Does Tacoma have music history?

It's 9pm and that means its time for band practice at my house. I live just above the basement where two bands, Head Bangs and Rituals, play every other night. So I hear all the songs. The other night we were talking about how Tacoma's music scene is not well known, and its history is too often jumbled with Seattle's history instead. After all, Nirvana wasn't from Seattle either - they were from Aberdeen, WA. This prompted me to see what bands, if any, had come out of Tacoma. I found three bands from the 50s and 60s that still are chart-toppers, so I wanted to share. Tacoma's music scene is built on a strong backbone.

The Ventures


In 1959 a band known as The Ventures burst on the scene with what was called "surf rock". Their music was purely instrumental, but topped the charts. Their songs were used in Quentin Tarantino films, and the group is the most popular American rock group in Japan to date, having outsold the Beatles 2 to 1. This band is, in fact, the best-selling instrumental band of all time - having sold over 100 million records. And they're from, of all places, Tacoma. Here is a taste.

The Wailers

From the same era as The Ventures, The Wailers (not the reggae group), is known to many people as "the first garage band", and the group that gave rise to the Seattle grunge scene. The song "Louie Louie" comes from this group originally. One of their hits is, "Tall Cool One". Here is a short documentary about The Wailers.

The Sonics

Another group from Tacoma - The Sonics - are considered the first punk band. I could not believe this, so I found the Seattle PI newspaper agrees, saying The Sonics "foreshadowed the punk era", which is a bit different. Still, this is big news. Here is a taste of their music.

According to these sources, then, Tacoma is home to the first garage band, the first punk band, and the most popular American instrumental band in Japan. There haven't been too many female artists from Tacoma, but I found one diamond in the rough who goes by the name Junkyard Jane. If you like the sounds of Head Bang, they will be playing in Olympia and in some Tacoma house shows next month, check out their myspace.


More sounds from Tacoma's past.

Vonnegut- Don't Tell Sophie

The Koto

If there was one instrument I would love to learn how to play, it would be the koto.

The koto is to Japanese society what the piano is to Western societies. The instrument has thirteen silk or nylon strings, each with a movable bridge, stretched over a hollow sound board that is about 6 feet long. The strings are plucked with ivory plectra worn on your thumb, index finger, and middle finger. The koto player can also strike and scrape the plectra on the strings to produce different tone colors and other effects. Sometimes a finger will waver on the strings to make a tremolo effect.

Most of the koto masterpieces - usually solos like this one - are from the Edo period (1615 - 1868). This is when Japan isolated itself from foreign cultures and developed new kinds of art, like Kabuki theater and color woodblock prints. This incubation period gave time to change the cultural ideas and inventions that it had received from China: the koto was something Japan gained through trade with China. Edo period koto-playing was mostly for entertainment rather than religion and aristocratic events as was the case in the preceding periods. Blind musicians became really good at playing the koto and began forming their own special guilds. Someone who was considered a master of the koto was known as a kengyo. Japanese musicians mastered koto-playing.

The most famous kengyo in Japanese culture of all time is Yatsuhashi Kengyo, whose most famous piece is known as Rokudan. Rokudan uses a specific kind of koto music style that is known for "themes" and "variations" - called danmono. The theme is presented in the first section of the piece. Then, in all the other sections there are variations of that theme, each time speeding up the tempo. Rokudan has six sections. This is what it sounds like:

When the koto is part of a chamber ensemble, no instrument is supposed to outshine the others. They are supposed to blend together without losing any individual qualities. The heterophonic texture, as it's called, has a very mellow sound to it. Sometimes, however, when the individual instruments start drifting off in different directions, they start to create a polyphonic texture.

Ebay - 21-stringed Guzheng, a Chinese zither koto harp: $250.00. hmmm.

My subverts are better than your adverts

This is a story of capitalist recuperation. It begins with Saul William's song List of Demands.

Saul Williams is a spoken-word poet and hip hop activist. In List of Demands he attacks conspicuous consumption. Written in the voice of "the impoverished and oppressed," including the "factory worker," Williams said in an interview with Morphizm that the last thing the song reinforces is hyperconsumption. He wants his money back because he's drowning in McDonald's fatty burgers; he is compelled to stand; he has a better plan.

But it doesn't matter how you attack it, the commercial enterprise will figure out a way to recuperate its opposition and sell it back to you in a different package. It has perfected the art of recuperation.

a brief description of recuperation

The situationists - who were the first artists to notice what what most revolutionaries had yet to realize - articulated the importance of fighting the bourgeoisie on cultural, as well as economic and political fronts. They articulated recuperation, gave it definition, put it in context. During their heyday in the 50s and 60s the situationist-organized 'art strikes' had intensified class struggle and demoralized the capitalist spectacle to some extent.

What is the spectacle? It's everything - humor, advertising, television, and so forth - comprising today's "spectacular level of commodity consumption and hype," as Kalle Lasn wrote in Culture Jam. And to show how deep the spectacle's recuperation has penetrated social life, successors of situationist theory have been absorbed into the spectacle they fought against. Having become marketing experts, advertising consultants, and advanced campaign managers, many of the culture jammers are now the prizes and trophies of capitalist domination.

Not just an ancillary source for marketing gurus, radicalism and rebellion are the dialectical anti-thesis of capitalism and thus the perfect synthesis for "post-ideological", late capitalist domination. This Jack in the Box advertisement that I photographed is a perfect example.

(Someone I shared this ridiculous image with has since added their own recuperation to it. After vectorizing, it was underlined with pro-consumption slogans, "Submit, Conform, Consume", to emphasize the overtness of fastfood recuperation. To learn how this works download the zine How to Make Adverts Better.)

In the recent book Coming of Age at the End of History, an embittered Generation Y activist, Camille de Toledo, narrates the story of how commercial experts came to treat situationist texts themselves as troves of treasure and information which helped them understand cultural products and how to improve the commodification of counter-culture. Now 30-ish, de Toledo is unsurprisingly cynical toward this historical moment where we are all being continuously recuperated. "All that remains of the spirit of revolt are annoying slogans."

In a German film about aged-anarchists, Was tun, wenn's brent?, one of the characters is a former activist who runs an advertising agency that exploits anti-capitalist and radical iconography. It is not just radical imagery that can be recuperated, it's the radicals themselves. In this film the former radicals have to become radical again, in fact, in order to save their bourgeois social status. In so doing, they relive the experiences they had as radicals.

On Guy Debord's own account, the SI was already actually recuperated by 1972, when too many elements of its work had been co-opted against itself. McKenzie Wark details this phenomenon in 50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International, where she wrote, "Having invaded the spectacle,

... the spectacle invaded it in return. It was no longer a secret enemy of spectacular society, but a known one. Its theory became ideology, mere contemplation. Contemplation of the Situationist International is merely a supplemental alienation of alienated society."

back to the List of Demands...

...you know what had to happen. Given all that led up to this blog post, of course, it was bound to happen: it wasn't long before some corporation figured out a way to use Saul William's anti-capitalist art to reinforce capitalism itself. In this case, the shoe manufacturer Nike was quick to use the List of Demands song - a chart-topping single in 2007 - in an advertising campaign called "better than your better". Have a look:

After two successful commercials the advertising team added a third, using the List of Demands lyrics instead of the previous bullshit. List of Demands is now inseparable from the sporty image that Nike bestowed upon it through popular consumption.

I was curious so see what Saul Williams thought about this, whether he gave Nike permission, or whether they simply used it. So I searched and found that Nike obtained the rights to use it from the record label. Williams welcomed Nike's use of it. In the Morphizm interview he remarked that,

"My intention remains for these songs to be heard by as many as possible. They are the virus that I wish to spread. I’ve infected Nike and all within their reach with a song that raises awareness as well as fists. It is indeed written in the voice of the impoverished and oppressed, which includes the factory worker. They know its their song when they hear it. The last thing it does is make someone want to go buy sneakers, but it may encourage someone to hit their boss over the head with a tennis racket. So be it."

As a 'public pedagogy', using capitalism as a vehicle does not seem to have succeeded. Williams essentially claims that Nike's bold move to use his List of Demands to advertise the opposite of what he is demanding puts Nike at risk of being recuperated by radicalism. It risks détournement, which is when commercial iconography becomes subverted. Détournement as a way of "infecting" the world with his anti-capitalist message, he says, could work.

Through détournement, radicalism creates moments of what Julia Kristeva in Word, Dialogue and Novel called the "carnivalesque" enacted to fight against the spectacle of everyday life. The carnival, according to Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabeilas and His World, is created using folk humor positioned outside the officially sanctioned culture of those in power. According to Williams, his song is an entirely different order of détournement. But it is the same logic use to détourne the Jack in the Box advertisement.

This is the logic:

1. It was positioned, from the beginning, outside the spectacle.
2. Now it is inside because of recuperation.
3. The song is so powerful that it will pull what is inside back outside with it.

This is hard to believe. Nike has framed the List of Demands so firmly in consumer iconography that it's impossible to imagine that this could be realistic.

Artists seem to think the commercialization of art is the best way to reach a wider audience. Anarchist punk band Anti-Flag aggravated fans by signing with major record label, Sony BMG, for example. The music giants have a new strategy. They want to maintain the "authenticity" of their recuperated artists by encouraging independent work. Meanwhile the innovations are used for commercial purposes. KRS-ONE explains in an interview with Digital Journal that,

Today, artists like myself or Chuck D or Talib Kweli hold a degree of credibility that’s attracting companies like Red Bull, Cadillac, or Nike. Executives at these companies are our fans. And they are really sick of the state of music. So what they’ve done is spend $250,000 of their own money, in the case of Nike, to create a song with Kanye West, Nas, Rakim, and KRS ONE. We don’t rap about the shoes because they don’t want us talking about that. They just want us to create a song they can play on their website. Authenticity is the new business model and these companies need a product that’s not destroyed by an artist's shady image.

There is something else that easily results from this business model too, which destroys radicalism from two directions at once. Corporations directly use recuperation in order to sell ordinary consumer products; they indirectly use recuperation to sell consumer products that imitate radical lifestyles, resulting in hipsterism.


I don't want to end on a depressing note because while recuperation can be a source of anxiety, others take it as an acknowledgment that radical creativity threatens bourgeois production. I'd like to know what other people think about this.

Bluetech, like a school of fish

One of my favorite downtempo artists recently came out with a wicked new set of tracks. Evan Marc is Bluetech, a Portland-based synth sorcerer, who whips up modest tunes and chords that leave my head spinning for days. Here are some samples of his older work.

In the movie Ring of Bright Water, there is a picturesque set where the hero and heroine are looking over a beautiful scene together. The hero sighs finally and says, "I really must get back to work. I can't keep idling the rest of my life." The heroine replies, "Why not, if it serves a purpose?"

Just what the purpose was is not very explicit, but that's part of the story's charm. I don't think she was against the hero having a purpose, but against the attitude the he should always have a purpose. I think she would agree that having a purpose might sometimes serve a very useful purpose, just as spontaneity can sometimes serve a grand purpose too.

I have also found it extremely hostile and destructive to ask another person what their purpose is. I am thinking of those who ask "Why would you want to learn philosophy or art?" Isn't it enough to want to learn them? The presumption is that philosophy and art are purposeless, or meaningless. Similarly, the question "What do you do?" is not "What sorts of things are you enjoying lately?" It's "What is your relation to the means of production in our society and how much social capital do you have compared to me?"

I have traveled far from the topic. What I am suggesting is that music can transcend this nightmarish duality of purpose and purposelessness. When I'm listening to a hypnotic scenescape it's as if I am unlocking the secret groove to the universe, a balancing act between work and play; a place in the mind where you can move headway through work like a school of fish. Like coffee, only less wiry... It also distracts me immensely from my work. Damn, I can't idle all day listening to Bluetech and Boards of Canada. Somebody please tell me to chill out because it's only a Saturday.

Toward Unitary Urbanism

There should be free parties in city parks every weekend.

I have anecdotal evidence supporting my thesis. The Decibel party in Seattle offered a free party in Volunteer Park as alternative to expensive parties downtown. Decibel was a 4-day party showcasing some of my favorite EDM artists - they spun minimal, dub, glitch, and all sorts of funky beats in between. (Look at the full list of all the artists.) Most of the artists played inside for a hefty fee (Carl Craig for $25 at the door), but a few of them played outside in parks absolutely for free.

Some local and West Coast Djs wanted to give Seattle a free show and that was excellent. Two from the Bay-Area (edIT and Boreta) played for free their West Coast "glitch" underground flavor. Here is a sample of their music:

I don't want to take the unitary urbanist thesis too far, but how can I resist? The status quo urbanism is a compartmentalized way to think about a city's surroundings, where "art" is detached from the rest of life. In that view, "art" is supposed to stay inside artist's lofts or inside museums. And increasingly, art is being pushed back into private spaces and out of public spaces. From this I suppose we can conclude that public art has negative aesthetic effect on some peoples' "indifference curves". These people, typically, we call "squares". Status quo urbanism is square urbanism.

It's unfortunate that square values have triumphed over unitary values in public discourse (in the City of Seattle and elsewhere). The Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle has seen an increase in art, dance, and "hip" scenes in recent years. But the squares are fighting back with socio-economic status and privilege as a way to limit everyone else's fun. In the unitary urbanist ideal, an urban environment is blended so much with work and play that you cannot tell where function ends and where play begins.

"A unitary urbanism — the synthesis we call for, incorporating arts and technologies — must be created in accordance with new values of life, values which we now need to distinguish and disseminate. . . . "

- Gil J Wolman “La plate-forme d’Alba” originally appeared in Potlatch: Information Bulletin of the Lettrist International #27 (Paris, 2 November 1956)

Why does postmodern music remix other music?

"Postmodern music" is a maddeningly imprecise idea as a musical concept. So much of what postmodernism has done is react against the project of modernism, and parts of postmodernism are not even doing this: they are not reacting but repudiating the authority of musical history. So, there are really two strains of the "postmodern" music attitude: anti-modernism and post-modernism. Postmodernism embraces, anti-modernism reacts.

Listen to Samuel Barber's second movement in the String Quartet No. 1 in 1936, Adagio for Strings, which is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of the modern classical era. Click on the green link for the full version.

It has been called the "saddest" classical work written in the modern era. With the Nazis coming to power in 1936 and the American Empire on the brink of a new age, the piece was also used in 2001 to commemorate the thousands who were killed in the September 11 attacks.

I heard Adagio for Strings played at a party over the weekend. This was the largest party I've been to, called United States of Consciousness in Seattle. Thousands of diverse creatures in costumes that embraced references all kinds of different sub-cultures. What we all came to be a part of was this party - and beat our heads to Tiësto - because "in trance we trust".

Listen to the Adagio For Strings as 'embraced' by Tiësto...

This nostalgia for the modernist purity and totalizing demonstration of musical mastery is not present in Tiësto's remix of Adagio. It is opposed to strains of modernist drives toward mastery of musical composition. The nostalgia found in Tiësto is distinct from Barber's in that it completely distrusts elitist 'high' and 'low' concepts in art. It doesn't uphold the distinction between varying senses of melodrama and over-sentimentality in art. Tiësto is imitating the superficial appearances of art, through a formula of "remixing" that is supposed to demonstrate the lack of creativity or originality displayed in art.

For example, electronic dance music djs in the "Happy Hardcore" scene and others who remix popular theme songs from Tetris and Wizard of Oz, really do embrace that "superficial" aspect of postmodern music (again, probably not superficial to those who like it). But I don't agree with the claim that postmodernism is superficial so much, because I think that misunderstanding is mostly caused by a generational gap. Generation X thinks Generation Y's music is not creative.

Why does postmodern music remix so much? I don't think it's because of lack of creativity. It's more like a dialogue that cross-generational and cross-cultural. It's what the millenial generation knows how to do so well. YouTube is full of remixes. By remixing something you add another layer of commentary on to it, and someone watching or listening or reading has to figure out what it is that you added to it, and why that's different from what the original was. It's hard to tell what the original of anything is now. But postmodern music embraces the whole of commentary that came before it. Because everything seems so inter-connected, all content seems more like a discussion rather than a private session by yourself.

Kixotek

I never liked the sounds of the techno genre "breakcore" since to me it sounds too choppy, too cut up, and too extreme. The kick drum is usually excessive, and the snares very echoey. Mochipet, for example. The breakcore sub-genre has split into endless divisions in recent years: 'wafflecore', 'flappercore', 'operacore', 'donkeycore', etc. Most of it is impossible to dance to, an expression of pure experimentation. It is often ridiculously boundary-pushing and musically incomprehensible.

However,

I find that even with styles I have come to dislike there is usually a gateway artist whom I find very interesting. I have found some of the most interesting and mellow sounds from Oregon recently, because Oregon is hyper mellow, very exotic, and is where some of the coolest cats in Cascadia reside. That's where Kixotek (from Corvallis) comes in. I heard Kixotek (pronounced 'kiggz ottik' or 'kicks-o-tech'?) mix a very flavorful breakcore session in Seattle a few months ago at Kinetic III in the memorable "Prehistoric Chickenhed Dowtempo" room, where the Seattle Science Center's movable dinosaur models swayed back and forth under the trippy light systems. So if it was love, it was only love for a small cross-section of the breakcore genre.

Which brings me to yesterday. Yesterday I mixed some of Kixotek's tracks for a mellow last day of classes at my school. It was a very flavorful grilled-sandwich-and-fries session in front of my student union building. The student affairs office was hosting a BBQ and requested that the student-run radio station (KUPS) play downtempo for the ambiance. The choice of downtempo was chosen so as to not disturb the stress-free massages.

Downtempo, breakcore, same difference right? My friend David (AKA The Chaosthetic) asked me if I wanted to mix at 4:00 p.m., and of course I said yes. The stressed-out students, eating their lunches and conversing with one another, stared blankly at me for choosing breakcore. They probably wanted something more Cancún-ish. Fuck that. The music I chose was dark, heavy, and gloomy, with organic textures laid progressively on top of the breaks. I have no regrets. Kixotek's tracks are an excellent blend of Indian-influenced bongo drumming and chilled synthesizing. That's what is so appealing about it for me: that and it mixes well to anything with ambiance. It sounded very surreal especially with the extra delay and break effects I laid on top of it. And I got a free back massage out of it!

Listen to Ouroboros on his myspace, and check out the art on his webpage.

House and Trance Tonight

The ornately adorned Trinity night club in Seattle is known for hosting some of the hottest DJs for its Saturday night dance parties. Tonight they are getting a taste of Tacoma since two of the University of Puget Sound’s well-known techno DJs, David Hvidsten (“Chaosthetic”) and Brad Miller (’06 alum) along with Jason LeMaitre (also from Tacoma) are spinning back-to-back in the 50’s-era retro Blue Room.

Brad is touring the Northwest after having spent his post-graduation years working as a producer for Foambox Nightlife Marketing in NYC. Both David and Brad were hosts of the Thursday night KUPS 90.1 radio show “In The Mix”. David continues to host the show now, kicking out non-stop tech-house, breakbeat and funky glitch four-on-the-floor. He’s opening tonight at 10pm for his first show in Seattle. Brad hosted the show for two years and for his last mix he locked himself inside the studio for a 12-hour marathon set.

The Melon used this opportunity ask Brad about his experiences since UPS. Brad has spun with many famous techno DJs since then, including Preach, BT, Hybrid and Seb Fontaine. He’s spun at a list of impressive clubs from the East to the West Coast. Space is one of his favorite clubs; Paul van Dyk is one of his favorite DJs. When the two converge it must be absolutely wicked. “Half the people who go to see [van Dyk] have no idea what he’s doing to the music,” Brad said. “This guy is adding notes on the fly, layering basslines, tweaking harmonics, adding acapellas, all with timing that comes down to fractions of a second.” Needless to say, van Dyk is one of Brad’s biggest influences.

Using a combination of techniques and technologies like Ableton Live and Apple Logic, Brad says that he loves mixing up his music with lots of sidechaining and percussive delays “to give them a bigger feeling.” With a traditional musical background in piano, saxophone and trumpet, Brad now incorporates instruments like Vember Audio’s Surge and Rob Papen’s Predator. So what kind of EDM (electronic dance music) does it end up sounding like? As Brad describes it, it’s a “darker” blend of progressive house and trance. And although it’s typically more “aggressive” sounding, he balances this with “euphoric”, trance-like elements.

In the techno scene, most don’t eschew what some might see as an endless classification and reclassification of its own genre. “You need some way to put the sounds in context,” Brad says. With trance and EDM in general, “It’s not the same when listened to track-by-track the way other music styles are.” When a fun, enthusiastic DJ with an ear for tune and the right sounds is spinning, “the songs can change meaning and create different feelings depending on the context they’re put in.”

Brad naturally tends toward an unregretful attitude toward making music. The question, “What if this is your chance?” was the positive feedback mechanism telling him he had to pursue a career in music. The first big paradigm shift came when, unbeknownst to him, a party thrown by BT would change his life. The next big moment was at Space, with Armin van Buuren spinning a massive set. At the exact moment when they released nitrous jets on the crowd, Brad “knew right there and then that it’s what I was born to do.”

“And,” he adds, “it was only a Tuesday night!”

But when asked about the best party he’d ever been to, Brad admitted it would have to be a 2007 costume party (for pirates only) on a private boat in Manhattan Harbor with Sasha spinning. “Picture me with an eyepatch, a sword, and a pirate flag harassing the tour boats by the Statue of Liberty with Sasha DJing on deck. Unreal.”

Brad, welcome back to the Northwest, and thanks for answering questions for The Melon. See you tonight!

Tonight’s show will open with David Hvidsten at 10pm. Brad Miller and Jason LeMaitre will continue the party until 2pm.

Bluetech

Last Saturday I skipped an excellent gathering (an Oracle Gathering) in order to study Kant's Transcendental Deduction. Some friends of mine had gone to the gathering for the downtempo music, the breakbeats, and of course the dancing. A week earlier we had all gone to a large party like this at the Seattle Science Center, Kinetic III.

Bluetech is a downtempo "psybient" producer from Portland who spun at Oracle this weekend. The kind of music Bluetech produces is often categorized as "intelligent dance music" or IDM, and is usually without a beat. (Though for parties I imagine he spins dubby tech-house, minimal house and music of that nature.) While reading the Deduction I listened to several of his early albums. Starting with Prima Materia, Elementary Particles, and Sines and Singularities, the atmospheric content of each creates what sound like enormous soundscapes that could only be experienced over the period of each album in its entirety. Like the mathematical concepts Bluetech invokes, they take time to understand and appreciate.

Perhaps the best way to describe what Bluetech produces is to make a distinction between moods and acute sensations. Most music today - "pop music" in particular - is interested in created acute sensations such as happiness, anger, surprise, etc. These sensations (pop sensations!) are more specific, triggered usually by specific changes in rhythm, lyrics, tempos, and other audible events. Moods on the other hand are characterized by a relatively long-lasting affective state. They are less specific and less likely to be triggered by separable stimuli.

Mood psychologist Robert Thayer distinguishes two dimensions of mood: energy level and tension level. Generally speaking, one can combine energetic or tired moods with tense or calm moods. The most pleasant mood to be in, Thayer says, is the energetic-calm. And the sorts of moods psybient music is interested in are these energetic calms which have induce lasting affective states.

Having been to a significant number of live DJ performances and parties, I tend to prefer the entire set, or the entire album, for the experience - as opposed to sequestering each three minute piece of music and having it marketed to me as an autonomous, interchangeable part. (At parties, however, socializing to and from rooms is a different experience altogether.) In this sense, great electronic DJs and producers have much in common with the great masters of baroque and classical music styles. Because it is the kind of music that cannot be sampled easily - without significantly diminishing the appreciation of it - their music must be something listeners are prepared to be affected by over a greater period of time.

Some online places you can find Bluetech's music are on his myspace, on imeem, or through pandora.

Minimal by Minimal

Lately I have been listening to the mixings of Richie Hawtin, who brilliantly shapes dance songs into an extremely minuscule format, bringing the experience of electronic music to a higher level. This style of mixing is called "minimalism", which is driven by a 4/4 beat,derived from house music and generally considered a standard dance rhythm. Because minimal techno tracks are so stripped down, the subtle introduction of one or two new sounds can have a tremendous impact.

Once an optimal beat-per-minute is found, all the tracks are matched and Hawtin is free to experiment with incredible spatial freedom. In the early days of techno there were no rules and DJs experimented immensely. But with new technologies even more possibilities broke through. The spatial transition, moving away from the traditional stereo field of music and into the 5.1 channels of surround sound, changed the dynamic effect of music. Richie Hawtin and others use this to their advantage, creating organic minimal and danceable sound environments, or a non-mechanical "downmix" as some would say.

Last week I listened to art Professor Elise Richman explain a bit about minimalism in art. From her perspective Donald Judd and others who developed this austere and very "American" form of art that was supposed to be geometrically perfect and immediately recognizable in its construction. Judd uses industrial manufacturing to create perfect solid-colored block shapes and other angular dimensions. I had seen Judd's work before, and the best way I could think to describe it would be "Euclidean escapism".

Minimal techno in fact has its roots in Detroit, home of the American automobile industry, and also in fact home of the techno movement too. Yet unlike Donald Judd's minimalism, the sound of minimal techno does not invoke the feeling of "industry". Richie Hawtin's style is often also called IDM, or "intelligent dance music" for its static effects and slow sound movement built on top of multiple "bed" layers of drums and kicks. When one thinks of "industrial" techno music, loud sounds that are jarring come to mind like electric synths and the high resonated kick drum of nRgY raves. Hawtin's minimalism is not jarring but instead feels incredibly smooth and well-rounded, and therefore very non-Euclidean.

Preferring to take everything in small bits in order to capture the full experience, the minimalists are the wine and cheese connoisseurs of the underground techno scene. Those who haven't developed an appreciation for the minimal style will listen to twenty seconds of minimalism and not understand what is attractive about it. It has been my experience that minimalism generally appeals to those who are older than the standard rave-going crowd. Having listened to a lot of electronic music throughout their lives, its subtle, steady sound provides a heady, almost intellectual, feeling of being in control. Not to say that minimalism can only be understood by those who have spent time listening to techno away from parties, but there is a bit of elitism or a "been there, done that" aspect to minimalism.

Just as the minimalist DJs themselves tend to have been around longer, the appreciation of minimalism builds over time. After listening to twenty minutes of a minimal session the logic of the rhythm surrounds your brain and becomes an advanced ambiance to dance to. Much like an art installation which cannot be experienced in two dimensional representation alone, minimal techno builds a sculpture in the mind that can only be understood through the dimension of time and change. That is also why the surround dynamics play important role.

Minimalism in the arts can nearly always be spotted through its austere repetitions and iterations. Yet all electronic dance music makes use of repetition and iteration. The development of minimalism simply takes this to a greater extreme. If there has been a post-minimalist movement in the arts, then maybe minimalism is actually the post-minimalism of techno. The Detroit techno scene of the mid-1980s is simply the critical reference point for all techno music thereafter.

You can listen and download Richie Hawtin's latest album DE9: Transitions for free here. (And being able to listen to the album did in fact convince me to purchase it even though I already had some of the music. I particularly like the very organic track "Where is Mayday?")

"Reality Check"

Son of Nun, the underground hip hop artist in this video, is based out of Seattle but frequents venues in the South Puget Sound. I recorded this in Tacoma.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - music of CIA torture

Regarding the torture videotapes the CIA conveniently destroyed, From Newsweek:

"The videotapes, made in 2002, showed the questioning of two high-level Qaeda detainees, including logistics chief Abu Zubaydah, whose interrogation at a secret cell in Thailand sparked an internal battle within the U.S. intelligence community after FBI agents angrily protested the aggressive methods that were used. In addition to waterboarding, Zubaydah was subjected to sleep deprivation and bombarded with blaring rock music by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. One agent was so offended he threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators, according to two former government officials directly familiar with the dispute."

The CIA used Red Hot Chili Peppers' music in their torture process. Does the CIA have a taste for the Chili Peppers or is this just "mainstream music" that happened to find its way into the CD deck? This also got me thinking what the Chili Peppers thought about this practice. Then I found this video, "Torture Me", from their 2006 album (voted 2nd best of 2006 by Rolling Stone) Stadium Arcadium:



The lyrics, viewable here, are eerily indiscernible. "The will of God is standing still - Brazilian children get their fill" means what exactly? "Because I'm happy to be sad - I want it all I want it bad". I'm not sure what this means either. I'm also unclear about what attracts the interrogators to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The Stadium Arcadium won the Grammy for Best Rock Album of 2007. So the torture song was written long after the CIA began using RHCP for torture.

Now I'm not a Chili Peppers fan, so it's not clear to me what the song is supposed to be about. But since the Chili Peppers are now a part of - culturally - the War on Terror it would be ncie to see what the Chili Peppers think about torture, imperialism, and the U.S. But their contract with Time Warner, the largest media conglomerate in the world, most likely doesn't allow them to become overtly political. (Didn't you know your level of political engagement is decided by your employer?)

In the unlikely event that the CIA pays Time Warner royalties for using their music for official CIA operations, as Fortune Magazine noted, it might be enough to cover the cost of a rebellion in tastes and preferences if one takes place like it did with the Dixie Chicks.

Rave Against the Occupation

Among all the peace efforts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this is by far the coolest. The first political dance party against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza featured electronic DJs and rappers in Tel Aviv, 2002. The second was in 2003. These two dance parties actually inspired two films Noam Kaplan's Blue and White Collar and Eitan Fox's The Bubble.

Making peace is so difficult, and most efforts are slowed and hindered by the invocation of history and the use of blame tactics. For example, perhaps the British are to blame for all of this. I mean, what right had they, in 1917, to promise the Jews a national home in Palestine? And why did the Palestinians reject partition in 1947? Why did Israel colonize the territories after 1967? Why did the Americans let Israel get away with it? Why did the Arab states leave the refugees to fester in camps? The Palestinians are terrorists, Zionism is racism, Israel's enemies are anti-Semites. Yasser Arafat should have accepted Israel's “generous offer” at Camp David in 2000. But, hang on, Israel's offer was not so generous...

Israel now has at least abandoned the nationalist dream of a "Greater Israel" that mesmerized it after the "great victory" of 1967. The illusion that the Palestinians would fall into silence has been shattered by two intifadas and every rocket Hamas fires from Gaza. Israel's present government says it is committed to a two-state solution. But it is a weak government, and has lacked the courage to spell out honestly the full territorial price Israelis must pay. The Palestinians have meanwhile gone backwards. If Hamas means what it says, it continues to reject the idea that Jews have a right to a national existence in the Middle East. Hamas wants to drive the Jews "into the sea"--every anti-semite's goal. And nationalist elements in the Jewish territory-hungry state are no better.

What self-defeating madness!!! For peace to come, Israel must give up the West Bank and share Jerusalem; the Palestinians must give up the dream of return and make Israel feel secure as a Jewish state. All the rest is detail, and in the mean-time let's all do our postmodern dances and listen to the anti-occupation sounds of the underground. That's what the Rave Against the Occupation was about. Naturally then, Hip Hop is appropriate since its the music of oppression, and electronica is the music for dreams of bettering our future. Dam, the patriotic hip hop group from Gaza promote Palestinian moral superiority. They blame the Israelis for all their troubles, and they invoke history in songs such as "Born Here". Sameh Zakout, SAZ, is the Arab-identity rapper for peace and change. Groups like ArabRap.net and Slingshot support the growing Palestinian Lyrical Front.

Israeli rappers like Subliminal, BooSkills, and Illan Babylon are all part of a label called TACT--Tel Aviv City Team--and are creators of "Zionist Hip Hop". They eschew drugs and promote patriotism and military service. Israeli Hip Hop violinist Miri Ben-Ari has collaborated with American rappers like Wyclef, Twista, and Kanye West. It's slowly becoming popular in Europe and the US. But most of the rappers in TACT were not "Born Here" just like the Dam song says. The Israeli rappers made aliyah from places like California and the Northeastern states. But they have all returned to their roots in Israel.

While musical propaganda is certainly interesting, it's inescapable that it is propaganda, and this means Liberal societies are faced with a false dillemma over whether to prohibit this music. Propaganda that supports the state is ignored or encouraged. Anti-state propaganda is suppressed. We are all psychologically adept at spotting Allied and Nazi propagnda from the 30s and 40s. But this new form is less visible and harder to spot, just like it was to the folk of ealier conflicts. We're used to believing lyrics and music are exercises and free speech, and they are. But they also can be tools of the state even though lyrical propaganda is not directly state-sponsored.

Yet it doesn't need to be--people will create their own propaganda and the government will do what they can to support it, or at least foster opportunities for it to grow, such as providing venues and not using their authroity to crack down on activity. I don't the government should crack down on any of this activity at all. Propaganda is speech, and is protected. But in cases where the state does crackdown, such as anti-electronic music acts just in 2004 which targets electronic music. This shows the discriminately anti-liberal purpose of a powerful state.

Exporting McCulture Through Hip Hop

Even though you can't understand the lyrics it's not difficult to see the export of American culture all around the world through music. Unless you speak Korean, you won't understand this video. But this South Korean pop star shows the influence of American culture everywhere in Asia. The video itself is emulative of American rap and pop star videos, from the stolen theme of Beverly Hills Cop to the Ecko Ltd. shirts. The video revolves around the popping & locking line style of dance made popular during the funk period, and features break-dancers stuck in poses that freeze in red, white, and blue. The song itself is about being a DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) champion I think, hence it's title Champion. At one point in the video we see a screen reading "Select your player" as in a DDR game. It then shows the arrows moving up the screen, leaving no doubt. That seems to be the only genuine Korean icon, however.

Or take this video, from the Gaza Strip, featuring Palestinian group called Dam--meaning "Blood"--rapping about the troubles of living in Palestine under oppressive Israeli inspections and regulations. Subtitles are offered in Hebrew, leaving a no doubt who the video's audience extends to. In this video the only thing distinctly American is the fact that it's hip hop and in music video format. Other than that the Arabic lyrics pertain to the destruction of thier homes and issues about land rights. It's a call-to-arms music video, but the interesting thing is that, in order to make it, they would have needed Israeli cooperation in getting the trucks and the officers to act. "Ethnic cleansing knocks at the door," the chorus says, "Like a bird that breaks out of the cage, she'll spread her wings and fly."


The French have many big-time rappers, such as MC Solaar. If his video Solaar Pleure was in English you wouldn't be able to tell that it was French! The German hip hop artist in this video tries to immitate the off-beat vibes of American hip hop from a few years back. Abroad they seem to always be a few years behind, and still getting almost all of their ideas from Americans. I wonder what they rap about in Germany? Brazil? Iraq? Iran? Venezuela? In most of the videos their gestures are indistinguishable from Americans'. They unfortunately tend to rap about American ideas and problems as well.

Hip Hop has spread to almost every nation on the planet. And with it comes American culture, American ideas, and even American dance moves. At least some of the nations are retaining their distinctive cultures and ideas, however. Americans are largely unaware of the world of hip hop that has been created outside their nation's borders. As a revolutionary musical force it ironically exports only ideas of the status quo, with few exceptions.

Modernist Music with a Bang: Rite of Spring

Stravinsky was born into a musical family, but despite his musical roots his father really wnatted him to become a lawyer. Stravinsky even got a law degree, while taking lessons from the great Korsakov.

Rite of Spring was intended to suggest ritual sacrifice and dance on stage. The idea of a pagan Russia really titillated people. It was intended to shock and horrify people. This was not about being beautiful but, shocking, brute force. It makes use of, like other nationalistic pieces of music, folk styles. The idea is that Stravinsky would actually have some folk materials embedded into this piece as kinds of musical archaeological artifacts.

The choreography as you might imagine was, well, brutal, spasmodic, jerking, crazy. The Rite of Spring launches modernism in the same way Picasso does with Cubism. Its a perfect musical analogy. Picasso was in fact used by the impressario to design some sets for ballet-rich productinos.

In the opening of the Rite of Spring, there's an interesting instrument which sounds ancient. I would have guessed a clarinet or a flute, but in fact, its a bassoon. Stravinsky has the bassoon playing in the highest extreme registry. This might strike fear in the heart of the bassoon player. In this opening tune, a Lithuanian folk tune, is played so high, it automatically puts us somewhere exotic and distant.

This is absolutely not tonal. Now, in Debussy, I see the language of the tonality, but tried very hard to thwart it. Things like exotic scales, parallel motion, sought to erase the stronghold of the tonic. With Wagner, I see tonality pushed to its limits. I cannot tell what the tonic of Wagner's Prelude to Tristan is. But its still clearly a tonal piece, we're still hearing the language of dominant cords pushing towards a tonic, even if don't get that tonic. In fact, that piece works because we know that language, and if we're denied the tonic, we know we're being denied something, and we want it. With Stravinsky we're not hearing tonal music. But this Lithuanian tune could be in a tonal context. What makes it not tonal is the vertical aspect of this piece. And this is what makes this piece interesting. Horizontally, we actually get a lot of tunes in the piece. But these tunes are often lost, because vertically, this piece is very dissonant. And there is no, ZERO, goal-directed harmony in this piece.

We hear instruments moving up and down like primordial ooze, not really going anywhere, and in fact moving up and down like parallel intervals--but they're dissonant parallel intervals.
The bassoon melody seems stuck in one place, in fact, its meandering in one spot. We have a great deal of forward motion. We have layers being added. This is a technique that Stravinsky uses, layers being added that are static, and no tonal language. This piece moves forward by accumulation, not by development. The piece builds in excitement, but by sheer mass, by layers being added on and on.

All the layers start coming together in swarming, atonal masses, until the opening bassoon solo returns. This introduction is called the Adoration of the Earth. The second part is the Sacrifice itself. Its as if we're editing a film together. Imagine we had different reels of film, each one with fairly static material. We take a little snip of reel A, and add a little snip of reel B. We just keep snapping between them. It's like a cut and splice technique. And these snapping reels have no forward tonal motion.

This piece does, however, have rhythm. Stravinksy has a way to treat the orchestra as a giant percussion machine. After the bassoon solo, Stravinsky gives us a pulse. And again, new layers are added on top of that. Every so often, we hear a little bit of folk tunes. This is mixed throughout the entire piece with a certain kind of dissonance.

Usually when people say that a piece is dissonant, they mean that it is ugly, and this is really a shame. Dissonance and beauty or ugliness really have nothing to do with each other. Dissonance simply means that two pitches vibrate strongly against one another. Any two pitches can be more or less dissonant, but it doesn't mean they're more or less beautiful. When people say they don't like dissonant music, it really doesn't make sense, because even in Brahms we have consonance and dissonance, and we need it because that's what moves his pieces forward. Without dissonance, the world would be pretty boring.

Richard Wagner: Revolution in Music

Why is Wagner's significance as a composer so unique? Wagner is the creator of a new art form, and the center of a new cult. The gigantic quality of his myth-making, and its function as a substitute religion, represented an entirely new artistic experience. There was a cult about his person, and the devotion to him was already impressive during his lifetime.

Nietzsche was the sharpest observer of Wagner. Nietzsche and Wagner represent a wave of late romantic irrationalism in Europe, from the lat 1870s onward. Nietzsche was intoxicated by Wagner. Nietzsche's greatest experience was a recovery, he says. Wagner was merely one of his sicknesses, we are told. When Nietzsche says that Wagner is harmful, but he adds that for others he is indispensable. Others may be able to get along without Wagner, but the philosopher is not free to do without him.

Nietzsche also realized that Wagner would seduce the Germans. I quote, "Above all: German youths understand him. The two words 'infinite' and 'meaning' were sufficient. They induced a state of unconquerable well-being among men." It was not with his music that Wagner conquered. It was with the idea. It was the enigmatic character of his art, his playing "hide-and-seek behind a hundred symbols", his polychromy of the ideal that leads and lures these youths to Wagner. It's "Wagner's genius for shaping clouds, his whirling, hurling and twirling through the air--He's everywhere and nowhere." These are the very same means by which "Hegel formerly seduced and lured them."

On one interpretation, this marks the beginning a catastrophe which ends with millions of corpses and the smoking ruins of German cities. There has never been a composer like Wagner, both unique and perhaps 'disastrous'. Historians of philosophy and translators who interpret Nietzsche positively, like the great Robert Solomon and Walter Kaufman, argue that the connection with Nazi Germany is moot. Nazis of course disagree.

I am listening now to "Music for the Sigfried Iddle" which Wagner's birthday present for his wife, Cosoma, in 1850. It's one of the finest expressions of love ever.

Interpreting Wagner positively in a political sense is difficult. Wagner wrote that one of his patrons has remained loyal to his interests. His way of repaying his patron was to suppress the story and write a very anti-Semitic pamphlet, "The Jews in Music". His anti-Semitism became a prominent feature of his worldview and later endeared his arts to Hitler and the Nazis. It belongs to that current of economic anti-Semitism which was a reaction to the explosion of Jewish wealth in Europe. Nietzsche's views regarding Jews had more to do with the rise of Christian morality, and by extension, perhaps this is the best way to interpret Wagner's views too.

Wagner had originally been a radical and a liberal, favorable to Jewish emancipation, which he later repented.

"According to the present constitution of this world, the Jew in truth is already more than emancipated. He rules, and will rule so long as money remains the power before which all our doings and dealing lose their force. That the historical adversity of the Jews and the rapacious rawness of Christian-German potencies have brought this power within the hands of Israel's sons. This needs no argument of ours to prove. That the impossibility of carrying further any natural, any necessary and truly beauteous thing upon the basis of that stage, where at the evolution of our art has now arrived, and without a total alienation of that basis."

According to Wagner, the Jew (always in the abstract), corrupts art by turning it into a market for art commodities. The theme, repeated ad nauseam, reflects the romantic distaste for the fact that even the genius has to sell tickets. Wagner's radical anti-capitalism was directed towards the Jews and the key figure was Nathan Meyer Rothschild and his brothers. The Jew corrupted art and culture by money. The Jew corrupted pure speech. Jews are unable to speak German properly. The German verb for "mumble" is how it is defined in politically correct dictionaries. But the original sense meant 'to speak like a Jew', or to sound like Yiddish.

Wagner commented freely on the way the Jew corrupts German culture with his writings. The Jew speaks German as an alien as a "creaking, squeaking, buzzing snuffle. Add there too an employment of words in a sense quite foreign to our nation's tongue in an arbitrary twisting of the structure of our phrases, and this mode of speaking acquires at once the character of an entirely jumbled blabber." So Wagner hears Jewish talk and his attention is on how he is speaking, but not what is being said.

Wagner was one of the first prophets of modern antisemitism. His art rejected reason, free markets, private property, capitalism, commerce, and social mobility. And for all that, the Jews were emblematic. Wagner opposed the modern world by transforming the Romantic enthusiasms for simple peasants and rural life into the cult of the folk, the pure people. The folk were the pure source of culture. And Wagner indulged in this Romantic glorification of the folk, just as the Nazis later did. "The true poet... gains his stimulus from nothing but a faithful, loving contemplation of instinctive life of that life which only greets his sight among the folk." The Jew is not able to reach the essence of the folk, but it is debatable whether Wagner can reach this essence either.

What is the relation between great art and artists who are evil in the eyes of many historians? Some say Wagner was a monster of ingratitude, hypocrisy and deceit, but also a genius. His art expresses racist ideas and cannot be separated from it. Can we enjoy it? How far can Wagner be blamed for what others did with his art? How far can Nietzsche be blamed for what others did with his philosophy?

Wagner threw himself into the revolutions in the 1840s and supported the revolution against the King, his employer. After the revolutions failed, he fled to Switzerland, where he conceived his greatest idea: the new musical drama, the "complete work of art." It combined and transcended the forms of theatric and operatic art, and he used music to express dialogue. He invented what became to be known as the leitmotif, or "leading theme", which sets a musical theme to certain events in the opera. The result is that the audience understands the ideas and motivations when the characters are not singing or speaking. They walk up and down the stage, whilst the music is playing, and you understand what they are thinking. In other words he invented a myth, a whole mythology, drawing freely from Nordic and Greek myths.

The plot of The Ring of the Nibelung, begins with three Rhine maidens. A dwarf--a symbol of the Jew--tries to seduce the maidens until the Sun breaks through and displays the Rhine-gold in the water below. Whoever will renounce love can forge a ring from the gold, which confers power over the universe. The dwarf steals it, and this is representative of the capitalist Jews using gold to destroy German culture.

Wagner made The Ring of Nibelung into a stage festival for three straight days. It was understood that one would go to Concert house and undergo a kind of religious experience. The work itself goes on for 16 hours. It was composed of four acts. Wagner won the patronage of the Romantic King of Bavaria, who built Wagner his own temple. Pilgrims, later, were expected to travel there in a religious state of mind.

George Bernard Shaw, an enthusiastic Wagnerian, saw Wagner as a socialist and anti-capitalist. The founders of German democracy saw Wagner as the prophet of a kind of new German anti-capitalism, because the German lower classes had no art of their own. They said that the lower classes should listen to Wagner for its anti-capitalism.

Wagner is a religion. There are people who travel miles to hear Wagner's music today, wherever it is played. Wherever The Ring plays along any of the cities along the East Coast of the US, many travel to hear it. They hear it over and over, and when they come out of the opera house they feel purified in some way. This is a cultural artifact that has not been seen before. What Wagner represents is a crisis in religion caused by industrialization, the crisis caused by emergence of the mass society for the first time, the tremendous spread of alienation, and the incapacity of the churches to deal with this new kind of paganism.

It's from this point on that the search for a new religion becomes so intense. If you think about the flags, and the ceremony, and the potency of the Nazi image in the 1930s, what is it but a continuation of the Wagnerian cult of the superman. What Nazism represents is another search for a new religion which will replace failing religions of the past. All the things Wagner was doing with his revolution in music. The Nazis took the ideas of Wagner and Nietzsche and encapsulated them into a revisionist version of the German spirit, the new German, the new European, replacing revolutions in music and revolutions in the human spirit with a radical ideology of force, of paternalism, and of revolutions in science and ethnic purity.

The Case of Wagner troubled Nietzsche and should trouble us too. Wagner created a work so gigantic that it was intended to replace the old religions and purify us from the corruptions of industrial and commercial society. It is not impossible to separate Nazi ideology from the Wagnerian music, even though wherever one hears it, it is accompanied a cultic gathering. Modern Wagnerians are ostensibly not Nazis, at least not necessarily so. Perhaps in a thousand years if you hear Wagner alone you wouldn't conjure up the images on the Nazi party. But until then his work may still be very troublesome politically, but intriguingly so.