three years ago, i saw richie hawtin for the first time in a sweltering loft space at 117 minna st. 700 ravers crammed into a low ceilinged room designed for about 450 people, with the only ventilation provided by a single window all the way at the back and a couple of fans at the front. at several points in the night it was literally raining condensed sweat from the ceiling. that night, richie played for five hours, and forever changed the way that i saw music. he played _everything_ - from warped aciiieeeed to the manic electro of j saul kane to the raw aggression of speedy j to clattering tribal house to concept-style minimalism to soulful detroit, with all points in between. his mixing was smooth and adventurous, but like any good dj he seemed to know that it wasn't so much how you played but what, and when. no matter how hot it seemed, you were literally compelled to keep dancing. "richie is a god," a friend muttered as we stumbled out at 7am. and no, i was sober thank you.
the flier for the party, appropriately called "a diet for the sick," identified richie only with the name plastikman and the ubiquitous alien logo. at the time i owned the two plastikman albums available at the time, and was fascinated by the possibilities they presented. what sort of person would produce such alien music, and what would they do in a live setting? the mystery implied the unexpected. i'm still not sure of everything that i heard that night. fast forward to the year 2000 and "Decks, FX, and 909." the mystery of plastikman is gone, replaced with the bald visage of "richie hawtin." despite its pretentions as "serious art," the new de909 angle is mostly a triumph of slick marketing and 21st century multimedia capitalism - buy the cd, buy the vinyl, go to the show, etc. etc. etc. - most of all, buy into richie's image. in the web business where i earn my living, we call this "branding." earlier this year i saw the de909 show live for the first time, and i was impressed - the shock of the new has its power. but i remember remarking afterwards that i couldn't recall a single track that richie had played, save nitzer ebb. last night at the plus8 classics show in sf, i was much less impressed. john acquaviva did an admirable job of warming up, though some of the music he played earlier in the night was pretty darn cheesy (its john a. though, and somehow he can get away with records other people can't). he ended up providing the highlight of the entire night for me - his last record was red planet's "stardancer." hearing that at top volume on 1015's sound system was _almost_ worth the fifteen dollar admission price. richie stepped up to the decks at 2 am and proceeded to simply wallop the crowd for two hours straight (and presumably a third, though me and my numbed friends had left by then). technically, richie is a joy to watch. his dj technique is unparalleled - almost every record is manipulated beyond recognition through fx and elaborate mixing tricks. just watching his fingers move about the mixer and fx unit is entertaining. but the musical end result of all this fuss and bother leaves a lot to be desired. in many ways, i think that richie is a victim of his own sucess - having developed such a purebred sound to accompany his aggressive marketing and packaging techniques, he finds himself unable to experiment or push himself beyond the image of "harder than hard" that he has created. he has sold his soul to pure technique, but pure technique is ultimately numbing. without rough edges, without surprise, without hints of contradiction and feminine energies to leaven the unrelenting attack, there really isn't much to care about. all tension and no release makes jack a dull boy. and in a way, this is an inevitable result of catering to a very mainstream crowd - they want exactly what they expected when they bought into the "richie hawtin" package. as a friend put it, "when richie plays anything besides total pounding nazi music they just don't care." i found it interesting to see a whole lot of acquaintences of mine from three years ago at the plus8 show. but not the folks that i saw richie with the first time - these were the kids that would complain and put on an aphrodite tape or a happy hardcore record when i would try to get them to listen to some jeff mills or kenny larkin. there they were, up front and center and jumping up and down to the pounding beat. "richie is a god," they told me with extremely dilated pupils shining. hmmm. -eli
