Dead links

It's great to see that the Guardian has copped on to this minimal lark: they're only about three years too late. Still, they're insightful enough to note, without a hint of irony, that Booka Shade make some of the best minimal around, especially the 'it's not at all like an epic Eye Q trance release by say Zyon from 1993 called 'No Fate' with some modern clicky, glitchy beats added in' 'In White Rooms'. Then there's the usual pop psychology psychobabble about people like Villalobos and those incredibly bland Romanian dudes railing against their upbringing in oppressive states by getting frazzled off their nuts. Please. Ricky V left Chile when he was a young kid and grew up in Germany, one of Europe's most liberal, forward-thinking progressive societies - that tells you more about why he is a party animal, rather than a vague memory of Pinochet's time. And those Romanian guys look way too young to have been traumatised by Ceaucescu's regime - they were probably only 10 at the oldest when the country's dictator got a bullet in the head in 1989. I'm sure the newspaper's organic parsnip-munching readership will lap it up and remind Amelie or Theodore to zip down to the local Tower in the Range Rover (or better still, log onto Amazon) to pick up Michael Mayer's last Fabric mix.
That said, the piece made more sense and was more articulate (and accurate) than this rubbish. Seriously, where do Slate get their writers from? The piece fetes the 'return of electronica' ( five years after the brilliantly insightful Alexis Petridis of the Guardian declared that 'dance music is dead': yes Alexis, the minute the phrase left your lips, it withered - the last five years have been a desert of inertia), a decade after the last wave of electronica faltered. What really rankled with me was this par:
"Besides the fact that no real artists self-identified under the electronica banner, the genre's moment evaporated because many of the accusations lobbed at the kind of electronic music on sale were more or less true. It trafficked in texture and ambience, shunning traditional songwriting techniques. It worked better in dance clubs than on home stereos, and was rarely created with album-length intentions."
I see that the guy who wrote the piece is on his way to college, and I sincerely hope that he stays there for a very long time, because it'll mean he won't get the opportunity to write this kind of drivel (or maybe he'll need to to pay his bills? Expel him already and make him get a day job!). I appreciate that the Yanks' use of the term 'electronica' is more focused on 'bands' like the awful Crystal Meth and the Chemicals and that electronic music operates in something of a cultural vacuum stateside, but what the writer is suggesting is that all of a sudden, techno music's more esoteric side died a death because no one was able to write lasting pieces of music. How about Boards of Canada, Rhythm & Sound featuring Tikiman, Plaid, As One, Junior Boys, much as I hate their more commercial stuff, Octave One, Zero 7, even Drexciya at their less abrasive - these are all acts that combined electronic production techniques with songwriting that recognised the need for substance, lyrics and melodies, and these are names that came into my find at this late time of night - I'm sure there are countless others. I have no idea how well or badly the Guardian or Slate pay their journalists to write these kind of inaccurate, lazily-researched pieces - my guess is that they are interns or juniors who are dazzled by seeing their own bylines - but there's still no excuse for what is perceived to be the quality end of the mainstream press to peddle such fodder.

Comments

[Brophy]

@ Stefano: I never suggested there was anything revolutionary about questioning music that's popular, but I would much rather criticise things than go 'oh yeah, that's great' when I don't feel that way. Maybe it has become trendy or even easy to slag minimal, but in fairness, a lot of it is sub-standard and kind of deserves it. Obviously that is just my opinion. By the way, any joy with getting that article published?

[marc]

I'd like the 5 minutes of my life back it just took me to read these comments.

[UnamUnarma]

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