Re: [microsound] machine soul: oxymoron?

[david turgeon <david.t@xxxxxxxx>]

> Reminds me of Michiko Kakutani's column from the NY Times Magazine a few
> years back, when "electronica" and the Chem Bros had their big boom; she
> accused it of being "cold" and "antihumanist."  A pretty hilarious article,
> really.  Goldberg doesn't exactly fall into the same trap, but her reasoning
> seems just as specious...

oh, this is simply journalism steeping to the level of weekly papers.

also, what she's babbling about is dance culture in its most futile
aspects.  her link between 'music made in hedonism -> music used for
work' is the only interesting point (the rest is either overgeneralizing
or plain laughable), but even that sounds dodgy to me, especially since
she makes comparisons to 'the pesky anger and alienation of rock and
hip-hop or the melancholy of sad-eyed indie pop', as if those weren't
fit for corruption as well.

indeed she points out, it's the 'instrumentality' of this music that
makes it so, not the fact that it's electronic.  which of course
invalidates her point totally: rock music would be used if it was hip in
advertising circles (as it has been & will probably be again in the
future); rock _is_ being used, in beer commercials for instance.  plus:
you can always remove the lyrics from anything.  a moby song i heard on
a car commercial...  they quite simply cut it before the lyrics come in:
'in my dreams i'm dying all the time'...  i would bet they would do the
same with a sad-eyed indie pop tune with similar lyrics (or hell, any lyrics).

in a word, her rant was misdirected; if she has something against the
_marketers_ & the _producers_ using techno (or, once again, ANY) music
to sell things, then this is where her rant should be headed.  but how
funny is it, i never see anyone criticizing publicity in those magazines???

her other mildly valid point is about techno being made from a bunch of
subgenre formulae & the examples of 'rooms' in raves.  what she doesn't
understand is that the fact that this 'functionality' of techno music
makes sense _because_ of its obviousness; i.e. chill-out music is
_really_ chill-out music.  this aspect is called responsible labelling
of product & is something to be condoned, especially as a
person/'consumer' caught in a cut-throat marketing/corporatist world. 
on the contrary, it is the fat cats behind pop music who should be
blamed for marketing everything & anything as 'good, good, good' &
eluding an actual description of the music (that would mean trusting
that the listener has a preference for something?!?!  how could they??!!!)

fuck, if your problem with music is that it's corporately motivated, i
wouldn't see a single reason to hit on raves first.  but of course,
rhino hasn't released the '100 years of artistic exploitation'
compilation yet to give pseudo-journalists the right 'angle'.

~ david