IDM Mailing Archive

For the most part, I agree with Lance and Peter in their defense of Chain Reaction (and all affiliated artists). I do get a little uneasy, Lance, when you fall back on a "commonly held opinion" as part of your reasoning; I don't think popular opinion is ever much of a defense when aesthetics are at issue. I feel like although you point out CR's value as an innovator & influencer (something that can hardly be denied), falling back on commonly held opinions doesn't do much to defend CR's real aesthetic value. Beyond their influence, what is it that validates them? Part of the problem might be that Joshua never really spelled out what he dislikes about Chain Reaction (Joshua, I'm not singling you out at all; I'm just interested in working through an argument, really). By calling it "bad minimal house" are you implying that there is *good* minimal house? Or is it the genre of minimal house (or even just house) itself that is problematic? I'd be interested in hearing from those anti-four-on-the-floor types on this (you know who you are!) -- how do you evaluate Chain Reaction, even if you've got a fundamental argument against 4OTF? For the record, I absolutely fucking swoon over Chain Reaction (Maurizio, Vainquer, Various artists especially) and the offspring labels & projects. And I suppose I should offer an aesthetic defense here, but I'm too damn lazy for now. phil

As an anti-four-on-the-floor type (by which I don't mean "ABOLISH 4OTF!" or something, just that I don't like it) I can personally attest to not liking Chain Reaction. Porter Ricks is something I feel like I really OUGHT to like, and I don't find myself turning it off quite as swiftly as the other stuff I've heard on the label, but all in all I hear about a minute of it and think "Why am I listening to this?" I've tried very hard to like Chain Reaction - reviews on idm, in the Wire, and all over the place exhort me to go and buy. However, it does nothing for me. Nice ambient sounds, I like the glitches and weirdnesses, but fuck me, those beats drive me mad. It's probably just a general house thing - I like very little house, and this is reflected in my opinion of minimal house stuff. [Don't think I'm dismissing everything with a kick drum on every beat (given that most d'n'b, and most hip-hop too, is in 4/4...) or whatever. I love Underworld's first two dance albums (ie dubnobasswithmyheadman and second toughest...) even now, but listening to the latest album I can't help feeling disappointed - some of it's lovely, but a lot is just boring] Ah! Boring. That's the word I was looking for. Chain Reaction bores me to tears. Y'know, there's minimal and there's minimal. Steve Reich will never bore me; same with Underworld's loooong epics, because they have an overarching structure that builds, goes somewhere, does something. Anyway, after all this crapping on, I'll say two things: Firstly, I think Joshua's words were ill-chosen; Chain Reaction most probably *is* groun-breaking. I just wish they'd break out of the horrible beats they put to their music. This is why Pole does so much more for me. Even then it's too static for my tastes mostly, but I like it a hell of a lot more than Chain Reaction. Secondly, it really does just come down to taste in the end. I'll explain all I like why music of type "x" doesn't do it for me, but in the end Lance will keep on liking it, and others will dislike it. There are so many factors that go into one's taste in music - what we were exposed to in our youths, what was cool when we were into being into the cool things (ie adolescent [a state of mind more than an age]), and even just what we innately respond to. So all I ask is that those who *like* Chain Reaction accept that maybe I have thought about it a lot, actually have listened to the music, and have a fair amount of musical knowledge, and dammit I just don't like this stuff... Final note: I'm not sure about the causality here, but Mego put out glorious glitchy and weird stuff which I think is on entirely another level from Chain Reaction. I doubt that one of them came first, but in terms of "ground-breaking", I think Mego [Fennesz, Farmers Manual, General Magic, Pita etc] are about as ground-breaking as it gets these days. I would also include Matmos in that league... Peter. -- Peter Hollo raven@fourplay.com.au http://www.fourplay.com.au/me.html FourPlay - Eclectic Electric String Quartet http://www.fourplay.com.au Raven: experimental electronic http://www.fourplay.com.au/sound.html "Of course, dance music can be a music where you lie on your back and your brain cells dance" -Michael Karoli of Can, quoted in Wire mag.

Well, I guess it's obvious which side of the 4/4 kick issue I stand on from my posts, but I'm going to throw in my heavily biased two cents anyway. I love Substance to death, for one thing. The reason I think lots of Chain Reaction, Rauschen series stuff (on Force Inc.) and the like is great is because it has the experimental, glitchy underwater-dot-matrix-printer sound to it while at the same time it KICKS, especially on a throbbing stereo or a PA. I hated house beats for a while, because they were everywhere and they were all the same, but as I tried to write more and more of my own songs with unconventional beats I realized that the classic backbeat has more mileage left in it than just about any other rhythm out there. If you build a giant experimental structure, what good is it if you can't walk inside it, touch it, use it? Techno & ambient is the musical equivalent of industrial design, to me, because form and function are so carefully meshed together. Beats are ergonomic, in a way. Of course you shouldn't use the same design for everything, but that doesn't mean you have to move all the letters around on the keyboard when you make a new computer. Tom