Thursday, May 3 2012
Party Machine: The Rise of Canadian Electronic Music
If Toronto is having a Seattle moment, as The New York Times called it, it's fair to say that Canadian electronic music is having a Chicago/Detroit moment.
Tuesday, March 6 2012
The Audibly Deteriorating Landscape
The ruins of Detroit identified a past that stands in contrast with Techno's futurism, but do the foreclosed homes, uninhabited luxury condos, and padlocked storefronts provide any kind of guide to tomorrow's music?
Thursday, February 9 2012
Playing Guarde: Music Metacreation and the Vanguard
To create something or to create something that creates something; that is a question. But if you lead an electric horse to art, does it dream of the avant-garde?
Thursday, January 5 2012
2011: Music’s Most Electronic Year Yet
Vestigial organs like industrial music and the radio dial proved vital in 2011, while house and dubstep were invaded by hordes of uninvited outsiders, proving once again that electronic and plugged-in music is at the vanguard of change throughout the world.
Monday, October 10 2011
The Survival of the Industrial Sonic in a Deindustrialized West
In the '90s, industrial music crossed over into the mainstream with heavy guitar and massive personalities, but blue collar labor itself was disappearing...
Monday, July 11 2011
Techno’s Labor Force, Rock’s Betrayal, and the Birth of the Fascist Groove Thing
Electronic music has always maintained an ambivalent attitude towards labor, at once rejecting the notion of wage internment and creative inhibition while embracing the beauty of the cyborgian mechanics of the factory and the allure of discipline and dominance.
Tuesday, June 7 2011
Idle Chatter About Paul Lansky
With "Notjustmoreidlechatter", Paul Lansky attempted to make a piece that would withstand the monotony of archival recording, future-proofed against the technological developments in the field of digital sound manipulation.
Thursday, March 3 2011
The Extinction of Electronic Music Giants
The year 2010 saw two iconic music medium figures go out of production. Panasonic's Technics SL-1200 turntables, the primary tool of DJs since 1972, and Sony's cassette-based Walkman, which put mobile music in over 100 million ears since 1979. Both went the way of the dodo.
Friday, January 28 2011
The Science of Sleep: The Electronic Lullaby
In the age of access, it’s possible that Raymond Scott, Kraftwerk, and ARP may become as essential tools for infant soothing as “Rock-A-Bye Baby”.
Thursday, December 2 2010
My Life With the Tape Hiss Cult
When we think of our experiences with electronic music, we can follow a thought trail that leads like a Wikipedia article from one incendiary album to many others. Their qualities are not always alike but for one: the nostalgic thread that runs through them.
Monday, August 23 2010
Chilled to Spill: How The Oil Spill Ruined Chillwave’s Summer Vacation
Empty nostalgia or a realignment of values, chillwave's alchemical waste-sounds may be on the cusp of a deadbeat summer.
Wednesday, June 30 2010
Amon Tobin Part 2: A Cool Acousmatic Cat
Tobin's goal as a composer was to create music that truly reflected the time in which it was made, and to see how far he could remove his samples from their sources before arranging them in new contexts. He achieved such an artifact with each album.
Friday, June 4 2010
Amon Tobin Part 1: A Cool Trip-Hop, Drum & Bass Cat
Amon Tobin has sought -- and succeeded -- to unite the two dichotomous sides of electronic music: to satisfy both the dancing feet and the theoretical minds of audiences worldwide.
Friday, April 30 2010
Things We Were Due to Forget: The Cold Undertow of Minimal Waves
When a music such as minimal wave “comes back”, it forces us to think about its lifeline, particularly its death. Yet what does it mean to relive a memory that we never even had?
Tuesday, March 30 2010
Ain’t No Cure for the Digital Virus
How I came to love electronic music... I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell looped and thrown over a 4/4 or broken beat with a bad ass bass line.
Tuesday, February 9 2010
Electronic Music: The Invader and Infiltrator
Electronic sounds have come to occupy and permeate spaces focused on alterity, from the fringes of academia to the disposal heap of exotica.
