IDM Mailing Archive

quoted 25 lines yeah, i think andrew has a really good point there. the other thing that

>yeah, i think andrew has a really good point there. the other thing that >people forget about is the motivation behind reynolds' polemic -- that is, >his ideal of techno (or, really, pop music in general) as an inherently >populist medium. whether you agree or not, that's his position (and, in a >similar vein, the reason he's so interested in ecstacy and its effects on >the techno scene, bringing people together and erasing certain social >divisions [at least for a limited time]). i'm not saying you have to agree >with him (i have a lot of trouble with the extent to which his drug-culture >theories drive his aesthetic judgements), but just recognize that he's >making a very particular argument. the super-underground, lo-fi geektronica >doesn't square with him because it's inherently exclusivist and doesn't >permit the kind of youth-culture populism he's looking to promote. and i >don't think it's the star system, exactly, that reynolds is affirming. more >like the cultural practices that bring people together (massive raves, media >exposure, whether underground or mainstream, etc.). most important, in >terms of these cultural practices, is the FORM of the music (materially and >sonically) -- is it readily available? does it only exist in editions of >200? and does it support gatherings of people, who come to unite & dance (i >know, sounds awfully hippy-dippy to me too)? most bedroom IDM doesn't, >frankly. the four-to-the-floor beat is incredibly effective for crowds (too >effective, for the adornians among us) -- hence its valorization by >reynolds. (actually, perhaps i'm overstating -- i don't know if reynolds >has ever explicitly deconstructed particular beat structures -- 4ttf, >jungle, hip-hop, etc.. but i'd be interested to see what he'd do with >them.)

these are really important points. and they also lay bare how dated and incomplete reynolds' dialectic really is. the analytic framework he employs in his writings about rave culture are pretty much lifted wholesale from the birmingham tradition, first worked through in the '60s and '70s by simon frith, dick hebdige, stanley cohen, et al (you may recognize some of these names from their writings about punk, style, subculture, etc.). british cultural studies scholars have been struggling desperately to combat the reductive effects of some of birmingham's fundamental observations ever since, including (primarily) its quasi-marxist tendency to valorize mass cultural movements as indicative of broad shifts in economic and social relations, and its simplistic reduction of the complex exchange between "mainstream" cultural forms and "underground" or "marginal" cultural forms (such as punk, ska, rave, and, one might posit, idm) to a sort of (you've got it right there, phil) hippy-dippy, blind celebration of "movements" and "cultural phenomena." as an alternative to reynolds' all-too-ideological line of thought, i'd suggest sarah thornton's "club cultures" (wesleyan, 1996), which aims to understand the internal logics of subcultural forms and their situation in/relationship to the larger divisions out of which they grow, through which they are articulated, and with which they are in inevitabe dialogue. imo a far more rigorous and enlightening read (particularly, perhaps, where something like idm is concerned). sc onnow: joshua kit clayton : 4mod3 (pthalo)

Sean Cooper wrote:

quoted 5 lines as an alternative to reynolds' all-too-ideological line of thought, i'd

> as an alternative to reynolds' all-too-ideological line of thought, i'd > suggest sarah thornton's "club cultures" (wesleyan, 1996), which aims to > understand the internal logics of subcultural forms and their situation > in/relationship to the larger divisions out of which they grow, through > which they are articulated, and with which they are in inevitabe dialogue.

That's all well and good and I realize that baseline analytical methods are truly at the heart of many of such communicative disagreements, but it changes nothing about the fact the lo-fi nerd-ness and the techno variety of this disease which many people on this list apparently possess is self-destructive and does little to truly help art. I have no problem with the pragmatic issues involved in the pressing-of-500 practice employed my so many, but the whole extra-limited-edition "look at how exclusive my stuff is" shit doesn't mean anything really. It doesn't add real value to art when you purposefully make it obscure. If you have to start small and only press 500, that's an important consideration, but if you make enough money and have enough demand to do a repressing, do it, don't say "well, I'm going to make this a limited edition, so sorry." That's crap. Tom

quoted 8 lines as an alternative to reynolds' all-too-ideological line of thought, i'd

>> as an alternative to reynolds' all-too-ideological line of thought, i'd >> suggest sarah thornton's "club cultures" (wesleyan, 1996), which aims to > >That's all well and good and I realize that baseline analytical methods are >truly at the heart of many of such communicative disagreements, but it changes >nothing about the fact the lo-fi nerd-ness and the techno variety of this >disease which many people on this list apparently possess is self-destructive >and does little to truly help art.

the argument that's being made is that there is a kind of art in all this that is vital. anybody can buy stock in either side of the fence and wave banners, but the reality is that this thing is going on and it isn't dying under it's own weight. in fact, the evidence suggests that it's thriving regardless of the ends some fans would like to push it towards. perhaps when a form of art is seen as a source of growth, certain people start seeing it as their job to make sure that it becomes culturally significant in some way, with extra prizes to the nonstradamuses who guess the best. eric -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pisces (Feb. 23- Mar. 22) You are a pioneer type and think most people are dickheads. You are quick to reprimand, impatient and full of advice. You do nothing but piss-off everyone you come in contact with. You are a prick.