RE: [microsound] purple

[Gareth Metford <gmetford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> i know i've resorted to "laptop" as an adjective one too many
> times in the last month.

Something which has come to worry me a great deal over the last year is the 
degree to which some of the discourse surrounding 'glitch' musics tends 
towards the mystificatory. Speaking as someone who actually *uses* 
sequencing software, hard drives, synthesisers etc. on a daily basis, and 
is aware of just how determined these devices are in practice, how 
essentially banal is their operation, it disturbs me to read phrases like 
'the hard drive's gigabyte wilderness' (from Rob Young's piece 'Worship the 
Glitch' in The Wire #190/191). Not simply because this is a phrase which 
wilfully misinterprets technical phenomena, transforming a piece of 
equipment with very specific operating characteristics into a symbol of the 
unknowable, the beyond-reason, but because it is knowingly applied to a 
music which very often adopts technical phenomena as its subject matter, 
often to deliberate de-mystificatory ends (cf Oval, Terre Thaemlitz). 
Hence, the abuse of technical terms becomes a critical abuse, a deliberate 
practice of disinformation, a political act. To what extent such 'poetic' 
realignments of technical vocabulary are used in order to *preserve* the 
music critic's traditional priestlike, interpretive role is, I think, a 
question worth asking.

Gareth

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Gareth Metford (Nonlinear / Qubit Records)

Email: gmetford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Nonlinear website: http://www.qubit.demon.co.uk/nonlinear