With all the comparisons of IDM and prog rock, how about going back
another 20 years and looking at modern jazz. You've got the same thing
in a number of respects:
-a small number of musicians in the underground take the
reigning African-American dance music and expand its vocabulary
dramatically by applying concepts derived from European art
music.
-the music produced is adapted for listening instead of dancing,
and works especially well with the electronic reproduction of the
day.
-its critics dismiss it as self-indulgent noise.
-it becomes most popular with relatively well-off, fairly
intellectual fans.
-it is far more successful and accepted in Europe than in the US.
The added advantage of this comparison is that it gives a better idea of
what we can expect in the future of IDM: namely, some of the musicians will
continue to do the same tricks over and over (cf. Dizzy Gillespie); some
will find ways to access the mainstream (jazz fusion and easy-listening
jazz); but there will be a large number of musicians who will persevere
in pushing the music farther and farther out (free jazz). I keep listening
to IDM in the hope that there is someone who is going to do for electronic
dance music what Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane did for jazz.
To follow this line of thinking, do any of you listen to the Art Ensemble
of Chicago? They have done some of the most amazing non-electronic ambient
music I have ever heard. They are the most amazing live music experience.
David
|*******************dbdodd@midway.uchicago.edu*******************|
|"It was an abiding mystery to Adrian that all man-made rubbish |
| smelt the same once it had been in a dustbin for any length of |
| time." --Stephen Fry*****************************************|