________________________________________________________ /\ . . . . . . . . . /__\ s s e m b l a g e techno \/ music V 1.1 / \S S E M B L A G E rave /\ culture NOV 92 issue editor russell potter rapotter@colby.edu ________________________________________________________ _Assemblage_ is a deliberately ephemeral, occasional, mobile journal that will publish reviews of techno/rave music, raves, dances, along with articles on the social implications of this music (if any). Freelance reviews, signed or unsigned, are welcome. Editorial Staff: Robert Campanell robcamp@well.sf.ca.us (cyberpunk) Michael Pisano mpisano@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu(theoretical articles) Russell Potter rapotter@colby.edu (reviews, theory) Bob Crispen crispen@foxy.boeing.com (record reviews) Frederick Wolf Frederick.Wolf@um.cc.umich.edu (Detroit scene, reviews) Robert Hooker hooker@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu (the theoretical side) Arthur Chandler arthurc@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (reviews, thought pieces) Laura La Gassa laura@usl.com ("The Flux Tube" (NE Rave Scene)) Andy ndc@engin.umich.edu (reviews, scene stuff) Johan Dowdy jwdowdy@colby.edu (reviews) taylor808 TOD3253@ACFcluster.NYU.EDU (tech,cyberpunk stuff) Joe Turner cutter@silver.lcs.mit.edu ("Kickin' Phase" (Tech Tips)) =========================================================== I S S U E 1 C O N T E N T S =========================================================== Columns [Assemblage part 1] : Kickin' Phase: "Techno: The 12-Point Program" -- Errata Stigmata The Flux Tube -- The East Coast Rave Scene as Seen by Laura La Gassa Articles [Assemblage Part 2]: Russell Potter, "DANCE: Music, Body, and the Reign of the Senses" Robert Hooker, "Reflections on the Rave Generation" Arthur Chandler, "Have We Been Here Before? -- Hippies & Ravers, 60s & 70s" Music Reviews [Assemblage Part 3]: The Techno Sound of Berlin, Swamp, Radition, Acid Drill, Lords of Acid, Underground Resistance, World Power Alliance, Sysex, C.Y.B.E.R.F.U.N.K., Circuit Breaker [reviewed by Andrew Crosby and Russell Potter] Rave Reviews Halloween Rave, Greensboro NC -- Reviewed by henders@eos.ncsu.edu ======================================================================== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ K I C K I N' P H A S E ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ b y E r r a t a S t i g m a t a TECHNO: The 12-POINT PROGRAM ---------------------------- TECHNO - the sound of ten million whining chainsaws melted into a disco record with a bad attitude on speed. Must be easy to make one o' them there thangs, eh? Hrmph! About as easy, as they say, as root canal -- but fun nonetheless, and you CAN do it if you want to. Techno, while ultimately very diverse, is actually a very rigidly defined style. Your first Techno song, if you're not a latent genius, will probably sound pretty derivative; don't fret, and don't give up if you suddenly realise your creation uses the same changes as the latest Twin EQ disc. Just as a lot of rock sounds interchangeable (on the surface) because it's just two guitars, bass, and drums, a lot of Techno ends up sounding similar because of the ingredients needed to make it. "Writing" a Techno song doesn't follow any of the same patterns as writing a pop song. Techno, with very few exceptions, is based on the jam-in-the-studio method of writing: you get in front of the drum machine and keyboard, and you just go nuts. Whatever works, you keep, and then change/modify until you like it (or you hate it and throw it away). If you don't like something, save it anyway; having old ideas around often lets them "compost" in your head, and they may come out later in a different and better form. The process of writing a Techno song is very linear, if you're having a really good day and the muses are with you. A basic drum pattern is created, then a simple bass line is added over it, and then a main chord or sound to fill it out gets laid over the top. Frills can then be added on, such as samples and effects. The samples can come earlier in the process, if the sample is integral to the song. The kick drum is almost always the first thing to be written. Techno uses a beat called "four on the floor" almost exclusively. What that means in english is that for each measure of a song, there are four kick-drum beats. You know, THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP. You can experiment with this, and play around with syncopating it a little. Variety is the spice of life -- but if Fred the Raver can't dance to it, it won't do well. Be inventive but know when to stop. The choice of kick drum is also important; make sure you use a sound that has a good fast attack and isn't flabby or hollow. Most drum sound sources, depending on whatever you're using as a drum unit (you can use a sampler with drum sounds loaded, or a drum machine), will have a variety of sounds to choose from. The Alesis SR-16, for example, has about 25 kick drum sounds. Once you have the kick pattern set, start experimenting with hi-hat patterns and snare drum fills. Use the snare very sparingly, if at all. Keep it low in the drum mix (most drum machines will let you control the volume of each drum individually), and avoid heavy, rock-like drum sounds (unless you are going for a particular one-time effect). Keep the drum line percolating but simple -- the urge to make a very complex drum line is strong, I know, but less is truly more. If you are going for a stereotypical hardcore Techno sound, you will probably want to put that grindy REEET-REEET sound in that everyone and their mother uses (if you're not sure what noise I mean, and through the printed medium I'm sure some people won't, just grab your ancient copy of "James Brown is Dead" and fixate on the annoying buzzy grinding sounds). Take your sampler and the nearest heavy metal record you can find, and sample a bit of pure guitar noise. Just a half-second will do, just enough to loop. (You should read your sampler's manual if the term "sample and loop" confuses you; basically it means "take the sampled sound and have it play over and over and over if you hold a key down". The shorter the sample, the more unearthly the loop usually is.) Pitch-bend that sucker to hell. If you're going for something a bit more housey or trancey, any good analog or digital synth will do. Moogs are nice; Juno 60's are better; Jupiter 6's are worth killing someone for. Go nuts with bloopy and blorpy arpeggiated sounds. If you're lucky, your unit can control how fast it arpeggiates by looking at how fast your sequencer is going (by looking at MIDI information), and you'll have some snappy- sounding acid basslines. If you have listened carefully to *any* Techno, you may have noticed that not only are chords optional, they're usually nonexistant. This doesn't mean you have to make something totally atonal; however, don't concentrate on figuring out how to get from the Lydian mode in the break back to Dorian mode in the main section. The ravers won't care, and so shouldn't you. Most Techno does not vary from one or two chords over the course of a song, so don't sweat it. Vocal samples are fun, but optional. They can either add to the recognisability of a song ("I'm the One and Only Dominator!", "Shut the fuck up, bitch, you can't sing!") but they can also get incredibly annoying if used too much ("...Dominator" and various Public Enemy samples being prime offenders in past years. Hey, anyone remember "this is a journey into sound..."?) A whole book could be written about attempting to match the rhythm of your sample with the rhythm of your song, but in general, don't worry about speeding the sample up if you have to, or slowing it down. Most DJs will adjust the speed of their turntable, anyway. Your song should groove, but it should also change and build. Don't be afraid to put breaks in. "Break" can either literally be a silence of so-many beats, or it can be short for "breakdown", where you strip the song down in an interesting way -- take the kick out, let the piano glide byt itself for 4 bars, or whatever. DJ's like breaks, especially in intuitive places (try to keep things in even numbers of bars) and when they can hear it building. The chances that your record will be played by itself in its entirety is pretty slim, so make it interesting; don't just let it sit there and grind away for four minutes. Now that you understand the basics of the process, you must meet two major requirements if you have ANY pretentions about making Techno: nearly infinite patience, and nearly infinite money. Money first. Forget all the hype about LFO plopping a Casiotone down on tape and having instant success with it; the equipment needed to do all the stuff I just described ain't cheap. If you plan on doing a housey-trancey song (much easier than a hardcore samplefest), you will need: o A sequencer ($200/$400 used/new) -OR- o A home computer such as a Macintosh, IBM-PC, Amiga, or Atari ST ($700/$1500 used/new) plus good sequencing software ($200). o A drum machine ($200/$400 used/new). o A synthesiser ($300/$1500 used/new). Most newer digital synths are MIDI-fitted; some older analog synths are, also. Some VERY old synths may need a MIDI "retro-fit", which can be VERY expensive. o A multichannel mixer ($25-$150/$50-$500 used/new). Four channel at least, six channel is nice. Radio Shack sells a good six-channel mixer; don't beleive anyone who tells you that you need twelve channels. o An open-reel audio tape recorder ($500/$1000 used/new) for sending your gem to the mastering plant. o Buttloads of audio and MIDI cables ($50-$200). This is the hidden cost that everyone forgets about. If you don't want to wear headphones, and your neighbors are 80 and deaf, you can also get: o A PA power amp ($200-$500/$500-$1000 used/new), at least 100 watts a channel. o Two PA speakers which you should call "cabinets" or else you'll look like a total neo ($200/$500 per pair used/new). Make sure they have good bass, and that they'll match the amp you buy. If you DO want a samplefest, then you can also count on buying: o A sampler! ($400/$1000 used/new) Make sure it has enough memory to choke an elephant. Most samplers will have enough to sample about 15 seconds in mono. o Lots of disks ($50) -OR- o A hard disk drive ($200/$400 used/new) to save samples on. Some home computers have "sample library" software and can store samples on disk, and modify them. If you just won the lottery and have money to burn, don't forget your: o Multitrack recorder ($250-$7,000/$500-$20,000 used/new). Four-tracks are useful, but eight-tracks are better for doing some really inventive tricks. o SMPTE time-code reader/writer (if you have to ask, you can't afford it, used OR new). Hook this up to your sequencer and record many tracks of synced-up music. Useful only if your synth is limited or if you want to do VERY layered stuff. You may pick your jaw up from the floor now -- but put it back down because even for bare-bones stuff, getting even 1000 records pressed requires $200 for mastering and EQ, plus five cents per sleeve, plus about $700 for the actual vinyl. IT'S NOT CHEAP. Unless you traffic in stolen goods, or unless you have lots of generous friends with equipment to loan, you will end up blowing close to $2000 on a basic set-up. This is by no means a complete guide; rules were made to be broken and Techno definately breaks a LOT of rules. Read the manuals then throw them away and play intuitively. Listen to a lot of Techno and then put a Patsy Cline album on before you go into the studio. Be calm but take risks. Play things for your friends, and send demos to anyone and everyone. Go to raves and really talk to DJs about what they like to play. Listen carefully to your friends jizz over what they've bought and what they like. Remember: it will sometimes take 20 bad songs before you write that first good one. ...and fer gosh sakes, keep a sense of humor about it all. Ain't nothing less fun than a pompous musician! ======================================================================== The Flux Tube A Column Depicting the East Coast Rave Scene as Seen by Laura La Gassa ======================================================================== This issue's topic: A Raver's Map of the North East Raving on the East Coast often involves a lot of driving, and the core of dedicated ravers will travel anywhere from one to eight hours for an event. This results in a lot of good friendly parties since a portion of the people will have made a special effort to be there, and because the same faces keep popping up, lending a small neighborhood feel to a large geographic area. Interstate 95 links the major cities on the East Coast, and as such links the major rave centers. Let's take a drive . . . MAINE: Way up north in Portland, K.C. and the Sunrise Gang throw raves about every two months. These are generally small (compared to the huge New York and Washington raves) and breakbeat oriented. I have never attended any of these raves, but a reputable raver reports that the last party, CRUSADE held on October 10, was excellent. MASSACHUSSETS: The Boston rave scene as such is pretty much non-existent. A large number of enthusiastic ravers live in and around Boston, but they have been able to have very few rave parties within the metro-Boston area. There are decent clubs with good techno nights (Venus and Axis), but everything must close down at 2.00 am so it's difficult to get an all-night vibe going unless it is at a private party held in someone's apartment. Occaisionally after-hours parties are thrown at underground locations, but these are prone to being busted. I attended a good after hours party Labor Day weekend, thrown by self-proclaimed Boston scene leader Debo and DJ'd by Debo and Long Island's trace god Onionz, but it was closed down at 7.00 am because of noise. The exception to all this is a legal Fridays-only after hours club called The Loft, which runs from midnight until about 6.00 am. The Loft is a beautiful space, and a welcome addition to the now-overrun-by-overly-drinking-college-student Axis, but it lacks the atmosphere and energy of a non-club rave. Debo planned to throw a warehouse rave in Boston proper, but moved the location 45 minutes west to Worcester after someone else tried a non-rave-related party there and got busted at 2.00 am. Worcester has had two other sucessful raves, both called BOLD. I worked the door at the second one, held October 17. Over 160 ravers turned up from Hartford, Providence, and Boston, as well as from the immediate area. The DJ list at BOLD II was spectacular if you are trance-oriented: Dave Trance, James Christian, and Dante. Other DJ's spun breakbeat and acid as well. RHODE ISLAND: Providence, aside from being Rhode Island's rave capitol, is the defacto center for the Boston rave scene. It is supposed to be easier legally to throw raves in Providence than in Boston, and three seperate organizations ensure that there is at least one party in the city every month. Word of mouth tells me that the best raves are the QUEST raves. I was at their first rave and thought it was wonderful. They had an excellent location near a 24-hour donut shop, and allowed re-entry so hungry ravers could fuel up. The music was a mixture of styles, from the hardcore of Adam X and Jimmy Crash to the breakbeat of Mayhem to the trance of James Christian. The ORACLE organisation held their first rave October 9. I did not attend, but heard that there were underage kids blatantly drinking beer outside the front door and that the rave was busted around 3.00 am. The organizer of the ORACLE rave was arrested and taken away in handcuffs for selling food without a license. The third organisation, MICHELANGELO, has also had two raves. Word of mouth says that their first one was really bad, but their second was an improvement. CONNECTICUT: I am under the impresson that Connecticut ravers travel a lot, because I know there are lots of people in Connecticut that rave but I never hear of any raves out there. I could be wrong . . . they could just be very underground. I never claimed to be *that* well connected with the rave scene . . . . NEW YORK: New York seems to always have to do everything the biggest and the best on the East Coast, and raving is no exception. It was announced that the last Storm Rave in New York City drew over 5000 people, but one of the promoters told me that there were only about 1670 paid admissions. This discrepancy seems very odd, because I was at the rave in question and it looked to me that four to five thousand seemed like an accurate count. Offshoots of the Storm Rave Organization frequently throw raves of their own, so there is ALWAYS something going on in the metro-New York area. Since I adore deep deep trance techno, Sattellite Production's raves are a welcome addition to the Storm Raves. This group is based upstate in Poughkepsie, and have had two good parties so far: SPUTNIK and SPUTNIK II. At SPUTNIK there were two dance areas, one featuring mostly hardcore and the other with trance/breakbeat/house. SPUTNIK II featured a wide range of DJ's, opening the night with housey happy breakbeat, moving into hardcore, and finishing off with two of the most amazing trance sets I have ever heard: DJs Rob Sherwood and Onionz should be cannonized. All the Sattelite raves are held in roller skating / skate board parks, which is a neat twist from spending the night in a place with no real bathrooms (okay, so I'm a wimp). Their next rave will be December 5th, and is called EXPLORER I. NEW JERSEY: The New Jersey scene is incredibly underground, so underground that members of the raving community there don't even admit they are part of it. I will respect them and not name names and places here until they get things off the ground and go a bit more public. They've had a run of bad luck lately: every rave they've thrown since August has gotten closed down, and in September their sound equipment was seized. PENNSYLVANIA: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are the rave centers. The two main groups in Philadelphia are the Vagabonds, who host parties in various clubs on various nights around town, and Dead by Dawn, who have held at least two raves in the city. Dead by Dawn's last two raves have had police run-ins. At the first a raver was stabbed (by someone not connected with the rave or raving) outside the rave location, and the second (at a different location) was closed down around 1.45 am. They will try again. I'm not too sure exactly what's going on in Pittsburgh, except that a group of people who I know out there are throwing a nice big rave November 13th. Pittsburgh ravers travel a lot also, frequently going down to Washington and New York. DELAWARE: The Delaware ravers I know usually travel to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington. If anything else is happening, I haven't heard about it . . . yet. MARYLAND: It seems to be easier to stay open late around Baltimore, so several clubs have late night parties with techno music. Also, a number of the raves advertised in DC are actually in Maryland. WASHINGTON, DC: The Catastrophic organization puts on the most and the largest raves in Washington. They get amazing lighting effects, including argon lasers, and draw all the top DJs. I've never raved down in Washington either, but I heard that the last two Catastrophic raves were excellent as far as huge raves go. In warmer weather a number of smaller, simpler, outdoor raves happen under bridges and in parking garages. [END *ASSEMBLAGE* PART 1] ________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________ /\ . . . . . . . . . /__\ s s e m b l a g e techno \/ music V 1.1 / \S S E M B L A G E rave /\ culture NOV 92 issue editor russell potter rapotter@colby.edu ________________________________________________________ _Assemblage_ is a deliberately ephemeral, occasional, mobile journal that will publish reviews of techno/rave music, raves, dances, along with articles on the social implications of this music (if any). Freelance reviews, signed or unsigned, are welcome. ==================================================== BEGIN PART 2 ==================================================== DANCE! Music, Body, and the Reign of the Senses Russell A. Potter (c) 1992 Russell A. Potter This text may be freely shared among individuals, but may not be republished in any form without the consent of the author. 1. The dance as a sovereign gesture. In Georges Bataille's text, _Sovereignty_, he delineates a cultural domain, a domain that is sovereign in the sense that it is neither _for_ nor _about_ anything else. The sovereign, for Bataille, is opposed both to utility and objectivity; it is useless, it disdains use, and it scorns the (bourgeois) world of 'things.' It chooses the present rather than the past or the future; the transgressive rather than the obedient; its domain is excess, the realm of eroticism and the indecipherable. Yet at the same time, the sovereign is crucial, for it represents that share of each society's (and each individual's) life which is unsubjected to the constraints of work, to the endless deferral of desire which is sublimation. Without such epiphanies of unsubjection, society itself would burst under the strain; the refusal of society's boundaries is the (re)marking of those very boundaries. Thus, inevitably, the value of the sovereign is also its undoing, and necessitates its continuing re-doing; it is not enough to dance once, one must dance and dance dance again. Not the dance as a performance, offered for the consumption of others, but the dance of Dionysos, the dance as the social ritual which marks and exceeds the limits of the social. Dance is the supreme gesture of abandon, the embrace of the moment, the abeyance of work and the annihilation of guilt, neurosis, and the burden of the past. If there is a revolt against the continual demand of bourgeois society, the demand to work in order to accumulate things (including leisure itself, insofar as it is a thing), this revolt can only take place in the domain of the sovereign, and its technic will be the dance. 2. Dance: technic of the totality Dance is not merely on the side of the subject (s/he who dances), but also on the side of the object (s/he with whom s/he dances); it is spectacular as well as completely interior. In fact, the dance is capable of holding in abeyance the entire subject/object split. The associated technics of dance, from the earliest times, amplify this abeyance of the subject: incense, masks, hallucinogenic drugs, firelight or dim light, costumes, perfume, the relentless pounding of the beat. Current technology amplifies these technics still more, with strobe lights, lasers, black lights, moving dancefloors, neon, and an even wider palette of drugs. Such was the genesis of technorave music: in the industrial wastelands, whether of Detroit or Leeds, organizers rented disused warehouses, silent icons of the post-industrial wasteland. Portable sound and light systems would be set up, invitations spread by fliers, over computer networks, or by word of mouth, and by a few hours after nightfall the warehouse would be full. The dance lasted, often, till the morning ("rave till dawn," a phrase borrowed from the hip-hop dj's exhortation "On and on / till the break of dawn"), an incursion against the day, against society, against work, against the eternally deferred bourgeois happiness whose promise had long ago whithered in the shadows of vacant steel mills and ghostly factories. Yet this history is but one phosphorescent fragment of the eternal return of the dance; from the dances of Dionysos to the medieval carnivals, from the bootleg whisky and jug-band blues of southern barrelhouses in the 1880's to the prohibition mix of bathtub gin and jazz at 1930's speakeasies, to whenever and wherever the Grateful Dead pulled into a concert, be it the 60's or the 90's. This link between music and the body of the social is no anomaly; if there is any anomaly it is the hypercephalic spectacle of the audience at a symphony, each deeply lost in thought, their limbs motionless at their sides, where any suggestion of physicality (even a sneeze!) is regarded with horror . . . 3. Dance: The loss of self Like the eastern disciplines of Yoga and Zen, the point of the dance is the _loss_ of subjectivity, the immersion of the tyrannical ego in the bath of undifferentiated subjectivity. It is thus necessarily a collectivity of the most profound kind, even more so than riot and revolutions -- for riots and revolutions have their aims, their goals, and are directed to those ends, whereas the energy of the dance is entirely consumed in the polymorphous conflagration of the senses. Sexualities, personas, postures -- all are lifted from whatever 'place' society may assign, and mobilized in the great enactment of the dance, which is both acknowledgement and reversal of all the other 'acts' which one must 'put on' to maintain one's position in society. Thus the place of the dance is anyplace: under the stars, under the rusted i-beams of the industrial bombshelters of the past, under the glow of lasers, black lights, and strobes. The time of the dance is the eternal present of the senses, a deliberate forgetting and abandonment of the myriad threads which weave us into our neurotic fixations with what has been, or will be. For once, all the energy we waste at these devotions is set free, and mobilized into the collective and limitless space of the rave. To see, and to be seen; to smell, to taste, above all always to be in motion: this is the complete abeyance of time and the reign of the _useful_. The time of the dance is no time at all, it is measured only in the endless stream of beats, now faster, now slower, now fast and hard again . . . . 4. Industrial, Techno and the Return of the Carnival In the shadow of the Black Death and the ceaseless invasions and counter-invasions of mercenary knights, the inhabitants of what would later be named the "Middle Ages" celebrated life in the inverted rituals of the Carnival: Anti-Masses were conducted by celebrants who walked backwards and wore the heads of asses; young girls and boys were crowned kings and annointed bishops; men and women exchanged clothes and roles, and everywhere people drank and danced in a frenzy of life, life which declared this day its territory and refused its accursed pasts and futures. The domain of the Carnivalesque was also the domain of the Carnal, of desire unrefused, of the celebration of fucking, pissing, defecating, and puking, of all the human exchanges upon which the territory of the social had set its prohibition. The technologies of this carnival were relatively simple: facepaint made from roots and grasses; costumes and masks of leather, wool, and bark; for the inebriation of the senses there was mead, wine, and ale; for hallucinatory excursions there was ergot, henbane, and nightshade. This is the domain that Hans Peter Duerr calls _Traumzeit_, or Dreamtime; it is the "other" time that continually erupts into the pious days and hours of both sacred and secular calendars. And, when the "middle ages" gradually faded into memory with the incursion of industrial technology, this "time" was for a moment quelled; where, after all, could one stage a carnival among the narrow, sooty streets of the new industrial cities of the UK and the USA? Where it survived, as in New Orleans, the Carnival became perversely the property of the propertied; with costumes and floats consuming thousands of hours and thousands of dollars, the display of the carnival was appropriated from the masses (though drink, at least, and the license of the lewd, was left them). Yet even as it appeared to extinguish the spark of the Carnival, industrial culture could not permanently repress it. Ironically, it was the industrial muse that itself supplied the soundtrack for the return of the Carnival, whether in the mechanical noises and imagery of the 20's and 30's (e.g. _Metropolis_ or the _Ballet Mechanique_) or in the rancorous resonances of Einstuerzende Neubaten, who made music by banging on bridges and hammering on discarded metal tubes. Just as the Carnival had founded its reaction upon the bourgeois-Christian ethos of its day by tearing open a gateway to the pagan past, "Industrial" music attacked the despair of the post-industrial landscape by re-appropriating the very objects that society had discarded: disused warehouses, vacant fields, and abandoned amusement parks. It was bricolage and pastiche from the start, and its beat was provided by the very technologies it mobilized against; in the heart of the machine, it appeared, was a beat, and the beat initiated the very dance that was the undoing of the world the machine made. The Gothic ruins of the 90's, the empty rustbelt caverns of smelters, foundries, and warehouses, thus became the scene of a new cyberindustrial fusion, in which the boundaries between human and machine were deconstructed under the strobes and lasers of that very machine. The capital-industrial machine itself, inevitably, has attempted to appropriate and commodify this new form, and yet it is always _too little_ and _too late_. By the time the music "industry" had figured out how to market "industrial" music, that music had already shifted, mutated, taken on a new skin like some recombinant virus, to once again penetrate the system and begin (re)producing its subversive beats. Acid House, Hip-Hop, or Technorave; all have continued to evolve at an astonishing pace, making new incursions from sites just outside the genre-lines of record store bins (is Consolidated hip-hop? Techno? Industrial? What about Eon? Greater Than One? The Beatnigs?). Similarly, just as 1-900 RAVE hotlines have tried to capitalize the space of ever-changing rave numbers, or high-tech high-cover-charge clubs have tried to divert the curious by making "rave" a thing and selling it by the inch, ravers have mobilized away, finding new venues, new lines of communication, new formats. With luck, and with dedication, this process will continue, and the commodity shell-game will always be a step away. The new technologies make it easier, in fact, to evade commodification; with a small array of machines and mixers that could fit into a bedroom or a panel truck, rave DJ's can stay one mix ahead. In the UK, even as various government ministers condemned "ravers" and "travellers," their condemnations were sampled and set to a beat within 24 hours; in the USA George Bush and Tipper Gore have been relentlessly sampled by everyone from Ice-T to Consolidated to Front Line Assembly. It is difficult to resist the massmedia machine by rebuttal, but via the appropriation enabled by sampling, parody is only a beat away. Long may the hip-hop crews and rave DJ's continue, and long may the dance repeat its refusal of the strictures of society . . . ========================================================================= Reflections on the Rave Generation by Robert Hooker, Chicago Il ========================================================================= I went to a rave and I started to feel old. Here in Chicago it is pretty hip to go to a Rave; most of my friends have never heard of one. In my late twenties, I am in the uncomfortable situation being between two great cultural happenings; hippies and ravers. There is sort of an empty feeling in the middle. I like to rave because it exposes me to youth, but it can also make me feel a little old. At a Rave I don't rediscover my youth but I discover the youth of a new generation that I am not one of, that I don't fully understand. I become very aware that this new generation that is coming of age now, the first post-cold-war generation, is very different then myself and my generation. Also I feel for the first time that I am one of the old people that these kids are the youth that is opposed to me as the old. For young and old oppose each other and even though we try to make up middle grounds (the pathetic "Middle-Aged" is a case in point) you are generally one or the other. At I rave I really become aware of a generation gap that, even though it does not affect myself that much, keeps most of my friends away. The last rave I went to was an all ages things here in Chicago full of high school students all dresses in the latest rave fashion. In fact there was so much Cross Colors and Fresh Jive that it seemed more like a parody of a rave then a rave itself. Though I enjoyed myself thoroughly and love techno music more then anything I grew up with, the rave continued to leave me with a confused feeling that I could not put my finger on. After this Rave my group went to a Punk/Heavy Metal bar by visited by an older crowd. Walking into the bar looked like walking into a crypt, the punks, dead heads and metal heads (we are a generation of heads) look like walking zombies, corpses, worshipers of death in black leather. It felt comfortable to be back among "normal" people. Then it hit me, what it meant to be my generation. Our generation in all its trends was driven by an ever present awareness of death and hopelessness produced by the anxiety of the cold war. We embraced death for what it seemed to be to us; the only future we had any reason to believe in. Death runs throughout so many of our trends, heavy metal, punk, Terminator. Yet this is not the zeitgeist of the rave generation. The cold war was ending when they were in elementary school. But what drives the Rave set in their baggy pants and funky hats, sucking on their glow-in-the-dark lollypops? Consumerism, oralism, dancing? What is in the mind of this first post cold war generation? For a late-twenties such as myself the question becomes how do you read a rave, how do you decode a rave. What in their world are they referencing, what principle, hopes, fears give rise to the rave. What is the meaning to their oralism, their embracing of consumerism, their loose clothing the color of gum additives? But what would have been my answer if I had been asked at 17 for the meaning of my generation and its trends? I could not have answered. Probably no one could have answered. Probably no one can provide the meaning of an social movement while it is still going on. Case in point are the endless stupid explanations of the 60's written during the 60's. Today the rave generation is simply creating raving, they are making a cultural happening occur. They are raving a rave into existence rather then reading a meaning into the rave. Not until they have finished their college years, not until Rave is over and they are faced with a new generation which makes them aware of themselves, will the Ravers find the words to describe what went on, not until it is all over will they be able to tell me what it was the made them what they are, or how they see the world different then I. Then rave will stop being a movement but an influence, a way of looking, a kind of theory. These theories or outlooks on the world are what is left behind by once dynamic vital social happenings, like the skeleton left behind by a dead animal. You can not have both the skeleton and the living body. Probably just as you can not rave and read the rave at the same time. It is only after the hand is done writing that we can read what has been written. Perhaps this is the very essence of what distinguishes creation of criticism- creation is a living, vital process of becoming, a process so dynamic that the bonds between signs and meanings are unable to solidify. Creation is governed play and a desire for fun. Criticism is a later process, only after creative energy has been finished with a thing can we read the meaning left behind. Criticism is concerned with things left us, things that are now absent from direct experience. Criticism is governed by a desire to make the world an object- governed by rules. Creation is interested in the new, the fun, the young, criticism is interested in preservation, tradition, history, timelessness. For now, "Rave" is still an indeterminate word; the Rave scene is still free of the burdensome weight of meaning. We will only be able to read its meaning after it is over. But the same is true of any cultural happening. We can only think about the now in terms of the then. Probably this accounts for such bad name choices for modern trends. We talk about Cyberpunk long after the punks are gone, We say Industrial music when we live in a post-industrial society (perhaps rock and jazz are the real industrial music), we even call our age POSTmodern. We can only think about what is in terms of what was. I have set out to write about raving but have come to the realization that I can not "write", "write" in a deep sense much deeper then just describing, then meaning of raving. For now a Rave is just strange symbols without fixed meaning. the rave isstill the domain of play, of Sesame's Treet and glow-in-the-dark real neat stuff. And this is why the drugs, balloons, and dancing is so much fun; turn off the brain--forget the semiotics of American popular culture is the only way to keep up with the times--the only way to Rave. ============================================================================== HAVE WE BEEN HERE BEFORE? HIPPIES AND RAVERS, 60s and 90s Arthur Chandler (arthurc@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu) ============================================================================== When I walk down Haight Street in San Francisco these days, I think of Mark Twain's saying: "History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes." Haight St. 1992 looks a lot like Haight Street 1967: offbeat clothing, street music, vivid posters, dope bums and psychedelic messiahs, tourists cautiously looking for a hip good time.... "Yep," I say to myself, "It sure looks like...." But wait a minute, Mark: "light" rhymes with "night" and "fight." They're not the same thing at all. Are those similarities signs of something deeper -- a common connection between the 60s and the 90s? Is Ecstasy an updated version of Blue Cheer LSD, and is house music just acid rock in new clothing? To the point: do the similarities reach down to the heart, or are they just a matter of surface style? Do the spirits of the era rhyme? To someone who has lived through both eras, the most striking similarity is the music scene. When the tribes gathered in the Summer of Love, they were called by he music: Santana, it's A Beautiful Day, Jefferson Airplane, the immortal Dead and, beyond all others, the Beatles. The hippie tribes gathered at Fillmore West, the Avalon Ballroom, the Family Dog, and in the green spaces of Golden Gate Park. They got high and danced to the music and the lights. Now the music calls again. . . Now they gather in Toontown and in dusty warehouses, and on the beaches. They get high and dance to the music and the lights. But at first glance (and first hearing), raver music doesn't rhyme with psychedelic music. Lyrics don't matter as music to the ravers as they did to the hippies. When and if the human voice does shout through, it's often sampled and jacked out of the human realm. Words and phrases are cut up and recombined, and the original thought and emotion are lost or transformed into a kind of mantra (listen to what Orb does to the words of the breathless narrator in "Little Fluffy Clouds"). House and techno seem harder, digitally insistent; the spirit that pervades the tribal music of Cyberia is that of the microchip. At the concerts, the music makers have changed their instruments. DJs have replaced live musicians jamming down on their axes. Here in San Francisco, Jeno and Garth rules; here Grace Slick and Paul Kantner rocked the crowds a quarter of a century ago. Moving from one turntable to another, adjusting the mix, rocking one record back and forth until its music is ready to be wedged in under the current sounds from the other turntable -- the DJs moves are far away from the lead guitar smiling at the bassist, both of them trading licks and feeding them to the keyboard player as they all take the pulses from the flailing drummer. But though the musics and their makers look and sound so different, the rhyme of the 60s and 90s is real, like "light" and "bright." Above all, around all, there is Community. A strong sense of community pervades the core of the raver community, as it did among the hippies. The community is held together by a common (if not quite universal) sense of tolerance and fellowship with the whole world. Like the "Gathering of the Tribes" in Golden gate park in the 1960s, raves are open to everyone. Well, maybe not quite everyone. The rhyme ends here. dancing with a thousand raving brothers and sisters under the full moon on the beach or under the mutating fractals uncoiling on the projection screen -- "One world! No color or gender barriers! Come, Unity!" shouts the yes-voice within the raver. But later, as he/she chills out and appraises other people, a small worry whispers, "Who are those suits and high schoolers coming across the bridges and through the tunnels to *our* rave? And that too chummy dude over there who keeps trying to score E -- ten to one he's a cop." The hippies always had a sense of community and, in their Higher Moments, a perception of being part of the whole human community. But (except for the dopers who took too much speed) the paranoia about outsiders didn't set in late in the movement -- and it proved to be one of the dissolving agents of the hippies community. "Suspicion on our part justifies deceit in others," said La Rochefoucauld; and once the worm of suspicion gets going, it eats he heart out of a community. There are signs that the worm may be loose in the raver world. There exists,among a number of ravers, a kind of clubbiness, a sense of being "in" and wanting others to stay out. The exclusiveness isn't race- or gender-motivated; it seems o emerge from a kind of inner-circle hipness. "Don't let them -- Joe Lawyer and Jane Realestate, Freddie teenybopper and Marvin Mediaman, Professor Anna List -- into the rave scene, or it's all over for us!" "Your name's not down, you're not coming in." The community becomes a members-only party, where acceptance into the "real" rave community is dependent upon knowing the "right" people: the ones who know where the real action is tonight, and who let you know when and where it is ("And don't tell anyone you can't trust!"). This suspicion of outsiders leads me to one final point of difference -- the last non-rhyme -- between hardcore hippies and ravers. In the 1960s, the ideal philosophy of the hippies could be summed up in the phrase, "ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE." Love for another person, for the music, for whatever in life you've given your heart to. Love is all you need. The song said it; and, for better and for worse, many of them/us believed it and tried to live up to the possibilities and consequences of that idealism. I don't find this common ground of idealism among ravers. or maybe I should ask the question (and end the essay) thus: How do YOU fill in the blank? ALL YOU NEED IS __________________________ [END OF PART 2 OF *ASSEMBLAGE* 1.1] * A S S E M B L A G E * [ p a r t 3 ] ============================================ 1. R E C O R D R E V I E W S ============================================ AC = Andrew C Crosby RP = Russell A. Potter ============================================ Title: Berlin 1992: The Techno Sound of Berlin Arists: Various Label: Tresor/Novamute (dist. Tommy Boy) When I saw this record in a store, it struck me that it was the first record I had seen in a long time that had the word "Berlin" with no "West" before it. And, for those who have been wondering what's been happening musically in post-Wall, post-West Berlin, I can't think of ant better answer than this record. It was, after all, in West Germany in the late 60's and early 70's that the idea of original electronic popular music was born at the hands of kids like Edgar Froese, Klaus Schulze, and Roedelius, and it was there too that Kraftwerk first found an audience. The DJ's on this compilation were probably still in diapers in 1973 when Schulze's _Cyborg_ redefined electronic music, but they've learned a lot from him, and from other German electronic musicians. Unlike Belgian techno, which to my ears often sounds like the excited noises a five-year old who had come accross a digital keypad by accident would make, these Berlin DJ's make sophisticated electronic music with a full range of beats, pulses, samples, and waveforms -- not to mention machines. These guys are playing with a full deck, and it makes a difference. The cuts on this compilation are incredibly diverse; though they tend towards the moderate-to-trancey range of BPM's, there are harder and faster beats as well. What sets many of these cuts aside is their dense blend of melodic accents; for instance Cosmic Baby's "Cosmic Cubes," which takes a fairly standard beat and enriches with just the right amount of Schulze-like melodic arpeggios and accents, often running a sleek treble over a pulsing bass loop. For those who like a harder sound with phased cymbals a la Front 242, Vein Melter's "Hypnotized" offers that and more, giving a trancey feel over a relentless 138 BPM. Along the same lines, Phuture 2's "Futurhythm" works similar magic over a clashy industrial beat reminiscent of KMFDM. If house techno is more your style, Microglobe's "High On Hope" hooks you with housey piano and soul vocal samples, only to bust your mind open with incursions of high energy, culminating in a tour-de-force sequence of 120 BPM madness that changes its feel every thirty seconds or so. The gems of this collection, though, are the two long trancey mixes at the end, 3 Phase's "Open Your Mind" and Mindgear's "Don't Panic," which together clock in at just about eighteen minutes. Both feature long sequences of trance beats with weird little loopings of samples that keep you moving _and_ keep you guessing (shouldn't be rare, but is). All this says a lot for Tresor, which is both a club (located near the site of the Wall itself, in the basement of a what was (before the war) a department store) and a record label. This is (so far as I know) one of the first Tresor/Novamute records to be licensed domestically via Tommy Boy, and I hope there will be many more; a comp such as this would be worth $20, but it's great to be able to pick it up for $12.99 As taylor808 said earlier on the ne-raves list, "it's total trancey, acid, blipcore. I can't get enough of it . . . spacey, blippy perfektion." [RP] Title: Swamp Artist: Influid-1 Label: Discomania (?) This track is really old, I suspect, having heard that it was on some MTV-Europe sampler or something. I like it though; the a-side is a pretty cool acid stomp, typical bubbly analogs with a KILLER intro sound... kind of a buzz that modulates on each beat. The first mix has the most variety; it changes style several times during the song. On the b: The track prohibition is really boring, a kind of funny sample of some guy saying 'women having sex with animals' but very predictable. The second mix of swamp is much more sparse than the first, fast and furious with that droning buzz all the way through . . . nice. Both versions feature samples from Flash Gordon ("Lower them into the swamp"), but not overused, very subtle. Cool. [AC] Title: Meltdown Artist: Radition Label: Radikal Records This came out over the end of the summer, sort of a trancey hardcore. Cool sounds mixed up with a fast beat; the crash mix is long and ok, though I like the intro on the other mix better; it starts out really slow and works into a frenzy. The other track, 'Help Me,' is ok too, but nothing spectacular; it sounds cool when you mix it with other stuff. [AC] Title: Acid Drill (remixes) Artist: Edwards & Armani Label: Music Man (?) Three mixes here, all of them pretty cool. It's hard acid stuff, original and nice and fast, featuring a guy yelling 'left right left right left right left,' which sounds sorta military, but remains feisty and hard. The sounds on this aren't your typical analog bubble, way cool. [AC] Artist: Lords of Acid Title: I Must Increase My Bust (remixes) Label: Caroline The Lords are at it again, and this maxi-single, clocking in at over 44 bust-expanding minutes, is definitely worth it. There is _some_ filler (a "Noise Mix" and "Distortion Mix" that basically sound like some other person playing around with LOA effects), and two nearly indistinguishable dub mixes ("DD Vocal Dub" and "The Lords Like 'em Large Mix"). But the real star of this disk is the "'Rock-n-Rave' mix", which extends the cut to over seven minutes of coolly acidic sounds, switching from one breakbeat to another and boldly going into sonic universes where the Lords had not gone before (this remix is credited to Mark Picchiotti and Terri Bristol). The LOA were always in danger of being a sort of one-noise act, but this cut shows what can be done with their underlying beat and a slim core of guitar. The other outstanding mix is the Plus-8/Richie Hawtin "Detroit Hardcore Mix," which again completely revamps the sound, peeling back the relentless LOA fuzz and substituting an old-school, spacey techno sound reminiscent of early Detroit scene acts like Cybotron. All in all, a pretty good disk, though some chains seem to be regarding this as a virtual EP and are charging as much as $9.99 for it. Let's hope that LOA keep experimenting in this vein, or that if they don't, that they'll let others keep on making remixes like these. Maybe LOA should make like Psychic TV and just let rave DJ's remix everything on their albums (as with PTV's _Beyond Thee Infinite Beat_)... we'll just have to wait and see. [RP] Title: World 2 World Artist: Underground Resistance Label: Underground Resistance Wow!! The acid jazz sound from Nation 2 Nation returns; this is a way cool ep. It opens with "Amazon, " a slightly tribalish number that has a cool chord progression and builds with a beat that comes and goes twice. Other tracks are "Cosmic Traveller," a nice housey space jam with a cool chime sample. "Jupiter Jazz" features a funky analog bassline with little wispy solos done with a sound I can't really describe, a high-pitched tone that twists yer head around. The last track has a kind of acidic feel to it, very trancey, with cool samples of a female vocal and analog blips coming and going. The whole ep has a very organic, earthy feel to it, samples of water and stuff I think help. Excellent. [AC] Title: Seawolf, Kamikaze, Belgian Resistance Artist: World Power Alliance Label: Underground Resistance Basically another subproject of the UR people, these tracks were all released as single 12"s with one song on one side, and a little manifesto pressed into the other side, talking about techno unity and stuff like that. Seawolf: WAY AWESOME ACID BLEEPER: driving hard beat, with little submarine-like blips fading in and out and then ambient whirrs and grinds forcing their way through. Kamikaze: has samples from a WWII documentary -- ok, but not great. The sound of the airplane crashdiving is cool, but the track doesn't have enough substance or anything profoundly new. Belgian Resistance: I like this, a warm bassline with a heavy beat and feel, with little scrape/whirr sounds coming in and out, very acidic. Pretty good overall. My main complaint is that these three tracks were all released separately. This would have made an awesome EP, but instead makes a cool single and two merely ok singles. At $5 a pop (and a lot more for those in other countries), it just isn't worth it to only get one song each, in my opinion.The back plate pressed with the message on the vinyl is cute, but useless. I read it once and don't care anymore; I can't play it, so what's the point? [AC] Title: Sysex EP Label: Plus 8 This ep (on green vinyl) opens with "Intro,'" a long analog improv that is pretty cool but not that listenable (or useful from a dj perspective). World Domination is great; it builds from intro into a throbbing hardcore acid track, with grindy analog ringing bouncing all over the place. "Intruder" is my favorite track, with a fast hard analog beat and a cool melody made from a 'bomp' kind of sound, hard and cool. The b features three more tracks: an ambient bleepy thing with no beat, and two others that are ok. Didn't grab me, but then i haven't listened to it enough for them to really grow on me, as plus 8 stuff often does. Mind buggin 909 just seemed a little empty; anyone could program a 909 to do this, what's the point of it? Overall, if you like the really hard plus 8 stuff then this is quite a buy; otherwise, it may be a bit too sparse and distorted. [AC] Title: Life at the Wunderbar Artist: C.Y.B.E.R.F.U.N.K. Label: Radikal Records Despite their name, C.Y.B.E.R.F.U.N.K. is not very funky. Like many other Belgian techno acts on Radikal, they use a lot of that "BLEEEP BLEEP" sound. Both the beats and samples are relatively unimaginative; particularly annoying is the relentless "police whistle" sound. "Part 2" is virtually identical with "Part 1," except for a whispering voice that intones "no revolution" (there's certainly nothing revolutionary in _this_ mix!). The CD contains no other tracks or remixes, making this disk a real waste of money no matter how you cut it. Radikal seems to have a very good distribution network in the U.S.; too bad they don't have much good music to distribute (how many times can you hear "O Fortuna" before you get sick of it?) [RP] Title: Circuit Breaker EP Label: Probe Take a drum machine and pipe it through an array of distortion filters. WHAMMO this is really cool. My significant other gave it a thumbs down at first, as she felt that it sounded like it was recorded improperly or something, with a fuzzy, muted feel. it may be a learned taste, so I can't totally recommend this to everyone -- but it sounds great to those who like incredibly hard stuff, and it is very new and unusual sounding. The entire ep is made of three tracks, each made from rhythms that are distorted to the core. [AC] ====================================================================== 2. R A V E R E V I E W S ====================================================================== Halloween Review : This past Saturday, there was a wonderfully crowded MasquaRave for Halloween at a warehouse in Greensboro, NC. The site was within view of the downtown scape on a misty night, and along the downtown's central road, Market. We brought some jackolanterns, and left them by the side entrance as a crowd toy. Inside was a large well-lit foyer. Beyond, in the gloom, one passed the entrance to a huge dark area and proceeded up a concrete ramp into the sparkle of an intellabeam. On this second level, all to the left, was a warehouse/woodpile stage for the spinners, flanked by speaker towers, two more intellabeams, and two smokies. Into the space and left, were people in costume mingling about the ramp railing, two more speaker towers, and on back to a stairwell, bathrooms, a chill-out room, and drinks sales room. This early in the night the lights were held low, as people filtered onto the central floor, lit sporadically by glowsticks, false vampire teeth, and blinking bicycle safety lights. As the evening progressed, it KICKED into high gear; at midnight the DJ simply fitted the groove and SLID ! Unfortunately, there were several early technical errors. Twice or so a dancer bumped into just the right spot of the "stage" to skip the beats, wrongly skip I'll say as they were fun-skipping along normally. Then the WORST occurred...power--sound and main lights--went down for what seemed an eternity, but which was probably three minutes. The crowd was more than helpful, filling in the gap with wild hoots, patterns of whistling, some continuing dance moves, and some house-clapping. We all knew they were busting their butts behind the scenes to get it going again. The only downside was that this pause occurred twice more in the evening. Several people were drinking or NO2ing, but most seemed to simply be sampling, not sloshing, so the scene stuck well all throughout the night... For the Most Incredible Surprise-Its-Cool-Afterall Award, they played a clear stanza from an easily recognizable pop diva ( was it Samanta Fox?--they blur). Just enough to make you think, "rave's Over, go home NOW!" Then they syncopated the beat of that song with some other beats and that was the end of your worries. That set of beats went SO hard, SO broken, and SO long that we knew the DJ just HAD to be dying!! THAT was true break beat to the max! They should be congratulated, and they were!! An old friend of mine said that she was singing that night, but...unbeleivable for this scene. Well, I stood corrected when, at 3 AM, Nichol meshed her voice with the DJ-beats, backlit by yet another intellabeam. This Rave was Planned And Executed!!! Even the 3AM announcement was coy : "there is a police line just up the road, but it has nothing to do with us. And the wonderful lot owners have opted to allow everyone to exit out of the back of the parking lot.....or you could just stay here and party with us somemore....heh-heh... ;-) " And as seven o'clock approached with the last song, the last two hundred continued to jam and hug in the misty dawn filtered through heavy ceiling windows. --Peace, h.e. hansel-dude (henders@eos.ncsu.edu) [END of *ASSEMBLAGE* 1.1]