the cover story of this week's sf bay guardian is "the future of music",
with a panel discusion that includes representation from idm lurker
and dropbeat records co-owner mike schulman. the full text can be found
at www.sfbg.com, below is an excerpt:
BG: How significant is the American music media's
recent turn toward DJ culture and electronic music --
MTV's formatting shift, for instance? Is this a grassroots
phenomenon that finally caught on, or the construct of an
industry that's run out of ideas?
MS: The media's idea of electronica is so limited and
ill-informed that I can't imagine a full movement being
brought about. Bands like Underworld and Prodigy
aren't especially different in sound or intent from a
typical big rock band, so it isn't a big stretch to get kids to
buy those records.
The real DJ culture of vinyl records and homebrew mix
tapes is a million miles from that, as is the genuine
underground techno and jungle coming out on tiny labels
all over the U.S. and Europe. Whatever the industry has
caught hold of is a very tiny piece of the picture, dictated
by the need to sell units to a lot of people with relatively
pedestrian tastes.
AW: Journalists and TV program directors are not
divine; they're depressingly mediocre people who only
know how to latch on to what is being sold -- not what
people actually like, or what's really good. Such trends
only represent the directives of commerce.... Whenever
I'm in a record store, customers crowd the pop aisles
while the techno, acid jazz, electronic aisles are virtually
empty. Maybe electronicats are getting what they need
on-line. In the real world, love makes things spin and
the music that gets people happy, that makes them need
each other, still goes pop-ular.
Given this need to connect, the music and news media's
desperate search to segregate music -- ignoring black
beats for faceless doodlings of white electronic
musicians -- is just the latest wrinkle on rockism. And it
will fail -- even if it doesn't end.
WC: By and large, mainstream white culture (you can
read "major-label rock" into that if you like) is bankrupt,
and astute youth recognized that some time ago.
Underground hip-hop/DJ/turntablist culture is alive and
vital and has got originality coming out of its ears.
BG: Do you view electronic music as the music of the
future? Are you optimistic about its creative potential
and the changing role of technology in music production?
WC: Um, hello? Much of the groundbreaking in
electronic music occurred in the '40s, '50s, and '60s.
Stockhausen et al., baby. Though contemporaries such
as Oval, Boredoms, the Invisibl Skratch Piklz
turntablists, and even, yes, DJ Shadow are consistently
redefining and gleefully obliterating genre boundaries, it
is at best naive and at worst offensive to lump them
together under the umbrella term "electronica" and
presume they started it.
AG: So-called electronica is the music of the future in
the same way that Disney's Tomorrowland is a place of
the future. Anyone with an ounce of interest in, and feel
for, pop could have told you 20 years ago that Kraftwerk
was the future. Africa Bambaataa understood that, too.
The future arrived years ago, while half of America was
listening to Bruce Springsteen.
MS: The most creative music I'm hearing lately is
coming from the electronic side of things. Savvy jungle
producers are making tracks as avant-garde and
theoretically grounded as any piece of rock-snob noise.
A lot of people seem to have a real aversion to any
music that has a beat, a relic of that whole "disco sucks"
mind-set of the early punk years. And that's a shame,
because what's happening with experimental beat
science is creating a revolution in sound, and exciting
records are coming out every week completely
independent of the usual channels of distribution and
press.
It's really very punk rock in a totally now way --
independent labels, distributors, shops, fuck-off
attitudes. The folks making great electronic music right
now couldn't care less about MTV, unlike your typical
"punk" band, which rehashes boring 1978
pseudo-politics (and music) and poses for Alternative
Press fashion layouts.
BG: Will "electronica" supplant rock culture or be
absorbed into it? What does the recent shift toward
non-rock styles say about the cultural mood?
WC: This is like asking if black people will take over
America, or if aspects of black culture will be co-opted
(once again) by the white mainstream. What do you
think? Commercial "success" is all about power and
who holds the reins. Rock will flip its ungainly wig for a
while over how cool it is to have Photek remix your next
Blues Explosion atrocity, then eventually discard the
multisubcultures, proclaiming them spent, too digital, too
whatever, and then all the rock critics will start
rhapsodizing over plain ole rock and roll's newfound
renaissance.