“I am not there”
When I read this Ryan Elliott interview the first thing I thought of is how much of a Patrick Bateman vibe I get from the American minimal dudes.
If someone remade or rewrote American Psycho, I think Patrick Bateman should like contemporary American minimal techno, not Phil Collins (though Easton Ellis wrote the book long before he could have made this a part of it). Ask yourself, wouldn’t Patrick Bateman with a room full of M_nus 12s, delivering those long vapid monologues about Richie Hawtin, not Genesis, be a perfect fit?
He could rant and rave about seamless transitions and be infuriated by bad DJing. He could strive endlessly to be more and more pure and authentic, to be more “minimal”. To be even more “not there”. (on which point, what a “minimal” piece of self reflection his cold “I am not there” at the beginning of the movie is)
I genuinely think American Psycho should be entirely about techno, not just that one interlude. It should have a scene where someone debates the merits of Serato versus Ableton versus vinyl. Bateman’s endless, pointless quest for self improvement is so akin to the DJ who is constantly striving to reinvent himself, to play new records, to destroy his past incarnation.
Of course I’m sorry to make Ryan Elliott, who seems a really down to earth person, the scapegoat for my idea. Perhaps it’s unfair to single out the Americans (it’s their names I think, Seth, Troy etc, that and the fact that they seem so affluent and debonair). But maybe a fairer comment would be that all of us techno fans have a little bit of Bateman in us. We just have to reign it in.
So next time you find yourself discussing equipment or decks with more fervour than the music itself, resist. You may be just a few steps away from carrying a severed head down the corridor of your apartment to a Troy Pierce soundtrack.
Mr. Shirts wrote:
Hmmm… Interesting. I don’t agree with your general idea, but the the Elliott interview provides strong evidence for the cold, technical, perfectionist, “professional” American DJ that you describe.
Jesus, he must really love the music, cause he doesn’t have time to be having any other kind of fun.
Definitely no Villalobos…
As for generalizations about Americans seeming affluent, I always wonder something different; why do the British
, who have wages which (in absolute terms) are so much higher than that of Americans, seem so poor? It seems like Brits have developed a system that ensures that the middle class takes care of both the upper and lower classes, to a large degree.
There are lots of reasons why both your observations about Americans and my observations about Brits might be true (I’ve never been to Ireland, so I’m not going to make any projections about life in Dublin or elsewhere in the country).
However, I’d guess that neither of us (me as an American and you as an Irishman) have had enough information to really get to the bottom of those kind of questions.
Thinking about this reminds me how much I like economics, AND music…
Well, maybe you have a point after all.
Posted 16 Jul 2007 at 3:33 am ¶
tom/pipecock wrote:
the patrick bateman attitude is one that i have been at war with in music for a long time. this kind of thing happened in drum and bass. at this point in time, if a drum and bass tune is not engineered to perfection and mastered as loudly as possible, it will just be completely ignored. this in comparison to the older days of crazy off time edits, dodgy pressings, and illegal samples timestretched to the point where it almost no longer resembles the original sample, etc. deejaying back then was all about people who played good jams and in many cases were not good technical deejays at all (like grooverider). right now, the epitome of the genre would be a deejay playing CDs of unreleased tunes by the approved 10 producers, flawless mixed, dropping only tracks engineered to be super loud, and it would all be very very boring to anyone outside of the hardcore trainspotters.
unfortunately, i see this coming in the techno realm as well, not entirely surpringly mostly in the mnml realm. the “destroying past incarnations” is now very popular as evidenced by some of the playlists ive seen for deejays such as Magda which contain almost all promos and or otherwise unreleased jams (not at all dissimilar to the “dubplate only” mentality of drum and bass. by the time tunes in that genre actually *come out* for the public to buy, they are no longer cool to be played! its extremely asinine). newer /= better! aside from tune selection, it is also evident in the production tools and methods. all these people are going all digital so that their tunes are perfectly edited and smooth, they shine like a new macintosh computer. there are no human errors anymore, its impossible to discern if a song was made by a person or all by the computer itself. the use of ableton or CDJs to deejay takes all the pops and crackles out. shit, people timestretch records so that theyre all the same BPM so they dont have to actually do anything that might mess up.
the american guys you mention are definitely on this tip, but its not just them. its all over the place. take henrik schwarz’s dj kicks mix which has a tracklisting not dissimilar to something theo parrish would play, but its all digitally edited together! its like sucking the soul out of the music. the errors and human parts of this music are important.
for me, the only discussions i have about the equipment used is when i try to say the same thing about the equipment that is true about the music itself: newer does not mean better.
Posted 16 Jul 2007 at 6:07 am ¶
Ronan wrote:
Really interesting Mr Shirts, as you say, this is sort of armchair economics/sociology and not exactly empirical, but I definitely agree that the British have more of a default “poor” thing going on, and certainly this is true in Ireland too.
I don’t know why this is, I mean surely that fetishization of poverty amongst artists must exist in America too, maybe it just manifests itself a bit differently.
Or maybe the thing here is that in Britain, more “professional” people wouldn’t be making techno.
It’s probably to do with how techno is traditionally seen in the two countries, and perhaps the Americans need to really distance themselves from whatever the mainstream idea of it is.
Posted 16 Jul 2007 at 8:40 am ¶
Mr. Shirts wrote:
I think the fetishization of poverty definitely exists among musicians and music fans in America, just in different genres.
I don’t live in America anymore, but on the West coast, where I’m from, techno and electronic music in general definitely doesn’t seem like poverty music. Perhaps it’s different in other parts of America, but wasn’t it largely middle-class kids who drove the techno scene in Detroit?
Ronan, It seems like this comparison of what genres appeal to people who self-identify with certain socio-economic classes in different countries has masters thesis written all over it, or at least it would make some good, honest music journalism.
Unfortunately, I don’t see techno breaking out of the middle class bubble in America, at least not anytime soon - unless those Bay Area Hyphy kids get on the bandwagon…
Stranger things have happened.
Posted 16 Jul 2007 at 3:47 pm ¶
mike wrote:
there is a minimal dj patrick bateman…. http://www.patrick-bateman.dk/
Ryan Elliott, his mixes and dj output are like a fine Bordeaux wine, a tastemaker.
Posted 17 Jul 2007 at 5:07 am ¶
markaugust wrote:
@ tom/pipecock
AMEN! (and not meaning that drumloop amen)
I am totally thinking the same thing; and as much as I can resisting to it.
allthough it is hard trying to make dynamic raw tunes that still keep standing in this overcompressed and overpolished world
Posted 17 Jul 2007 at 9:50 pm ¶
tom/pipecock wrote:
@ markaugust: yeah, it is not at all easy to do! but thats one of the reasons i think people take the glossy overproduced route: it is possible to make a track based entirely on technical knowledge and have it sound “professional”. you need zero creativity, in fact sounding like whatever the standard for a tune’s loudness is better than sounding different!
its much easier to ignore things like loudness and shit like that when youre playing more than just this week’s releases. if youre dropping 45’s, LP cuts from the 60s 70s and 80s, 12″s, EPs, etc, you get used to there being dynamics in your sound (as well as in your music selection!).
Posted 20 Jul 2007 at 1:08 am ¶
tom/pipecock wrote:
“Unfortunately, I don’t see techno breaking out of the middle class bubble in America, at least not anytime soon - unless those Bay Area Hyphy kids get on the bandwagon… ”
so what about detroit house, chicaco juke, detroit ghetto tech, baltimore club, NYC garage, etc? none of those are middle class music. in fact, in the US id say that most good dance music is not middle class material.
Posted 28 Jul 2007 at 5:55 pm ¶