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.