Speed Screed: Metal Dad

I had the strangest vision of myself yesterday, as a forty-something father driving my kid or kids to school or something, blasting death metal from the late 90’s through the car’s stereo. There is something extremely odd about that idea. In terms of generation gaps, metal is not really the music of any particular generation – it’s a non-popular offshoot of rock and roll with a diverse number of influences including 20th century atonal music and folk music. So when my kids are rolling their eyes and asking of this is the music that my generation listened to, I would truthfully tell them “no.”

But of course this is true for many other genres besides metal. Jazz is very similar inasmuch as it went through its own set of revolutions and evolutions over time, but it was concurrent with popular music and not woven into it except in the most basic ways (blues’ influence on early rock, for example). But jazz is generally pretty unobjectionable; even if my kids didn’t like it, they probably wouldn’t be embarrassed by the fact that their dad listened to jazz.

On the other hand, there is a persistent weirdness about pulling into a school parking lot to drop off your children with “Smashing the Antiu” by Nile blasting out the speakers. Especially since, unless I miraculously end up being a metal musician, I sincerely doubt anything else about my attitude or personality would indicate any sort of stereotypical metal-like tendencies. I’d probably be driving some eco-friendly hybrid and waving goodbye while Karl Sanders is growling about disemboweling the enemies of the Pharaoh.

Now, obviously, I’d probably keep metal away from really young kids, although that they would almost certainly be completely unable to discern any of the lyrics. But the music my parents listened to influenced me a great deal, and I still ended up here with the strong opinion that metal stands head and shoulders in both quality and originality above all other genres of non-classical music. So maybe it hardly matters what they hear from me, they’ll probably end up just liking what they like and that will be that.

But the really funny thing to me is that there is essentially nothing “square” about death metal. It’s gritty, violent, intense, and for preference, fast. It’s just hard for me to picture my kids mocking the music I listen to for how “lame” or “old-fashioned” it is. There are plenty of other good reasons to mock it, but I can’t conceive of metal being associated with old timers.

The other thing is that death and black metal might be considered extreme (and actually good) offshoots of the angsty popular bands of recent years, so in that sense they are associated with the energy and conflicts of youth. On the other hand, what angsty teens listen to transliterated texts from Ancient Egypt being growled out over the most crunchy, dark riffs every to issue forth from a drop-A-tuned electric guitar?

Not many.

Nile rules.

Speed Screed: Pop Stagnation

Music doesn’t seem to have evolved much in the last ten years. Although I hardly started listening to popular music of any kind before 8th grade (I can’t even remember what I used to listen to), once I actually got into the music of the 90’s I realized there were actually many quality bands around. Beck, Rage Against the Machine, Sublime (to an extent), Nine Inch Nails; there were dozens of bands that didn’t suck. They weren’t derivative. They had some talent. In short, they were good.

I now know that death metal was really taking off during those years too, though I only learned that later. And hip-hop? Four words. A Tribe Called Quest. The 90’s were a serious decade as far as popular music went. The end of the millennium brought all the creative people out of the woodwork.

What the hell happened?

Music these days is unbelievably derivative. Other than a sneaking of country influences into the mainstream via cute Southern women singers who can also play acoustic guitar, I have yet to see anything new, or anything old enough to be re-branded as novel. A perfect example are these “Jonas Brothers.” Now there’s a shtick if ever I saw one. Their music is what I kindly term “post-alternative drek,” an amalgam of punk, emo and whining that was exemplified by Blink 182, though any band that uses that formula (including the Jonas Brothers) are still better than they were.

What sells them is that they’re three brothers, with their outfits coordinated. This is marketing designed to shoot right into the hormone-soaked early teenage girl market. They are not without talent or ability, but their music is absolutely nothing new, and it already sounds corporate. And if they’re the “hottest new band” as magazines and TV shows have publicly announced ad nauseum then I think we can draw a pretty good bead on what passes for music in the popular mind these days. The 00’s here are just castoff leftovers from the sound that wasn’t better produced in the 90’s. I mean, new wave was irritating, but at least it was a sound! People were trying! And at least the 60’s and 70’s saw the introduction of rock and even hints of progressive rock.

No wonder I listen to metal.

Today’s Rave: Nile

This is another one of those “metal” articles that most people will probably roll their eyes and ignore. Can’t blame you. But as I’m out of ideas I will start raving about one of my new old (or old new) favorite bands.

Nile is a brutal/technical death metal band from South Carolina. Their lead vocalist and guitarist, Karl Sanders, is an amateur Egyptologist with keen interest in all things ancient Egyptian, and he actually has a sizeable personal collection of artifacts and curios from that time.

Unsurprisingly, he brings this theme into the death metal that he writes. Many of the songs are transcriptions or interpretations of ancient texts (in English, for the most part) or prayers. Additionally, he makes consistent use of Middle-Eastern sounding modes and occasionally throws in archaic-sounding acoustic string and wind instruments for introductions or musical interludes.

So obviously, Nile gets big points for originality and consistency. But what does that matter if they suck, right? Well, Nile is admittedly an acquired taste. Half their songs are about wreaking horrible vengeance on some group or another with graphic descriptions of disemboweling and so forth (those ancient Egyptians were a terribly violent lot, apparently). Musically, they are in a subgenre of death metal called “brutal” which tends to be murkier-sounding and makes extensive use of palm muting to creates a sort of heavy strumming effect that doesn’t produce any real tone, but just sort of a percussive blast. As a result, you’ll find yourself straining to hear a melody where there isn’t any. Once you get used to the style though, it’s pretty awesome.

I used to like Nile alright, but I recently got into them again and after my foray into black metal I guess my tastes have widened up enough to let me really get into brutal death metal. Now Nile has jumped up into my top 5. They tend to do two types of songs really well: shorter, insanely brutal thrashing songs that take you through a wild maelstrom of crashing melodies, and longer (7 minutes plus), slower and more measured epics that feature greater variety of material.

Also, Karl Sanders has the honor of quite possibly having the lowest death growl I have ever heard. It is so low as to be essentially unintelligible about half the time, and I’m getting used to picking out words from almost any growl now. His guttural intonations perfectly fit the sort of necromantic material they cover, particularly in the album “In Their Darkened Shrines” which has a much more crypt-like feel.

Nile is such a unique and intense listening experience, I would recommend it to everyone except I know that most people would hate them immediately. I think the average person would have to work their way up to Nile. There are probably a few people who hear it and immediately realize it’s the music for them. Nile’s songs are an immensely satisfying combination of exotic modes, atonal ramblings, ancient texts, and face-smashing intensity, not one of which you are even remotely likely to get within a hundred miles of the pop music scene. Of course, you may not look for face-smashing intensity in your music.

Your loss.

Speed Screed: Reviews Revisted, or What’s The Point?

Truly there can be no stranger experience than reading reviews of metal albums. I’ve never seen such a huge difference of opinion between two people regarding a single album or band. I’m looking at the myriad reviews for Darkthrone’s Transylvanian Hunger on metalarchives.com, and I see things like 100%, 98%, 99%, and then a 30%! There are a couple of problems here. First of all, anything lower than, say, a 50% is almost impossible. Once the album has utterly failed, how much worse can it get? I say, anything lower than a 50% means that your life has permanently gotten worse for listening to this album. That’s the only excuse. Otherwise, you’re just being an asshole.

Consider the undue weight to the negative you’re giving it. Some douchebags will actually dole out 0% to an album. I cannot conceive of any album so bad that it deserves nary a point. At that juncture you’ll probably just be giving pity points to the poor bastards who thought they could hack together an album. But three 100%’s and one 0% means the album averages out to about 75%, which is nonsensical. The album clearly meant a great deal to a number of people, and some arrogant bastard who “doesn’t get it” or what have you knocks the average far lower than it ought to be based on general acclaim.

I suspect some of these people are just contrarian reviewers and will smash stuff that people generally like and defend things that other people hate, since so many of these people think that metal is only good if the minimum number of people like it or even know about it. So when something as important and well-liked as Transylvanian Hunger comes along, it’s too much even for the metal community. It’s too popular, and they have to attack it or else they’re not tr00 enough. (That’s a real term for, um, true-to-its-roots metal, or something. I don’t really care what it is).

Anyway, although I used metal reviews as an example, this does not apply sheerly to metal although it is an obvious example in this case. The only way to really decide anything is do it for yourself. I’m learning that more and more and yet I still seek out reviews for stuff to somehow “confirm” my opinions. I’m disappointed as often as I am in agreement with them; I guess we all have a need to go out and seek other people to add weight to our opinions. Unless you’re John McCain. He’s convinced trimming 18 billion earmarks can save us enough money to justify making 300 billion in tax cuts permanent.

He crashed and burned at the debate. Nothing of substance said by him whatsoever. Ignore the reviews. And, uh, listen to me.

Peace.

Today’s Rave: Black Metal

I know I said I was done with metal for a while, but I thought I would mention a metal that I’ve been getting into more recently, another “extreme metal” genre known as black metal. In terms of overall style and feel, there are a number of similarities between death and black metal, but essentially if death is the “technical” side of dark metal, black metal is the “atmospheric” side. As a result, black metal may actually have more appeal to certain people than death metal, since it is easier music to appreciate as background music.

I never really knew what all the fuss was about until recently where I managed to find a few really good black metal bands. Interestingly, one of the features of black metal that people may find confusing is the fact that many recordings made are quite low-fidelity; essentially, they are deliberately recorded in poorer quality than is readily available to most musicians. This is out of a sort of desire to stay “true” to the roots of black metal, where it was sort of an underground, counter-cultural thing and so you could only hear it on bootleg tapes and the like. However, nowadays there all kinds of black metal and the low-quality recording is more a stylistic choice that is often done as opposed to a “requirement.”

Fun fact: Greece has a very strong black metal scene. There aren’t that many black metal bands there (maybe half a dozen) but those that exist are consistently lauded for the high quality of their writing and musicianship. But they’re all obscure, even to people in the community. By sheer happenstance I stumbled across Order of the Ebon Hand, a Greek black metal band, by listening to a track from their 1999 first album, Mystic Pathway to the Netherworld.

I was shocked. It was damn good.

And yet, there were only 500 copies pressed worldwide. How’s that for obscure?

My main gripe about black metal is not about the music, but the fact that these people often take themselves too seriously. It’s less of a problem with death metal because death isn’t concerned with proving that they’re evil or pagan or whatever; the roots of death don’t coincide with black metal. But historically (about 10-15 years ago), some of the original Norwegian black metal bands were involved in things like church burnings and murders and some really horrible stuff. Granted, I think one can like the music without liking the people that wrote it (I love Wagner’s Ring Cycle, but he was a real Anti-Semite), but I never like people who can’t take a step back and laugh at themselves once in a while. They’re no more than punks, ultimately. Granted, most of that stuff is long gone now, and many of these dumb bastards are in jail, some for life. Black metal is a much more open book now, hailing from places like Mexico, Greece (obviously), France, and all over the world.

You can check out that song if you want. Order of the Ebon Hand is very authentic black metal, so you’ll immediately get an accurate taste of what the genre is generally like if you hear it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLbWD8KwwKo

Today’s Rave: More On Metal

Most people express surprise that I got into metal. I don’t really fit the typical description of a metal-head. But as you find out as you spend more time in the metal community (i.e. metal-archives.com) you realize that virtually anyone you know could be into metal and you would just have no idea. The people who wear their hair long, have multiple piercings and broadcast their love of the music is actually in the minority. In fact, I read a cutting piece of irony the other day about the satanic black metal band Gorgoroth – one of the members is a full-time primary school teacher.

Amazing, isn’t it? How’s that for compartmentalization? And so you never know – your boss, that kid across the street, your favorite professor – they may just come home and crank up Necrophagist until their ears bleed. You never know.

When I am asked why I like metal, the answers are actually fairly straightforward. I think I might be repeating myself here, but I’ll go into additional detail to make up for it.

1) The intensity. There is no music more intense, emotionally and in terms of the sound. It’s just massive, driving force distilled into music. As a person who has spent much of his life playing, writing, and listening to music, the sheer power of the music is just something that I really appreciate. That, and the sincerity manifest by even mediocre metal bands still sounds a lot better than the whiny nonsense you hear on pop radio stations. These people love metal, and that always comes through.

2) The music theory behind it. I studied a lot of atonality and 20th-century music in college, and after a while I finally started to get into limited forms of atonality; and in addition, the use of modes both ancient and new was a refreshing change (if you don’t know what a mode is, typically it’s one of 8 particular types of scales performed by playing 8 white notes of the keyboard in sequence). I’ve always loved modal music, and I basically had to go back to Renaissance and before or post-Romantic to get my fix. But as it turns out, many types of metal make heavy use of dissonance, limited atonality, and most of the music is heavily modal. So all that 20th century music actually heavily influenced one music genre: metal. I get much more satisfaction from listening to the novel ideas in metal than from the extremely hackneyed chord progressions of, once again, popular music. As a student of modern music, metal has a huge appeal to me.

3) The technical skills of the players. Few genres make such immediate demands on the performer’s abilities. There are definitely simpler songs, but most metal songs require speed and accuracy to even be played. No lazy thrashing around half hitting notes, at least not if you want any respect. I am constantly amazed that the drummers are not dropping dead from exhaustion during the songs. Blast beats for 5 minutes straight probably burns about 1000 calories. And since solos are such a major feature of metal, the technical skills of the lead guitarist (or both depending on the band) are clearly showcased.

As for the generally dark and macabre themes that much of the metal I listen to features, I simply see it as something that fits the music. Music this monstrous and intense is not going to be about love, or going to the store, or walking down some boulevard of broken dreams. Nor are there going to be clean vocals – this music demands harsh, guttural vocals. I appreciate when they switch it up, but honestly I think the harsh vocals came about just as much because it fit the music as some sort of desire to sound demonic or something.

Is it angry music? Yeah. But I’m not really an angry person. I mean, I know I write pissed-off articles here all the time, but I’m not sitting there screaming at my computer. I don’t consider myself full of rage. So I’m more attracted to the intensity that anger brings to the music than the anger itself. Plus it is extremely cathartic. Listening to metal actually chills me out.

Well, that’s enough raving about metal for another month. I wonder if I should so one of those stupid things where at the start of every article I write:

Currently listening to: Dissection – Night’s Blood
Current mood: Annoyed

Ha ha. Nah.

Today’s Rant: Japanese Song Lyrics

I majored in Japanese in college, a reasonably standard second-language major to take. But being a student of Japanese is somewhat unlike being a student of a closer language to English, because it is quite different not only in grammatical structure, but also in the way that it treats words and assigns semantic meanings to them.

One thing I’ve constantly wrestled with is Japanese song lyrics. I usually find them fairly banal. Part of the problem as I see it is that Japanese is not the world’s fastest language for expressing complex thoughts. Considering that we can say “sing,” which is one syllable, whereas in Japanese it would be “utau” which, if pronounced mora by mora is three syllables. This fact is not only unfortunate from a meaning standpoint, as it means there’s less time to for more meaning in a single phrase of the song, but is often used extensively on purpose, with even the n in words like gomen being pronounced by itself.

Which is not to say that Japanese isn’t a fairly musical sounding language. I think it is an amazing sounding language, which is one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to learn it to begin with. I like the sound of Japanese in songs, which is why it pains me even more to deal with most of the stereotypical stuff I hear. Example from the well known (even by non-anime nuts of whom I am proud to count myself among) Vision of Escaflowne theme from the series of the same title:

Kimi o kimi o aishiteru
Kokoro de mitsumeteiru
Kimi o kimi o shinjiteiru
Samui yoru no

which translates approximately as:

I love you, you
Gaze at you with my heart
I believe in you, you
Despite the cold night

As a counterpoint, some things in Japanese are expressed more cleanly than English, such as the use of kokoro de. meaning via or with or by use of the heart (or heart/mind, kokoro is overused). I mean, it only means one of these things and its clear from the context when you listen. Same thing with samui yoru no, since the no sets off the previous statement as a contrast.

I know it sounds like I’m pulling a 180 here, but you have to understand that this is a mental wrestling match. There is a haiku-like simplicity to much of this, where you pack the maximum amount of meaning into a minimal amount of words. The problem is, as a non-native Japanese speaker, even if I’m listening in Japanese and the concepts are pouring into my head as pure concepts, my cultural values and American attitude still regard the concepts as cheesy. Speaking of which, I grilled my host parents and host sister on this topic while I was in Japan: there does not appear to be any concept known as “cheesy” there. Mind blowing, yes, but it also explains why nobody seems to care that the lyrics of a song are so trite.

There is additional poetic license in Japanese songs which is difficult to deal with. The Japanese language has a natural poeticism about it; practically anything can seemingly be used as a metaphor in the right place. Since it’s a second language for me, my concepts of metaphor are still firmly rooted in how English does it, and so you run across strange conflicts when a Japanese songwriter puts English lyrics to one of their songs. A classic example is simply the phrase which is the title of the opening song to Persona 3 (which by the way is a great game and it has a very, very good soundtrack): “Burn My Dread.”

Though it’s a stretch, I can see how it would work in Japanese, because if they were to say something like yuuku o mosu everyone would immediately get that it was a metaphor; I don’t think there would be any debate over whether it’s “workable” or not. But in English we’ll sit around and evaluate whether it’s really appropriate. Or at least, I do.

One issue is that “burn” is not descriptive enough. Are you burning your dread to ashes? Or simply singeing it a little? Are you burning it to like, use it to fuel something or are you simply getting rid of it? God, I know this sounds stupid. Bear with me just a little longer.

Also, dread is a good sounding word, but it’s not really an appropriate substitute for “fear” here. Generally speaking people experience fear and terror as a sudden reaction, but dread is something that builds up over time. You can dread that something is going to happen, but you can’t react to events in real-time with dread. Therefore, you are burning your fear that something is going to happen, which is an odd thing to be burning; I think we can agree on that?

This is what happens when Taro Yamada (sort of like me saying Joe Sixpack) decides to add some spiffy English to his song: he ends up with an untranslatable semantic conglomeration. Perhaps it only bothers me because I’m so crazily obsessed with getting in on the ground floor of meaning in Japanese when this will probably all clear up if I lived there for a year or two.

Or maybe I’m just crazy. You decide!

Today’s Rave: The White Album

The greatness and importance of the Beatles second-to-last full album studio release cannot be overstated. I’ve always been a fan of the Beatles, but generally I lean heavily towards their later stuff as their earlier, 60’s rock roots-style songs are more generational and have less appeal to me, especially since I like my rock extremely hard if not entirely death metal. Anyway.

I won’t bore you to death with an in-depth analysis of the album (not that an in-depth analysis would be boring necessarily, but mine probably would be, and if you know the album well my notes would be considerably less useful to you). I will assume you’ve heard it, and at least can stand it if you don’t love it to death, as I do. It is my favorite Beatles album by far, because it is the most uninhibited and utterly creative thing they have produced. There is a great deal of apparent irony in the fact that they produced some of their best stuff when tensions in the group were fast reaching a breaking point. However, the apparent irony wears off when you see how many excellent groups (such as Mr. Bungle, and even A Tribe Called Quest) have fiercely independent ideas of what direction they want the music to go in, and inevitably split up. If the group is all on the same page, it is a rarer thing for them to be truly excellent, and generally they excel at one particular thing, a la The Rolling Stones. They always did the bluesy-rock thing better than the Beatles, but frankly that’s the only thing the did better in my opinion. The Stones are like a favorite restaraunt – you can go there, get what you love, and leave happy, as opposed to the Beatles, which are like going to a new restaurant every week and being constantly impressed with the quality of the food. What a strange analogy. Well, I did just have lunch.

Particularly revealing about the White Album is that, aside from the aforementioned colloquial name, its true title is simply The Beatles. Considering that they waited until nearly the end of their time together to produce their self-titled album speaks volumes about their own understanding of where their music was headed (and I don’t mean towards the end, I mean towards their own unique style/s). The album is a veritable gallery of styles, ranging from McCartney’s old-fashioned-sounding pop tunes that draw heavily on wind instruments (and strings on occasion) to Lennon’s bluesier, heavier stuff, and even a few choice songs with Ringo at the lead (he’s not a bad singer, but with John and Paul hanging around, what can you do). Honestly, George got the shaft more than anyone else in my opinion, considering he was extremely talented and definitely underutilized as far as songwriting goes – but you can check out some of his excellent solo stuff in All Things Must Pass, an extremely strong album that may be the greatest single effort of any ex-Beatles’ solo career, or at least it would be if Phil Spector didn’t smash the two best songs to bits with a ham-fisted heavy mix of them. As a side note, a recent re-release of All Things Must Pass done shortly before George’s death includes the acoustic demo versions of these two songs, Let It Down and Beware of Darkness, which let you see their simple beauty and George’s skill at songwriting, at least before Phil got his hands on them. Some of the stuff on there would have ended up on the White Album, if he didn’t get pushed out for the lead two.

As you can see, it’s hard to discuss all the merits of the double album without a discussion of the dynamics of the band itself. I’m no Beatles historian by any means, and most of what I know is third-hand from a few documentaries or the choice Wikipedia section. But the fact that this album is still fresh, relevant, and still contains music that can only be described as just plain good is reason enough to keep it on your iPod playlist. I listen to metal, underground rap, and techno, but the Beatles are a band that produce something so thoroughly unique that it comes down to the fact that everyone ought (and I hate making recommendations involving ought or should, but I’ll make an exception just this once) to listen to it, repeatedly.

Peace.

Today’s Rave: You’ve Come A Long, Long Way Baby

In case you weren’t aware, You’ve Come A Long, Long Way Baby is the name of a Fatboy Slim (aka Norman Cook) album from about 10 years ago. I actually heard it for the first time when I was visiting a pal of mine in Seattle. Um, actually it probably was near the Seattle airport, but it was some kind of suburb-esque area. I can’t for the life of me remember the name. It seemed pretty good to me at the time, but until high school my musical tastes were extremely limited in scope, and I never really thought too much about it.

Most people will probably point at this album as the best in Slim’s lineup to date. I would be hard-pressed to argue. While he may have released a few singular songs that are his best (Weapon of Choice being a popular, uh, choice) this album stands apart not only for the high quality of virtually all the songs but also as a very clear showcase of what the Big Beat subgenre of electronica is all about.

Big Beat is more a genre for listening to than dancing. Which is not to say that you can’t dance to it, but it does not have the immediate “jump on the floor” drive that dancier stuff has. It tends to be rhythmically complex, and often will use variations on stop time (i.e. with drums left out on certain beats) which is part of the reason why it doesn’t seem as danceable. Nevertheless, the drums usually come pretty dense, and acoustic drum samples are usually favored over electronically generated drums. There is generally more reliance on acoustic instrument samples as well, such as horns, strings, piano, and often quite a bit of voice. Turntables are also used with some frequency. The ultimate result is a more old-school sort of feel, more reminiscent of soul and funk than the kick-heavy techno most people associate with the genre.

Fatboy Slim showcases this style on the majority of the album, his most popular of those being most likely The Rockafeller Skank, Praise You, and Gangster Tripping, though at least four of the other tracks are pure or partially hybrid big beat tracks. His tight grasp of rhythmic variation and ability to eke the most punch and mileage out of his samples (including the well-worn technique of playing around with a low-pass filter) makes everything extremely enjoyable to listen to, and you will unconsciously find yourself tapping or humming along in no time.

But, to prove that he can handle other, somewhat more typical genres with ease, he includes a few other tracks. The opener, Right Here Right Now, is sort of a trance-y, strings heavy song with a very epic feel. Not only is it a perfect opener, but it is very different from all the other tracks on the album. The tenth track, Love Island, is pretty much the most straight dance-club song on there, extremely bass-heavy, with simpler but nevertheless very effective drums. It still is of notably higher quality than 90% of tracks you hear in dance clubs anyway (as I mentioned before, you would be astonished at how few truly competent electronic artists there seem to be), and damn catchy to boot. Kalifornia is a synth-heavy entry, and probably my least favorite if only because it’s not as unique as the other tracks, but still of good quality. Last but not least is Acid 8000, which appropriately covers the acid subgenre, which I can best describe as taking a single moderately complex waveform instrument (maybe a square wave and sawtooth combined or something) and passing it through a couple of tweaks, and actually working with filters and phasing closely to add direct ornamentation to the sound to create phrasing. It’s much easier to hear than describe, but Acid 8000 does a good job of showcasing Slim’s ability at fine control. And as a strange coincidental side note, I have a weird feeling that the line in Acid 8000, “It’s so easy to get acid, you can get it anywhere” is taken from that horrible movie Trash that I described earlier.

All and all, this is a great album even if you don’t like techno that much, because its acoustic-heavy style and Cook’s undeniable skills at mixing and creating catchy track is pretty much unparalleled. That’s why he won the Ivor Novello Award. Enough yapping. Listen to the album.

Today’s Rave: Electronica

A very interesting subclass of music, this. Plus, “Today’s Rave” becomes a bit of a pun. Get it? Get it? Ahem. If I had to list off my 3 favorite genres of music, they would probably be death metal, underground hip-hop, and electronic music, particular big beat a la Fatboy Slim. It’s actually a fairly unique form of music: it’s minimalist, for the most part, as far as music theory goes. It uses motives and melodies sparingly and repeats them pretty much for the duration of the song, adding and subtracting them. That’s almost pure minimalism; if you listen to any Steve Reich, it sounds more or less like classical techno. Obviously, the sound range for artificially generated sounds is pretty huge. Add sampling, effects, filters, and a whole host of analog and digital technology and you can produce pretty much the exact right sound to suit the part you need.

Electronica is also fairly easy to write. It only takes a few strokes of minor inspiration to put together a decent track, since you can keep using it repeatedly. The trick mostly comes down to writing decent drums, as far as I’m concerned. Anyone can do the stupid kick, snare, kick, snare, beat you hear in clubs which bores the hell out of me. It took me a while but I’m a lot better than I used to be at writing exciting and interesting drum parts.

The great irony of this, though, is that the number of consistently decent electronic artists I can think of can be counted on one hand: Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx, Paul Oakenfold. I don’t even like half of these guys all that much anyway.

There are endless subgenres that I don’t know enough about to speak with any authority, nor could I tell you the difference between say, house and acid, or trance. Who knows? But fast electronica has also become almost the genre for fight music in blockbuster films. The pounding drums do most of the job of adding excitement, and something about fast riffs sort of adds this “skilled” feeling to the atmosphere. I have no idea how that works, but somehow it generates the “person x is about to kick some ass” feeling.

Techno is good fun, plain and simple. I don’t think it really has as much intellectual value as underground hip hop or as much raw emotional punch as death metal, but I still dig it greatly because it’s sort of the music of the information age. And I write minimalist myself.

Later.