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Re: [microsound] machine soul: oxymoron?



It is easy to laugh at Salon in its attempt to nudge-nudge-wink-wink
co-opt and in the same movement ironically question (so late 1990's a
stance!) electronic music, as this webzine seems to demand the masthead
subtitle "The Webzine for Self-Hating Yuppies," but maybe it is too easy.
Aside from obvious problems (Rhino as the new K-Tel, for example, when the
latter have recently released a quite shockingly credible compilation of
dark ambience) and desperate rhetorical attempts at oh-so-coolness (Gary
Numan's "Cars" as painful), what strikes me most is the frequent use of
"supposed to."  Music, for me, is not supposed to do anything except
organize noise for aesthetic purposes, yet at Salon it seems to have far
more expected of it, and I must add that these expectations have not
simply been pulled out of the proverbial hat.  One of the most troubling
aspects of the so-called Rave Scene - which must be viewed, whether or not
one holds one's nose at the thought, as one of the drivers of the
resurgence of electronic music in the last decade - is its relentless hype
concerning its own transcendental and revolutionary status in human
evolution and popular culture.  Of course it was not the Scene itself that
claimed this but rather the labels and publicists and promoters, but many
of these latter went to great pains to stereotype dance music as a
Movement of universal import and religious seriousness, attaching to it
rather unfortunately the now inevitable associations with ET-styled
aliens, chemicals, and plugin-of-the-month-club 3-D flyer graphics.  I
would argue that a part of the Scene - what I call Corporate Rave -
marketed itself quite deliberately to those Desperately Seeking Relevance,
among which we might find Salon, and at this point a significant number of
the Scene's shares are held by stockbrokers with 1200's in their flats and
by global media conglomerates.  Which is not to suggest that some of the
early non-commercial energy of the Scene is not still to be found, but
rather to hypothesize that any musical stream's obsessive overawareness of
its own importance can quickly transform a vital aesthetic current into a
disposable flavor of the moment - a Product - for the fickle hipster
media.  And HERE is the point for digimusic:  we should consider ourselves
warned.  For just as Corporate Rave Product made unbreakable the popularly
considered links between drugs, aliens, silver clothes, big headphones,
1200's, The Future, electronic music, and Raves, I see the same patterns
beginning here.  With the commodification of the Geek (due only to the
momentary relevance of stock options), a Geek Music becomes marketable,
especially when sprinked with a bit of justificatory academic theorizing
and propped up by a universalizing formula in The Wire (which I read and
do not mean to criticize here).  Replace the alien with the programmer,
Terrence McKenna with Gilles Deleuze (not that I see them as at all
comparable), flyer graphics with machine code, and the decks with a
computer, and - hey presto! - we have the stereotype ready for marketing.
And having read some of the truly preposterous press releases oozing out
for various digi-music compilations in recent months, I think it is safe
to say that an equivalent set of "supposed to" expectations is being built
quite deliberately in the consumer imagination for the next self-styled
Musical Revolution.  But I predict the Musical Revolution will neither be
televised nor be webcast, for it quite simply will not Happen.  The days
when one could speak of a Next Beatles - the next musical group to
overwhelm the universal popular consciousness (whatever that bugbear
happens to be) - with a straight face are in the past, as the popular
culture of the present has been narrowly segmented to ensure the success
of surgical strikes in target marketing.  It is not there there has been
no Next Beatles but rather that there have been several dozen (or even
hundred) every few months.  As an example of this ghettoization of musics,
the responses here to the article tend to imply a division between Rock
and Electronic music - between guitar and synthesizer - yet to me these
are simply arbitrary categories of commerce which fail to adequately
circumscribe the most interesting music available.  If we do not fight
against stereotypes of sound, technology, packaging, and language, we will
set ourselves up as the next fodder for the Salon mill.

np - Steve Roach "Slow Heat"

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