My Liner notes for the ART "Electric Institute" Compilation.
“It Is What It Is.”
To the casual spectator Techno’s raison-d’etre looks to be relatively uncomplicated. Its sleek surfaces appear to communicate with great clarity. Most saliently Techno seems to be a music defined by its own production values. The “classical” electronic sound of the contributors to this compilation resembles nothing so much as the exquisite car design of Italian stylists Bertone and Pininfarina or perhaps Marcel Breur’s and Eero Aarnio’s stylised retro furniture. Techno’s sonic palette approximates materials such as quartz, black silicone, titanium or borosilicate; quintessentially hard and cold. Its sound, like these substances, beautifully sculpted into practical form. This concept of the music posits the musician as “Master Designer”, at heart a craftsman. Upon talking to the musicians it appears the truth is somewhat different. Shakir of Detroit’s The Stranger is “programmed on the K2000 as though I was riding the music”, straight off the bat in other words. Equally Balil’s lovely “Glass Dual” is built from an old midi pattern.
On the face of it Techno’s prime historical moment has passed, its futurity partially eclipsed by Drum and Bass, even as today futurity in music is perhaps no longer as important it once was. Degiorgio seems to agree, but his agreement problematises this: “With Jazz, in the early seventies, there was less money to be made, artists would be playing in smaller clubs and recording for independent labels. Labels like Strata East.” Strata East could hardly be conceived as cul-de-sac and it would be churlish to suggest that this later music means less to us today than that of its forebears. Ed Handley remarks: “We never really cared about being cutting-edge, we didn’t even perceive what we were doing as cutting-edge.” Indeed what kind of music would pride itself as being definitively contemporary? Conversely Shakir claims that all he cares about with his tracks is that, “they’re in key and that I’m going to be able to enjoy them in 5 years time.”
It’s ironic that such a “timeless” music’s finely wrought moodscapes seem to describe memories and romantically recall long-forgotten emotions. Are these tracks designed to evoke? Ed Handley concedes that the music can perform a cathartic function, voicelessly expressing melancholy, but Shakir and Kirk quite austerely conceive it as formal expression. One’s tempted to conclude that here is evidence of what must be Techno’s defining characteristics: its inscrutability, its opacity and its mysteriousness.
Matthew Ingram.
London, 5th May 2005.