To me this kind of points to what this dude was bringing up in the first place. People (a global outsider view) have an image of black america. It’s not one of innovating, techno banging subcultured diversity. But black america is VERY diverse. I’ve had conversations where people are shocked to learn the origins of techno and house in the U.S.A.

Generation to generation connections get lost and youth get lost and think that the only thing that makes them black is fulfilling some image that was fabricated by a machine in the first place.

From my perspective to acknowledge ‘the hood’ which in this case is a very northeast/midwest U.S. black hood specific definition, is to yes give a nod to innovators, but also to liberate a people and to allow them to express regional or socio-cultural diversity within a race. (It’s funny cause in the bay area, the idea of hyphy is racially and culturally inclusive, even though from an outsider perspective it is a black form of expression. The socio-politics being different than the “frost belt.”)

Dude (Matt) was just trying to express that thing that goes beyond the music, and it’s time and place and (temporary?) condition.

The greatness to me of Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore electronic music is the fact that it doesn’t fit into the clean definition of Black America that EVERYONE is always trying to paint, positive or negative.

Can you plug your (eugenics-y!) dog-breeder metaphor into your techno-as-machinery metaphor? the latter seems to be all about cogs not necessarily cognizant of their role in making it all work, while the former invokes full-on God-like, sky-view selection & breeding & culling..

[and then you throw in the satellite!! turns out the autonomous machine has a remote control, Phil Dick saw it first]

i think it — that mixed metaphor… or whatever — is a pretty compelling description of how genres + movement in DJ cultures work. the tension or lack of reconciliation btwn the ego with a door-opening vision and the many-part machinery where every Unique Sound gets blent into the next, parties spill over, visionary door-openers overdose, drift away, chase money instead of sound.

love the description of hiphop. i’d add that it’s purchasing audience drives thematic content to an overwhelming extent; black porno, black (on black) violence is what the predominantly white hiphop buyers most want to see… hiphop as a sleek, only lightly stealthy corporate machine of powerful intricacy, the Rapper is only a small, highly visible part. america — the american machine — has never had the stomach for negro complexity. and so we watch complicated narratives degrade.

enjoying the conversation.. /r

Thank God there are some tastemakers out there to tell all us common folks what to enjoy else we’d just listen to boring ol’ “speed garage” and minimal techno and owning our butt ugly mutts (who can actually breath normally and don’t suffer nearly as often from hip displacia haha.)

You mean these inbread freak shows with serious debilitating health problems? RIGHT! I’ll take the bunch of mutts thank you very much.

plus 8 released a comic book once (drawn by t1000 I think) about a satellite that coordinated the programmers that make techno work. we all really felt that way, that we were just there to help these amazing analog machines discover the tracks.

and in fact right now I’m into this vibe: I’m in the way (I do keep fucking up these tracks, I know). the sounds and the machines and the memes in the scene need to get connected and I need to make that happen, but other than that my ego is in the way.

jeff mills: “sometimes somebody opens a door and somebody else goes through it”. a lot of times innovative tracks get forgotten because the breeding and copying produces new forms that are far better records (but only those who watch all the releases know which ones were seminal. but it doesn’t matter, as long as the door got opened).

jace “re: “the problem with minimal right now” — if the dj does “abrupt and unmusical” segues and “the dancefloor doesn’t seem to mind”, then how (or to whom) is that a problem?

cause its wack.

because even if people don’t complain, the artform is regressing and eventually people all realize that the scene has gone to shit. same thing has happened in hip hop. gradually its just rotted out because people said it was ok to do cheap porno and violence (it was funny for a while) and now everybody knows its degraded to the point of collapse.

do you realize that all dogs were bred by man from wolves ? in maybe 10,000 years. can you imagine if there weren’t specialists that really cared ? we wouldn’t have all of these amazing breeds. if the common dog owner ran things we would just have a bunch of mutts.

however sometimes innovation springs up in areas that some of us have written off as wack. I used to diss speed garage, then I got into the “underground” proto-grime era, then I went back and found all the stuff that I missed while I was being snobby.

last week I tried to convince Suburban Knight (UR) that 4×4/bassline was cool. he wasn’t havin it.

Sick posts from Timeblind. People: if you want to hear constructive, intelligent and critical thoughts about techno listen to this man. He has the knowledge and authority to speak about it.

At ’bout 14:50 that “I Gave you all my Love” interlude is so on point, it’s ridiculous. It’s turned into a personal theme song for me. RESPECT.

Thanks for doin’ what you do.

Timeblind — i love the idea of techno as a machine greater than all the people involved in making it, not ‘faceless’ but ego-averse, collaborative.
re: “the problem with minimal right now” — if the dj does “abrupt and unmusical” segues and “the dancefloor doesn’t seem to mind”, then how (or to whom) is that a problem?

I’ve got the file if the mega upload is gone.

old style minimal should properly be called “suspense”

rob hood once commented that there is a point after you’ve been playing a locked loop for about 3 minutes when the dancefloor gets a huge shiver down its spine. I know this sensation very well. its once it hits you that its going to outlive you.

techno for the most part is about the planes and liquids of sound seeping into each other (in the mix). its the tension and release as they inter-penetrate. its constantly rising.

the problem with minimal right now is not too slow mixing, but rather that people seem to think its ok to just fucking fade out the last record even while a melody is playing. and actually the dancefloor doesn’t seem to mind. we demanded a lot more of DJs back in the 90s. its not that the mixes are too slow and seamless, its that they are abrupt and unmusical.

you all know what the third record is, don’t you ? no, it doesn’t involve 3 turntables. its the phantom third that is summoned into existence by the 1 and the 2.

but techno is about getting a techno vibe in the room, and that means you can’t go throwing in kuduro or (as I did once at the bunker to the horror of several techno heads) mixing missy elliot on top of jeff mills. (I thought it sounded awesome. It did.)

its about calling up memories of endless past parties, and sorry guys … but its not about the ego of the DJ or the ballsyness of the performance. its about the party, and techno is greater than all of the people involved in making it. its a machine. that’s how it works. its a collective intelligence, and all those Djs are just there to make the life form come to life.

btw. I heard a lot of very clubby proggy kuduro, so its out there.