don't forget music generated by microprocessors! Kraftwerk, Jean
Michelle-Jarre, techno, house, Caberet Voltaire, Deep Forest, HipHop
(yes HipHop, it does a great job of describing the modern urban
experience through electronically produced music, giving modern urban
dance culture a frame of reference)
AirLiquid, RoniSize ('change my life....') the Orb, anything really on
the Astralwerks record label.
The techno explosion is all about cheap disposable, recycleable, music
made by the microprocessor/human interface. This is the folk music of
the future. Is is the driving, pounding soundtrack to the information
age. Passionate and dispassionate, pretty and sterile, virtual and
virtuoso. Everything that technology promises to be. Slapping soulful
house lyrics on top of clinically accurate beats is like slapping XML on
top of HTML. Having eerie spacey synth pads play over distorted
energetic breakbeats is like a cold ATM in a local fruit market. The
replacement of jazz for acid jazz, roomfuls of violinists for a sampler,
a conducter, orchestrator and composer for MIDI, virtual concerts via
the internet instead of huge concert halls all represtent the
digitizing, 'uploading' if you will of our common cultural aesthetic.