Nü electro: boring.

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What's up with this electro revival? Why has new electro become so trendy all of a sudden? It seems like every record with (fake) analogue synth sounds and vocoder vocals is getting high ratings in trendy magazines. I thought electronic music was about progression, not regression. Now don't get me wrong, I love old school electro; but that's because it had a genuine feeling of experimentation and sincerity. This new thing is just recycling old sounds, and to make it worse, with an ironic distance. I hate nostalgia and irony in music. Kill irony! Like the KLF said: "Irony and reference points are the dark destroyers of great music." I guess that's why they ended they're career.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 6 March 2003 11:17 (twenty-three years ago)

It's a sincere reflection of an insincere world.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 6 March 2003 11:26 (twenty-three years ago)

Should instrumental dance music reflect the insincerity of world? I think not. When I'm dancing, irony is the last thing I want to feel.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 6 March 2003 11:33 (twenty-three years ago)

I think Electroclash is really cool. About time the early 80s become fashionable again. The more retro, the better, as all (entirely) new styles of "music" from the last 15 years have sucked anyway.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 6 March 2003 11:35 (twenty-three years ago)

What you call "irony" is inescapable anyway, and dancing knowingly is just another way to dance.

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 6 March 2003 11:40 (twenty-three years ago)

What I mean with "irony" is when electronic musicians are afraid to make truly emotional music, so they use all sorts of distancing elements to make their sound "intellectual" and not "sentimental". Just listen to Aphex Twin, Mouse on Mars, Squarepusher etc., and you know what I mean. I guess there are some electro artists who do their thing for the simple love of it, but I still think recycling old styles wholesale is not what electronic music should be about.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 6 March 2003 11:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Give us a snare rush!

― Tom (Groke), Thursday, 6 March 2003 11:54 (twenty-three years ago)

Irony is the opiate of the masses.

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Thursday, 6 March 2003 11:54 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess there are some electro artists who do their thing for the simple love of it, but I still think recycling old styles wholesale is not what electronic music should be about.

The only way to get synthpop back is to recycle it, and synthpop is an electronic style of music.

Electroclash is the best thing that has happened to music since Britpop (which, in turn, was the best thing to happen to music since the New Romantics movement)

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 6 March 2003 11:55 (twenty-three years ago)

What's up with this electro revival?

Are you sure this is 2003, not 2000?

That aside, I agree that the retro/irony thing of electroclash can get tiresome - but the current crop of German 'big room' electro tunes (Tomcraft "Loneliness" & "Overdose", Taucher "Millennium Bitch", Syntax "Pray (Dave London Remix)", Blank & Jones "The Hardest Heart (Suburban Remix)", Anne Clark "Sleeper In Metropolis 3000") is a great alternative. Plus they're actually danceable.

― Siegbran (eofor), Thursday, 6 March 2003 12:06 (twenty-three years ago)

I think I've heard "Sleeper in Metropolis", and it was the best electro track for ages. Perhaps everything is not yet lost. As for the year 2003, I know this electroclash has been going on for quite some time, but I live in a small and backward country, and electro has only recently hit our trend papers and clubs, which is really annoying.

By the way, what does that "clash" part mean in the word "electroclash"? I sure hope it would clash into something interesting.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 6 March 2003 12:22 (twenty-three years ago)

"Clash" as in "Berlin vs New York".

― Siegbran (eofor), Thursday, 6 March 2003 13:56 (twenty-three years ago)

My listening probably isn't broad enough to make this call really confidently, but I'd venture that only about a quarter of the stand-out electro stuff is actually ironic -- and even with a lot of that, it feels like some sort of productive irony, not an irony meant simply to distance the speaker from what's spoken, but a traditional irony meant to convey a particular point. (And with some of it it's not even an unpleasant irony, more of a cute one: cf French house.)

But the stuff I like best of this doesn't strike me as ironic at all, not a scrap.

I also think contentions that this is simply recycled early-electro are overplayed, have taken on an air of truth that examination doesn't always uphold. There are certainly a lot of people making loving recreations of vintage Italo-disco, yes, but I guess I have yet to hear whatever early-80s singles sound quite like the stuff on Bpitch Control or Ersatz.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 6 March 2003 16:52 (twenty-three years ago)

I sort of agree, although I find a lot of Squarepusher quite 'emotional;' - "I wish you could talk", "iambic 5 poetry" - and a lot of Aphex quite the same "girl/boy", "melodies from mars", some of his recent piano stuff.

I do believe there is a bridge to be made between electro bleepage and something a bit more "sentimental" and quantifiable without getting near UNCLE territory or sacrificing the harder edges of the Warp set and beyond. It's sort of what I'm working on at the moment. I am a man who likes both Gram Parsons and Photek and as such I'm going to damned hardest to combine the two.

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Thursday, 6 March 2003 17:17 (twenty-three years ago)

Adult. are cool and i have a soft spot for ARE Weapons, but so much of this stuff is ultra-tepid, soulless and just plain lame. I'm tired of the rich and the beautiful and their shitty catwalk music.

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:23 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess I have to ask, Roger: what particular stuff are you thinking of?

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:32 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm tired of sweeping generalizations.

― disco stu (disco stu), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:39 (twenty-three years ago)

I only ever "got" electroclash when I heard Ladytron's "Seventeen" out recently. I've now compiled a retrospective disc to listen to because the whole thing is pretty much, OVAH.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:46 (twenty-three years ago)

talking about Crossover, WIT, Miss Kittin, etc.

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:48 (twenty-three years ago)

I've been struck by the exact opposite: by how much nu-electro is yearning, wistful, emotional. I think you really just need to hear more stuff. Borneo and Sporenburg, for instance or "o.o.a.a. (shake it)" by Zimt. The cold tech of the beats will often just amplify the humanity of the voices, like they're lost children imprisoned in ice cages and this song is the last known transmission from their sunken lifeboat. there's something VERY FUCKING "AI" about a lot of it.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:49 (twenty-three years ago)

sorry that should be "u.o.a.a" (the name comes from the vowels he breathes during the chorus - "you oh ah ah")

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:51 (twenty-three years ago)

miss kittin is really good dj though - she plays all over the map, too.

agreed Spencer...

― disco stu (disco stu), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:52 (twenty-three years ago)

map meaning musically (because geographic would've worked as well).

I wouldn't classify Borneo and Sporenburg "Nu Electro"- 'smore like Nu Kompakt.

― disco stu (disco stu), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:54 (twenty-three years ago)

True (though they works in an electro set v v well!)

"stupid boy" by grom

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:59 (twenty-three years ago)

Tracer, I question the AI-ness of electroclash tracks. To me, AI would be cold, calculating, futuristic and pristine; whereas electroclash (or my preferred term: retroclash) is messy, cartoony, overwrought and even clumsy. pulse versus crash if you will.

but as before, I withhold judgement til I download your recommendations.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:59 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, if anything, hopefully more people will have turned back to those early Human League and Heaven 17 albums and discover what they've been missing.

Though, anthony's comment back then was otm: "electroclash is mainly for people who are too ashamed to admit they liked the 80s".

― donut bitch (donut), Thursday, 6 March 2003 19:25 (twenty-three years ago)

The cold tech of the beats will often just amplify the humanity of the voices, like they're lost children imprisoned in ice cages and this song is the last known transmission from their sunken lifeboat. there's something VERY FUCKING "AI" about a lot of it.

I agree with this statement, but there are two problems I have with newer electro that come out of just this issue.

1. The stripped-down, exaggeratedly cold/synthetic style of electro (which i see coming out of the mid/late 90s: Dopplerffekt, Adult, Drexciya, Ectomorph, I-F) seems to limit itself to exploring the same Gary Numan, man/machine, imprisoned humanity territory. And once you've heard it a few times, you've got the idea. But people seem to keep rehashing the same ideas. Dopplereffekt's Gesamtkunstwerk is really the only cold electro record I need.

2. The earlier electro/Italo disco records are so camp! Man Parrish, for example, is not sinister or foreboding, but joyful, celebratory, and funny (the sounds--giggling, dogs barking, the pitched up "hip hop bee bop!", the lyrics--more like early hip-hop party starting "we are going to rock you"). I know people are doing this too, but I feel as though the camp gets pushed as far out of the way as possible to get more of that arty, serious, self-conscious Ersatz Audio style.

So I guess I object to what seems like a willingness on the part of newer electro producers to paint themselves into a stylistic corner, rather than exploring the variety of expressive potentials of electro.

That being said, I've never heard Zimt or Grom, so I'll check those out. Maybe I'm wildly off the mark?

― Matt B. (Matt B.), Thursday, 6 March 2003 19:44 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, Roger, please don't take Crossover or WIT as representative of anything. The Crossover record doesn't even seem to think it's good itself (it's basically a coy toss-off), and WIT are a peculiar cul-de-sac, though I question calling them soulless at all: something like "Hold Me, Touch Me" can only be called "soulless" if you sort of arbitrarily decide that they couldn't possibly mean it seriously. (I mean, look, it's a bit weepy sigh called "Hold Me, Touch Me!")

I can see those criticisms being made against some Miss Kittin stuff but not all of it.

After the TokTok thing Tracer is now my most valued source for electro and post-electro recommendations, so it's off to soulseek for me.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 6 March 2003 19:52 (twenty-three years ago)

also, I never stopped listening to the early 80s stuff. New Order's electro pop just seemed like the farthest you could go with it and all of these retroclash people now are just making it sound rough on purpose without any real purpose other than to be simply regressive.

terrible sentence, apologies.

all that said, I really like certain songs. However, that whole Adult. album is really terrible. Although I do like the new one, "Don't You Stop" thanks to Nabisco for that one.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 6 March 2003 19:53 (twenty-three years ago)

Ha, Spencer, I am very curious how you'll respond to the forthcoming Adult full-length.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 6 March 2003 20:17 (twenty-three years ago)

I'll have to recheck that Grom lp...

I've recently done a mix that has some definite "nu electro" moments. If anyone's interested I could post the tracklisting later (or mail you a cd).

― disco stu (disco stu), Thursday, 6 March 2003 20:38 (twenty-three years ago)

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