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IN SEARCH OF THE TRUE ELECTRICITY.
HARD/SOFT
We didn't say 'hard music is good' and 'soft music is bad'; this is not the
problem. The question is with what intention, motivation, attitude this
music is made. Techno is about innovation as much as about intensity.
If something is underground or overground isn't necessarily determined by
the amount of records sold, than how far it is driven by market forces
themselves. Our polemic response to the trance- and ambient hypes (in
nl1&2) wasn't directed against repetitive electronics that may induce some
sort of trance, nor against electronic music without the dance beats, but
mainly against the mechanism how labels (such as 'Trance' etc) get created
that serve one purpose above all: to reach the white middle class kids who
have the money to spend on CD's and expensive clubs. How the corporations
pick things up, how the media is their sales agent (or do you think it just
'happens' that magazines have those ads next to the features and
interviews?). What happens next is that it becomes obvious that money is
being made, and so many bedroom artists are jumping on the bandwagon,
desperate to suck corporate dick and the result is shiny tack, still
pretentious but without substance. What about some fake string sounds
straight out of the presets, for that uplifting feeling? Why this is
supposed to be 'intelligent' is a total mystery to me, coupled with the
claim that more hardcore, 'working class' styles are supposed to be
primitive and stupid.
Yes we do see it in a cultural/social context that original music gets
toned down to satisfy the demands of commerce, that it gets transformed
from something different into something conformist. You may be able to use
the market, but you have to have an idea who you are dealing with.
BANKRUPT
Don't be fooled - the market is in a crisis. Records are selling badly, so
on the one hand it's screaming for new input constantly, on the other hand
no one is prepared to risk anything that's out of the ordinary. So what you
get is endless recycling of things that were successful at one time - in
the desperate attempt to make a few more bucks with the same old shit, or
with watered down versions of what's really going on.
HARDCORE
This is possible only because they still manage to marginalise the radical
alternatives. 'Hardcore' (of any sort) always (at least implicitly) says
'no' to the state of things, and is always pointing towards the future.
This at least potentially bears a danger for the established order, because
resisting the present bullshit and
(re-)claiming your future is simply not what state and business want you to do.
NOSTALGIA
Therefore we get prescribed this mixture of positivism and nostalgia, a
lethal cocktail that permeates present day culture - and also supposed
sub-culture. We get back to basics, Victorian Values, every decade of the
century seems to have its different revivalists, may they consider
themselves monarchists, fascists, communists etc, we get 50's nostalgia
(when capitalism, big cars and rock'n'roll were cool), 60's nostalgia (when
the world was full of colour), and different sorts of 70's images get the
recycling treatment, from glam to punk. Finally there are decidedly
different forms of Archaic Revivals available dealing with times
pre-historic and therefore easy to claim as records are scarce - in
different forms by neo-hippies as well as the extreme right wing in Europe.
The past is up for grabs, but it's a completely fictional past everybody's
gaze is firmly fixed on. The propaganda machinery of late capitalism has
indeed done a marvellous job discrediting the radical, futurist, utopian
movements in recent history and the banning of 'no' has made it a citizens
duty to be 'positive' in the face of grim realities. The result of this is
a situation where criticism isn't allowed, and at the same time a
disgusting cynicism prevails.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't learn from history, look for useful ideas,
check out all the heretic and utopian movements that have either been
aborted in the course of time, or ideas thathave only been kept alive by
small circles, but we have to do it without sentimentality.
LEAVING THE 20TH CENTURY
It is the Reality Film that has to be recut, rewritten, redirected.Now.
The transparency of the world, the terrorist seizing of truth and the body,
the 'indirect light' of surveillance, the production of disaster (the
disaster of production) rules.
Control needs the rulers of production who need to control.
Control must be destroyed.
This project is bound to fail if it stays within the confines of reason and
order, it needs a utopian angle that refuses to escape into the past or
virtuality. We won't fall for false liberation because we know that behind
the lies of scarcity (survival) lies an abundance of passions (life).
Whatever technology we can get our hands on we shall use: to contaminate
the networks of power, to short circuit Control, to create webworks of
counter-intelligence and information. To amplify NOISE.
NOISE is what interferes with Control's broadcast of pacification and
programming, fear and oppression. Noise erupts when anyone takes their life
in their own hands, when lovers touch, when people dance, or
fight,.negating the madness of production, the ruling principle of western
thought.
It is irreversible: "Once the cloud of lies ... was pierced, myth was
shattered, leaving a vacuum that could be filled only by a delirious
freedom and a splendid poetry."
Originally appeared in Praxis Newsletter 3, april 1994 |
