techno-Kate

["Brian J. Dillard" <dillardb@pilot.msu.edu>]

Continuing the dance remix thread, I think some fine points have been raised 
in terms of the crucial factor being how much input the original artist has 
and HOW electronic instrumentation is used (I'd quote directly but I get the 
digest and my mailreader is sloo-oo-ow.)

To further develop those points:

1) _It's unfair to judge a genre by its most well-known practitioners._
I'd say that a large portion of non-dance music is shit. To judge electronic 
music on the basis of a bad Mariah Carey remix is to judge all jazz music on 
the basis of a Kenny G. album.

It's the same thing with electronica. Anyone who knows anything about Tricky 
can tell you, his music is about as far away from stereotypical notions of 
disco OR house OR techno OR rap music as you can get. It's like comparing 
Paul Auster's novel "City of Glass" to a low-grade pulp detective novel. The 
one is an avant-garde reinvention of the other. Tricky's music IS hip-hop, 
but it is just as tied into the tradition of Kate and Peter Gabriel and co. 
as it is that of Erik B and Rakim and De La Soul.

2) _It ain't the instruments, it's how you use them._ 

I, for one, like a nice bit of imaginatively produced, functional dancefloor 
fodder. But when it comes to stuff that I will return to time and time again 
in the future, I like music that is more full of passion and artistry. And I 
STILL think there's a goodly amount of techno and jungle that fits that 
criteria.

To the person who raised the point about TRS sounding fake compared to TD and 
HOL, I couldn't agree more. Kate herself has, on occasion, had her creative 
efforts hampered by incorrect/lazy/uninformed/whatever use of technology. But 
when it is used properly, the results are brilliant. Her two most brilliant 
albums are perhaps her most studio-intensive. She used the technology to 
fulfill ideas and passions and artistic motivations.

Kate, like her spiritual descendent Bjork, often talks in interviews about 
her love of collaborations. And in my original post, that is what I was 
advocating: a COLLABORATION between her and Tricky (or Goldie, or whoever). 
That could mean Kate meeting the man, liking his music, and trusting him to 
take her work and ferret out some hitherto overlooked aspect of it through a 
remix. Or it could mean the two of them hanging out together in the studio 
and seeing what happens. I think that self-production helped her blossom as a 
full-blown genius, but I think, on the basis of TRS, that she has been holed 
up on the farm without outside input for a little too long.

3) _The remix is to modern pop music what the bootleg was to past pop music._
It may be difficult for those who didn't come of age during the advent of the 
remix (I am 23) to appreciate that remixes CAN be money-grubbing shit but 
they can also be brilliant. Ron G. expressed to me via private email his 
disgust with Bjork's promiscuous use of remixes, but I find that I enjoy her 
remixes just as much as I do her b-sides. And she CERTAINLY has a lot of 
input into them, choosing the sort of top-notch techno and jungle and dub 
producers who will create something interesting and new. Ron and anybody else 
are entitle to dislike remixes prima facie; but I think that a prejudice 
against remixes may keep people from discovering the true colors of an artist 
like Bjork.

It's like bootlegs. Look at the Beatles Anthology series: the alternate takes 
tell us something new about the songs. Remixes are the same thing. It's like 
recreating the same song with new producers and seeing how things would have 
gone differently.

Another example: deliberate misreadings of classics. Think of the soundtrack 
to "A Clockwork Orange." Those are Beethoven remixes, plain and simple. Do 
they replace the original symphonies? No, but they're an interesting new 
take. "A Fifth of Beethoven" from "Saturday Night Fever" is the flipside: 
same idea, terrible execution. The concept of remixes is not inherently good 
or bad; it's ALL in the execution.

4) _Back to Tori ...._
My original point was that, although a lot of Tori's remixes have been shite 
(a la "A Fifth of Beethoven"), she is finally getting a clue and at least 
turning her songs over to good remixers (Van Helden). Even better, she is 
directly collaborating with folks--BT is the case in point. I _have_ heard a 
lot of Tori's earlier remixes and they are CRAP. I don't blame people for 
getting turned off. But the girl is wising up. Which is the news I wished to 
share in the first place ....

Brian Dillard
dillardb@pilot.msu.edu