okay, so now anybody with a PC and a beatbox can make "techno music" and
many of them do. and of those that do, a small fraction put out records
that are decent. and it's hard to keep up with all the good stuff that's
coming from the DIY industry so what's a big smart buzz-word coining
important journalist to do now that the output of the musicians exceeds
his input capacity?
welcome to punk rock, circa 1978. anybody with a shitty guitar and a
friend with a drum set started recording rock and roll in their basements
and putting out 7" records. and guess what ... there were so many
different kinds of music being put out that it got really hard to find all
the good ones and some narrow minded folks decided that the only way to
deal with that was to just listen to ska. or hardcore. or emo. or
progressive trance.
but the other thing that happened was that the audience became part of the
"process". kids started saying "gee, melody maker can't cover all this
good stuff, so i guess it's up to me to start my own zine" and you got
hundreds of zines chock full of reviews. somebody is picking up all this
music, and the good stuff is going to get discovered. maybe simon
reynolds can't handle it, but most of the DIY'ers don't really care if
simon reynolds can find their record because they know that if it's really
good, SOMEBODY is going to pick up on it, and then they'll tell other
people about it, and word will spread.
maybe they'll even get mentioned on the IDM list.
josh
--
String Theory : Digital Music for Humans
http://www.enteract.com/~yoshi/index.cgi
On Mon, 17 Jul 2000, John Bush wrote:
quoted 41 lines That's one thing about Reynolds -- he's very adept at nailing the long view,
> That's one thing about Reynolds -- he's very adept at nailing the long view,
> especially for a genre most of us are so enmeshed in, that it becomes very
> difficult to be objective. He discusses a few things I've had rattling
> around in my brain the past few months:
>
> 1) There's a *lot* of great electronic music being made right now...
> Sometimes I wonder if my standards are shot, just because I've been giving
> so many good ratings lately. A few weeks ago, I realized that I gave great
> ratings to about ten *straight* records, a completely random sample of
> electronic releases in the past few months that just came across my desk one
> after the other. And they were uniformly *great*. Just for the record,
> they were:
>
> Persona - Maximal (VC)
> Adam Freeland - Tectonics (Ultra)
> Russell Mills - Strange Familiar (Instinct; actually a reissue)
> Doctor Rockit - Indoor Fireworks (Lifelike)
> Theo Parrish - Sound Signature Sounds
> L'Usine - Charydis (Isophlux)
> Sutekh - Periods Make Sense (Force Inc)
> Zammuto - Willscher (Apt. B)
>
>
> 2) There's a lot *more* electronic music being made than anytime before...
> Obviously, this is Reynolds' main point in the article, but it's so true.
> Compared to when I started listening to this stuff (early '90s), there must
> be at least a hundred labels/artists for each one operating back then. I
> think it's great too -- more artists means better work, which means more
> people will grow accustomed to electronic music, which in turn means this
> whole thing'll grow as an important musical subculture. Onward and upward,
> I say!
>
> .John.
>
>
>
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