Salon.com > Amanda Nowinski

Sharps & Flats

Wed, 22 Mar 2000 17:00:00 +0000

It's unfair that trance music, currently the most popular dance genre, has such a strong hold on the name. No disrespect to Day-Glo gypsy pants or melodramatic music that peaks and peaks like a never-ending acid trip, but the term "trance" should be available to each and every genre of electronic music, provided that the sound is hypnotic enough. Besides, when all forms of dance music are boiled down to their bare minimum, only rhythm and bass remain; repetitive percussion and low bass frequencies are what send listeners and dancers into far-off states. That said, the "Points in Time" series is nothing less than top-notch trance music -- except that it's pure drum 'n' bass.

The triple-CD compilation tracks the progression of atmospheric or jazzy drum 'n' bass, a chill-out style innovated by U.K. producer and Good Looking record label founder LTJ Bukem. The collection spans four years, from 1993 to 1997, and includes tracks from the likes of Bukem, Seba, Big Bud, Blame, PHD and Blu Mar Ten. But it's really Bukem's seductive music and influence that play the loudest. His style is nothing like the harder and more popular tech-step or jump-up versions of drum 'n' bass. Instead, he lightens the aggressive edge of the break beats with gently ticking drums, warm keyboards and Orb-inspired synth pads, juxtaposing arrhythmic ambient noises against crisp breaks. The effect brings listeners to an expansive, airy place, somewhere between jungle, jazz-fusion and outer space.

Sharps & Flats

Mon, 24 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

British jungle icon Goldie is the one thing the average dance music producer isn't: visible. Equipped with flashy gold teeth and couture skateboard trainers, the former British b-boy has surpassed the faceless producer stigma by a series of star-power decisions. He's played roles in James Bond and David Bowie films, chummed around with Hollywood stars like Val Kilmer and Johnny Depp and made a habit of dating other well-connected musicians, like the late Kemistry (of Kemistry and Storm) and Bjvrk. Although his involvement in the nascent jungle scene was pivotal -- he established the Metalheadz label and released the influential "Timeless" in 1995 -- his greatest contribution to date has been his unusual ability to draw mainstream attention to a decidedly con-commercial sound.

But his latest project, a DJ mix CD that mainly features Metalheadz performers, is more a testament to his pop market appeal than to his skill as a DJ. Here Goldie simply lays down a series of other people's tracks, adding very little other than his image on the CD cover and a hefty, seven-page, Levi's sponsored fashion spread and fanzine insert. While the 26-track, double-CD set highlights a comprehensive sampling of U.K. drum 'n' bass heavyweights like Alex Reece, Optical, Doc Scott, Grooverider and J. Majik, the Goldie-centric presentation minimizes the importance of the featured artists, and disguises what the CD really is: a high-end dance music compilation.

Sharps & Flats

Mon, 06 Dec 1999 17:00:00 +0000

DJ Spooky is no stranger to the vitriolic criticism from the electronic music underground. As a postmodernist writer, free-style journalist, DJ and music producer, he stands at an awkward crossroad between academic experimentalism and anti-establishment urban club culture -- two factions of electronic music that rarely intersect.

Over three years and more than a dozen releases, Spooky (aka Paul Miller, of New York via Maine and Washington) has gone highbrow on collaborations with avant-gardists like Ryiuchi Sakamoto and Philip Glass, and then stepped down into the underground with hip-hop icons like Kool Keith and Organized Konfusion. His rambling essays on DJ culture and electronic music are fleshed out with references citing 20th century intelligentsia -- Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Langston Hughes, Marcel Proust, Richard Wright and so on -- and have appeared in publications such as Artforum, the Source, Paper and the Village Voice. But although Spooky's theories are sometimes insightful and rendered with sincerity, the hardcore electronic underground often accuses him of riding on teacher's pet pretension and neglecting to lay down the fat beats.

Sharps & flats

Wed, 20 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

The Planet E "Geology" retrospective sounds best when mixed with the spontaneous vibrations of the street. Police sirens, ambulances, street car gurgles, cell phones, home boys with pumped sound systems -- these urban sound bites sound natural next to the minimalist tones and pulses of techno. "We are approaching noise-sound," wrote Italian Futurist Luigi Rossolo 81 years ago in his "Art of Noise" manifesto. "This revolution of music is paralleled by the increasing proliferation of machinery." Rossolo wasn't writing about techno, of course, but his idea still applies today: Mechanized music suits a mechanized world. As long as cities and technology persist, electronic music will continue to be the most environmentally reflective soundtrack.

The diverse sampling of artists on Planet E -- the label run by Detroit techno innovator Carl Craig -- proves that the techno aesthetic still thrives in the Motor City, where the music was pioneered by Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May and Juan Atkins in the late '80s. The classic Detroit sound is loosely characterized by sparse instrumentation and limited vocals alongside a hybrid of electro, funk and dramatic deep house dance rhythms and melodies. The sound is the antithesis of the speedy, hard European variety that eventually took over in the early '90s and stigmatized the original Detroit product.

Sharps & flats

Thu, 30 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Rumors of attempted murder, kidnapping a journalist and flipping off label owners might make an excellent P.R. campaign for a Norwegian death metal band. In the geeky realm of electronic music producers, however, these kinds of tales seem rather out of place. That doesn't stop the purported hard-ass South London thugs in the veteran electronic group Genaside II from upholding threatening reputations derived from those exact stories. The collective even goes so far as to mine that sort of bad behavior for artistic and comedic ore on their "hard-core reality" themed record "Ad Finite."

Welding together signifiers of apocalyptic doom -- Gothic opera vocal samples, shadowy minor chords, Wagnerian orchestrations, jolting beats, demonic heavy metal -- Genaside II build a set for a sort of street-smart, techno break-beat "Phantom of the Opera." The premise of the group's second full-length (after a string of singles that dates back to 1991) is fairly simple. Over comic-book instrumentation, both black and white MCs rhyme about -- what else? -- violence and being gangsters. Sure, at times the whole project is annoyingly silly, but behind the group's mask of adolescent horror there's a clever report on the state of electronic music.

Being Everything But the Girl

Tue, 28 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Rich with the sound of classic deep house, Everything But the Girl's "Temperamental" captures the drama, the sweat and the rapture of an all-nighter on the dance floor. Following seven LPs and "Walking Wounded" (1996), an album that explored the harsher, moodier sides of drum 'n' bass, "Temperamental" is also an uplifting, deeply melodic shift for the London-based Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn. Again, the duo plays with drum 'n' bass break beats, but now they focus on the old-school garage sound, a form of house filled with smooth, soulful lyrics and moderate beats. Fusing Thorn's tender voice with Watt's bittersweet production, the result is an achingly sublime work of machine-derived art.

Watt and Thorn, who are married, have played together for 17 years. Here, they fool around with any genre that suits their fancy. Unlike most producers, they're willing to shift between jazz, jungle, house, downtempo and indie rock, never settling on any one distinct sound. That approach doesn't always resonate with the genre-obsessed underground. At the same time, the openness is part of what made Everything But the Girl instrumental in introducing electronic music to listeners beyond the small dance-floor circuit -- an achievement that peaked in the States with New York deep house pioneer Todd Terry's gorgeously melancholic remix of their single, "Missing," which charted at No. 2 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1996.

Sharps & flats

Mon, 30 Aug 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Plagued by attention deficit disorder? DJ Krush's "Kakusei" is so monotonous that you'll be frantically pacing the floor within seconds. But if you chain yourself to a sofa, retreat into a set of headphones and maybe even spark a joint or pop a Ritalin or two, the understated, diverse nuances are potent and rewarding. Krush makes head-nodding, cerebral trip-hop with languid, minimal tempos similar to classic dub; it's not supposed to be abrasive, ass-grinding dance music.

The abstract Japanese B-boy anchors each track with a solid, samey hip-hop beatscape. Listen closely and new shapes and tones manifest, like images appearing in a Rorschach blot, or colors blurring together on a Rothko canvas. Although the word "narcotic" is overused, it's really the single most appropriate word for this nebulous, spaced-out trip through 17 tracks with the same beat. Keep the stereo cranked: You'll need decibels to hear the gentle detail beneath the thundering bass.

Sharps & flats

Fri, 13 Aug 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Nearly 15 years after the first house track was released in Chicago -- Jessie Saunder's "Fantasy" -- the incredibly hyped Basement Jaxx bursts through with a radical reinterpretation of late-night, booty-grinding grooves. Forsaking classically smooth, deep R&B house sounds for rough 'n' ready, ragga-heavy jams, the Brixton, England, duo, Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe, has developed a style of cheeky, in-your-face garage punk. Merging garage -- a soulful deep house style typically filled with vocals -- with jump-up rhythms and aggressive MC-ing, on "Remedy" Basement Jaxx renovates the old house and gives it enough bad attitude to match the current trends of dark drum 'n' bass and hard electro.

Basement Jaxx moves asses as much as it kicks them, transferring the energy of a mosh pit to an after-hours house club. You can still wear cute platforms and facial glitter, but instead of tripping out on a sweet hit of E and gliding across the dance floor, you down a pint of rum and bang your fists in the air. Fuck it all, the rugged beats and harsh vocals seem to say.

Sharps & flats

Thu, 22 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Considering that the artists on this unique compilation are more than just piddly-widdly bedroom producers tweaking gear for no apparent reason, the title "Unknownwerks" is a bit offensive. "Unknown" implies that these 12 musicians don't exist, that they are unpromotable or unexceptional. But several of the acts included here are established, serious artists, known to a vast underground of other electronic musicians and DJs. "Unknown" is a relative term, and Astralwerks could have been more sensitive about it. Truth is, few electronic artists cross over into the mainstream marketing machine, and struggling indie labels -- the home of most the acts on "Unknownwerks" -- have a hard time aggressively promoting artists who look like computer programmers.

The country's most commercially successful electronic label wants this comp to represent the electronic scene across urban America. But even if it's nice to know that people got the funk in Denver and Milwaukee, it's also important in this case to recognize the second definition of "unknown": a symbol in a mathematical equation representing an unknown quantity; almost a synonym for infinite. This indefinite definition of "unknown" is highly useful when trying to understand the state of the American electronic underground -- there's more music being made than even the highest-paid DJ or pushiest PR agent can track down.

Sharps & flats

Thu, 08 Jul 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Nearly 20 years after Afrika Bambaataa, Kraftwerk and Cybotron figured out how to create future funk by molesting beat boxes, the electronic-music instrument and software industries are finally catering directly to their primary consumers. For a mere $500, anyone can get the Roland MC-303 Groove Box, a compact machine that "effortlessly delivers techno, rap, jungle, hip hop, acid and other dance styles." While that means that every raver with a credit card can make bleeps and beats, it also means that the people who actually know what they're doing have to go two steps further, work the shit out of the technology and tweak it to the limit. That's exactly what early acid house innovator Andy Weatherall and partner Keith Tenniswood are doing under the moniker 2 Lone Swordsmen.

On this debut full-length, the Swordsmen out-think their software and prove that in some cases, man is still more intelligent than technology. Operating like a pair of obsessive disco scientists, the duo anatomizes a seemingly infinite range of individual techno noises and rearranges it into a strange new body of static funk, retro electro, alien free-jazz and chunky, housed-up Detroit techno. Although classic electro has recently become immensely fashionable in the underground music scene (see Carl Cox, Bassment Jaxx), the Swordsmen approach the sound with a unique irreverence: The heavy, minimalist bass kick is there to ground the old-school funk, but the overall composition is futurized by a brilliant concoction of fucked-up rhythms and insubordinate noise.

Sharps & flats

Fri, 04 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

David Byrne hasn't sounded groovy since his shoulder pads stopped making sense in the late '80s. But take his "Dance on Vaseline" and, like the remix duo the Thievery Corporation, lace it with erotic harmonies and dub-house rhythm, and the former Talking Head sounds like he's from another planet.

Thievery Corporation, a DJ and production duo from Washington, crafts songs by tearing apart others' work. Although there's a critical debate raging right now over the legitimacy of remixes as art, it's clear that Thievery is side-stepping questions that attempt to separate art from artifice. For them, the dance music universe -- populated by sampling machines, white labels and faceless producers -- is a place where all sound is public property. As remix artists, they can take a tepid original like Byrne's and transport it to a dubbed-out electrosphere where mid-tempo beats sip on cocktails and puff away on tight spliffs.

Sharps & flats

Tue, 01 Jun 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Most American music listeners who bitch about electronic music complain about the "monotonous" rhythm tracks. And they're right, to a point: Most dance beats, whether derived from Latin, African, Middle Eastern or Asian sources, are intentionally repetitive. But their complaint usually only points out how little mainstream radio and deaf rock critics have taught them about the music. Orbital are one of the few groups -- along with techno pop stars like Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers, Moby and Underworld -- that have made even a small dent on radio or in the press. As a result, for four LPs they've helped shape a public perception of what electronic music can be. Unfortunately, Orbital's new record, "The Middle of Nowhere," will do nothing to challenge that old monotony stigma.

Sharps & flats

Fri, 21 May 1999 16:00:00 +0000

House producers, always on the lookout for new syncopated rhythms, have been appropriating and incorporating Latin jazz into happy dance tracks for the past decade. There's an easy similarity between the two forms, both engineered to get dancers to move their feet. But for whatever reason, ever since London-based Richie Rich recorded "Salsa House" in the late '80s, the fusion has been relatively flat, lacking exceptionally creative interpretations.

"The New Latinaires," a new compilation from the Ubiquity dance label, identifies the essence of Latin jazz, echoing Dizzy Gillespie and its 1940s roots, and challenges the genre's conventions with more ingenuity than its electronica predecessors.

The record includes seven producers redefining and re-integrating Latin jazz influences into their own original dance tracks, and also includes a few remixes of Latin standards. With work by Detroit techno god Carl Craig, and a host of lesser-knowns like Jazzanova, Izuru Utsumi, Beatless and Capsule 150, the album is an unusual fusion of moody, forward-thinking electronic music and romantic, old-school salsa.