Re: I'm in the owned-everything-JD-ever-did JD-covers-are-sacriledge camp>
i'm in that camp too, and reacted at once with wretched dread upon reading
that MOBY had covered New Dawn Fades. these are the
sorts of revivals that make you realize more than ever the death of that
revived. especially when the one in charge is MOBY, whose music has always
struck me as having far less achievement and taste than it pretends to
have. it's not rock bottom, but there are better exemplars of
contemporary synthetic music.
but first reactions, at least mine, tend to be conservitve.
JD covers are indeed
sacriledge, but isn't that sacriledge in some sense the point of IDM
(whether or not we include MOBY in that category)? Joy Division are up
there with Kraftwerk and Velvet Underground in terms of the
tremendous-epoch-in-the-history-of-pop sort of thing, but at least part
of what gives IDM that very status as well, what makes it an edifice in
that very history, is its unabashedness about covering the past. and i
mean "cover" in every sense of the term. original/ copy; our time/ their
time; my creation/ your creation - these are questions than they are
intact answers.
"sacriledge" is a problem because the sacred is a problem.
IDM creates interest in wandering from its proper property, in trespassing.
(the sound of the
sample always includes the resonance of a question - what is "the proper"
at all? how is it constituted?) IDM isn't a band, it's a vague area -
that's what gives it redolence. it's as great as JD because it does what JD
never would have done.
but i write too much, perhaps becuse i am trying to convince myself first
of all. am i convinced?...