Richard Pettauer on Thu, 11 Feb 1999 01:40:30 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Panasonic monadology: El.music from Buenos Aires


Some thoughts on musical dialects in Reply to Nils' CD-presentation
 
> The selection does question
> the idea of musical dialects in the technosphere.

Who ever had this idea? The technosphere, I suppose more or less in
general,
but especially when it comes to music, uses multi-texturing, where any
local references can be understood as a critical approach towards the
effort of localisation of music in general, as mere chance, or even
their absence could express an intention.  

> Every artists from BA appears to be a monad, a unique mirror of the universal
> trend of electronic music.

I wouldn't call a DJ or an artist who produces electronic music a monad,
but rather a nomad who wanders between the walls of sound and takes
whatever he or she want's to take, shreds it up, tears it apart,
puts it back and gets a more or less unique result. But monad, 
referring to Leibniz, means "immaterial, because inseparable,
non-spatial,
eternal centers of power with consience of self" - and
exactly this aspect of a small unseparable entity doesn't quite seem
to be typical of these musicians. If you refer to electronic music
as one limitless space of variants constructed by the makers they are
mirrors of such a quality that they change the light itself and only
it's direction.

> If you start to look and to listen into this mirrors
> you have to be careful. Fist one tries to use patterns like melancholy and
> Tango when one starts to categorizes the offerend musical signchains. But this
> is not simply possible. It is more ones one prejudgement that tries to find out
> special argentinian features in the acoustic images. 

The prejudgement is what the reception of electronic music is all about,
because of the given fact that you understand the more the more you
know, or,
in this case, the more you have heard before - understanding is actually
not a very apt word, but contextualisation. So it's all signchains in 
electronic music, sometimes more, sometimes less hidden.

To be honest, it's quite difficult for me to get the idea of this
project. You sure don't want to get to the core of electronic music
by localizing it, so maybe it's just a brilliant piece of music,
but you shouldn't overrate the fact that it all comes from
one city in neither way.
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