I don’t say a lot on social media. I don’t know who my audience is. Recently, much of it has been people from the online networks of underground music I write about, most of whom I haven’t met IRL. Within this community all kinds of people friend you, follow you and message you - most of them are amazing people who it would never have been my privilege to encounter otherwise. Sadly this is not always the case.
I’ve just found out that certain female musicians I’ve written about have been harassed online, and there’s a chance that this attention might have come as a result of coverage of them in my articles. To my knowledge, this is the second time that this has happened. Firstly, if this is indeed in any way related to my attempts to highlight some brilliant emerging artists for the benefit of this community, I cannot apologise enough. This is the only regret I have in covering female or any emerging artists however, because, secondly, I may not need to remind people reading here that this reaction and this behaviour is one of the many reasons that women struggle to gain the voices and representation they deserve in music, underground or otherwise. These artists deserve our respect not just because of the humbling courage and imagination they show in doing what they do in a context dominated by bros and bro aesthetics, but because they are human beings.
For better or worse, music and the community around it is a reflection of society. But what’s special about music is that it can be more than that, it can become a reflection of our hopes for tomorrow’s society - democratic, plural, polyphonic, open-minded, fair. That goes for the community too. The music and the community are the same thing. Gender and sexual minorities played a massive role in the development of both the computer and electronic music (lately vaporwave and basically everything I write about). You wonder if they did so, like so many of us who have turned away from mainstream society, to escape a world that couldn’t treat them properly. This behaviour shouldn’t be allowed to follow them in the new and fantastic spaces they created. They have so much more to give.
If you read my articles and don’t get even the tiniest sense not to treat the people in this community like objects, or that music and life is more beautiful and complex than that gratification, then either you’re a fuckwit at reading or, more probably, I have failed. In any case, I gotta try harder, all men do.
Tresillo Playlist
A playlist for my latest System Focus column for The FADER (click here to read) on recent club music that draws on the tresillo rhythm
1. Blaze Kidd: Elemento (prod. Kamixlo)
2. Dinamarca: A M A B (ft. GNUCCI)
3. Mapalma & Mobilegirl: Philae Touchdown
4. Zutzut: Otra Vez Llegue
5. Kamixlo: Paleta
6. Imaabs: La Apuesta
7. Mobilegirl: Ice Sheets
8. Lil Tantrum: Picuda
9. Zutzut: Yo te voa a dar
10. Palmistry: Protector SE5
11. Blaze Kidd: Lento (prod. Lexxi)
12. Blastah: Crime Wave (ft. Karmelloz)
13. Mapalma: Nunca
14. Spaceseeds: Ephemeral
15. Ana Caprix: Flashlite (ft. I-Octane)
16. Imaabs: Tercera Persona
17. Dinamarca x Rihanna: Numb
18. Zutzut: Lagrimas y Hustle
19. Kamixlo & Uli-K: Loyal (edit)
In this extended feature, Adam Harper explains how a new generation of artists and labels are reshaping the idea of what it means to make and release electronic music.
remember who the real enemy is
Cold as platinum and hard as glass, Adam Harper deciphers a new wave of dazzlingly alienated beats.
my latest system focus column for The FADER is here. focusing in the system, y'know? and it’s all about beats I like made of gleaming grey platinum, glass, tasers and luxury. it feats. bine☃, DYNOOO, Dutch E Germ, M-O-R-S-E, Sentinel, Subaeris, Weed Konducta and James Ferraro.
