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-- futurism: passed?
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Laeke, thank you for your excellent contribution to this forum.

I want to respond to some of the things you wrote (as i listen to a 1989 set from derrick may at braintree )


Your distinction between futurism as a theme and as a technical process is important to the thread. A while ago I made a thread about obsolescence and stagnation in musical production technology and how it relates to the music. Also involved with that is the fetishizing of certain devices and sounds.

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This is what I call (incorrectly) post-modernism. Art is currently talking a lot about art.

Who really knows what post-modernism means . I think this is definitely one of the components of post modern art, that is meta-art, artwork as criticism of other artwork. (Then again, this occurs throughout history) This is basically what the writer of that article was talking about when he wrote the term "blog house".

And just to be clear, I am using a broad definition of 'futurism' as foward-looking, with a distinct desire to leave the past behind and embrace contemporary and future technologies.

I don't think a futurist theme was limited to detroit techno, though certainly maybe in terms of its romantic and dystopic vision. I think there was a futuristic idea about partying and the culture itself that accompanied the rave/acid house scene as well. The detroit influenced scene of Berlin in the early 90s also I think you could say had a similar romantic outlook after the fall of the wall. There is a social experimentation as well as musical experimentation that becomes manifested in things like the Love Parade.

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At least we can sleep safely on one point: there will always be a difference between talented people and untalented ones, the first taking maximum advantages of the tools.

Well to be fair, there are a lot of talented people out there (I'm thinking of the BT Ishkur describes in his critique), but the ones who take maximum advantages of the tools are those who are both creative and talented. I see creativity more or less as 'having the courage to create something without knowing exactly how it will turn out'.


So speaking of futurism in art (neo-futurism, whatever you want to call it), check this out:


Generator X
http://www.generatorx.no/

This is a website that collects information on artwork (visual, motion, sound) created from code.
http://www.dextro.org/
http://www.turux.at/

I will suggest again that responsive, intelligent, sentient, code controlled, generated music will be something we see in the future replacing deejays and redefining our nightlife and our every day life as well.

Nice links there, will take a deeper look at that a tad later.

My idea was not to limit futurism to Detroit Techno, although it is probably what I am the most versed in, and it is one of the genres -well Techno really- where "futurism" was the most prevalent (in its narrow definition), but all electronic music is (was?) to some extent futurist (in means of production and/or themes)

By talent I meant technical prowess and creativity, on that we agree.

Funnily enough, I started listening to EDM in 97 (with Carl Craig - More Songs...), just when the article starts its analysis. 97 to 99 was sure a big period for electronic music, with several major releases including the age d'or of "Big Beat" and "French Touch". I probably lack some perspective there, but in ten years I never went through a lack of new things to hear, but it's probably because I was busy going into the back catalog as well.

On meta-art/post-modernism, I don't know how much this affects the EDM scene. It has, indeed, become the most important cultural trend in the Western world (the "art of sampling", as Ishkur put it in this thread), thanks to "post-modernism" being (unfortunately) an excellent excuse to just re-hash everything for a cheap success.
(I guess that with theories like "the end of history", we had it coming...)

It is starting to get late and I don't think I could add much at this point. As someone put it, electronic music force lies into the absence of image, that is what sets it apart in today's musical landscape. For the best and the "worst". This is probably why it will never gonna hit mainstream approval (among other things), and maybe why it will (is?) becoming a niche genre that exhausted all of its possibilities. Look at "repetitive" classical music, it built most of its history on less than a dozen guys: is it very important in the musical history? Without a doubt. Will it live on after Glass & co pass away? Probably not on any significant level.

While i agree with your idea that samples and tracks will probably be more and more available over the net, i think it will never become a part of the collective conscience (apart from ours). In such a "catastrophe scenario", the legacy of electronic music will live on with "fusion" or pop artists or new movements.
(Serious and depressing, sorry about that).

Otherwise, I find the idea of machines making and playing music on their own pretty neat!

This thread reminds me why I still come to this board, i salute you all

quote:

Originally posted by nefardec re: table thing Yeah that's cool, I think we've all seen it by now... but is that going to create a subculture that produces music, clothing, art, new building paradigms just because you can turn a cube around and make fancy patterns?

watch the "table thing" video at the top of this page

http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...12&pagenumber=3

imagine going in to a club to see a DJ. instead of playing vinyls or cds or whatever, its just him or her doing that? the DJ would be participating in a live performance, interacting with fans on the fly. think about DJ competitions were it was no longer about how well you could mix but how good of a song you can make up with a limited set of pieces specified by the competition rules. to make a remix you could obtain the same exact pieces used by the artist. a whole business would be made producing unique pieces to create sounds. it would be pretty sweet.

some of you guys take music too seriously and need to lay off the yay a wee bit.

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Originally posted by Spacey Orange some of you guys take music too seriously and need to lay off the yay a wee bit.

Not denying it... I guess I wouldn't be a good "Detroit techno fan" if I was not a snob ^__^

But heh, some people do take sports seriously (myself included on some occasions), so I guess it can be OK to do it with music too, as long as you do not go left and right to patronize everybody.

quote:

Originally posted by Spacey Orange some of you guys take music too seriously and need to lay off the yay a wee bit.

yeah we're called producers.

quote:

Originally posted by Spacey Orange some of you guys take music too seriously and need to lay off the yay a wee bit.

AMEN BROTHER

speaking of past futurism:

http://dailymotion.alice.it/video/x...xmix2-vhs_music

Again, Sherburne and his current view of future of techno:

quote:

Between (or beyond) the poles planted by "Ribcage" and "Heater", of course, lie other options. (I should note that I think Samim has produced some brilliant music-- and I'm not even sure that "Heater" doesn't rank in that category.) A few weeks ago, I had the chance to spend a few hours in the Berlin studio of Tobias Freunde and Max Loderbauer, aka Non Standard Institute (or Nsi.), and whatever doubts I may have had about the future of techno-- a born doubter, I seem to go through these funks on a monthly basis-- vanished over the course of the recording. Nsi., in case it's not obvious from the name, isn't your standard techno outfit. For starters, its members have history: Freund has been recording since 1980 (under the aliases Tobias and Pink Elln, among others, and as a member of Sieg �ber Die Sonne and a frequent collaborator with Atom Heart), while Loderbauer, also a current member of Chica and the Folder, helped kick off ambient techno with his group Sun Electric back in 1990. Nsi. haven't yet recorded much-- one 12-inch single for their own Non Standard Productions label and two CDs, for Ostgut Ton and S�hk�, respectively. (Freund and Ricardo Villalobos also recently released a collaborative single for NSP under the name Odd Machine.) But watching them at work was enough to make me wish for a world in which theirs were the only "techno" recordings available-- at least for a month or two, during which time other aspirants might be given a chance to play catch-up. No matter that most of nsi.'s work isn't banging enough to meet the amphetamine standards of most club publics; theirs is a vision of what club music could be. As opposed to the thousands of producers banging away at the plug-in of the month, nsi. know their setup intimately. Loderbauer sits in front of a fairly mammoth bank of modular synthesizer components connected to a vintage-style step sequencer. Cables dangle dangerously; the array brims with knobs and excitable LEDs. Freund focuses his attention on a Roland TR-808 and TR-909, the definitive drum machines of techno. Joints are rolled, the audio software Logic is set rolling, and the two proceed to improvise. Loderbauer's sequences begin normally enough, mapping out the groove in generous bass lines and taut arpeggios, but as he begins to twist the dials, and as the LFOs of his synth begin to modulate, well, everything in sight, from waveforms to the pitch and step-lengths of the sequence itself, everything becomes malleable, mutable, liquid. Repetition, the cornerstone of techno, is a constant presence, but an unstable one, like a drunk uncle who keeps slipping off to the kitchen for nips of eggnog at the holiday party; the groove is always crumbling into one-off sonic events that thrill and disappear. Across the room, Freund stands in front of his racked machines, taps at keys and twists at knobs, dropping beats in and out, tripping the kick over its own shadow. From what I understand of their process, only Loderbauer's synth work is being recorded into Logic; later, Freund will go back and re-improvise his own drum-machine sequences over the top, and the two strands will finally be edited together. The idea that any of this is not being recorded-- is happening and being lost, unrecoverable-- is incomprehensible. They play for perhaps an hour, barely communicating by any means other than musical. (At one point, Mambotur's Argenis Brito arrives from his own studio downstairs, clearly bored, trying to engage the two in conversation, but the most either will do is flash him a grin and hand the joint his way.) At the end of it all, I feel as though I've been through something. This is techno not as product, but as process-- an active practice whose end never eclipses the means used to attain it. The realist in me knows that it would be foolish to imagine a world where nsi. were the standard-bearers for club music; their output is too eccentric to provide the rush required by a public in search of dependable arpeggios. It rewards primarily active listening, even if it doesn't require it. And very few artists can turn stuff like this out. That's both a drawback and a blessing in techno's headlong rush of a scene. The market needs more beats-per-minute, and, quite simply, more minutes of music, than the Non Standard Instituts of the world can turn out. There's churn to be churned-- a thought that has been depressing me a lot, of late. But a few hours spent with someone like nsi.-- or a few hours spent listening to their records, or any records that take you outside what you thought techno, or indeed any kind of music, was supposed to sound like-- is enough to make a whole year of music, at its most fertile and its most fallible, look worthwhile.

funny thread

Bumped!

I realise I'm replying to a post from November...

quote:

Originally posted by Laeke all electronic music is (was?) to some extent futurist (in means of production and/or themes)

But to what extent indeed? You mentioned house music earlier. In my mind this is simply another phase in the soul/funk/disco continuum. Not particularly futurist at all, but other things were happening around the same time. Acid house was on the experimental side of it, but does the fact that it was experimental mean it's futurist?

Then there's the stuff I truly perceive as futurist. Let's take an obvious example: Red Planet. It should be apparent just from looking at the titles and pictures. Meta-information like this plays a huge part in determining whether something is "futurist" or not. Even Kraftwerk did it. The fact that they dressed as robots really had nothing to do with the music itself, but it tied in with all that. While we're at it, here's an even grimmer example: The Mover - The Final Sickness.

Just some thoughts, I might be back to post more later.

there are little bits of future around yet

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=74601

Redshape Remix sounds good.

in terms of sound, for me at least, the percieved "futuristic" style of music that I grew up with is really on it's way back at the minute. Whether that has anything to do with the Vangelis / Blade Runner sound track being re-released I don't know, but I'm fucking loving it.

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