Empty (or not?)
The latest “Month In Techno” column by Phil Sherburne makes for gloomy reading. I’ve felt a bit this way lately but I held off writing a blog post about it because I figured it was a personal mood, not the wider mood in techno. As regards writing I’ve wondered about what’s the point for ages, and bored you all with my posts about it!
Last week I posted this on ILM: “Maybe forums have just replaced the need for reviews entirely to the point that people don’t actually have any respect for somebody doing a review, because why would they, everyone is literally a critic in that they sit down and type their opinions about stuff constantly.”
What do you think? Are you feeling depressed about dance music? Or at least about dance music on the net?
I love tons of new releases, I’m still buying as much as ever. But I don’t enjoy talking about dance music online anything like I did a couple of years ago. Something new needs to come along to replace “minimal” as the hyped genre and the genre people love to hate. Not because it’s musically bereft (the term means nothing musically anymore) but just to blow away the cobwebs. It’s been a long time since people had something new to argue about.
As a result the the tiny patches of internet reserved for dance music discussion are looking a bit too weatherbeaten. But is the internet representative of anything wider? I’m not so sure. You could frame any downbeat article in the last 20 years with negative world news stories, no matter what you were writing about. And musically I think dance music has been quite strong this year, albeit without too many big gobsmacking ideas.
I also have to say as much as I enjoyed the article and am glad somebody had the courage to actually stand up and ask some questions, I think some of Phil’s comments seem a bit too hasty. For instance: “A party culture (and drug culture) predicated upon parties that never end can only result in a music that thumps dully away without surprise or meaningful variation.”
I mean, how do you go from writing about minimal for so long to this? I’m not saying somebody should be a lifer, just that if you really believe the above, then surely all dance music ever made would be worthless? Why would a longer party mean less meaningful music, when people have been having hedonistic parties to techno for years upon years? When did the music lose its meaning? Why?
I sometimes feel that it’s purism that’s paradoxically in vogue at the moment, with half of the techno world spending the last year or so falling over itself to denounce laptops, minimal, drugs, and rely the kind of lazy dismissals that a jazz or classical critic would use to eviscerate every techno record ever made.
The manifestos collected from producers at the end of the Month In Techno piece feel like more of this suffocatingly dull trend to me. Isn’t it just completely depressing to see so many producers rhyming off criticisms of dance music that most people would have thought were dead and buried, eg it’s not made with “real instruments”, people who like it take a lot of drugs, it’s easy to make etc etc.
And these criticisms are coming from inside the genre! It’s practically self hatred. All I’m saying is I’m glad most of the producers quoted make records that are more interesting than their manifestos. I mean, this probably seems very harsh, but I just wish people in dance music could talk about in ways that acknowledged that sleaziness, questions of inauthenticity, drugs, and hedonism were all intrinsic irremovable parts.
Dance music is not about “hard work” or “real instruments” or brainy manifestos, it’s much harder to pin down than that. As a writer I know how maddening that is, but this is why so many of these rules that are imported from outside the world of electronic music for these manifestos just don’t work for me.
In the middle of all the straitjacketing, Cristian Vogel grabbed my attention with the best manifesto of the lot, the only one that seemed challenges the reader rather than slot them back into a familiar groove. The cryptic brevity of his words says more than Matthew Herbert’s entire autobiography.
Vogel’s manifesto also serves as a good answer to the questions of why there might be a crisis in all these online techno discussions, because ultimately it doesn’t mean anything, because the more discussion there is the more the meaningless hits you. That’s not to say we should all give up, but we’re living in a gigantic sea of opinion now, it’s got to be disheartening from time to time, especially if you’re a journalist.
“Cristian Vogel (No Future, Tresor)
http://www.no-future.com/vogel_microsite/
Techno music is not important; it is nothing.
Techno music can strive to be as empty as possible.
Techno music can be poetry about the ecstasy in the universe.
Techno music should give awareness, not take it away.
Techno music is too good at describing our cyclic existence.
DJs should strive to enlighten.
Techno music needs to be kind and rest.”
(see a previous post by Ronan)
flashfonic.de on 17 Jul 2008 at 7:42 am
[…] Ronan sieht die Frustration eher im Schreiben über Musik (und weniger in der Musik selbst). Die Begeisterung über eine Platte, ein Live- oder DJ-Set in Worte zu packen, ist eben eine schwierige Angelegenheit, die wohl nur selten so gelingt, dass der eigene Enthusiasmus am Ende auch beim Leser ankommt. Einer der Kommentare bringt es auf den Punkt: After all, house is a feeling, not a paragraph. […]