This is puzzling. For many years now Carl Craig has proved an
ability to produce bold & enthralling music: from refreshing electronic
paeans ('Lite Music' on Planet E) to full-on work-outs ('Sound on Sound'
also Planet E). Finally with 'Landcruising' he wins opportunity to release
a first full length recording. It's a concept album with automotion as its
focus. Detroit obviously once drove America, in both the industries of
manufacturing & music. At the apex of the cultural revolution during the
1960s, the Seventh City was the motor & music metropolis of the entire
United States. Today it leads the world in urban decay. Detroit is unlike
any other city because of the transitions it has endured, throughout the
rise & collapse of the Industrial Revolution. It's a devastated city & that
much is evident within the music it provokes - harsh, harrowing, hardened
rhythms. If mobility truly were nobility, perhaps there would have been
positive change in Detroit, but nobility only emerged in the depiction of
progressive musical forms. Meritocracy is still a far flung elusive ideal
to the black musicians who once lived along the 'Techno Boulevard' of
Gratiot Avenue on Detroit's north-west side.
Techno was once the ideal travelling music, the optimum soundtrack
to the Infobahn highway of digital networking: its repetitive rhythms,
minimalist melodies & textural modulations were perfect for the constant
shifting perspectives offered by high speed travel. Today perhaps that's a
jaded obsession, resolved long ago by the innovations of Cybotron or even
Kraftwerk.
Craig has remarked that this album was an attempt to "create
something that 20 years from now, people would listen to." That's quite a
challenge. 20 years ago 'Landcruising' would have hit hard & ranked
alongside Klaus Schultz or Holger Czukay's explorations into motion &
machines. Listening intently to it now, over & over again, there's little
that breaks through with honed originality. It's a mature & magnificent
long player, but where's the shifting scapes, the sense of urgent
acceleration, the automotive adventurousness? If there is only good music &
sounds you don't yet comprehend, perhaps 20 years from now I'll find this
more fulfilling. Anyone else share these reluctances or offer contrasting
insight? wdyt?
Desmond K. Hill
e-mail: des@anubis23.demon.co.uk