On 3/16/05 8:55 AM, "Simon Kong" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Techno music in its origins was about futurism. Using new technology to > to express new ideas and explore new paradigms. Sure, but older technology can still be used to those ends, the way certain 'obsolete' machines were reclaimed by various Detroit innovators in order to express themselves. In a somewhat related way, Mills uses old films and stories (The Time Machine) to get the brain synapses firing and explore new techno trajectories. How does 'newness' enter the world, anyway? Often by turning technology against itself, by forcing it against the grain, against nature (or what have become the natural, accepted norms of commodity culture). But will the "spirit of the people" always be "greater than man's technology" as Cleaver famously said? Aren't these things part and parcel of the same thing? Some comments from CC in an interview with a local paper here: "Techno is a state of mind. It's driven by an obsession with the future and what the future should be, and it's an attempt to represent that in sound. The best techno music sounds like nothing you've ever heard before, yet the mood it's expressing is instantly familiar. Techno is what you get when a bunch of black ghetto kids start dreaming of alternative futures, rather than reporting on what they see, which is more the department of hip-hop." "My music takes a different stance to most music, I think. It's a little quirky, it's influenced by almost everything, and I'm careful to ensure that it isn't just different from what everybody else is doing, but also different from what I've done in the past." "What I do is about being original, not copying. I make music to express what the future sounds like for me, a black man who grew up during the '70s in the rubble of capitalism in America. For someone growing up in New Zealand, the future should sound very different." Cheers, Wes
