truth' that I'm ignorance of."
ReplyDeletei've been hearing your "points" for years in dance music now. people keep trying to reinvent the wheel, and failing miserably. their music becomes a joke and it gets passed on for the next fad of people who try to reinvent the wheel. glitch, then tech-house, then mnml, then electrohouse, then etc etc etc etc etc. none of these musics are anything special because they refuse to understand that there is nothing new to be done! it's like lamenting that a guitar doesn't make a good saxophone: limitations are good for creativity, not bad. workign within the contraints of dance structures is hardly a limiting thing, but to not change anything and say that you're doing something new is on some emperor's new clothes type shit. i see his ass quite clearly, yet so few do because they want to be "new" or "cutting edge" or whatever.
"All I learn from this is that you have a lot of faith in your own opinions and origin myths (not that myths don't have real effects), which appear to rely on the following:
"As soon as the deejay began, all the theory and ideas that we know today were invented."
This, to me, is the theological underpinning of your argument, which is also why it relies on a kind of 'revelation' by an 'innovator'. I think this might be very important to your musical perspective, ie, 'the real shit for those who know'. What do you think about that?"
but as i said, the entire flow of music like that existed almost as far back as human existence does. nothing has changed but the tools! and does that make it fundamentally different? nah, it makes it more convenient for one person to be in charge of all the music (instead of a drum circle or a funk band or whatever else) for a long time, but that is all that changes.
"Interestingly though, you talk about the innovator/origin, but this recurs against another contradictory part, as follows:
"It is a whole movement of people who discovered the power of mixing records together to get a constant dancefloor instead of having silence inbetween tracks. you can trace back certain ideas to single people, but it was a movement."
But this is a space that's implied once you have a city and disposable income and a PA and a mixer... so we get back to technology again."
but it is a tool to achieve an idea, nothing more. the idea is what matters, and the idea never changes.
"And seeing as your argument appears to repudiate the creativity of technology"
i'm going to school for electrical engineering, so somehow i doubt that i would agree with that. but i do see the big picture, which is why i see technology as nothing but a tool for other things.
"I want to ask directly what you feel the *value* of technology is, in the sense of:
-is it 'value neutral' (technology is 'just technology')
'cos this appears to be said (and implied in the silences) of what you're saying."
unless my synths start getting up and talking to me and inventing new ideas and shit, im going to assume it is just a tool for me and other people to use to achieve ideas.
"There appears to be this idea that 'innovators' (who must be human) have the necessary activity/dynamism/movement to lead 'movements' and that the technologies are just passive or neutral."
this may come as a surprise to you, but machines can't think. they do what we tell them to do. even the most complex AI was designed and implemented by a person, i didn't come from some netherworld.
"This is appealing because it simplifies everything down to a single, human origin (with a form and a voice and a history that's containable) and that way you can avoid talking about the larger 'tangle of wires' by which we're all connected."
the wires could all completely disappear and humans would still make music.
"If we keep talking about music as if it's just about music, then we don't have to talk about the broader economies it circulates in, and the kinds of sociability that its created by, that it creates."
it is just music.
"You say you want to talkabout history, but a of what? Always the history of Hardy the prophet, not Juno the Prophet, Roland the Prophet, Fender the prophet."
name one idea that any of those machines had! it's not like the ideas of designing them are anything new either, thre ASDR envelope and oscillators rely on natural phenomena that people model and shape with electricity.
"But I ask: can you have Genghis Khan without the horse, or Shock and Awe without the FA-18 and the aircraft carrier?"
war and killing existed before any of those things were used! come on, youve got to be kidding! the scale changed due to technology's convenience, but the idea is a fundamentally human one. you should go watch 2001: A Space Odyssey to see your points about technology all repudiated. it's all about the inner transformation, technology only assists.
"I don't deny the movement and influence of people, but I also add the movement and influence of technology on people (and people on technology) – this is my claim."
technology is all from people, any influence it has is from the people who created it.
"So when you ask me 'what is different' all I can do is repeat (like a machine, through a machine, about machines):
"tools that mediate it MAKE it fundamentally different"."
the ideas don't change! only the tools do.
"Because technology appears to be a 'dumb unit', we think of it as 'dumb'. It has a logic, it has a voice, it shapes, it influences, it facilitates. It is also an actor, it plays its role, and sometimes that is the decisive one in what we retrospectively recognise as innovation and revelation."
technology has none of that, it has whatever value people assign to it.
"We are having this conversation on a blog, remember."
just as we could be having it face to face!
Without having read all of the comments of this thread - what Pole said about Berlin clubs isn't exactly true (maybe it just shows that he doesn't go out anymore, too old, stefan?:_). watergate and panorama bar actually do indulge in a similar booking style, but the VIBE of those places is COMPLETELY different. so it doesn't really matter so much if the music is "samesame but different";-. 103 club is a category on its own (not necessarily a brilliant one as a PLACE though), they have a much wider booking scope i feel: ed banger (i wonder whether these will ever be invited to play in berghain/ pannebar, my guess is NEVER), weird indie-whatever-pop-stuff, a WARP night (PLAID....) - quite diverse. plus then there are "in" places like Picknick (completely indefinable, a decidedly Berlin homegrown one), some CO.OP party (ex Rio posse) etc. so here you go with all the diversity you desire and deserve;-). so don't be fooled by internationl hipness spotters and minimal afficonadAs ;-) which spent all their Berlin hours at pannebar - Berlin is (and has always been) much more than a minimal (now minimal-house) trap. which circles back to the bandwagon part of the post.
ReplyDeletecheers zuckermann for more-than-house-to-come berlin netlabel: www.stalking-gogo-girls.net
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI've been following and enjoying the conversation from the sidelines here for a while, but the last few posts have finally prompted me to step in and ask a couple of questions of my own.
In his posts Pete has stressed the importance of the role technology (and changes in technology) plays in how music changes.
Pipecock responded with (if I may quote):
"nothing has changed but the tools! and does that make it fundamentally different? nah, it makes it more convenient for one person to be in charge of all the music (instead of a drum circle or a funk band or whatever else) for a long time, but that is all that changes."
"but it is a tool to achieve an idea, nothing more. the idea is what matters, and the idea never changes."
"the ideas don't change! only the tools do."
I know, I've taken those quotes out of their original post/context.
Also, Pete said:
"If we keep talking about music as if it's just about music, then we don't have to talk about the broader economies it circulates in, and the kinds of sociability that its created by, that it creates."
Pipecock responded with:
"it is just music.
Okay (finally something from me), that last exchange really got me thinking. Pipecock, do you really feel that music is not influenced and informed by the context that it is created in? Do the "broader economies" and "sociability" that Pete mentioned really not matter? Is it *really* just music?
(Or am I misunderstanding your position?)
The way I see it, music (just like any other cultural expression/form of art) isn't created in a vacuum. The context (the history, as you've noted yourself) matters. The social context, political context, economic context ... and, yes, the technological context.
You said, "the ideas don't change! only the tools do." But can't the tools change the ideas? Can't the development of technology offer up new approaches to those ideas? Even new (dare I say) ideas?
Cheers,
Cam.
PS I recently watched the 1998 documentary "Modulations", and one of the things it seems to posit (if I read it correctly) is that modern electronic dance music/techno is in large part a response/reaction to the rapid development of new technologies (and the ever increasing speed of that development).
Have you (or has anyone else) seen it? If so, how do you all feel about that idea?
Plato's... sorry, Pipecock's ancestors 'knew' about Modulations many millions of years ago, Cam. The idea has *always* existed (and always been the same), only the method of delivery has changed, and only so the artist can know what they already knew, to wit: technology is just technology. Ideas DO NOT CHANGE.
ReplyDeleteThe 'fact' is that 'humans' control the ideas (which are immutable), and WE control technology... the only value intercontinental ballistic missiles have is the value that we assign them. Same goes for the jumbo jet, and the emissions it produces. The sooner we admit these immutable facts, the more correct we will be about history... and then we can give up on our silly little ideas that there is something 'new' to explore and get down to the serious business of paying homage to the immutable forms.
"i've been hearing your "points" for years in dance music now. people keep trying to reinvent the wheel, and failing miserably. their music becomes a joke and it gets passed on for the next fad of people who try to reinvent the wheel. glitch, then tech-house, then mnml, then electrohouse, then etc etc etc etc etc. none of these musics are anything special because they refuse to understand that there is nothing new to be done! it's like lamenting that a guitar doesn't make a good saxophone: limitations are good for creativity, not bad. workign within the contraints of dance structures is hardly a limiting thing, but to not change anything and say that you're doing something new is on some emperor's new clothes type shit. i see his ass quite clearly, yet so few do because they want to be "new" or "cutting edge" or whatever."
ReplyDeletePipecock, you lost me here -- You're declaring CATEGORICALLY that "glitch, then tech-house, then mnml, then electrohouse" do nothing new, but I don't really see this as anything other than you venting about genres (quite fluid ones, really) that you've a priori decided are worthless. In the case of glitch, actually, I'd disagree with your premise entirely--glitch music (like that of Oval or Carsten Nicolai, specifically) absolutely did something new; it may have referenced disco and Eno and Steve Reich (among other things) but it was hardly just a pale imitation of everything that came before it. Not saying that its newness made it *better* (or even, in many cases, good!) but it was hardly just a drum circle with bourgeois pretensions.
Also, I'm having a hard time with your terminology: "joke," "fad," "emperor's new clothes"... we get it, you don't like a lot of contemporary music because you think it has pretensions to novelty -- basically, you accuse it of acting out of bad faith. Fair enough! But I'd be very interested to know what the *good* faith position is. Obviously, I'd expect it would come down to knowing/respecting history, etc., but how exactly is that supposed to be accomplished? You and PC were having a very fruitful and interesting discussion on the nature of origins and innovators, but falling back into the rhetoric of "oh, poseurs these days" is sort of derailing your deeper philosophical point, i think. Sure, a lot of these techniques probably did begin with Hardy (as a side note, Luc Sante's new collection KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS has an excellent article on the blues that posits that it was most likely the invention of ONE individual, and NOT a social matrix). But does that naturally mean that everything that comes after is necessarily lesser and worse?
"Pipecock, do you really feel that music is not influenced and informed by the context that it is created in? Do the "broader economies" and "sociability" that Pete mentioned really not matter? Is it *really* just music?"
ReplyDeletei believe that the most obvious driving force behind any music is the culture from which the music comes from. this is what dictates the values of the music. it is that human interaction that matters, anything technological falls far short of this.
"Plato's... sorry, Pipecock's ancestors 'knew' about Modulations many millions of years ago, Cam. The idea has *always* existed (and always been the same), only the method of delivery has changed, and only so the artist can know what they already knew, to wit: technology is just technology. Ideas DO NOT CHANGE."
very nicely summed up. technology didnt invent sound modulation, it only allowed it to be done more easily.
"The 'fact' is that 'humans' control the ideas (which are immutable), and WE control technology... the only value intercontinental ballistic missiles have is the value that we assign them. Same goes for the jumbo jet, and the emissions it produces. The sooner we admit these immutable facts, the more correct we will be about history... and then we can give up on our silly little ideas that there is something 'new' to explore and get down to the serious business of paying homage to the immutable forms."
the only noxious emissions from music technology is bad music, and i guess there is plenty of that around.
"Pipecock, you lost me here -- You're declaring CATEGORICALLY that "glitch, then tech-house, then mnml, then electrohouse" do nothing new, but I don't really see this as anything other than you venting about genres (quite fluid ones, really) that you've a priori decided are worthless. In the case of glitch, actually, I'd disagree with your premise entirely--glitch music (like that of Oval or Carsten Nicolai, specifically) absolutely did something new; it may have referenced disco and Eno and Steve Reich (among other things) but it was hardly just a pale imitation of everything that came before it. Not saying that its newness made it *better* (or even, in many cases, good!) but it was hardly just a drum circle with bourgeois pretensions."
what exactly did it do? it's nothing but collage, taken to an extreme by the use of technology. how does it differ significantly from what Todd Edwards did? or what any number of tape musicians did? it's just "more, faster" which is typical of the escalation of technology. think about computers, they get more and more complex but the essence of what happens in the CPU is the same: floating point calculations. its all about making it happen more and more quickly.
"Also, I'm having a hard time with your terminology: "joke," "fad," "emperor's new clothes"... we get it, you don't like a lot of contemporary music because you think it has pretensions to novelty -- basically, you accuse it of acting out of bad faith. Fair enough! But I'd be very interested to know what the *good* faith position is. Obviously, I'd expect it would come down to knowing/respecting history, etc., but how exactly is that supposed to be accomplished? You and PC were having a very fruitful and interesting discussion on the nature of origins and innovators, but falling back into the rhetoric of "oh, poseurs these days" is sort of derailing your deeper philosophical point, i think. Sure, a lot of these techniques probably did begin with Hardy (as a side note, Luc Sante's new collection KILL ALL YOUR DARLINGS has an excellent article on the blues that posits that it was most likely the invention of ONE individual, and NOT a social matrix). But does that naturally mean that everything that comes after is necessarily lesser and worse?"
not at all!
the "good faith" position would be one in which artists concentrated more on developing a very personal sound instead of trying to ride a hype machine to popularity based on whatever "new" sound exists. this is what makes people like carl craig, jeff mills, basic channel, larry heard, and robert hood so interesting for such a long period of time, their tools may change but their music is instantly recognizable as them. it's not as if there isn't a ton of room for different sounds even in an "old" form such as house or techno, it just involves alot more work than just firing up some new plugin and making a sound no one has heard before and putting it over a kick drum. once people hear that sound, it is done with and disposed. but the same is not true of a person's sound, it is only as limited as their imaginations. trying to reinvent deejaying with technology (as some ableton players seem to think they are doing) when they cant even deejay with records with their own personal style is a fruitless quest. the thing that is fascinating about the "innovators" is nothing more than the fact that they put their own personal touch on things. in doing so, they changed the game far more than anyone who sat down at a computer with the goal of changing things using technology alone. it didnt even matter what tools they used!
i'll have to check that article about the blues, but even if can be traced to one specific individual, that person still had the influence of a culture to guide him. it reminds me of some book i read many years ago (i remember the back cover dubbed it "an existentialist detective novel" but i cant recall the title or the author) in which a man locked away a newborn child in a dark room with no input whatsoever aside from food. the goal was to discover "nature's language". quite an interesting read.....
BTW, i think "a drum circle with bourgeois pretensions" is a really good way to describe glitch!
ReplyDeletethanks for the response pipecock -- i guess with respect to glitch, specifically, i'm hearing different things, perhaps because i'm thinking less of clicks + cuts (which was, indeed, a genre woefully hobbled by its own pretensions, and i say this as someone who had some hand in promoting them) than of the pure sinewave work of carsten nicolai, ryoji ikeda, et al. i mean, that stuff accomplished something on its own terms, and worth engaging with on its own terms, and disco really hardly bears upon it. which is fine! my only frustration with the way this conversation has been going is the hagiography of, you must admit, people generally agreed upon to have "soul" and old-school values like that, and held up to a degree that short-circuits discussion of anything else. as far as the malleability of the form of house and techno goes, of COURSE there's a ton of shit material being made w/ lazy presets, plugins, whatever, but hell, that was true with analog gear as well.
ReplyDeleteoh and as for that luc sante article, it comes highly recommended -- the whole book does in fact, esp for another article on the etymology of the word "funk." fascinating shit.
ReplyDeletePipecock, the book you're referring to sounds a lot like J.J. Rousseau's 'Emile'...
ReplyDelete"Pipecock, the book you're referring to sounds a lot like J.J. Rousseau's 'Emile'..."
ReplyDeleteit wasn't, though that sounds interesting as well. i've never read any rousseau, though im into that kind of shit. i need to check it out. the book i was thinking of is City of Glass (The New York Trilogy, Vol 1)by Paul Auster, very odd stuff. the amazon reviews are all over the place, i reccomend just checking it out. it's not a great book, but it kept my interest depsite making little to no sense at many points.
"thanks for the response pipecock -- i guess with respect to glitch, specifically, i'm hearing different things, perhaps because i'm thinking less of clicks + cuts (which was, indeed, a genre woefully hobbled by its own pretensions, and i say this as someone who had some hand in promoting them)"
maybe my genre classifications are off, but that is the kind of stuff i was referring to. it was the first of the techno/house offshoots since IDM that really went up its own ass trying not to be "stupid" dance music (which is of course the best dance music!). essentially the same thing that happened to much IDM happened to "clicks and cuts", it lost the basis of what made it dance music in the first place.
"than of the pure sinewave work of carsten nicolai, ryoji ikeda, et al. i mean, that stuff accomplished something on its own terms, and worth engaging with on its own terms, and disco really hardly bears upon it. which is fine!"
indeed, but that stuff is pretty much not dance music in any way, though the use of such stuff by a deejay isnt out of the question ;)
"my only frustration with the way this conversation has been going is the hagiography of, you must admit, people generally agreed upon to have "soul" and old-school values like that, and held up to a degree that short-circuits discussion of anything else."
i guess what fucks people up was the idea of facelessness in electronic music. just because you didn't know who the person was didn't mean that their expression was any less personal. in fact, the facelessness forced you to concentrate only on the expression which to me made it even more powerful. sure, we can name names of many of these guys now but that wasn't always the case. regardless, it is always the personality of the music that makes it interesting. 94-95 era jungle was some of my favorite shit ever, but only so much of it really stands the test of time and most of it was by artists who got it right consistently. sure, there are always one offs who nail it once or twice and then churn out nothing but crap, but they are largely the exception.
i don't understand the reluctance to give credit to artists, as if the idea of personal expression is over. i've been given shit by a couple people about this concept, and it really has nothing to do with old school values or anything like that. soul is just an artist's expression, music that tries to be clinical loses that and in the end is boring because of it.
"as far as the malleability of the form of house and techno goes, of COURSE there's a ton of shit material being made w/ lazy presets, plugins, whatever, but hell, that was true with analog gear as well."
absolutely, but the attitude then was not about trying to advance beyond what dance music is about. what dance music is about is making people dance (duh!), the musical concepts that help you do that are pretty limited in scope. if you go beyond them truly, you basically no longer have dance music. it doesnt matter if the sounds are made by synths, acoustic instruments, or 2 rocks being banged together, what you do with them to make people dance is consistent.
Well, I don't think we're going to see rock to warhead on the issue of technology, pipecock, ... but again, I can't help but wonder if it just comes down to aesthetic prejudices, and the fact that you don't like cold, clinical, anonymous music - I think that this can be an extremely powerful form of expression.
ReplyDeletePSherburne noted Oval, Ryoji Ikeda and some Raster Noton stuff - I would add 12k and a lot of Mille Pleateaux... even a lot of the 'dreaded minimal' (flatlining, static, inward-moving, architectonic minimalist plugin music) can be great, and the statics and 'boredom' it is expresses can also be fascinating... I'm preparing a post about this, so you (and Plato) can rip my shadow puppets to shreds then, eh?
"Well, I don't think we're going to see rock to warhead on the issue of technology, pipecock, ... but again, I can't help but wonder if it just comes down to aesthetic prejudices, and the fact that you don't like cold, clinical, anonymous music - I think that this can be an extremely powerful form of expression."
ReplyDeletei think more than anything else i just think such a thing is not possible. you can make music that conveys those feelings, but it is still a deeply personal expression.
"PSherburne noted Oval, Ryoji Ikeda and some Raster Noton stuff - I would add 12k and a lot of Mille Pleateaux... even a lot of the 'dreaded minimal' (flatlining, static, inward-moving, architectonic minimalist plugin music) can be great, and the statics and 'boredom' it is expresses can also be fascinating..."
i feel like making boring music is not the best way to express boredom ;)
the thing is, i dig some mille plateaux stuff and some 12k stuff too, mainly when the artist isnt trying to substitute technolgy for personality in their music. anyone can sit there and learn the science of sound, making music is art.
"I'm preparing a post about this, so you (and Plato) can rip my shadow puppets to shreds then, eh?"
i'll be there! :)
pipecock, i've read that one too but forgot about that part!
ReplyDeletecrazy book indeed...
I haven't had the time to make up my thoughts on this whole discussion here but i feel there is some connection to be made with the whole 'drone' hype in rock with bands like sun O))), Om, The Boredoms (! the name!), Earth that just keep on repeating a certain drones and one day i'm fascinated by their sound, the other day they completely bore me to death.
One day, i'll find time to into this a bit deeper. Promise.
"Anyone can sit there and learn the science of sound, making music is art."
ReplyDeleteCarsten Nicolai might disagree with you... his work seems pre-occupied with an aesthetic of hygienic, laboratory modernity, but paradoxically, actually finds enchantment in the detail of precision.
The machines are beautiful to him.
Check out youtube and you should be able to find an interview with him discussing his Soviet-era sine wave machines, or how he used to listen to short-wave static as a kid...
...I also think of Markus Popp's disavowal of the category of 'music' for his 'audio' – and then I wonder whether a lot of electronica is music, or even gives a fuck about it.
Likewise, Eno was adamant about being a non-musician... I think this is really, really important, considering the influence he's had, theoretically, inspirationally and ermm.... musically...
An interesting anecdote:
A friend of mine interviewed the guys from Simian Mobile Disco, and one of them described how Eno came over. They were expecting him to lecture them on 'oblique strategies' or something, but when he got there... he did the dishes, and cleaned their house. They said he did it in this really nice, unobtrusive way, but when it was done, he'd actually renovated their headspace/workspace in a way that was far more helpful and productive than anything they'd 'expected'.