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Philip Sherburne : What Happened?
Stolen from my local forum, i figured this would be an interesting topic here.
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| Originally posted by julien2 http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/147344 The Month In: Techno The Month In by Philip Sherburne If there was a record that desperately deserved a reissue this year, it was Abe Duque's 2004 track "What Happened?" Over a brilliantly focused jack track, Blake Baxter reels off the names of dance-music institutions of yore-- Frankfurt's Omen, New York's Danceteria, Berlin's Love Parade, Chicago's Trax label, hip-house, even the S�nar festival-- followed, every time, by the question, "What happened?" It's an amazing, timeless track: Duque's production is proper minimal house, with bleeps that send shivers up the spine, but what really makes it work is Baxter's delivery. What could have been simply an exercise in everything-was-better-back-in-the-day cantankerousness becomes unexpectedly poignant. It's not just the nostalgia, the sense of loss-- Baxter sounds genuinely baffled as he winds up his spiel: Detroit techno? C'mon, man, whassup? It's like, what's going on Frequencies play with my mind I'm getting lost back in time I wanna lose myself in the rhythm But yo, kid, what's happening? What happened? I don't know, damn. What's happening? Yeah, I know, things change, rearrange... But really, dude. What's happening? Johnny-come-latelies, has-beens, will-be, the Next Big Thing... Man, fuck. What happened? In 2008, "What happened?" seemed to be the question on everyone's mind as house and techno struggled to define themselves. As for so many years now, minimal was the scapegoat. FACT magazine's Kiran Sande decried "the steady, sterile pulse of T-Mobilized minimal techno"; The Guardian's Tony Naylor chronicled "the strange, lingering death of minimal techno," and even Magda acknowledged that, having reached a certain level of mainstream acceptance, "a lot of the sound has become generic." For DJs, producers, and listeners faced with a glut of interchangeable takka-takka, "deep house" seemed to be the preferred alternative-- at least in name. But much of the nu-deep sound, espoused by newly hot labels like Oslo and C�cille, failed to live up to the hype. Sure, there were decent records, but how much mileage could you really get out of rehashing the same old one- or two-chord syncopations? The new We Play House label-- which actually put out a pretty solid release with San Soda's San Soda Presents-- even took the piss with a note on the label that read, "SOME OF US CLAIM TO BE ORIGINAL (But We Are Still Playing House)." To get a sense of how quickly this "new" sound colonized clubland, just page through the charts on Beatport, where every other record seems to ply an identical mix of elements: rolling congas, jacking rhythms, wildpitch string ostinatos, "soulful" vocal samples, and of course those ubiquitous, pistoning chord stabs. Tempos remained routinely laid-back, almost to a fault-- where was the drive, where were the moments of ecstatic release? Ok, sure: Big, garish, "ethnic," or acoustic samples were rife-- a legacy of Ricardo Villalobos' "Fizheuer Zieheuer" and "Enfants" and Samim's "Heater". Sis' aggravating "Trompeta", released on Villalobos' Sei Es Drum label, followed "Fizheuer" in setting Balkan horns to a stomping, Ibiza-ready beat; Ronald Christoph's "Underground Limbo" [Paradigma] did much the same. On Get Digital, Jamie Jones and Simon Baker's "Kaskazi" followed the format, but swapped out the horns for a snippet of exotic-sounding female vocals. Miss Fitz' 14-minute "Drifting On" laid awkwardly Abletonized Nina Simone vocals over a rudimentary drum-machine beat; elsewhere, there were muezzin's calls, Turkish horns, and Violetta Parra vocals, yet another nod to Villalobos, who did it first and better. (Ironically, one of the year's heaviest riffs came from "Township Funk", which found South Africa's DJ Mujava turning to early-1990s techno for inspiration-- fitting payback, perhaps, for decades of northerners sampling African chants and drum circles.) Johnny D's "Orbitalife" and Sebo K's "Diva", both ginormous hits for the nu-deep sound, also bet the bank on earwormy vocal snippets that served as the songs' prime identifying features. It was as though ringtone culture had colonized dance music, turning everything into a series of hot-swappable jingles. What happened? Maybe it's just me, but dance music didn't feel particularly fun this year. It felt professionalized, a churn of chart positions and sycophantic feedback, of patches hastily applied to a formula rapidly wearing thin at the elbows and knees. I won't pretend my experience is the same as everyone's; I'm a moody bastard, for starters, and circumstance and temperament alike kept me largely out of clubs this year. Hell, I don't even like the music that I produced this year very much. I'm reminded, again, of Simon Reynolds' admission earlier this year that he had lost "a quasi-mystical faith in beats as somehow figurative: a belief that the tremors that each breakthrough by auteur-producer or scenius alike sent through the state of pop somehow correlated with or could be equated to tremors through society..." That's a fancy way of saying that it doesn't feel like very much is at stake in electronic dance music these days. Rather than producing new social forms, the newest genres (grime, dubstep, blog-house) largely adapt themselves to established structures. Even taking a more conservative, more purely aesthetic position, it didn't feel like much was being said in house and techno this year, neither in the music nor the discourse around it. I heard some great records, but very few records felt like they really mattered. It's easy to attack techno's interchangeability, of course, and in any case, I used to adore the interchangeability of early minimal techno. Its collectivist, anti-auteurist perspective seemed not only novel, but also crucial: A critical take on pop music from within the music itself. This year, though, I just felt like it didn't much matter which record I put on, because they all really did sound pretty much alike. Efficiency ruled: many of the "best" tracks simply worked well, applying ever-increasing degrees of technical precision to formulae that were all but writ in stone. (One of my favorite tracks of the year, Paul Frick's "Steal My Heart", was in many ways a commentary on this very principle.) Maybe if I were going out more I'd get more out of the current craze for tools and calling-card riffs, which tout recognition above engagement. (Adorno's "On the Fetish -- Character in Music and the Regression of Listening" might apply here.) But instead I find myself yearning for less straightforwardly functional forms: slower tempos, unconventional beat structures, unusual time signatures. I could care less whether people are using vintage drum machines or freeware plug-ins; I just want to hear sounds, timbres, melodies and harmonies I haven't heard before. (And before anyone sends me huffy mails, yes, I realize I can satisfy those urges by listening outside house and techno, and yes, increasingly, I do.) Given that this month's column will be the last Month in Techno in 2008, I wanted to offer some kind of best-of summary, but assembling my list of favorite tracks of the year, it felt more like simply a list of tracks I quite liked, rather than something that could tell some kind of story. So instead, I focused on three artists who strayed from the herd. After the 2008 election, it may be too early to comfortably use the word "maverick," but these three producers and their collaborators deserve the label in only very best connotations. You might say that I've retreated into auteurism, but in a year where the collective effort was so lackluster, it made these artists' contributions all the more remarkable. STL You might be able to guess that Stephan T. Laubner doesn't exactly crave exposure. His alias, STL, is practically un-Googlable. And his label, Something, sounds like it comes straight out an Abbott and Costello routine. (Customer: "Do you have Something?" Clerk, with an exasperated expression: "Could you be a little more specific?") Downloaders are out of luck: STL's material is vinyl-only, with the exception of a series of CDs available by mail order from his website. (All but three of his releases have appeared on his own label; the others came out on the respected avant-house imprint Perlon.) Hell, he doesn't even have a MySpace page. But Laubner's profile is on the rise, thanks in large part to an incredibly prolific rate of production over the past two years. Since the beginning of 2007, he's released nine vinyl releases, two of them doublepacks-- that's three times what he put out on wax between 2000 and 2006. It doesn't hurt that Laubner's skuzzy, lo-fi house sensibility, like his minimalist, DIY aesthetic, is coming back into vogue. But rather than an example of an artist trying to keep up with the times, it seems more like the Zeitgeist is finally catching up with him. Laubner's style hasn't changed appreciably over time: his tracks are generally built around skippy drum-machine sequences and buzzy, muted synthesizers, and they're generally inspired by the early house and techno of Chicago, Detroit, and New York (though never with excessive reverence). I'd bet his gear is all analog and his recordings are recorded in real time. But it's not just that his music offers a welcome respite from the pristine production values and hyper-efficient dancefloor formalism that's become so prevalent in house and techno. You could look at it as an exercise in old-skool values, but that's not really the point. STL's recordings are, to use a loaded word, unusually musical. The restricted set of tools and the unvarnished production quality allow no room for distraction; every sound buttresses the idea at hand. I know I'm treading dangerously close to rockist territory here, and I don't mean to suggest that STL's music is somehow more "pure" or "real" simply because it's raw or lo-fi. To be honest, I have a hard time explaining what I find so fascinating about his music. But to listen to his records-- especially played back to back, which I highly recommend-- is to immerse yourself in a singular soundworld populated by rickety rhythms and crotchety melodies, of sensual grooves and psychotic tangents. As with Smith 'n Hack or early Herbert, you can hear the aleatory at work in every revelatory filter tweak or accidental syncopation. And yes, there's something satisfying about Laubner's DIY, back-to-basics approach, which accomplishes so much with so very little. With so much club music devolving into an exercise in joyless professionalism-- and the market in free-fall around it-- STL comes to seem almost ecstatically generous, from the quality of the music to the presentation (bonus lock grooves on every disk, records pressed on clear or marbled vinyl). A few producers might have matched Laubner's talents in 2008, but almost no one managed the same kind of total presentation, where the ethics are inseparable from the aesthetics. Plus, of course, it's got a great beat and you can dance to it. Significant 2008 releases: Lost in Brown Eyes (Perlon] Invisibility [Something Vinyl Series] Musik 4 Life [Something Vinyl Series] Klangbewegungen [Something Vinyl Series] 51� North [Something Vinyl Series] Tobias./nsi. Stream:> Tobias.: "I Can't Fight This Feeling" Non Standard Institute's Tobias Freund and Max Loderbauer have long histories in electronic music: in the early 90s, Freund began recording for labels like Rising High, Ongaku and Fax (in addition to working as a studio engineer for the likes of Meat Loaf and Milli Vanilli), while Loderbauer was a member of 90s ambient pioneers Sun Electric. But with nsi., which they launched in 2005 with the Max Binski EP on Cadenza, they feel more relevant than ever. They didn't put out that much in 2008, but what they did release was jawdropping, essential listening; their ambitions are matched only by their considerable skills. Theirs is the rare voice in minimal techno that seems intent upon an expression of something greater than 10 minutes of abandon-on-autopilot. Like STL, they work mainly on analog machines (TR-808, 909, Doepfer and Cwejman modular synthesizers, etc.); their compositions often spring from extended improvisational sessions. And again, at the risk of a rockist emphasis upon chops and intuition, their method results in superior music: thrumming constructions underpinned with ungodly bass that threaten to explode into chaos (or dissolve into nothingness) at a moment's notice-- Autechre meets Acid Trax, if you will. Nsi.'s Squelch EP (Non Standard Productions) is typical of their entirely atypical approach: "Ride", a shuddering maelstrom of ride cymbal and FM bass; "Squelch", a slab of deranged funk led by an errant kick drum; and "Nikita", a blissed-out lullaby set to a dancehall rhythm (really!) that was written in honor of Martin Schopf (Dandy Jack) and Sonja Moonear's baby daughter. They close out the EP with "Risset," an adaptation for drum machine of Jean-Claude Risset's so-called continuous glissando, a sort of Op Art auditory illusion rendered in kicks and toms. In a year that seemed to be defined by DJ tools, this took the cake: too long, too weird, too minimal and too unmixable for even the most deranged crowds, it was a clever trick that also served as a "fuck you" to clever DJs and tricky tracks. Freund's solo output, as Tobias., remains more faithful to the conventions of house music; his Street Knowledge and Dial EPs for Logistic, in 2006 and 2007, made explicit reference to icons like Trax, KMS and Strictly Rhythm. But this year's I Can't Fight the Feeling EP took deep-house tropes (fluttering chords, distended vocal samples) and sent them into hyperdrive, with a hypnotic, reductionist intensity. "Beat Study One" and "Beat Study Two" are gnarly, teeth-bared workouts for steely drum machine and buzz-bomb bass; "Go" is a fever dream of sourceless, churning tones and scissoring hi-hats with a vocal sample that sounds like lungs and larynx being turned inside out. The title track is the best: built of jittery 16th note patterns, it trembles like a house of cards; an uncredited singer intones the refrain, "I can't fight the feeling," with the force of an apocalyptic wind. If nsi. was quiet this year, Freund stayed busy: his unsettling, subaquatic remix of Los Updates' "Pictures of You" (Cadenza) was possibly my favorite quasi-pop, should-have-been-huge anthem of 2008, and remixes for Tampopo (M�tisse/Curle), Jim Rivers (Simple) and Two Armadillos (Buzzin' Fly) continued to sketch in the outlines of an ample vision. (You'll never think about the spatialization of sound in quite the same way after hearing Tobias.) Freund closed out the year with Non Standard Productions' release of Margaret Dygas' See You Around EP, which he co-produced. Its two long, undulating, teasingly arrhythmic tracks could care less about peaktime or afterhours; the only place they're likely to win "Track of the Season" is Bizarro Ibiza, a clubbers' paradise frequented by borderline-autistic mathematicians with twisted libidos and a thing for DMT-- which, for my money, is precisely why it points the way forward for 2009. Significant 2008 releases: nsi., Squelch [Non Standard Productions] Tobias., I Can't Fight the Feeling [Wagon Repair] Los Updates, "Pictures of You (Tobias. Remix)" [Cadenza] Margaret Dygas, See You Around EP [Non Standard Productions] Move D / Move D + Benjamin Brunn I'm not the first Internet commentator to note that 2008 belongs, in many ways, to Heidelberg, Germany's David Moufang, aka Move D. Moufang's career stretches back to the early 90s-- encompassing records for Warp, City Centre Offices, Pete Namlook's Fax and Moufang's own Source-- but he was largely quiet for the first half of this decade. Around 2005, Moufang sprang back into action, and a series of singles for liebe*detail, Compost, Philpot and others followed, along with a long overdue reissue of his 1995 classic Kunststoff. As with STL, in many ways, Move D's current success has to do with the fact a growing number of listeners are coming around to the sound that he's been plying for years. A daydreamer's take on early 90s house and techno, it fills well-worn grooves with needlefluff and floats away on a cushion of ephemeral associations. This is as pensive, even doubtful, as club music gets. It's an out-of-body fix for hedonists grown tired of gravity, a closed circuit between marrow and mind. Moufang made up for his quiet years with his 2008 output. He released EPs and compilation tracks on Shanti, Running Back, Modern Love, Workshop and Uzuri, and with Benjamin Brunn, he turned out two EPs and an album for Hamburg's Smallville label. 2008 may have been short on electronic records that crossed over beyond the clubbing public-- there was no Apparat, no Isol�e, no the Field, and even Luomo's Convivial still hasn't made much impact, despite a cameo by Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears-- but Move D and Benjamin Brunn's Songs from the Beehive should have been that record. (Ironically, it even features cover art by Stefan Marx, who was responsible for the sleeve of Isol�e's We Are Monster.) Padding house and techno's boom-tick template with sirloin-thick riffs stained with the nuance of a Rothko, they followed on artists like Dettinger and Thomas Fehlmann in crafting spongy, engrossing grooves that seemed to expand in four dimensions. My favorite Move D production of the year was his least accessible: "Dr�ne", a limited, one-sided 12" for Manchester's Modern Love label. Nearly 13 minutes long, it's Moufang doing what he does best: taking a single musical idea-- in this case, a syncopated snare pattern and one slowly unfurling chord-- and dubbing it into the stratosphere. Cycles run against cycles until time seems to be spinning backwards, like the silvery hubs of the car in the next lane. Heavy on the reverb and the resonance, every inch of the sound field is sodden: His atmospheres are humid as an August day and sticky as a purple-veined bud. (If, like me, you regard Pub's long-lost "Summer", from 2000, as a high-point of ambient house, then you'll know what I'm talking about.) From dub, Moufang has learned that you can blur the line between cause and effect (a drum hit and its echo, say) until there's no difference: repetitions float in a closed system that creates its own impulses. Lots of dub-techno artists have the clang-and-echo racket down, but I didn't hear another track this year that transported me the way that "Dr�ne" did. Significant 2008 releases: Move D, Quit Quittin' [Uzuri] Move D, "Dr�ne" [Modern Love] Move D + Benjamin Brunn, "Honey" [Smallville] Move D + Benjamin Brunn, "New Horizon" [Smallville] Move D + Benjamin Brunn, Songs from the Beehive [Smallville] |
I'm kind of relieved that my life chose to fall off the musical map in 2008, because it doesn't seem that I missed too much, or that it would be terribly difficult to catch up.
I got this feeling -- "what happened?" -- as I was untangling myself from the music scene about a year ago. It was uncommon that a new record sounded fun, and the nights I went to (admittedly few) lacked the unrestrained hedonism that drew me to dance music in the first place. The prevailing mood was serious, deep, and even pretentious.
I'll be getting back into things in the coming months -- hopefully the scene cooperates with a direction to light old fires.
that is the thing with dance music, you tend to associate the music you love with the memories you have, yet when you have a hiatus it does not usually feel like you missed much...and it comes back easy once you hit the sound that speaks to you.
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| 2008 belongs, in many ways, to Heidelberg, Germany's David Moufang, aka Move D |
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| Originally posted by nefardec didn't really like the article though sounds like he's having an identity crisis |
Meh. Maybe Sherburne needs to start a new column. "This Month In: Breaks", perhaps?
EDM this year seemed to be, for me - the minimal boom is slowing down, the hype behind Justice and 'blog house' is dying, people are confused where to go, now we're all desperately looking for the 'next big thing'. Which usually comes from where you least expect it. Prog seemed to make a bit of a comeback this year, at least.
I think we're definitely at the more retrospective point in our music's continuum, as seen by the constant 'updates' of classics, using a similar, slightly-updated sound palette on a couple genres, digging deeper into older, more obscure forms of music and bringing them back (dubby techno, Italio, speed garage) in a more modern form, etc. Stuff like peak-era prog, trance, 2-step is at that awkward point where it's too old to be hip, and still too new to be mined for nostalgia's sake.
I believe 2008 was the year without a "next big thing". And maybe that's not a bad thing, after all. Musical genres and subgenres had a tendency to be mixed up with one another in 2008. Well-defined genres are dying.
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| Originally posted by julien2 I believe 2008 was the year without a "next big thing". And maybe that's not a bad thing, after all. Musical genres and subgenres had a tendency to be mixed up with one another in 2008. Well-defined genres are dying. |
What do you know about techno Ian?
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| Originally posted by elFreak What do you know about techno Ian? |
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| Originally posted by Ian enough to know that I preferred the chris liebing of 2002-5 to the one of today, that I enjoy Oliver Lieb's sets & productions under solieb, that preach may have been cheesy but his work in 2004 was way better than what he does now, know a few good tunes/sets. Enjoyed early Joris Voorn work, Technasia, Kowalski, Hertz, Grindvik, Hardcell, Beyer etc from older days, mostly a fan of well mixed loop-techno but can appreciate funky & hard and some minimal but not very much. Used to enjoy Cave's sets too. |
Eh, why bother yourself about what the "next big thing" will be anyway? The cycle of trends in EDM seems to be faster than in any other kind of music. Some people correctly predict what's going to be "it" next year or next month, it blows up, and then probably 90% of people promptly forget about "it" and move on to something else. Seems like obsessing over trends should get old really fast, but apparently some people's interest never dies.
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| Originally posted by Ian enough to know that I preferred the chris liebing of 2002-5 to the one of today, that I enjoy Oliver Lieb's sets & productions under solieb, that preach may have been cheesy but his work in 2004 was way better than what he does now, know a few good tunes/sets. Enjoyed early Joris Voorn work, Technasia, Kowalski, Hertz, Grindvik, Hardcell, Beyer etc from older days, mostly a fan of well mixed loop-techno but can appreciate funky & hard and some minimal but not very much. Used to enjoy Cave's sets too. |
I think the Barack Obama presidency will mark a return to more unrestrained and less self-conscious techno
who is philip sherburne?
and why does any1 care what he thinks?
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| Originally posted by sot who is philip sherburne? and why does any1 care what he thinks? |
obama will fix the music industry and pay my mortgage off
Jesus christ I want those 10 minutes of my life back.
I've had a fucking fantastic time with music in 2008. Its just getting better and better.
4/4 Dance music often sounds the same? GET THE FUCK OUT!
I love these people who act like every tune has to be the most forward thinking, innovative, weirdly structured, musical masterpiece they ever heard. It shows they don't go out much if at all.
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| Originally posted by nefardec didn't really like the article though sounds like he's having an identity crisis just a classic example of pscyhological projection. the techno sky is falling because phillip sherburne can't figure out what's intellectual or cool to like in 2008. just listen to what moves you and keep exploring |
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| Originally posted by flavdave But if Pitchfork can't tell us what's cool, how will we know what to listen to? |
My interest in modern techno lessened when compared to last year, but I blame myself for that rather than quality of the music itself. I definitely started to appreciate the old, raw, analogue sounds more, so when I had to decide which records (apart from dubstep) to buy, I grabbed more faster, detroit-ish cuts.
That being said, I still enjoyed (for listening purposes mostly) stuff like the latest Troxler on Crosstown Rebels, Efdemin, and Johnny D's Orbitalife was big for me earlier this year as well.
I think Sherburne has a point when he's talking about all that nu-deep stuff; there were lots of preachapellas used in a context that was simply too white for it, and thus it sounded perhaps a bit fake; vocals saying "Detroit" or "deep" as if only the iteration of those words could give tune more soul. I know it's a part of all the "returning to the roots" that was possibly the leitmotiv of techno this year, but it rarely succeeded.
Personally, where I see the biggest potential, is in merging sounds of dubstep and techno - see Martyn, 2562, Appleblim (watch out for the brilliant remix he made with Ramadanman of a new tune featuring Paul St. Hillaire, forthcoming on Aus/Simple) or even Mathew Jonson. I can see this sound spreading more in the following months/next year.
Personally I don't tend to give a fuck about what's currently in vogue. Most of my favourite records from the past three or four years have been divorced from what's "going on". I have so much stuff to listen to from the past that keeping up with what's trendy seems a waste of time and energy, especially if I'm not connecting with it.
The way Sherburne talks, by contrast, is as though house and techno- and their trendy strains at that- were the only things happening in electronic music in 2008. How typical of Pitchfork.
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| Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Personally I don't tend to give a fuck about what's currently in vogue. Most of my favourite records from the past three or four years have been divorced from what's "going on". I have so much stuff to listen to from the past that keeping up with what's trendy seems a waste of time and energy, especially if I'm not connecting with it. The way Sherburne talks, by contrast, is as though house and techno- and their trendy strains at that- were the only things happening in electronic music in 2008. How typical of Pitchfork. |
To be fair, I guess if you're financially connected to the club scene in some way (regular DJing, promotion, whatever), then what's "trendy" will be more important since you won't want to turn off your audience by playing something too out of step with whatever their current infatuation happens to be. Maybe not keeping up with "what's currently in vogue" is a luxury of people who aren't trying to eke out a living from this music or at least draw a regular audience.
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