From Philip Sherburne Sent Fri, Apr 9th 1999, 16:35
From Philip Sherburne Sent Fri, Apr 9th 1999, 16:35
>Whatever. I think this is a big part of the complete lack of common ground >between IDM and reynolds. yeah, i think andrew has a really good point there. the other thing that people forget about is the motivation behind reynolds' polemic -- that is, his ideal of techno (or, really, pop music in general) as an inherently populist medium. whether you agree or not, that's his position (and, in a similar vein, the reason he's so interested in ecstacy and its effects on the techno scene, bringing people together and erasing certain social divisions [at least for a limited time]). i'm not saying you have to agree with him (i have a lot of trouble with the extent to which his drug-culture theories drive his aesthetic judgements), but just recognize that he's making a very particular argument. the super-underground, lo-fi geektronica doesn't square with him because it's inherently exclusivist and doesn't permit the kind of youth-culture populism he's looking to promote. and i don't think it's the star system, exactly, that reynolds is affirming. more like the cultural practices that bring people together (massive raves, media exposure, whether underground or mainstream, etc.). most important, in terms of these cultural practices, is the FORM of the music (materially and sonically) -- is it readily available? does it only exist in editions of 200? and does it support gatherings of people, who come to unite & dance (i know, sounds awfully hippy-dippy to me too)? most bedroom IDM doesn't, frankly. the four-to-the-floor beat is incredibly effective for crowds (too effective, for the adornians among us) -- hence its valorization by reynolds. (actually, perhaps i'm overstating -- i don't know if reynolds has ever explicitly deconstructed particular beat structures -- 4ttf, jungle, hip-hop, etc.. but i'd be interested to see what he'd do with them.) there are, of course, plenty of interesting questions to ask about the relationship between "undergrounds" and mass-culture, between cult-followings and populism. and, of course, reynolds is always going off about some strain of dutch power-gabba which i've certainly never had the opportunity to hear. so perhaps populism is in the ear of the beholder. philip sherburne