After the complaining....
Let's talk about music....
Current Stuff:
The only stuff I've managed to get excited about in the year 2000
so far has been the various German dancefloor labels that have
it all together, namely Playhouse, Klang, Perlon, Raum Musik
and Ware. I'm fairly new to these labels but I'm loving what I'm
hearing and I'm especially excited by the fact that these labels
are putting out at least one awesome record out of every three
they release, which is a great batting average. Especially digging:
Playhouse (see Isolee, Lo Soul and Blaze)
Klang (see Farben, Maus and Stoll and Eight Miles High)
Perlon (see Villalobos and Dimbiman)
Raum Musk (see Dirk Diggler)
Ware (see Schaffhauser and Neiswandt's "Loom Service")
This German scene has all the makings of being another genre-defining
scene that we'll be reminiscing about in five years (see A.R.T.ificial
Intelligence, Detroit, Chicago, Lowlands, etc.) A defining term is
"quirk-house", which is what you get when you combine the brutally
rationed out funk and soul of Theo Parrish or Herbert with the nigh-beatless
super deep transcendence-minded ambience of Larry Heard or Chris Grey.
Just a home run, and these labels are getting me excited about music again,
especially the Carl Craig remix of Blaze's "Lovelee Dae". That track does
capture all the glory of a summer day and is the quantified application
of that elusive optimistic chord that doesn't get struck often enough
in the bleak air of western Massachusetts. What a track.
Also the Clicks and Cuts genre (at least the better stuff) is working
as a balancing sound at the other end of the spectrum (ala Basic
Channel in the A.R.T. era: you see Vico is right about repeating
patterns in history) but I've probably said enough about that genre
already without having any new theory at the moment.
Most of the other new stuff has been really, really boring me.
As I think Nutti said techno in many ways has progressed beyond
our mutual tolerance for abstraction, but I don't think it's even
abstraction so much as it is abandoning effective formulaic structure.
One of the pitfalls in art and music seems to be going at it from
a freeform, chaotic angle. Not to sound like your college English
professor, but you have to make choices in a work. Part of the reason
Playhouse, Klang, SND, Delay and of course Mad Mike, Beltran,
May, etc. are/were so good is because they make the right choices,
pick an effective rhythm, strip the track down to manageable
length, in a good rhythm at a good tempo with only the best sounds
integrating into the mix. But it's not just that the structure is absent,
it's also that most of today's stuff sounds flat and grey to me. Looking
at the stuff I mentioned above it shares two qualities: a very
incremented structure and a use of sharp, distinct sound. I think these
are the two qualities I look for in music, be it "house" from 2000 or
"313" from 1989. Your mileage may vary, and I think that there is
probably as much good stuff now as there was in 1992, it's just that
we haven't forgotten all the crap from 2000 yet.
(Old Stuff write-up coming soon (maybe))....
Matt
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