Am I correct in assuming that late 80s/early 90s rave techno is not one of the more popular genres we enjoy here at Intellectual Props? It is a (mostly justifiably) maligned genre, and most people who come to house music or techno through channels such as which artists cross over into the ever-widening maw of "indie" music will often qualify their love of house or techno with, "...But not the, like, rave stuff." We know what we mean when we say this, and most people we say it to get the point as well. There's a lot of shitty house music out there, to be sure. Maybe we're a little better than people who say they like "Everything! Except Rap and Country," when we say this, but not much. And the KLF are here to tell you why.
Now on our box, 1991's "The White Room" by the KLF, not to be confused with their "The White Room" original soundtrack. I'm not sure if the film ever came out, but if it did not, we can be assured that the album did. I am a newcomer to the KLF, but I would point you to allmusic.com's biography for a complete picture. Long story short, they were the architects of the UK rave sound and one of the biggest bands in Britain at the time. Then, suddenly in the mid 90s, the duo retired as the KLF, saying they would not record another song until peace was declared throughout the world. A surprising move, for sure, and given their mysterious nature (youtube them to see how they successfully put up a front of sheer craziness in their live performances to evade being constrained by a fixed identity) one that might or might not have been facetious. But it's hard for people not to take your retirement seriously when you delete your entire back catalog, making their classic LP "the White Room" an OOP classic.
I don't know if it would change anyone's mind about the genre, but if your mind is going to be changed it will probably be while you're listening to "the White Room." It is one of the best records I've ever heard.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
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3 comments:
i refer you to:
My Uncle's Early 90's Club Dance Craze Mixtapes From College, Listened To While Mowing The Lawn - Still Awesome
La Bouche, Haddaway, Eurythmics, etc. I'd like to think this Night At The Roxbury stuff doesn't have the artistic merit of the Daft Punks and Hot Chips I hold so dear, but who knows. Maybe all dance music is the same. It's all fun, and what else matters?
i probably should have gone more into this last night, but i want to stress that the KLF were the Daft Punk of their time - the mindblowing live shows, obfuscating and minimizing the importance of "performer" in a concert setting, being played by all the "cool" DJs - KLF was there first. to say nothing of the fact that Acid House as a genre was a toddler and what the KLF did for it - adding prominent vocal hooks and shortening songs to radio airplay length - laid the foundation for groups like Daft Punk.
did i mention that they invented ambient house music (even a trailblazing group like the Orb is sometimes miscast as a KLF side project because of Jimi Cauty's early involvement)? or their pioneering use of samples? they've had an influence on nearly every genre of music that uses a drum machine, and i probably did them a grave disservice by making it sound like they were merely "the best rave group" in the world.
in actuality, they were pop terrorists cut from the same cloth as Negativland or Aphex Twin (Richard D. James particularly owes an enormous debt to the KLF/JAMS continuum of cheeky provocation). Plunderphonics, Go Home Productions, Kid606 - anyone who wants to take credit for inventing the "mashup" has to account for what the KLF were doing in the mid-80s.
i'm not sure anyone currently making dance music can lay as much claim to "artistic merit" as the KLF. for example, take how they retired: they were a worldwide top 10-selling act and they chose to have a thrash metal group called Extreme Noise Terror cover their biggest hit rather than do a straight performance at the Brit Awards.
after firing blanks from a machine gun into the audience and dumping a sheep carcass at one of the after-parties, they left the music industry for all intents. they literally committed career suicide for the sake of their art. imagine - today that would be like Kanye West refusing to perform his song and instead pissing on the first row.
which, of course, wouldn't mean a damn thing if their music wasn't still vital and interesting 20 years later. in my opinion, it is, and i in no way want to draw a comparison between what the KLF were doing and what shits from the bowels of the discounted "various artists" divider card of Best Buy's "Dance" section.
dance music had artistic merit long, long, long, long before the KLF came around, but as the twin booms of Chicago House and Detroit Techno in the 1980s gave birth to more vapid, lifeless dancefloor fare, KLF injected the genre with a healthy dose of sarcasm, humor and agitprop, even as they took it to unknown heights of commercial viability.
sadly, most of the dance music i hear today - even the kind of stuff pitchfork praises, which is quite listenable - is either too self-serious to be subversive or lacking the balls to aspire to anything more than a "career in music."
i hope i don't sound combative or anything - i wanted to write a lot of that stuff last night, but i wanted to get the album uploaded and do my post and get to bed. and in doing so i left out a lot of what i wanted to say about it.
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