Respect the roots of techno music, or the tree might fall on top of you!

Posted on: August 20, 2004

It's no secret that the electronic world of techno music is still burgeoning and growing shoots and leaves in a variety of directions, spawning subcults of subgenres and substyles every what-it-seems-like fortnight. Like a brilliant symphony of firecrackers exploding across an already beautiful Aurora Borealis, the variety and diversity of what is one freakin' YUGE umbrella is staggering. Not to mention how electronic sounds have infiltrated — or more recently, boldly marched into — all manner of other kinds of music, from country to pop to rock to rolling on… and need I say the instrumental section of most hip-hop, which encapsulates not only synthesizers (i.e. Timbaland's take on the acid house sounds and his stuttered swing beats which bring to mind the jagged breaks of drum 'n' bass) and sampling (this one goes without an explanation)? To channel Ben Kingsley via proxy of Conan O'Brien, "Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!"

It's no surprise then, that it is really hard to catch up with the present which bridges into the future. And by extension, that makes it all the more difficult to trace the roots of the music, and in a parallel way, enjoy what came before because we are so used to the beefed-up sounds of today that many younguns think that Kraftwerk sounds thin and tinny without even stopping to think of the context of the times.?Oh, how we take things for granted! Yes, we have plenty of room of improvement, but we've come such a?long way, baby.?We live in a hyper-age of attention deficit. Next! Well, the pioneers pride themselves on their in-contrast-to-today beeps and bleeps, and perhaps that's the point. A stylistic beauty unique to them which heralded synthesizers as being part of pop music's repertoire of instrumentation during a time where most of these music-making machines were associated with academic experiments which the people by far and large cannot relate to.

There is no room for ignorance in a TECHNOlogically-based music form that prides itself on attention to technical detail and inscrutable knowledge of digital facts, plastered all over the mind's ear like a beehive full of angry buzzers that has just fallen on top of a poor critter (take your pick: whale, porcupine, or amoeba). Clubbers talk about the trance of today and the house of here and there and the progressive which is oddly regressive, and they know what exists NOW, but they do not know of names like Kraftwerk, Larry Fast, Can, Perry & Kingsley, Juan Atkins, and onwards. Oh, perhaps they've heard of them, and the words do convey a message but remember this: the music is a message all its own, and it deserves to be heard. With digital technology such as the internet (capitalize it if you wish), finding music from previously in the timeline is no great chore, and one must not make excuses to search out "classical electronic music" dating back to the 60s and even before — if you happen to have an itchin' for the eerie theremin stylings of Clara Rockwell.

So if you feel tempted to discover more and expand your horizons and vertical/diagonal whatevers, go ahead! Enjoy!?(It's like a family tree, albeit one that may prove to have?far more chemicals involved and illegitimate children than your biological relations.)?Seek out progressive trance before it was called that and was "humbly" known as epic house.?Search for techno classics in the day before WYHIWYG sequencers?or even?the pivotal points where the trains of tech and hip-hop merged, coughing up many an electro breakdance spectacular in the 80s like the Bambaataa-beaten "Planet Rock". You don't have to like it?– and you should NEVER force yourself to — but you should give it a spirited ears open, because you never know what gems you might come across that really move you. It's not ancestor worship; it's paying the utmost respect to the greats of the team who had a hard time getting the novel electronic sounds out to the public. And guess what? The next generation will say that about us too.?All good things in time.

Also, I wholeheartedly recommend that you read interviews with today's luminaries and look up who they looked up to, and track it back from there. Not only do you get a better appreciation of where X DJ or Y producer is coming from, you'll be able to fill in more pieces of the puzzle of your own listening preferences. Don't forget Google and Wikipedia!?Speaking of information authorities, here are a few of many sources I, an eccentric autistic,?am pleased to learn from:

the allmusic database - Slow to navigate, but the one and only! Link one thing to another and your associative thinking will improve impressively.
fye - A music store connected to the above and has plenty of sound samples. Note my emphasis on "sound samples" to come.
Ishkur's EDM Guide - Full of snarky fun, but read the disclaimers first. The audio samples make this CHOICE!
Modulations - A documentary which I've watched several times. Not as spastic as I hoped it would be, but solid. Serious electronic music references are rare because the genre is still young, so stay tuned…
120 Years of Electronic Music - The name says it all, but the only way you'll really get it is by listening to the music. Thankfully, sound samples are provided. There is NO substitute for the actual music, never forget!
hyperreal - I've mentioned this before, and it is a super-valuable/invaluable archive. It covers more recent times up to the bulk of the early and mid-90s, but with precocious 11-year-olds getting into the groove, they were in diapers then like rave babies. And Kraftwerk must be MECHA-DINOSAURS. LOL.

From these pages, you will find oodles of further links to follow — ain't hypertext and the World Wide Web?a beauty for being such a beast? So who are Torley Wong's personal favorites of the old vanguard? Here's a sampling of ace memories: Yellow Magic Orchestra's "Rydeen" (this is not the original version);?the lo-fi-before-lo-fi-was-cool expressions of Rob Hubbard;?w-w-Wendy Carlos's Switched-On Bach; Vangelis and his "Chariots of Fire" antics and beyond, which everyone knows the tune of but how many people can name the composer?; Orbital's "Satan" (God bless them); the big, brassy tubular bells; Jan Hammer's soundtrack to Beyond The Mind's Eye, a certain Tangerine Dream album; and Yanni's Keys To Imagination?which still ranks in my book today as one of the crowning achievements of melodic, emotional electronic music.

Please DON'T namedrop the same albums that other people do if you've listened and found you don't actually like them. Don't contort to pressure to conform and?"be cool" because?you're a unique individual with?tastes all your own.?So don't pretend, just be you. It's one big musical buffet, this techno music palette. You may not like every dish but none of them are particularly lethal or poisonous (unless you play them at high volumes and kill your hearing ), so give each nook and cranny a try and come back for seconds, thirds, ad infinitum!