>From Tom's review of Dan's book... "Moreover, there¹s little discussion of techno¹s bastard offspring, such as gabber and trance. Yet if this book has a single overriding fault, it is that too often Sicko fails to make connections or carry his themes through boldly enough.
He rightly describes minimalism¹s original impetus as an attempt to find the lost funk in techno, but fails to point out that the hordes of minimal loop records that followed have been techno¹s undoing and are probably responsible for any current difficulties. He identifies commercially successful groups like 808 State, The Prodigy and Underworld but fails to underline that their success came only by adopting the kind of rock¹n¹roll trappings many of the music¹s originators were trying to get away from in the first place. And while he discusses genres like drum¹n¹bass, ambient and post-rock, he cannot pin down their relationship with techno. All the same, these are just personal observations, probably the kind of thing Sicko intended to generate in the first place. With such a vast subject, generalisations or omissions are inevitable and everybody with an interest in the subject is bound to find something here to take issue with - if the music didn¹t inspire debate and strong feelings it probably wouldn¹t be worth listening to anyway. What¹s more, as I¹ve already pointed out, Techno Rebels¹ is not meant to be an encyclopaedia or a definitive history, simply because such a work could probably never be completed... md 25/7/03 2:55 PM David [EMAIL PROTECTED] > What's wrong with minimal techno? > What kind of "damage" has it done? > ~Dave > > ---------- Original Message ------------- > Subject: (313) The Techno Wheel > Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 11:50:10 +0000 > From: Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > Shake said to me last week that the only people interested in history are > historians, I disagree :) > > The amount of times we've played out at clubs and people have asked me "what > kind of dance music is this?" or "is this classed as techno?". > > I do know what you mean about putting things in a box but this is how the > kids of today understand things and they are the ones who are going to be > buying the tunes, the least we could do is give them a clue and keep it > interesting. Lets give them a box of cool stuff to download/read and if > breaking it into waves or years makes it easier then I'm all for it. > > How cool would it be to have a disk like the one Greg Wilson sent you with > all the mixes and interviews on about electro-funk :) Man, you'd be tooled > up to win any argument with that kind of info.... > > > Last week in the studio, two of the DUST DJ's accused me of wanting to > reinvent the techno wheel, why? Well I was doing things that they considered > to be outside of what is deemed "techno" (one example would be a long snare > roll), for me this music has always been about innovation, ideas, great art > work, propaganda and the third record not about block building in Cubase or > Logic, I think Tom MagicFeet wrote an article about all this and about the > damage done my minimal techno - my point being 99% of the public think they > know what techno is, the truth is only 1% of what they know is true and that > would be the 4 to the floor side of it...we have no one but ourselves to > blame... > > md > > > >> hi martin, >> >> don't get me the wrong way, i think history of this stuff is very >> important and sometimes it's good to have this stuff down in a way that >> isn't jounalism with an agenda (see blogs stuff etc). i like the way >> you're headed with this tho. >> >> i'm complaining about waves in the same way i complain about genres, and >> microgenres....i use em, as we all do, but it doesn't stop me thinking >> they prevent a certain creativity... (it's a "mistaking the menu for the >> meal" situation for me) >> >> peace >> >> robin... >> >>> While I agree Robin, I'm not trying to make this into a "year zero" thing, >>> no point really. What I'm interested in doing is getting a good list >>> together of the players, doing a mix of the tunes and adding some biog info. >>> >>> We could always do a mix of tunes that influenced the first wave, there's >>> plenty of references points and I know there's a couple of the early players >>> "lurking" on the list, should be to hard. And if we through in a copy of >>> Dan's book and a couple of articles for good measure, it should make it easy >>> for people to get into the History and therefore push the present into the >>> future. >> >> > > > >
