Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture (68 page)
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Authors: Simon Reynolds
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Yet Oval’s activity is
dependent
on nineties digital technology. According to Popp, the trio’s impetus is to expose the ‘conditions and constraints under which music in the nineties is created’, and by extension, to interrogate the entire technology-mediated nature of today’s information society. ‘Experimentation in music, at least nowadays, is for most people a tame, safely “guided tour” through MIDI software and hardware,’ says Popp. ‘Most of the music produced by using this equipment proved to be no more than a predictable effect of the hardware or software involved.’
dependent
on nineties digital technology. According to Popp, the trio’s impetus is to expose the ‘conditions and constraints under which music in the nineties is created’, and by extension, to interrogate the entire technology-mediated nature of today’s information society. ‘Experimentation in music, at least nowadays, is for most people a tame, safely “guided tour” through MIDI software and hardware,’ says Popp. ‘Most of the music produced by using this equipment proved to be no more than a predictable effect of the hardware or software involved.’
Oval resist this deadlock, or expose it, by having ‘an audible user-interface’. In nuts and bolts terms, this involves fucking with the hardware and software that organizes and enables today’s post-rave electronica. Most critical of these technologies is MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), which allows different pieces of equipment to be co-ordinated like the players in a band, or instrumental ‘voices’ in an orchestra. Despite, or rather because of, MIDI technology’s reliance on this ‘deplorably dated music-metaphor’, Oval deliberately use its sonic syntax, because their real interest is in standardization. They combat the ‘determinism within these programmes’ by erasing the manufacturer’s distinction between ‘features’ and ‘bugs’. Just as Hendrix aestheticized feedback (a ‘bug’ or improper effect immanent in the electric guitar but hitherto unexploited) and hip hoppers abused the stylus and turntable, Oval fuck with digital technology: by tampering with MIDI hardware and, most famously, by deliberately damaging and painting over CDs. Taking the unhappy CD player’s anguished noises – glitches, skips, and distressed cyber-muzik generated when the machine tries to calculate and compensate for missing algorhythmic information – Oval painstakingly assembled the material into the glistening audio-maze that is
Diskont
.
Diskont
.
Typically recalcitrant, Oval reject terms like ‘sabotage’ or ‘vandalism’ to describe the CD-treatments. ‘Vandalizing?’ sneers Popp. ‘In my perspective, the CD treatments are only a humble attempt to reestablish a decent, tangible, material basis for one of many possible musical stances in the nineties. It’s our personal, tiny aesthetic margin for intervention from within software.’ Oval do use the word ‘disobedience’, though, which also has a frisson of subversion. But perhaps the term that best describes Oval’s oblique strategies is deconstruction, at least in its precise original meaning: Derrida and Co’s close, rigorous reading of philosophical texts in order to unsettle the terms of post-Enlightenment thought
from within
. Deconstruction involved unravelling the rhetorical tropes and purely literary sleights that compose any text’s supposedly rational argument; it meant exposing the text’s blindspots, paradoxes and hidden complicities. Oval similarly talk of engaging in a kind of non-antagonistic dialogue with corporate digital culture, with Sony, IBM, Microsoft, Roland, Apple.
from within
. Deconstruction involved unravelling the rhetorical tropes and purely literary sleights that compose any text’s supposedly rational argument; it meant exposing the text’s blindspots, paradoxes and hidden complicities. Oval similarly talk of engaging in a kind of non-antagonistic dialogue with corporate digital culture, with Sony, IBM, Microsoft, Roland, Apple.
Blindspots and contradictions abound in Oval’s own rhetoric. They speak in punk-style anyone-can-do-it terms of deliberately keeping their activity at the ‘lowest entry-level’, of not wanting ‘to convey an image of arcane technology and years of expert study in digital signal processing and programming’. Yet their discourse is often absurdly forbidding and user-unfriendly. Then there’s the way they deny any musical intentions, only to later come close to characterizing their project as an enrichment of music; they claim the invention of a ‘completely new music-paradigm’, or even ‘a new kind of perception’. The next step for Oval is the realm of the interactive; they are working on a kind of digital authoring system. ‘It’s not exactly CD-ROM or hypertext,’ explains Popp. ‘But it will involve guiding the user through some kind of design-environment, and basically enabling people to make Oval records themselves.’
Party for Your Right to FightWhen asked about his relationship to techno, Oval’s labelmate Alec Empire declares bluntly: ‘Rave is dead, it’s boring! House is disco and techno is progressive rock.’ An engaging fellow who’s constantly laughing, usually at his own utterances, Alec Empire divides his energy between fostering the Berlin-based anti-rave scene called Digital Hardcore, and recording as a solo artist for Mille Plateaux and Force Inc, where his output ranges from the edgy eclecticism of
Limited Editions 1990 – 94
and
Generation Star Wars
to the sombre fugue-state electronica of
Low On Ice
and the psycho-kitsch of
Hypermodern Jazz 2000.5
(a sort of twisted riposte to the E-Z listening fad).
Limited Editions 1990 – 94
and
Generation Star Wars
to the sombre fugue-state electronica of
Low On Ice
and the psycho-kitsch of
Hypermodern Jazz 2000.5
(a sort of twisted riposte to the E-Z listening fad).
This two-pronged campaign – rabble-rousing agit-pop versus hermetic experimentalism – reflects an interestingly jumbled background. On one hand, Empire studied music theory and, unusually for a ‘techno artist’, uses notation when composing his own music. On the other hand, he was a breakdancer at the age of ten and playing in a punk band by the time he was twelve. At the end of the eighties, Empire got swept up in Berlin’s underground rave scene – clubs like UFO, illegal warehouse parties. Despite being a non-druggy type himself, Empire embraced acieed’s cult of oblivion. ‘Acid was a political movement for me, it was like stopping being a part of society . . . For a lot of people, it was about escaping from reality. At the time it made sense, politics seemed futile, with the Left dead, and even the autonomists seeming like silly kids rioting for fun.’ The German scene quickly turned dark and nihilistic: ‘People got into heroin and speed, there were parties in East Berlin with this very hard industrial acid sound, Underground Resistance and +8, 150 b.p.m.’
Empire dug the way this aggressive sound reflected the kids’ frustration, and, influenced by UR’s abstract militancy, he formed the agit-tekno band Atari Teenage Riot. Atari signed to a major label, but were dropped before they released an album. Wrecking a recording studio’s amplifier and running up huge cab bills by stopping off at record stores, they were just too much trouble. By this point – the end of 1993 – Alec had already released around fifteen EPs of solo material on Force Inc and other labels, including ‘Hunt Down The Nazis’ and ‘SuEcide’, an ironic/nihilistic ‘hymn to self-destruction through Ecstasy’. Meanwhile, he was experimenting with a Germanic jungle sound for Riot Beats, drawing on the influence of UK darkside tracks by Bizzy B and the Reinforced crews. Dark-core remains an influence on Digital Hardcore, which is both a scene and a label. ‘Our beats are fast and distorted, but the programming is not as complex as the UK producers.’
Breakbeat appealed as an antidote to Germanic techno’s Aryan funklessness, and as a multicultural statement. ‘I did “Hunt Down The Nazis” at a time when skinheads were attacking immigrants. Then you’d discover, talking about the attacks to people on the rave scene, that a lot of people were quite racist. At the Omen Club, Turkish kids were turned away for no reason. There was quite a nationalistic aura to German techno, “now we are back on the map”. Mark Spoon from Jam and Spoon made a comment on MTV, about how white people had techno and black people had hip hop, and that’s the way it should stay. One neo-Nazi magazine even hailed trance techno as proper German music.’
Ironically, Empire now reckons that UK jungle has gotten too funky. ‘The energy is missing. A whole night of jungle is just too flat. The idea of mixing, of fading tracks into each other smoothly, is over-rated. Pirate radio was better before the DJs learned to mix properly. DJ technique is just like a guitarist who knows how to make a really complicated guitar solo. A Stooges riff can mean much more, with just three notes. If the energy’s not there, what’s the point?’
With its speedfreak tempos and brutalist noise aesthetic, Digital Hardcore has less in common with jungle than it does with that other descendant of the original 1991 pan-European hardcore: the terror-gabba and speedcore sounds of labels like PCP, Kotzaak, Fischkopf, Cross Fade Entertainment, Praxis and Gangstar Toons Industry. Digital Hardcore Recordings’ own acts, like EC80R, Moonraker, Shizuo and Sonic Subjunkies, mash up skittery 200 b.p.m. breakbeats, ultra-gabba riffs, thrash-metal guitar, Riot Grrrl shouting, and loads of midfre-quency NOISE. ‘In techno, in jungle, the middle frequencies are taken out, it’s all bass and treble. But the middle frequencies are the rock guitar frequencies, it’s where the aggression comes from.’
As well as ‘boost the mid-range, cut the bass’, Digital Hardcore’s other key precepts are ‘tempo changes keep it exciting’ and ‘faceless techno PAs are boring’. At their parties, DJs favour a crush-collision mess-thetic of mixed up styles and b.p.m.’s, and there are always bands playing. Instead of hypnotizing the listener into a headnodding stupor, Digital Hardcore is meant to be a wake-up call. If rave is heavy metal (rowdy, stupefying, a safety valve for adolescent aggression) and electronica is progressive rock (pseudo-spiritual, contemplative), Digital Hardcore is punk rock: angry, speedy, ‘noise-annoys’-y.
In many ways, Digital Hardcore is the lo-fi underground counterpart to pop groups like The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers, who mash together hip hop’s boombastic breakbeats and techno’s insurgent riffs to create a twenty-first century equivalent of rock aggression, and who’ve both built up a reputation as kick-ass live bands. There’s a crucial difference, though. Where Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’ and The Chemicals’ ‘Loops Of Fury’ are gloriously adolescent tantrums in the plastic punk tradition of The Sweet, Gary Glitter and Alice Cooper, Digital Hardcore’s aural insurrection is targeted; Empire and his comrades really believe that noise can bring down the establishment’s walls. Nonetheless, all this music
feels
like rock, rather than rave.
feels
like rock, rather than rave.
‘You know, there’s this foundation of musicians – German Rock Musicians Against Techno – who used to play at parties and have now been put out of business by DJs,’ Alec laughs. ‘We want to join it!’ He adds, ‘Just to take the piss,’ but I think he means it,
maaaan
.
You Make Me Feel Mighty Unrealmaaaan
.
It’s a few days before New Year’s Eve 1995, and downtown Manhattan’s ‘illbient’ salon The Soundlab is paying host to Alec Empire versus DJ Spooky: an evenly matched turntable duel between the doyen of digital hardcore and local DJ-theorist Spooky. Alternating in ten minute sequences at first, then going head-to-head, the pair cut up the beats wildstyle, Spooky rockin’ out in his dreads and B-boy gear, Empire impassive in an incongruously bureaucratic grey suit.
If DJ Spooky tha’ Subliminal Kid – aka tha’ Tactical Apparition, tha’ Ontological Assassin, tha’ Renegade Chronomancer, tha’ Semiol-ogical Terrorist – hadn’t existed, it would have been necessary to invent him. There was a gap just waiting to be filled by a figure who’s not just hip to the postmodern implications of cut ’n’ mix culture, but who goes out of his way to exacerbate them. That’s Spooky: the DJ-as-philosopher, someone who can happily flit between the sub-cult underground of hip-hop jams, raves, ambient parties, and the highbrow overground of
Artforum
, ICA conferences, Semiotexte.
Artforum
, ICA conferences, Semiotexte.
This young African-American – real name, Paul D. Miller – isn’t shy of bringing the full might of his college education to bear on the humble art of spinning vinyl. And so he calls the mix-tape an ‘electromagnetic canvas’, celebrates ambient music as ‘electroneiric other-space’, exalts the DJ as a ‘mood-sculptor’ and lists his occupation as ‘spatial engineer of the invisible city’. The way Spooky describes it, when he’s mixing he’s pulling down ‘ill shit’ from the vast data-cloud of modern mediaculture; when he makes tracks, his approach is ‘recombinant’, a splicing and dicing of music’s genetic code.
‘My two big things,’ Spooky pronounces, ‘are “cultural entropy” and “post-rational art”.’ By cultural entropy, he means that in the age of sampladelia, cultural signifiers are becoming deracinated and etherealized, eventually resulting in a state in which all difference has been erased. As for ‘post-rational’, that’s art which isn’t about narrative or meaning, but a flux of sensations, ‘art that’s immersive’. The supreme example of both syndromes is digitalized dance music, particularly Spooky’s faves, ambient, trip hop and jungle. In ‘illbient’ – the sound and scene that Spooky and a gaggle of downtown New York allies have conjured – the membranes between these genres have become porous. The result, depending on your allegiances, is either an exhilarating stylistic free-for-all, or a deracinated, diluted mish-mash.
In just a few years, Spooky has become both a celebrated and a highly controversial figure. For some he’s a cult, a tightrope walker on the cutting edge; for others, he’s a dark magus of auto-hype. Counter-culture veteran rockcrits and Marxist academics find Spooky’s Baudrillard-meets-B-boy spiel thoroughly decadent, an elaborate pomo rationalization of political disengagement and surrender to the seductions of late capitalist hyper-reality; Spooky slogans like ‘seize the modes of perception’ just rub salt in the wounds of these mourners for the death of History and political agency. But the fundamental difference between these sixties nostalgics and ‘a child of the digital night’ like Spooky is temperamental or even psychological; like many of his generation, the Subliminal Kid seems to have a more tenuous but less oppressive sense of super-ego than people who grew up before the age of McLuhan and the TV-as-glass-nipple.
In a piece in the
Village Voice
entitled ‘Yet Do I Wonder’ – part of a series in which African-American writers pondered questions of identity and community – Spooky declared that ‘every patriarchal “family value” that I have ever thought of begins to crack and fall to dust when I think about the stuff of which my everyday life is made: DJ-ing, living under almost squatlike conditions, writing.’ The death of his black radical lawyer father when he was three is both biographical fact and a crucial element of the Spooky myth. Spooky knows his post-Lacanian theory: specifically, that it’s the intrusion of the father that smashes the cosy mother/infant symbiosis and enforces the child’s admission to the regime of language, selfhood and lack. If you don’t go through this Oedipal crisis, and abandon the infant’s cosmic narcissism, you don’t become fully human.
Village Voice
entitled ‘Yet Do I Wonder’ – part of a series in which African-American writers pondered questions of identity and community – Spooky declared that ‘every patriarchal “family value” that I have ever thought of begins to crack and fall to dust when I think about the stuff of which my everyday life is made: DJ-ing, living under almost squatlike conditions, writing.’ The death of his black radical lawyer father when he was three is both biographical fact and a crucial element of the Spooky myth. Spooky knows his post-Lacanian theory: specifically, that it’s the intrusion of the father that smashes the cosy mother/infant symbiosis and enforces the child’s admission to the regime of language, selfhood and lack. If you don’t go through this Oedipal crisis, and abandon the infant’s cosmic narcissism, you don’t become fully human.
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