This genre would be absolutely *nothing* without the producers. Nothing.
If you have some other criteria for what makes a song good to you, like for
instance complex melodies and harmonies played on any arbitrary instrument,
fine, listen to some other genre. This one is IMHO primarily for producers.
It is self-evident that just like there are (technically) skilled musicians
as well as 'bad' musicians, there are producers that are skilled and producers
that are not. Thus complaining about producers in general by referring to the
work of 'bad' producers is like complaining about musicians in general by
referring to musicians that don't play their instrument very well.
I get bored very easily with music made by people who are not both
musicians *and* producers.
Being able to play an instrument very well is IMHO *not* a very good thing in
this genre, as I think that it somehow lessens the feeling for other ways of
listening to the music. My experience is that people who are too involved
with one part of the music - whether it be harmonies or timbres - will miss
out on some other essential part. There is a group called Twice A Man here in
Sweden that have been making electronic music since the beginning of the '70:s.
The last couple of years they have expressed their interest in techno. So they
release this album which they compare to 808 State and Shamen. However, the
album is *far* away from any kind of danceoriented beats. There are *great*
timbres and overwhelming atmospheres, cuz these guys have a divine relationship
to their synthesizers, but it is not even close to techno/dancemusic. It is
very obvious that they are too welltrained at making thick webs of sound and
melodramatic harmonies & melodies. The 'dance'-part gets lost. Also, they
cannot let go of the theatrical vocals, but place them in the foreground of all
their songs which makes it even less of a 'techno' record. Also, they tend to
confuse 'techno' with 'cyberindustrial' a la 242 etc.
I have friends that are mainly musicians, and I have friends that are mainly
producers. Those who are musicians every now and then get the idea that they
will make some techno to get rich, cuz they think that making good techno is
as easy as snapping with your fingers...
Well, I wish there were more people like you, Orpheus23, who understand the
importance of production.
In essence, I think listening to musicians complaining about 'produced' music
is like listening to a blind man talking about the sun...
Fredrik