At first, I was in denial about it, trying to convince myself I didn’t really like techno and that I was a grunger like all the other boys. If it got out that I was a wannabe Continental dandy who listened to German trance and trip hop, I would be ruined. This was in college in the late 90s. We were all getting laid and having parties, and I saw no reason to rock the boat with my aberrant musical tastes. Why slip a ten minute trance track into an hour long Pearl Jam set at a party and risk running off the Southern Belles? Why push cosmopolitanism and risk alienating the group when provincialism guaranteed a good time?
Later, I was in the closet about it. This was when I first moved to Vegas for graduate school and discovered the “Electronic” section of the iTunes radio directory. I’d really only flirted with techno before this. You see, I grew up in Georgia and went to
the state U in Athens so alt rock, country, jam bands, and the like pervaded our musical aether. REM,
Drivin’ n Cryin’, and
Widespread Panic were gods, and Alice and Chains and
Soundgarden might as well have been “Seattle Southerners.”
David Allan Coe and
Charlie Daniels made frequent stops at the
Georgia Theatre, and Johnny Cash was a grandfather god. As a result, I really wasn’t exposed to all that much techno save a
Robert Miles CD I picked up (Christ knows where … ) and the lame dance club remixes of top 40 hits I heard pouring out of the clubs in Athens and Atlanta. My family, though, made periodic trips to Europe. And thanks to a traveler on a North Sea ferry, who had a tape deck strapped to his pack and played “
One Day” for us all one morning as we alighted Dutch soil, I knew about Bjork. And there was
Kraftwerk from my buddy David and
Tricky from the sexy Honduran girl who lived down the hall from me and somehow these happy few let me know where my true musical interests lay. iTunes radio helped broaden my exposure significantly; but as I suggest, I was still in the closet.
Married when I first moved out West, I would listen to iTunes’ various “Electronic” stations while my exwife watched TV downstairs or after she’d gone to bed. Were she ever to enter the office (or were I to hear her rise from bed or walk up the stairs), I’d immediately mute the computer or, if I had enough time, shut down iTunes. Like most everything in our relationship, this too was based on deception. And I of course didn’t talk to our friends about my interests or think to buy techno CDs from Amazon. I just listened to NPR in my car, which I still do and still love, and snuck a few hits of electronica when I could.
Moreover, the iTunes radio stations were themselves problematic. Many of them underground entities, their streams were usually crap. And those that weren’t necessarily crap seemed to periodically, and unpredictably, shut down. (I have no idea what the state of such things is now.) Moreover, I was still on dial-up until 2005 so my own connection issues compounded the problem significantly. As a result of my closetedness and these technical difficulties, it really wasn’t until I discovered XM satellite radio in 2006 that I embraced my musical tastes and felt empowered enough to do so openly (read: “roll my windows down in my car whilst listening to techno”).
However, needless to say most Americans don’t share my enthusiasm for the genre of music most commonly lumped under the problematically finalized heading “techno” or “electronica.” Folks I know look on it as disposable, drug-infested, Eurotrashy, repetitive, and as a specialty genre they’ll tolerate (and even enjoy) in the clubs but never listen to at home, in the car, or with friends. Even the popularity of hip hop, which has supplanted rock in the current culture, hasn’t done anything to popularize “techno” in the US. This has really surprised me.
HIP HOP : TECHNO :: ROCK : JAZZ … so where’s the love?
Hip hop and “techno” are both production-oriented genres built around sampling, beats, and the manipulation of studio arts. Both are controlled (and created) by professional mixers and digital engineers such as DJs and A-list Producers like Timbaland and Eminem. Certainly, there are hip hop and DJ “performances,” but the “magic” of these genres comes out of the private studio rather than the public arena. Put another way, techno and hip hop tracks are primarily created in the studio and then brought out to the audience. Rock and roll is much different. The practitioners of that genre seem primarily focused on touring and performance and only reluctantly enter the studio cloister at the demands of their label and/or because of the realities of the marketplace.
In this way, rock and roll, like jazz, is “freer” and more public than hip hop and techno. Being performance- and performer-based, jazz and rock achieve their most profound expression — their own sense of “magic” — in live shows and via theatrical flourishes and musical improvisation. Rock and jazz performers also express themselves on traditional Western instruments that are merely evolutions of Medieval horns and lutes. The same can’t be said of the turntables, mixers, and various forms of electronic equipment employed by techno DJs and hip hop producers: equipment that seems hopelessly and inescapably modern.
Certainly, the anti-authoritarian themes, pervasive machismo, and commanding “loudness” of both hip hop and rock and roll help explain why a redneck fan of Metallica, AC/DC, and System of a Down enjoys Snoop Dogg and Ice-T (and why a brother from Compton might move in the opposite direction). This also helps explain why the rock audience has moved, nearly en masse, toward hip hop in the current pop music moment. In other words, while rock and hip hop are different in terms of racial associations, presentation, and general sound, folks could reasonably be, and in fact are, drawn to both genres in search of similar themes. I can’t understand, tough, why the profound similarities between hip hop and techno music don’t create similar bridges between these two genres and create trance and downtempo fans of us all. The two are so close, they could even be considered familial in the way rock and the blues are. And if rock folks are willing to give hip hop a try, why not techno?
Life Inside and Outside the Discotheque
For my part, I blame cultural ignorance and associative prejudice. To address the latter, Americans will, as I suggest, listen to and enjoy various sorts of techno in clubs but not outside these hedonistic spaces. Beyond all the associations with Europe and criticisms of the music’s repetition (which I will address momentarily), I suspect Americans primarily don’t like techno because of its association with club life.
In the US, we associate electronic music with dark nights spent grinding against each other, ingesting drugs, drinking to excess, momentary bisexuality, gender bending, and neon light shows. Like my beloved Las Vegas, clubs are recreational spaces where we take leave of the everyday; and even the most “boring” accountant becomes a party animal. When we’re not in a club (like when we’re not in Vegas: that place where everything stays), we can convince ourselves what we did there didn’t happen because these places differ so radically from insurance offices, restaurants, churches, and most of our homes. And in this Protestant-forged, middle class everyday, I’m not sure we could function without this illusion (nor could we function without the carnival spaces where we let loose and blow off the steam that builds up within our bourgeois lives). Thus, the college girl who will make out with her best girlfriend, grind her thong-clad ass against a perfect stranger, and ingest liters of tequila shooters in a club on Saturday also has to work on Monday in a respectable WASPy office place. Listening to techno outside the club in her “everyday” life brings the two parts of her reality into collision and results in discomfort and embarrassment. It would be the same if she went home and snorted coke, felt up her roommate, or did a tequila shot. Those activities are “club” things unfit for the ‘burbs.
Of course, the ignorance surrounding Americans’ (mis)perception of techno is inextricable from this associative prejudice. In one’s sober, “upstanding” moments, why would one take the time to learn about something s/he associates with vice? (At home with the kids on some random Tuesday night, who spends time thinking about what it means to do a body shot?) And in one’s less sober moments — immersed in the music of the decadent club space, critical faculties mercifully dulled by chemicals — how can one properly appreciate and cognitively analyze what’s going on around him/her? Recognizing patterns within and forming theses about the larger cultural meaning of something like a music genre would be nearly impossible or, if attempted, fall on ears dulled by opiates and filled with bass.
‘Techno’: Definition, Explication, and Justification
I really wanted avoid setting down a bunch of authoritarian-sounding reasons why folks should like “techno” and what makes it great. Unfortunately, this is a really wonderful and direct way to get one’s point across. Plus, it’s not as if folks don’t give me a bunch of authoritarian-sounding reasons why techno sucks and why I should instead listen to rock/rap star x instead. So here goes. Following is a list of reasons why techno is great, some counters to common arguments levied against it, and suggestions for how one can learn to appreciate it (or despise it) in a more informed manner.
1) Common Arguments
:: It’s disposable music
I agree totally. Techno is often like bubble gum in that it looses its flavor quickly. So don’t buy it. Subscribe to podcasts; listen to the radio; go to clubs where it’s played. Just enjoy the music and the freedom it offers one to break the chains that usually bind customer and music merchant. Just immerse yourself in it without worrying about buying every track you hear that you like. This isn’t Top 40 land after all.
:: I don’t go to clubs/I hate dancing
Neither do I and so do I. If for no other reason than the association I mention, it’s best to break one’s sense that techno can’t exist outside the club space. It can. Unlike disco which — because of its drug-fueled enthusiasm, primary dance function, and fashion associations — can’t really exist without the lame, polyester generation attached to it, techo can comfortably exist at the gym, on long car rides, and as background music during work. Some of it’s even timeless. If you treat your particular brand of techno like every other bit of music you have, you’ll see that it’s no more linked to the club than rock is to the stadium. Both are just venues where the music is performed. Nothing more.
2) Types
Don’t confuse Top 40 remixes with techno. Most of what one hears in a club are remixes: some songs you’ve heard a thousand times on the local hits station layered with extra quarter notes. I think that stuff sucks too. Personally, I’m into
trance,
trip hop, and
acid jazz. I hate
house and won’t abide
new age.
Here’s
a list of different types of electronic music. Familiarize yourself with the general styles rather than the precise “subgenres” (because the subgenres bleed into one another quite readily), find one you like, and embrace it. There’s lots of great music out there in every style. And usually, especially in the US, the cultures are small so you’ll make friends, find the superstars, and get a sense of the style pretty quickly.
3) Techno’s appeal
:: No cult of the artist
Certainly, there are superstar DJs; and within club culture, there is a sense of DJ as artiste. Nevertheless, even this differs radically from the ways rock music expects its audience to get caught up in the charisma of a lead singer idol or guitar hero. We’re supposed to hang on his/her every word/note like penitents receiving communion or audience members at a play. No thanks! Rock is supposed to be subversive; but in practice, it’s often very authoritarian, playing as it does into the Romantic cult of the artist forcing his expressions onto a captive and adoring audience.
In techno, the music stands rather firmly between DJ/Producer and audience, I think. There is an indirect relationship between the two that keeps the egos of everyone involved in check. Ultimately, the music stands above deliverer and receiver, everyone subaltern and existing under it. In the case of remixes and sample tracks, the DJ simply acts as compiler: a role significantly less endowed with awe than the god-like artist-creator who makes artifacts ex nihilo. At the very least, in techno, audiences are consistently less ga-ga over the DJ than rock audiences are with respect to their silly narcissists in leather pants. I mean, when was the last time you heard someone yell, “Kill the lead singer?” Crying out “Kill the DJ,” a club audience feels strongly that one of their own can replace the man on the decks. Such a revolutionary spirit and revolving authority doesn’t always exist within the captive rock audience.
:: Micro-level repetition, macro-level diversity
The musical forms grouped under the header “techno” are actually incredibly diverse. While each song can be repetitive and/or develop slowly and patiently, very few are alike. The beats and samples and relative lack of prescribed form make techno music extremely heterogeneous. Very few songs “sound alike” unlike in rock and Top 40 music where almost all the songs follow a verse-chorus-verse pattern limited to 4-5 chords. Thus, while each individual techno song may sound repetitive, minimal, and (to the untrained ear) “the same as all the rest,” one would be wiser to lodge this complaint against rock and pop music. While rock stagnates in its brittle prescriptions, then, techno has the power to liberate its fans from silly verse-chorus-verse patterns and from endless love lyrics (because so many techno songs have no lyrics anyway). Again, there will be exceptions to this, and many dance tracks are just rock songs with more beats per measure. But on the whole, techno is repetitive only on the individual song level. As a genre, it’s peerlessly variegated.
:: Delayed gratification
One thing I learned very well while living in France is that the Europeans love delayed gratification. I think they like it even more than the gratification itself. Their entire daily lives build to food and drink (and “other” things) even as these are tantalizingly around them all the time. This differs quite significantly from the US where we indulge that which surrounds us almost constantly. We like instant gratification, as the criticism often goes. Identifiably European, delayed gratification exists profoundly within interesting remixes, those ubiquitous tracks a DJ snatches from the airwaves and incorporates into his set in an inventive manner. This explains why many Americans probably don’t like these remixes even as they respond well to (and buy) the kinds I’ve criticized elsewhere in this post: those more like rock music than techno.
Here’s how this works. The audience knows the ins and outs of a particular song because Clear Channel, &tc. has spent the last season ramming it down their throats on the radio, in movies, and in restaurants. Such songs invariably operate around instant gratification. “Bubble-gum Pop”, you see, is more than just a clichéd metaphor for them. These songs get through the first verse fast and hit the hook and chorus hard. Here, I’m referring to those tune phrases by Fergie and Britney Spears that you hear and can’t get out of your head for a week. “
Earworms” they’re sometimes called.
Now the DJ knows folks want to hear the hook or the chorus but s/he toys with the audience, tantalizing them with the idea that it may soon appear. Lesser DJs simply indulge their audiences and create the types of lame remixes I’ve expressed my distaste for. Good ones, though, build tension as they delay the appearance of, and yet hint at the presence of, these hooks and choruses. Some never even gratify the desires of the audience, and this always leaves me feeling frustrated. Nevertheless, the act of toying with the hook/chorus and then finally releasing it on us creates an electric atmosphere and a sense of communal indulgence. Obviously, this works only for one type of techno, but it’s an interesting aspect of remixes that both explains why Americans don’t generally like progressive house (outside a club) and why, simultaneously, it can be so much fun for the initiated.
Final Suggestions
Though I realize techno is radically diverse and that my tastes tend toward trance and downtempo, here are some names for those who might be interested in getting better acquainted with “electronic” music. Each name is linked to the artist/group’s profile in iTunes, where possible, and to the artist/groups homepage or Wikipedia entry otherwise.
![[v]ocabulary](http://www.vocabulary-blog.com/images/header2.jpg "[v]ocabulary")
![[v]ocabulary](http://www.vocabulary-blog.com/images/me6.jpg "[v]ocabulary")
