Re: (idm) Music criticism

From Kent Williams
Sent Mon, Aug 3rd 1998, 15:32

On Mon, 3 Aug 1998, Erkki Rautio wrote:
> > One thing that really pisses me off is musical anti-intellectualism, or
> > the idea that serious music can't be fun, and fun music can't be
> > serious, and that one DARE not take fun music seriously. 
> 
> Have you read Kodwo Eshun's "More Brilliant Than The Sun - Adventures 
> In Sonic Fiction" (Quartet Books, London, ISBN 0 7043 8025 0)? It's one
> attempt to have some serious criticism on electronic dance music, and
> also might shed some light on the problems you may get into when trying
> dissect it intellectually and using postmodern terminology (as in
> Eshun's case)... 

Postmodern Criticism's BIG PROBLEM: It's often said that if the only
tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  Pomo Crit
has as an axiom that it IS the hammer and dammit everything IS a nail.

I'm a whole lot more interested in the criticism I see on IDM, because
it's experiential rather than analytical -- you hear about what people
consider 'chicken-skin music' rather than some sort of deconstructive
analysis.

This is not to say that there is no place for analytical thought in music
criticism; just that I think that some criticism seeks to exhibit the
cleverness of its author in ways that obscures the putative subject, the
music.  The technical term for this is 'wanking.'

The whole dichotomy of dance music is fascinating though -- blokes employing
maximal technology to try and invoke the ecstasy of dance that goes back
to the most primitive origins of human culture.  They were holding
raves 50,000 years ago, with guys beating on logs instead of caning
their 909s.  The other difference, of course, was that they had flaming
branches instead of glow sticks.