Confession.
I was a raver. Between 1995 and 2000 I spent nearly every weekend wrapped blissfully inside rented bass cabinets, ruining my hearing and obliterating my memory.
It’s cute now. Kitschy. The futuristic cyberdelia of the period became so quickly passe that my neck nearly broke. I burned out just like the scene in Memphis did. Like tech stocks, the nineties saw the creation and partial destruction of the genre outsiders and music critics clumsily dubbed “electronica” a word which still pisses me off. I was so deep in that I had a favorite sub genre of dance music. Even favored a sub sub genre.. I was swimming in deep waters.
Techno, House and Jungle. Breakbeat, big beat and minimal. Gabba, House and Trance. They all united to form something raver kids believed represented us and the future world we would soon inherit. It was an orgy of the oncoming new world.
We were very high.
It was meant to be future music. Robot rock. If machines made music without us, this is what it would sound like. Admirably, we didn’t know that it was a throbbing train wreck and an emotional culdesac of American and European culture. We didn’t know that our style would be absorbed and shat out by horrific cultural rapists like LMFAO.
But we should’ve.
Despite that fact, it’s what has become of the actual electronic music scene rather than it’s pop music absorption that saddens me the most.
For the uninitiated, the dominant style of electronic music these days is called dubstep. Also called “bro-step” because of it appeal with frat guys and skanks. And yes, I know how harsh that sounds.
I could analyze and explain things like “the drop” or “the build” but I’ll save the semantic crap. A quick listen to artists like Mau5 and Skrillex will immediately explain more than I ever could
Dubstep attempts to recreate the excitment of dance music but without the bliss full money shot of a payoff that was so important to the drug addled mid-nineties. It is all stroke and no pop, all hat and no cattle.
That difference though, is etherial. Its just a coloring tone but it hints at something more. The vanguard of music just over fifteen years ago has careened into self parody. The idea of PLUR has been flushed away leaving irony in its self important wake.
Daft Punk chose to wear full robot masks and tuxedos, symbolizing their robotic musicianship and the removal of humanity.
Mau5 wears a giant mouse mask. Mostly cause its funny from what I can tell.
The kids are spinning their wheels and angrily refusing to make anything new. They think I’m stupid just for asking. Everything is history and the future that seemed so unimaginable to the CD and cassette tape generation is sooooooooo boring to the generation that lives in it.
To the millennials who are enjoying the time honored tradition of rolling eyes immediately followed by the “he doesn’t get it” retort, I say no.
I get it very well. That’s the problem. I want you to do something loud and obnoxious and unlistenable to old people. I want you to make something so offensive to Generation X that we avoid it as our parents avoided rap and electronic music. I don’t want to understand your music. I want to be frightened of it.
I want it to worry me
Instead, it’s just boring, repetitious and bathed in nostalgia porn.
