quote:

someone wrote to me last night on myspace, saying we should play live and wear the masks etc. instead of DJing. it got me thinking about what is passiing for live now. as you all know, i spent about 12 years playing 100% live for people around the world. thats how ALP and i met.. playing drums in diff bands that played together. i know what playing live really is. i know what it feels like and what it looks like... and i know that other than some of the techno artists, no one in this genre is playing live. sequenced ableton performances arent live. midi secuences arent live. i actually find it insulting to hear people speak about thier faux live performances with me. anyone who saw DFA79 or femme fatale play knows how real a live performance can be. no hiding behind props or lights. not a fake moment or unnecessary item on the stage. no matter how hard i tried, it would never be the same every time. impossible. in true live music, there are just so many variables... every day is a new experience. calling these pre-arranged performances LIVE is like calling a DVD movie 'theatre'. know what im saying? what gets me is that it seems like kids are actually buyin this fake shit. what punk rock still lives in me wouldnt let me look in the mirror if all i was doing was playing with filters behind a lightshow. if youve seen us DJ a few times, you know its always different. some nights we are off and some are incredible... thats cause its real. i dont feel right being anything but honest with the audience. maybe thats why i dont have that ashlee simpson money. even though we DJ, al and i have too much respect for live performance to ever call anything we could do as mstrkrft 'live'. the most live act in this genre is just working with midi sequences... so no one is actually PLAYING anything. theyre just turning knobs. fuck that. so, lets not call that shit live anymore. call it A SHOW. cause thats what it is. call it A PERFORMANCE.... but please, dont refer to that as a live show. its not. the reason al and i havnt devised any live setup is because it would never really be truly live. im not sure if anyone even cares about honesty anymore, but i do and thats why youll never see that bullshit from me. j f k

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just to clear some stuff up.. i really wanted to talk to you all about this and hear what you thought. i also think that if this is how its going to be, there should be some consensus as to what playing live means in electronic music. dont get me wrong... some people are doing it live for real! para one, apparat, adult, yuksek, dim, vitalic, smd, chromeo, soulwax... there are so many who are pullin out those machines and going to work. daft punk used to do it before thier music became so sample based with discovery. back in the day, people would show up to raves with a 606 and 303 etc and perform live all the time. im the last person to question the use of midi and i dont think there is anything wrong with using it with synths etc to perform. there has to be a line drawn though. if the entire performance is laid out in midi and just runs to some synths, then all the artist is really doing is adjusting patches. is that enough 'live' work for it to be called a live performance? i do way more live adjustments while DJing... and we dont call DJing live. ? also, when an artist puts songs in thier performance that they didnt make etc, is it still live? isnt it then more of a DJ set? surkin used to say he was playing live, but he was really just DJing with ableton. he stopped saying he was playing live awhile ago because he didnt think it was accurate. ? when DJ falcon plays off ableton, its the most involved ableton setup ive ever seen... and ive seen everyones. everything was broken down to 2 bar sections and he was combining and mixing like, 4 things together at all times.... thats more involved than many 'live' setups, yet he calls it what it is... DJing. ? see what im sayin? like, everyone knows what daft punk is doing isnt really live. thats why it never changes. its a great lightshow.. and there is nothing wrong with that. however, if there is no real live aspect to the musical performance, what about it is actually live? the lights are synced up with the music and they never really change either. is it live? what else do we call it? if we call that live and we call what para one does live (whe plays totally different from night to night and really creates a new thing every show) doesnt that seem odd to anyone else? i guess my question is, at what point does it become live and not DJing. DJing doesnt mean playing whole songs anymore or using turntables etc. computer DJing is here to stay. .... ? j f k

Thoughts?

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