Date: Sat, 24 Apr 1999 20:04:39 +0100
Subject: Re: avant-noise


In message <l03130302b346f45e450f-AT-[209.86.194.86]>, Christine Palma
<Christine-AT-DROMO.com> writes
>At 10:25 PM -0400 4/23/99, Damien Henderson wrote:
>
>>I'm not quite sure how familiar anyone is with the contemporary
>>avant-garde electronic music syndicate nowadays.  But I have to admit,
>>it's mighty fine.
>>
>>If anyone is interested in this growing trend, inquire into the following
>>outfits:  microstoria, oval, rome, mouse on mars, and the list goes on.
>>
>>If anyone is interested in discussing the intricacies of these bands, or
>>others, and can, in fact, fill me in on some new sounds to consider, I'd
>>be much obliged.
>
>Actually, the term is IDM or Intelligent Dance Music - if you are
>interested in more hardcore discussion of these and the like I would
>recommend the IDM List - I believe it's hosted by Hyperreal or you can
>search on Yahoo for IDM.  There is also Wire magazine out of the UK which
>is a great place to get the scoop - they like to drop the name of John Cage
>a lot.  I think they have a simple site up with good back articles.  The
>IDM list is full of fanatics and they could give you this year's top ten
>list of what's really cool.  I think X-radio also has an IDM section and
>you can listen to real audio samples of entire tracks.
>
>I am a fan of most of these electronic IDM acts, however I consider them
>mostly a pop phenomenon/a genre and not really avant garde - they would
>probably like to think of themselves as avant garde and what they are doing
>as falling more in the art area, above regular anonymous beat driven
>repetitive techno.  However besides the earlier guys like Autechre  maybe
>Scanner and Photek, has that much experimentation really happened in the
>IDM genre?  I'm not saying that cool stuff has not come out recently, just
>that in defining themselves as "intelligent" or "high" electronic music,
>they are playing a marketing game and distancing themselves from the more
>viceral beat driven techno - which is successful in it's own way - regular
>techno is beyond concept.  I think that Atari Teenage Riot and ATR's Alec
>Empire could probably be called avant garde - they/he uses gabber form and
>noise to subvert techno.  Gabber is very fast hardcore beats - speed
>techno.  Most IDM is very sterile and minimal and adults like it because it
>seems to wear a suit of complexity, but remains palatable.  I'm saying that
>while I love IDM, I'm convinced it's not an art form.
>
>--Christine
>
>________________________
>nanostep-AT-drumandbass.com
>
>
>
>
>     --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

How about German electronic 'rock' from the seventies ?  Into that ?
Can ? Neu ? Amon Duul 2 ?  Popol Vuh ? Kraftwerk ? Guru Guru ? Klaus
Schulze ? Ash Ra Tempel ?  etc. etc. ??

I used to write articles about them for the UK rock press, but the
editors generally didn't want to know. The music was 20 or 30 years
before its time. During the seventies I would regularly see Bowie and
Eno sneaking in at the back when these people performed in London, but
they only talked about people whose clothes and attitude they copied
when it came to interview time - the people whose musical ideas they
constantly raided never got a mention !

There was a whole electronic/digital frontier being opened up in Germany
at that time, it was really fascinating. I hear echoes everywhere around
me now....

Gerald O'Connell

http://www.gacoc.demon.co.uk/


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