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Futuresound: Techno Music and Mediation
(Abridged, text-only version of an HTML document of the same name)
Ethnomusicology Senior Project, completed on December 16, 1996
University of Washington, Seattle
Author: Morgan Lang,
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Project Sponsor: Aaron Fox
Contents:
Introduction: (a) "A Note on the Internet," and (b) "(Sonic)
Facts Regarding Techno and the Author's Orientation to it."
Part 1: Techno City: an Overview of the History and
Diversification of Techno.
Part 2: Techno Tribe: Utopian-Futurist and Future-Primitive
Ideals and their expressions in Rave Culture.
Part 3: Techno Logo: The Mediation of Techno.
We feel affinities not only with the past, but also with the futures
that didn't materialise, and with the other variations of the
present that we suspect run parallel to the one we have agreed to
live in.
--Brian Eno
Whether they're real or imaginary, animate or inanimate, one must
form one's mediators. It's a series: If you don't belong to a
series, even a completely imaginary one, you're lost. I need my
mediators to express myself, and they'd never express themselves
without me: one is always working in a group, even when it doesn't
appear to be the case.
--Gilles
Deleuze
Introduction
To some, it is the "heavy metal of dance music," this music
which has occasionally been disparaged as sounding like
"car alarms set to disco," this typically beat-heavy,
bass-thumping dance music which has, in fact, derived some
of its sound symbology from disco, as well as from funk,
rap, and numerous lesser-known genres. Techno music, the
term I use as a top-level rubric for an ever-increasing
variety of postmodern dance music (Hilker and Behlendorf)
is, of course, more varied in its scope than either of the
above mentioned descriptions would lead one to believe.
Techno, depending on whom one asks, has existed for
approximately ten yearsit is not new music when compared
with some music genres of the '90s: Lo-fi, Neo-Lounge, and
Grunge, but it is music which has diversified and evolved
considerably since its beginnings in the mid '80's. The
music appears fresh and compelling because of its frequent
use of the newest and most powerful recording and
sound-processing technology, and because of its role in
the development of what is commonly termed "rave culture,"(with
its concomitant argot, fashions, and utopian-futurist
philosophies, its self-conscious marketing devices which
simultaneously appeal to, contradict, and exploit music
consumers' desire for the new and the rarethe "underground"
stuff), and it can terefore be stated that Techno is perhaps
the most compelling and cutting-edge of contemporary popular
music genres. That relatively little academic attention
has been devoted to electronic dance music is somewhat
surprising, considering Techno's popularity, creative
dynamism, and relevance toand reflection ofthe processes
of cultural formation and mediation in information-age
capitalist society. Those interested in learning more about
contemporary dance music culture should read Sarah Thornton's
excellent book, Club Cultures, which discusses in detail
the cultural processes I only have enough space to allude
to here.
My purposes in developing this HTML document are as follows:
(1) to provide a basic narrative of Techno's history and
process of diversification, (2) to analyze representations
of Techno's supposed transcendent/ utopian "meanings" by
its devotees and its detractors as exemplified in aural,
textual, and experiential/performance media, and (3) to
examine Techno's role as a commoditized cultural focal
point. I do not pretend to offer a comprehensive look at
every aspect of Techno; rather, I want to suggest to the
reader that there is much yet to be studied, and that Techno
music and rave culture are appropriate and promising subjects
for Ethnomusicologists and anyone interested in popular
culture. The HTML format appears to be one of the most
suitable for my purposes since it allows me to make examples
of the music I will be discussing readily available to the
reader. Words and phrases in bold type denote links to
sound files I have provided; readers should click on these
links in order to hear brief excepts of the music being
discussed. Footnotes are available as hypertext links;
simply click on footnote markers in order to view them.
By using the WWW and the NEXIS-LEXIS databases in researching
my "paper," and by presenting what would ordinarily be a
"paper" as an HTML document I am, to a limited extent,
ironically engaging the tropes of computer and communications
technology as appropriately contradictory media for a
general critical discussion of Techno music and its embedded
processes of cultural mediation. When this project is made
available over the World Wide Web, it will in turn contribute
to the swirl of ever-changing perceptions regarding Techno,
and will therefore become a mediator itself.
A note on the Internet: Many documents used as source
material for this project were obtained via the WWW, which
has proved to be an invaluable resource for documents which
describe people's deepest and most personal thoughts
regarding music. It is obvious that the WWW is in some ways
an ideal research tool in that it allows people residing
in countries with well-developed communications networks
to express their thoughts in coherent, tidy, and easily
obtainable texts. It is also obvious that people who
communicate via the WWW tend to be educated, middle-class
white people, people who hardly constitute a representative
sampling of any cultural affiliation other than that of a
global association of individuals whose commonality originates
in their ability to obtain and wield telecommunications
technology. Texts which one may view via the Internet are
carefully mediated, inherently contrived, and may or may
not accurately describe what we may suppose to be "reality;"
that is, in the case of Techno music, what we might observe
on an experiential level at a dance club or rave. For these
reasons, the Internet is usually not an appropriate research
medium for ethnographers, even though it easily allows one
to "meet"and conduct detailed interviews withpeople who in
person would appear to be likely subjects for an ethnography.
It is important for the reader to recognize that the WWW
material I use does not and cannot act as a substitute for
an ethnography of a broad category of Techno listeners;
rather, it is representative of one segment of a broad
category, a sample of people whose ideation concerning
Techno and technology may be shaped in a circular and
self-reinforcing fashion by their use of technology. In
short: although the people who contribute to newsgroups
like alt.rave are an important part of the Techno listenership,
they are by no means representative of the entire spectrum.
(Sonic) facts regarding Techno and the author's orientation to it:
Overall, Techno is denoted by its slavish devotion to the beat, the use of
rhythm as a hypnotic tool. It is also distinguished by being primarily,
and in most cases entirely, created by electronic means. It is also noted
for its lack of vocals in most cases. Techno usually falls in the realm of
115-160 BPM There are of course exceptions to every one of these rules,
but these guidelines seem to survive the "what about" test most of the
time (Hilker and Behlendorf).
Here is an example of an archetypal Techno beat: consisting
of a single looped drum machine sample, it features a
perfectly constant tempo of about 140 BPM with equally
heavy emphasis on every pulse. This is perhaps the single
most "generic" sound in modern dance music, and one which
has been frequently used in Techno.
It should be stated at the outset that I am an enthusiastic
but discriminating fan of many Techno artists across a wide
range of genres. To point out another apparent link with
Heavy Metal, I am, like Robert Walser and his interviewees
in Running With the Devil (who are attracted by Heavy
Metal's power in the form of distortion and sonic intensity),
drawn to Techno mostly by its aural expressions of
powerexpressions which in Techno are most often heard as
over-accentuated bass frequencies, prominent drum and
percussion samples, and an extreme aural density across
the bandwidth. One may think of aural density as describing
the proportion of silence to sound apparent in a musical
event: if there is little apparent silence, the music thus
has a high aural density. In positing the preceding
description of what I believe to be the fundamental sounds
of Techno, I am fully aware that there are, as always,
exceptions which must be noted; for example, below the
reader will find a discussion of Ambient Techno, a style
of Techno in which all three of the aforementioned traits
are frequently absent.
Part 1: Techno City: an overview of the history and
diversification of Techno.
In August 1996, the Metropolitan Detroit Convention and
Visitor's Bureau began a campaign to change Detroit's
official slogan from the industrial-era "Detroit: the Motor
City" to something which would evoke the city's eventual
transformation into the postindustrial, service oriented
city it is slowly and painfully becoming. Upon soliciting
suggestions for a new slogan from its readers, the Detroit
News reported that a popular suggestion was that Detroit
be known to the world as "The Techno City," or "Techno
Town," quoting one respondent as writing that "Techno Town
is an ideal slogan because Techno music was created in
Detroit" ('From Autos').
There are a few differing accounts of the "origin myth" of
Techno, just as there are differing views of how Rock &
Roll and Rap came to be; however, most accounts place the
origin of Techno in Detroit in the early- to mid- 1980's.
During an innovative period concomitant with the development
of disco-influenced and vocal-laden House music in Chicago,
musicians in Detroit developed a style of music based on
more or less equal parts of European synthpop or "Euro
Disco" like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and domestic
music such as Parliament/Funkadelic, Afrikaa Bambataa, and
Detroit's Cybertron, who were making heavily funk-influenced,
electronics-based music called, variously, "Electro-Funk"
or "Electro," and who had also been influenced by the purely
electronic bands of Europe. One of Cybertron's members,
Juan Atkins, is frequently credited with being the sole
inventor of both the term and the music "Techno," although
it is known that Atkins was in constant contact with other
Detroit musicians who were developing electronic dance
music and who shared similar musical influences (Sicko 60).
However, it is understandable that Atkins is seen as the
music's great progenitor, as he did create the single
"Techno City" in 1984, an independently-produced electronic
dance composition which became a huge hit in Europe,
particularly in London and Berlin, where it had the effect
of sonically reconfiguring Kraftwerk's music and broadening
electronic music's listenership; as a result, Europeans
began producing their own "Techno," adding their own
stylistic preferences to the palette they had been handed
by Atkins and his now popular co-inventors in Detroit, all
of whom shared the critical attention of the Europeans. It
is interesting that European accounts of the Techno origin
myth place the development of the genre at a later date in
Manchester, England, where, in 1990, the group 808 State
released the single Cubik. It is perhaps too easy to suppose
that Techno never would have happened had it not been for
the Detroit school, and it is important to recognize that
the process of diversification has almost entirely occurred
in Europe, particularly in London, Manchester, and Berlin,
large cities which already had a well-developed array of
dance clubs by the time Techno "arrived," and in which the
first Techno-only clubs were opened.
One may take a long view of the trans-Atlantic "waves"
which crossed and re-crossed the spatial and conceptual
European and U.S. scenes: Techno, having been originally
produced in Detroit, influenced numerous European artists
like 808 State, whose influence finally began reaching the
vast American music consumership through the distribution
of CD compilations which purported to provide a sampling
of "underground" European dance music. The Record reported
on this trend in 1992 by writing that "the techno represented
by big sellers such as the Movement and 2 Unlimited has
been tamed and is boffo in the [U.S.] 'burbs" ('The Masses').
The cyclical production-consumption-production process
seems to have begun again, as Detroit is again producing
"good product" and is experiencing something of a Techno
renaissance: American and European music consumers may now
purchase CD compilations of the newest Detroit "underground"
dance music-- music which reifies the authenticity of the
original Detroit Techno. Like the appellation denoting the
Motor/Techno City's previous musical identity, "Motown,"
this referencing of the locality of production cleverly
authenticates the music and thus the entire musical product.
This is a very common marketing technique which frequently
results in the back-formation of new musical genres; for
example, Goa, which now refers to music which has its own
original and distinctive musical characteristics, originally
referred only to music which happened to be played at beach
parties in Goa, India. The strategy in marketing the word
Goa is to sell the desirability of being at Goa attending
a beach party.
One of the effects of the Detroit renaissance is a renewed
interest in the city's original Techno: a documentary film,
"The Architects of Techno," is being produced (Allen and
Banks), and there is a sense that an attempt is being made
by listeners to re-authenticate their interest in Techno
music by familiarizing themselves, a mere decade after the
release of "Techno City," with what is seen by many as
being a kind of "roots music."
In the late 1980's Techno had arrived in Europe and had
begun its transformation into the variety of genres existing
today. In Berlin, radio DJ Monica Deitl began broadcasting
the new Motown sound, which immediately became desirable
as a music product and which created demand for Detroit
Techno at dance clubs. In response, DJ's such as Kid Paul
and Dr. Motte began specializing in Techno, playing records
in Berlin's first Techno club, UFO (Levy). In Britain,
pirate radio stations like KISS FM began broadcasting the
Techno that public and commercial radio stations refused
to touch. (Later KISS would be granted a commercial radio
license, thus negating its importance as a subcultural
focal point in the minds of many listeners) (Thornton
146-51). These stations also disseminated notices regarding
warehouse- and outdoor parties where Techno as well as the
vocal-oriented Chicago genre House, promoted in Europe as
Acid House, could be heard. These parties in unconventional
locales were directly influenced by the beach-party culture
of the Spanish Balearic islands, particularly Ibiza, where
young vacationing Britons danced to Reggae and House.
Following the re-emergence of the archaic appetite suppressant
MDMA (methylene dioxymethamphetamine) as the drug "Ecstasy"
in Dallas nightclubs in the mid 1980's, the drug began
circulating among people attending Techno clubs and the
parties which were now gaining popular notoriety as "raves"
(Hilker and Behlendorf), events where, in the public mind,
decadent and sexually promiscuous throngs of teenagers
danced all night in a drug-crazed frenzy. The mass-mediation
of this misconception both served to attract more young
people to what was now being viewed as a "movement" and to
form and cohere the subcultural status of "ravers," who
then began reinterpreting their image in a complex series
of processes to be discussed in the final section of this
work.
Among Techno's most well-liked genres in 1996 are Jungle
and its derivative Drum & Bass, as well as Ambient and
various eclectic forms which are in the process of becoming
identified/ marketed as genres, most notably those musics
which are currently being referred to using the optimistic
label Progressive or the somewhat more skeptical Ethno-Techno.
Jungle refers to music which came about as a result of the
club- and rave DJ's artistry and skill at the on-the-spot
creation of aural bricolage: consisting of a very wide
range of stylistic "cuts" (Hebdige) placed in apposition
to a "foreground" of altered hip-hop rhythm samples, Jungle
sounds like 160 BPM funk combined with a very wide array
of samples, turntable "scratches," and digital effects.
The most common forms of music one finds sampled in Jungle
are generally classic Reggae, Ragamuffin, Dub, Funk, and
Rap, whose BPM rates are usually calibrated to be exactly
half of the "foreground" beat, thus creating an effect
which may be heard as "two songs to dance toone aggressive
and fast, the other slower and relaxed. [One] can choose
which beat to pay attention to when dancing" (O' Malley).
Jungle used to be subsumed under the broader category
Breakbeat, along with another style, Darkside (a style
developed by DJ's in London dance clubs which uses "minor
keys to create an eerie feeling" [Hilker and Behlendorf],
but is otherwise similar to Jungle), but it has since been
promoted and accepted as a genre in its own right, spawning
in turn the creation of its own subgenre, Drum & Bass,
which is now in the process of transformation into a genre
from which further subdivisions shall depend.
Drum & Bass is, as its name implies, a style of music
dominated by drum and bass samples; in fact, it is really
just a stripped-down version of Jungle, often using many
of the same elements as Jungle, including scratching, but
far more sparingly, which results in a sound often lacking
the aforementioned "layering" effect. Drum & Bass has become
very popular in the United States during the past two years,
and many clubs now feature entire evenings devoted solely
to it.
Perhaps partly as a reaction to more frenetic musics like
Jungle, there now seems to be a countercurrent trend in
cities: Ambient is slow and subdued where most Techno is
fast and "in your face." Clubs and parties which feature
Ambient do not do so with the expectation that people will
attend in order to dance, although a great deal of Ambient
Techno is quite danceable. It is not a utilitarian sort of
music in the way that a great deal of Techno ishaving been
designed to do something to; i.e: dancebut rather it is
frequently used to help bring peoples' interactions into
the foreground, to provide a complimentary backdrop to
conversation and even the playing of board games (Strauss).
When compared to most varieties of Techno, Ambient seems
anachronistic in that it recalls the environmental "art
happenings" of the 1960's, the "Furniture Music" of Erik
Satie, and, most clearly, the work of Brian Eno, who is
alleged to have created the term "Ambient" in the mid-1970's
in a deliberate attempt to create a new music genre, one
which would not draw attention to itself while being played
and which would have the effect of relaxing the listener.
In clubs one finds Ambient, the "exotic" music of non-industrial
cultures, environmental recordings of forests (sans chainsaws,
of course), as well as what might be termed Eno's "classic
Ambient" being played in "chill rooms" adjacent to the main
floors where faster Techno is played as a main event. In
this context, chill rooms function as places where "aural
antidotes" to faster, more intense Techno can be absorbed
in a deliberately relaxed atmosphere. In a way, this music
is as pragmatically functional as dance-oriented Techno in
that its function is often to counterbalance the apparent
psychological and physiological effects of the volume,
speed, and aural density of dance-oriented Techno. Recorded
Ambient music often takes the form of a sound collage or
bricolage, and frequently features compositions which are
far longer than most Techno "songs" (that is, edited versions
of long mixes and remixes), and which require more time to
develop musical motifs and gestures than other genres which
usually state and restate a small number of themes. In a
club or rave context, of course, there is a continuous mix
of music which may gradually shift from one to another
emphasis, but, because of the vast differences between
Ambient and other genres, Ambient is emerging from the
chill rooms not into the main rooms, but rather into its
own parallel scene at parties and cub nights devoted solely
to Ambient.
Among global industrial cultures there exists a well-documented
process of "exoticizing" musics by infusing them with the
music of romanticized "tribal" peoples (preferably from
places far away from the actual site of cultural and economic
production): the strongest recent manifestation of this
tradition can be seen in the "world beat" and "world music"
trends beginning in the 1980's and increasing in strength
to the present day (Feld 266-8). In Techno we see this
trend appearing most blatantly in the style sometimes called
"Progressive" (although this term is sometimes also used
to describe Techno which uses "real," non-digital instruments
in live performances, and is also used as a term which
modifies preexisting genres: i.e. "progressive Trance") or
"Ethno Techno," a name sometimes used derisively. Here I
use the term simply because it more plainly evokes the
music's real content than the term "Progressive," which is
becoming more vague as it is used more frequently as a term
which ameliorates "hard" styles; for example, a recent
trend has combined two very different, very widely listened
to, and very profitable stylesDrum & Bass and Ambient. This
seemingly improbable mixture has been promoted under the
(assumed) name "Progressive Drum & Bass"that is, Drum &
Bass which features washes and patinas of chord colors,
"ethnic" sounds, and an overall lower aural density than
typical Drum & Bass.
That all of this labeling is "inorganic" and is intended
to aid the process of the commoditization of art is a 20th
century truismone which shall be more thoroughly discussed
in the Mediation section of this work. It should be pointed
out that "Ethno Techno" is also a term very frequently used
by the mass media and by industry journals such as Billboard;
therefore, it is definitely not a term which one would find
commonly used among Techno's self-defined subcultures,
except in order to indicate an ironic metacommentary on
the mediation process.
Ethno-Techno has a tendency to sonically associate the
concept of primitivity with that of environmental righteousness,
and to express these associations in compositions which
place "ethnic" sounds in aural conjunction with "environmental"
soundsthat is, real or imaginary soundscapes (see Schafer
77: 3-4) which feature a conspicuous lack of industrial or
"first world" sounds (and increasingly this is indeed an
imaginary soundscape). This conjunction equates romantic
notions of pre-industrialism with a sort of lost innocence
or a mythical idealized past now viewed as being represented
in the lives and musics of "indigenous peoples." This is
an interesting and contradictory facet of the Techno ethos:
that a connection to a primitive, pre-technological (and
therefore completely ahistorical) past may be created by
"quoting" contemporary "ethnic" musics within a composition,
frequently using the most advanced recording and production
technology as well as the network of the global capitalist
market as a medium of communication.
