Explain Electro To A Sweet Boy

[thirdform]

you're asking for techno to be a surrogate literature. some detroit cats tried to do that with the conceptual stuff but honestly im not into that stuff so much sci fi is like a corny cold war art form for the most part. you have to listen to it as non-music. when you try to listen to it musically with standards of western art music it doesn't work, that was what industrial and free jazz musics were trying to break. westerners are too indoctrinated in notions of rational tonality, of rational emotion, of precise bourgeois mathematical tonality. a lot of techno is just someone sitting down with a machine and tweaking it. it is not composed in the strictist sense, nor is it improvised in the same way as avant jazz. it's not really something you need music theory to do. a basic understanding of the rhythms and music technology will do. whereas with punk if you didn't want to basically sound identical to the ramones you had to have good chops. a lot of punks could actually play really well, they just didn't admit it till the post-punk era. whereas the 2nd wave onwards of techno in fact came closer to realising a non-musicians music. techno in that respect is closer to moroccan hand drum percussion circles. it's more about being tactile rather than sitting at a piano and mathematically plotting everything out. although of course in gnawa drumming there is heavy heavy mathematics, it's just that a lot of that is sublated into the censory perceptions and the immediate rituals.

 

[luka]

I like this set up.

 

[thirdform]

the thing is hardcore is camp as fuck. like if barty doesn't get that he's understood nothing of blissblogger. Simon wasn't trying to convince the soulboys, he was saying look at it on its own terms. if you don't like those terms then fair enough. but if you extend that criterion then barty will have to be like kirk degiorgio in that invisible jukebox thing where he only started paying attention to the 4hero lot around 96-97 when hey'd done most of their seismic non-musical innovations.

 

[thirdform]

the thing is i can't listen to a lot of proper music for long periods of time. if i listen to arabesk or soul or even rnb for an extended period of time its too much, it's too emotional, i start thinking about things. like i've been on a 3 hour turkish 80s arabesk binge this evening and the heartfelt lyrics are already putting me into a massive depression and i can't wait for this Bergen album to end. it's too much for my constitution. i could never be a musician. music doesn't work for me under capitalism. it's too intense. If I could be a musician i wouldn't be on dissensus, i'd be revolutionising electronic music.

 

[sadmanbarty]

oi thirdform, stop coming up with reasons why i'm a terrible bastard and write your masterpiece.

explain in your own inimitable style what anti-humanism is. your subjective experince of it.

in my understanding campness contradicts this anti-human aesthetic, it imbues it with emotion. explain why that's wrong.

i experience all that anti-human energy surges luke was talking about in jungle breaks, explain how that materialises in all this stuff your posting.

go on, knock it out the park son.

 

[sadmanbarty]

i never said camp was a bad thing third.

 

[luka]

What bartys done for himself here is draw on his background in gestalt therapy. In gestalt I think this is called something like your 'growing edge' something like that. You find the underdeveloped aspect on focus on it. It's very powerful and useful for overall integration.

 

[luka]

Camp undermining the attempt to invoke the adamant fixed zones of matter is a fair point

 

[sadmanbarty]

i'm desperate to open myself up third. your putting words in my mouth so you don't have to show me the way. i'm ready to kowtow to the robo-overlord. i'm ready to plow the fields for the glory of the motherland. take me there...

 

[thirdform]

yeah but jungle is camp with all those high pitched soul palliatives. like what makes techno camp to you i can't work out.

I also can't work out if this is basically straight guy saying this is gay/queer music. which to an extent it is (although don't overemphasise it...)

 

[pattycakes_]

if you're genuinely interested, you could do worse than watch that darkbeat documentary i posted earlier

 

[sadmanbarty]

I also can't work out if this is basically straight guy saying this is gay/queer music. which to an extent it is (although don't overemphasise it...)

wow. sorry, you make it sound awful when you put it like that. that honestly wasn't my intention. i'd feel terrible if i upset anyone with that.

i meant 'camp' as in 'theatrical', not as homophobic slur.

 

[thirdform]

oi thirdform, stop coming up with reasons why i'm a terrible bastard and write your masterpiece.

explain in your own inimitable style what anti-humanism is. your subjective experince of it.

in my understanding campness contradicts this anti-human aesthetic, it imbues it with emotion. explain why that's wrong.

i experience all that anti-human energy surges luke was talking about in jungle breaks, explain how that materialises in all this stuff your posting.

go on, knock it out the park son.

But you're more into the musical jungle as opposed to the amusical jjungle right? you like the break chopping when it sounds like dancehall or jazz rather than something like:

 

[sadmanbarty]

yeah but jungle is camp with all those high pitched soul palliatives. like what makes techno camp to you i can't work out.

jungle definitely camp. all those ragga vocals. akai vocal stretches. bombastic breaks.

again, i have nothing wrong camp music. i love it. just though there might be a contradiction between something being camp and something being anti-human.

 

[sadmanbarty]

But you're more into the musical jungle as opposed to the amusical jjungle right? you like the break chopping when it sounds like dancehall or jazz rather than something like:

that's wicked.

 

[thirdform]

wow. sorry, you make it sound awful when you put it like that. that honestly wasn't my intention. i'd feel terrible if i upset anyone with that.

i meant 'camp' as in 'theatrical', not as homophobic slur.

I'm not upset, sure its theatrical. all good music is theatrical though. that was the problem with post-dubstep. it was a reaction against dubstep becoming too theatrical.

 

[thirdform]

I mean short of the annihilation of the species I don't think it's possible to become fully antihuman. techno is still fundamentally music to shake buts to, although the more red bull etc get on its case the more it's just becoming the edge equivalent of easy listening, sad to say. These are impulses and tendancies, not definitions per se. some techno can be very musical, like kenny larkin stuff.

the closest music that comes close to that stuff is freeparty tekno. literally music designed to bang away for hours for people on drugs. totally anonymous and completely divorced from artistic concerns. I could basically write an algorithm to write it and just put loads of it out. there is no intuition it can be totally automated (I'm not speaking as an old curmudgeon, just type 'schranz tekno' or something into youtube and you'll see where I'm coming from.) the dancers are everything, the dj and the records are nothing. I'm for the abolition of art but i feel that sound tends to do it in a reactionary direction for yuppies and crusties to take shitloads of drugs in a ditch to. I'm for art returning back to its collective mnemonic essence, the idea that music proceeded constitutions and treaties, the idea that the daily rhythms were memorised in music long before they were put down on tablets. in essence, the original literary form. in that respect I wouldn't say techno could be totally antihuman. that is the contradiction within it, but without that inherent contradiction the genre would not exist. similar to the inherent contradictions in jungle.

 

[sadmanbarty]

ideally, what would i be experiencing listening to this stuff?

 

[thirdform]

ideally, what would i be experiencing listening to this stuff?

You're not supposed to listen to it. just like dub reggae should theoretically be experienced. once you've experienced it enough then you can start to build on that psychedelic foundation in an elliptical way. but if you sit down, say here's some techno, I'm going to listen to it, you'll be bored stiff. I can say that confidently. in the same way my parents would find wedding davul and zurna music boring divorced from its context. like i said, it's easy to commodify if you take the psychedelia out of it.

 

[thirdform]

I mean if I was around in 93, then the 94 switch to pure jungle would probably mean i got off if i was not going clubbing, i'm not sure if its really possible to get jungle without a good sound system and a party, you have to feel that pressure, that's the electronic aspect to it. otherwise jazz funk and indian classical has more technical drumming. like hardcore tunes, despite their radical amusicality were structured like songs. jungle tunes weren't. Was also why I'd be more tempted to agree with luke back in the day about jungle being dead around 95. if you played me a break heavy choppage or dnb set back then I'd probably be like nah mate play me a 93 era slipmatt or randall set.
Like I said, this is a personal thing I can't really do music anymore. It's too much effort. that's what appeals to me in techno. it's pounding, it's funky, it's distorted, silly and camp but it's not like metal or hard rock which is just too fuckingmusical for my tastes.