quoted 7 lines With techno acts `playing' conventional>
>
> With techno acts `playing' conventional
> venues and selling US$20 tickets, audiences are demanding something more
> than DAT. But techno is a studio-born beast, and probably the best we can
> hope for is some originqal live mixing."
>
At the risk of having a second dispute in as many weeks with Fluid on two
different list, I disagree with the above.
In the UK, 1993 saw a major advance in 'live techno'. From my perspective
I saw this mainly at Megadogs but also at other 'rave' style events.
I've seen groups such as Higher Intelligence Agency, Orbital, Eat Static,
System 7, Underworld, Drum Club, Zuvuya, Transglobal Underground, Tribal Drift,
Banco De Gaia, Sabres of Paradise, One Dove, Bandulu, Fluke and others all
produce live techno music. It has ranged from pretty much DATs as mentioned
above to live instruments and vocals being mixed in to DAT to completely live
music. They vary in success. For instance I much prefer the studio sound of
One Dove who don't come over live well. However, Underworld or Sabres of
Paradise are capable of extended live jams with a mixture of tape loops, DATs,
bongos, guitars, keyboards, vocal samples etc. all going together to form
a completely live sound albeit with some pre-sampled stuff. I've seen Orbital
react to an audience and change style accordingly, the Drum Club mixing backing
for the live digeridoo of Annabelle as do Tribal Drift and Zuvuya.
How much of this you would like to define as live and how much as preprepared
would vary between artist, venue, equipment available etc. but I would
definitely call a lot of this kind of stuff 'live techno' and very good
some of it is too. I hope I get the chance to see Underworld play again before
I move to the States. Their mix between live and prepared is excellent. I
think they're one of the best live techno acts I've seen.
Here in the UK people are asking for a lot more than original live mixing
and we're certainly getting that and its getting better all the time ...
cheers - Clive