I am an Aquarius.
Maybe you don't put much faith in Astrology.
Neither do I. But one thing it gets right is the characterization of
Aquarians as fixated on the future. Electronic music has always been the
music of the future to me. My best friend and I got into electronic music
through our search for great sounding music to which to sit and listen (both
sober and otherwise). Pink Floyd was the beginning. Then "Tubular Bells II"
(laugh if you like).
At that time (the early 90s), 808 State was getting some radio play in
Toronto, but I didn't go for the aggressive stylings of Cubik and that other
track off "EX:EL". However, a good review for "Gorgeous" in Q magazine made
that album my first IDM purchase ("Gorgeous" is a hit-and-miss affair,
IMHOP). Heard "UFOrb" on CFNY's "The Alternative Bedtime Hour with Danni
Elwell". She played the album through. It scared me, so I turned it off part
way through. The music stayed with me though, and it wasn't long before I
picked up that album. Those huge, deep sighs that open the album...they
should comprise a 10-minute track in themselves!
Then: Artificial Intelligence, the "See the Light" tour, Orbital...and oh
yes Resistance-fucking-D.
By the way IDM means this to me:
Around the time of the birth of this list, dance music was getting a lot of
airplay; Snap, KLF, Technotronic. With these groups and their ilk defining,
for most, the genre known as dance music, announcing "I listen to dance
music," was, in most circles, tantamount to declaring "I am an idiot."
Saying one listened to *intelligent* dance music was a way of describing the
music relative to the most similar music genre with which the person to
whom one was describing the music was likely to be familiar. Like this: "I
listen to dance music, uh, INTELLIGENT dance music." I never bought the idea
that the music discussed on this list was necessarily "intelligent", it just
wasn't that *other* stupid shit.
Peace,
Matt
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