"Copywritten . . . So Don't Copy Me"
The sacred cows of Warp, Aphex Twin and Autechre each released
records in the past year that were mediocre and incredibly abstract,
respectively. Not to mention Squarepusher's attempt at vitality through
a genre exercise. With these fine acts releasing subpar material in the
past year, IDM fans have looked elsewhere for quality. Attention has
finally been paid to the United States, of all places. After almost a
decade of European superiority, the press began to look to the United
States, California particularly, for the next mutation of the genre to
appear.
In the group of labels that have sprung up in the area -- Tigerbeat6,
Plug Research, and Othlororng Musork -- there is a sense of a movement
brewing. It seems that perhaps the Americans are set to dethrone the
European hegemony of IDM. In the past year, Matmos and Tigerbeat6 were
even featured in taste purveyors Spin Magazine. Aside from Cex's
stellar Role Model LP, which was recorded over two years ago, we
have little indication that Kid606 and friends have much to offer us at
all besides scatological humor (Blectum from Blechdom) and abstraction
for abstraction's sake (Kid606 and Electric Company).
In the never-ending search the press has mounted for a new genre to
"discover", however, Kid606's label has received almost unanimous praise
for a myriad of reasons. Some of the reasons are well founded,
admittedly, but they have nothing to do with the music. IDM, a genre
renown for faceless producers and mystery surrounding releases and
working methods, has received a sort of kick in the pants due to the
Tigerbeat6 attitude of punk rock electronics and accessibility. The cult
of personality crafted by the European sensibility that the music is
more important than the person making it has fallen by the wayside a
bit, in Tigerbeat6's attitudes. Cex maintains an online journal that
details his journey as the "#1 Entertainer" in the world. That is what
Tigerbeat6 is essentially about, in the end. Entertainment. Because
behind all of the distortion, DSP, and the attitude -- what remains?
Not much.
In this first release for the Violent Turd label, what seems to be an
offshoot of Tigerbeat6, Kid606 has enlisted a group of friends to remix
Missy Elliot songs. This is not unlike the release of a few years ago
where a group of Kid606's associates remixed an entire NWA album. This
sort of bootlegging has come into vogue lately. Either in the mix of
Kylie Minouge's "Can't Get You out of My Head" and New Order's "Blue
Monday" at the Brit Awards last month or the mix of Christina Aguilera's
"Genie In a Bottle" and The Strokes' "Hard To Explain", we have a
impressive mixing of genres and a new genre that is slowly being born
with the rise of technology and its ease of use. Even with the brilliant
ones rising to the top quickly, there are tons of failed experiments. In
the end, the genre, if you can call it that, has either no staying power
or all the staying power in the world.
Obviously groups will continue to make songs and bedroom producers,
liking them or disliking them, will have reason to put them on top of
each other in a gleeful deconstruction/reconstruction, all too
reminiscent of the Cubist art movement. Unfortunately, no coherent
statement is really being made here besides "I like this song, a lot. I
like that song a lot. They sure do sound alike ... what if I put them
together?" The unauthorized remixes of Missy Elliot are even worse,
critically, however. Since there is no mixing, only remixing, what the
groups that have undertaken remixes are basically saying, as Simon
Reynolds so eloquently puts it, "We really REALLY like these Missy
Elliott records. If only we could be this cool, if only we could pull
off the avant-garde yet
massively popular/potent balancing act too."
As any person paying attention to hip-hop will tell you, there has
been an amazing amount of innovation in the production lately, initiated
by both Timbaland and The Neptunes. Timbaland has taken the hip-hop
paradigm out of the programmed four-four beats, into a syncopated
territory rife with instrumentation that would sound absolutely absurd
out of context, but within his framework ends up sounding new and fresh
even with questionable talent rapping over it (Magoo? I know he's a
childhood friend, but you could do so much better, Tim!).
Aside from the philosophical context and meaning behind the
productions, it all comes down to the final product -- the music. There
are six proper remixes contained on the disc, aside from the final
seventh unlisted track which contains five minutes of silence and then
approximately forty minutes of distorted static filled music that
reminds of Merzbow. The first remix is by Kid606, himself. A large
portion of the original is heard, with an amount of distortion and
digital effects added on for good measure. The bleeps and bloops that
are added are fun and interesting but only leaves the listener asking
the question, "What's the point?" It certainly doesn't sound better than
the original. Structure is destroyed in favor of keeping the listener
off balance and ready for anything. At this point, however, the most
interesting thing that any of these artists could do would be to
actually write a straight up pop song. With the advent of punk rock,
everyone and their brother decided that forming a band would be both
easy and a good idea. Now that software has begun to be cheaper or easy
to pirate; the fans of electronic music and, now, pop have begun to form
their own bands posting their newest compositions on mp3.com in the
hopes of being discovered.
The DIY ethic of the new American IDM is admirable, surely.
Unfortunately, the ethic has been almost mythologized by the public and
the press and, as a result, pop has taken a backseat in the minds of
many music fans. Sometimes, however, it would seem that pop does much
better for itself than the underground reworking of it -- as it does in
this case. After all, pop matters, right?
