Wrote this paper for a class and I want to know what y'all think. I had to keep it short, so I kept to what I believe are they key events leading up to "IDM", and then onto the American kids like Kid606, Cex, etc.
This paper is about us/you, so please give me your thoughts. Hope this may open some interesting dialogue.
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The past half-decade has seen a new wave of young American electronic musicians whose work references, in a fast and loose manner, experimental electronic music, techno, hip-hop, and the reckless abandon of punk rock. The scene is both an outgrowth of and a reactionary response to IDM? or intelligent dance music, a cerebral, abstract hybrid of techno and experimental electronic music that developed out of the British rave scene in the early nineties. The label IDM in itself alludes to many of the issues these young Americans take up with the genre ?that the music is intended for headphones rather than the dance floor, it is largely devoid of emotional content, and the musicians maintain a calculated degree of anonymity. Many of these conventions, as well as the production methods and sound of IDM, can be traced back to the work of early electronic pioneers in the fifties and sixties. A brief analysis of the progression of electronic music technology from the 1950s onward, as well as the manner in which musicians responded to and utilized these developments, is essential to an understanding of direction now being taken by American electronic musicians.
Electronic music bears the distinction of being the only form of music rooted in technological research and development, rather than cultural tradition. Early electronic compositions, such as Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffers Symphonie pour un Homme Seul (1955) and Karlheinz Stockhausens Gesang der Junglinge (1955/56) were electroacoustic pieces created by means of physically manipulating pre-recorded magnetic tape to alter the recorded sounds. Magnetic tape was a relatively new and expensive technology at the time, and creation of such works required access to highly specialized studios such as the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in France. These necessary resources were available only to a few select artists, whose interests lied not in traditional conventions of storytelling, rhythm, or melody, but in the quest for new sounds and musical forms. With each new piece came a new technological innovation. As such, the output appealed primarily to fellow artists and academics, and was too esoteric to appeal to the general public.
The introduction of the first consumer electronic synthesizers utilizing transistors and semiconductors in the early 60s made the use of electronic instruments affordable and accessible to traditional musicians . Robert Moogs Mini-Moog was a powerful, yet easily controllable synthesizer that became popular with rock musicians and came to define a very particular sixties sound. Rock and pop musicians?use of electronic instruments bore little resemblance to the compositions of early innovators in that the instruments were played as if they were pianos, essentially used to emulate the sound of acoustic instruments. For the most part, musicians had little interest in the sonic capabilities of the new technology and were content to simply apply the instruments to their predefined musical vocabulary.
The use of synthesizers continued to grow over the next two decades as they became more compact, easy to use, and affordable. Production of synthesizers increased as companies such as Korg, Roland, and Yamaha introduced their own line of products. In 1982 Roland introduced two sequencing instruments ?the TB303 (Transistor Bass), which generated bass lines and was intended to emulate a bass guitar player, and the TR606 (Transistor Rhythm), which generated percussion sounds and was intended to emulate a drummer . The machines allowed users to enter musical patterns that would play back and accompany the lead musician. Rock musicians, the products?target consumer, found little use for the machines, which sounded very little like a real drummer or bass player. Although the machines were a commercial failure, they gained a following among early hip-hop and dance music producers, who appreciated the unique sounds of the boxes and their ability to loop phrases indefinitely. Synthesized drums and keyboards became a ubiquitous characteristic of eighties pop music, but it was the TB-303 and TR-606 (and later, 909) that almost exclusively formed the backbone of hip-hop and techno music . Perhaps of even more significance to hip-hop, of course, was the role of the DJ, who accompanied rappers by scratching records and mixing samples from the records into their own work. Oftentimes, entire phrases of popular songs would be appropriated, as in the case of Run DMCs Walk This Way? a reworking of Aerosmiths hit of the same name.
Both hip-hop and techno became massively successful in the late eighties and early nineties, the former primarily in the United States and the latter primarily throughout Britain and Europe. In the U.S., hip-hop groups such as NWA and Public Enemy created a storm of controversy, not to mention massive record sales and critical accolades, by candidly broadcasting the plight of angry young urban blacks, which in turn captivated a generation of young suburban whites and horrified their parents. In England, roughly during the same period, the rave scene was peaking. Raves, all night dance events staged in massive warehouses, were characterized by throbbing, repetitive techno music, elaborate lighting and video projections, and the consumption of copious amounts of synthetic drugs such as LSD and ecstasy.
By the mid nineties the personal computer became affordable enough to make its way into many homes and powerful enough to handle complex audio synthesis and production. No longer was it necessary to own a synthesizer, sampler, or sequencer to produce electronic music ?all of these tasks could be handled reasonably well by readily available software programs. Sounds could be processed and manipulated in ways that were once impossible or simply tedious and time consuming. In 1993 British record label Warp released the seminal compilation Artificial Intelligence: Electronic Listening Music > Warp?. The album featured the premiere of prominent artists Aphex Twin (under the pseudonym The Dice Man) and Autechre, and solidified a burgeoning movement among a loose association of musicians who were utilizing this new technology to push the sound of techno and dance music into new territories. Later in 1993, a small group of computer users established an e-mail list to discuss the work of Aphex Twin, as well as the other artists on the Artificial Intelligence compilation. This group dubbed themselves the Intelligence Dance Music list, and thus the name was born. As the nineties progressed, Aphex Twin and Autechre gained international distribution and audio production software had reached unprecedented levels of power and simplicity of use. Awareness of the genre grew and a slew of clones of the early progenitors began to produce albums. What was once considered a genre by virtue of its inability to be categorized, came to form its own rigid conventions. As in the fifties and sixties, the music was often focused on its own methods of production ?what software was used, on what kind of computer, etc. The genre also lacked much of a performative aspect ?a typical performance could be expected to consist of a solitary figure on a dark stage illuminated solely by the cool glow of a laptop computer.
In the late nineties in the U.S., a new wave of artists informed by the IDM scene began to gain attention for their particularly abrasive take on the genre. All too aware of the stigma that came with producing music on computers ?that the work is too cerebral for large audiences and lacks passion ?the artists took it upon themselves to upend the genre by drawing upon their uniquely American influences of hip-hop and hardcore punk. One work that helped define this trend was the three inch CD Attitude?on Tigerbeat 6 records. The release featured artists sampling, without clearance, the work of hip-hop group NWA (who in turn freely sampled other artists without clearance) and reworking the tracks into violent, mangled chunks of sound. Tigerbeat 6 founder Kid606, 23-year-old Miguel Depedro, has become the most prolific artist of this movement and its unofficial poster boy. His most recent album, Kid606 the Action Packed Mentallist Brings You the Fucking Jams? released in May of 2002, perfectly illustrates the zeitgeist of this movement in its title and first two tracks. The title alludes to experimentation and complexity of the music, but also that the music is meant to be energetic, fun, and danceable. The first track on the album consists of three minutes of clicks and droning buzzes that wouldnt sound at all out of place alongside an early work by a composer such as Stockhausen or John Cage. The second track, however, starts out with a warbled, overdriven synthesizer line and quickly layers in a sped up version of Eminems hip-hop group D12s hit Purple Pills? rendering the mens voices high pitched and squeaky, and the songs mid tempo rhythm a fast dance beat.
Through the subversive appropriation of the work of other influential, aggressive young musicians, a new generation of American electronic musicians have found a way to reconcile the cerebral experimentation of IDM with the attitude and visceral power of hip-hop and punk. The availability of computers and music production software has allowed these artists to explore new avenues of musical production and composition, while consciously referencing both the canon of electronic music and popular culture at large.
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