Why Techno?
by Joshua Brown
Beginning on a crass note, let me pose a question. Who does evolution invariably favor: Musicians who work with new ways of creating sound, or musicians who stick with the tried and true? To evoke an unsubstantiated cliché, let’s go back to pre-Flintstones human history. Probably the first human musicians were the ones who banged rocks together, sticks together, bones together, whatever. Later, someone had the revelation that you could bang two different things together, like sticks on stones, bones on sticks, etc. To evoke a tale from childhood, two of the Queen’s servants are debating on the merits of peanut butter versus jelly sandwiches. It’s the servant who has been silent the whole time who finally steps up and says, “I know! How about a peanut butter AND jelly sandwich!” In both cases, the ones who stuck with the tried and true got left behind.
On a slightly less theoretical note, let’s discuss the acoustic guitar and the electric guitar. The MTV Unplugged series says it all. All-acoustic sets have been reduced to a gimmick. About techno: just listen to it. There are a lot of nice sounds in there that would have been impossible to create when guitar rock was in its prime. (Anyone who thinks the ’90s have been any kind of heyday for the traditional band set-up of guitar/bass/drums/ vocals is sorely mistaken.) The only sound that we can feel confident won’t go out of style in our lifetimes is the human voice. All other instruments are tools that we make.
A common argument I come across is that synthesized music is nice to dance to but hard to listen to at home. All I can say is that some music is made for the dance floor while some is made to be listened to without shakin’ yo booty. Some of it works for both activities. If you’re not looking to buy a CD that makes you consider splurging on a disco ball, pick up something by Orbital or Future Sound of London, not a K-tel style dance compilation. If you’d like something more rock-oriented, pick up a Chemical Brothers release. Their new single “Setting Sun” is an example that shows that techno (not to be confused with industrial) and rock can peaceably co-habit the same space. If you want something good to dance to, but don’t care for the current radio dance hits, check out CD collections from international masters of the art of mixing. The list is too long to even begin, but reading British mags like Mixmag and Musik, or American ones like Mixmag U.S.A. and URB, will help point you in the right direction.
If you’ve actually listened to a fair amount of electronic music but still don’t like it, realize that music has consistently gotten more technologically advanced, and will continue to do so. Part of this process is that tools once possessed by only a cultural elite have become available to the general public. Yes, a lot of flaccid music gets produced, but society benefits by exposing itself to points of view that otherwise wouldn’t have been heard. How long does it have to take before high tech samplers and synthesizers become as compact and inexpensive as a Sony Discman? Or DJ mixers like Sega games? Just look at what has happened to computers so far, and there’s no reason to think that we’re about to slow down in that field. My point is that making music sound the way you want it to is rapidly becoming more feasible. Doesn’t it sound fun?
