♥☮☯♫ PC MUSIC ♫☯☮♥ ☺☺☺ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°✌

what a load of shit. it wasn't a fad and it didn't "know that" itself. it had a massive influence on the ensuing years and it didn't come out of nothing either, the people making it were around beforehand - many of the people involved moved on to do other things.

if you even bothered to read my posts properly, LG, you'd see i made this exact point only about a page above. but a big part of electroclash AT THE TIME was about toying with ideas of disposability, plasticity, the ethereal, faddiness - which all went towards the dance music press (Jockey Slut, Mixmag) taking the bait and deriding it as being a style-over-substance passing trend. of course it didn't turn out that way because electro, 80s-retro and a lot of the latter themes went on to permeate so much of the coming years.

as for "hinged almost entirely on retro" - how about 90% of house and techno music p much ever made?

how about no?

great rebuttal. "no".

but a big part of electroclash AT THE TIME was about toying with ideas of disposability, plasticity, the ethereal, faddiness

it was fashionable and talked about fashion. this is not the same as "ironic" or "knows that it's a fad".

dance music has always been conscious of itself and referred to itself. there are probably thousands of records which include the words "house music" or "techno music" or whatever. see the two youtubes i posted - two p fundamental basic classics.

"a lot of questions have been raised, about this new dance craze, called acid."

great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".great rebuttal. "no".

also i read jockey slut at the time, just fyi as someone who actually knows about this music - and they praised electroclash and had a feature on its enduring influence a few years afterwards.

i would say the derisory comments were more from clueless outsiders.

Skimmed 20 pages of searching the ILx archives for mentions of electroclash in date order and I'm only as far as Oct '02; I mean, N1tsuh/Tim F/Andy K/Tom/Jess/(LG!)/etc (& uh Momus + Ott if that's to yr taste) were talking about this stuff in an intelligent fashion that gainsay yr received stereotypes, DL.

dance music has always been conscious of itself and referred to itself. there are probably thousands of records which include the words "house music" or "techno music" or whatever. see the two youtubes i posted - two p fundamental basic classics.

"a lot of questions have been raised, about this new dance craze, called acid."

that's so far removed from anything we're talking about here though. it's not the same thing at all. the whole point of acid house at the time was that it was futuristic, decidedly non-retro, non-referential, non-ironic, because those 303 acid sounds had never been conceived before, nor had any equivalent precursor come before it. similarly, a huge part of early house and techno (Juan Atkins, Drexciya) was future-facing, sci-fi-centric. electroclash used the past as its main jumping-off point; continually referencing the past, and deliberately making a deal out of its own retro-futurist outlook.

2 men look at the same hat one says thats alpine and the other says its too big

feel like there's tons of self-referencing in nearly all of the umbrella genres, if you like

ie you could easily fill a whole 24 hours listening to dance tracks about dance music, ditto metal songs about metal etc

also i read jockey slut at the time, just fyi as someone who actually knows about this music - and they praised electroclash and had a feature on its enduring influence a few years afterwards.

i would say the derisory comments were more from clueless outsiders.

― bureau belfast model (LocalGarda), Wednesday, June 10, 2015 2:24 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In that case, we obviously read different articles by different people in different editions of the same magazine at the time. There was definitely a backlash against electroclash, same as there was praise. And it's the same as PC Music. My point is, they're both being hailed/denigrated in much the same way as each other and for very similar reasons.

Most of the electroclash people I spoke to back then seemed pretty sincere, if provocative. I don't recognise your description of it dog latin. The backlash iirc mainly focussed on Fischerspooner's absurdly large record deal and accompanying hype.

I'm sure AG Cook comes across as sincere in interviews or if you speak to him IRL though.

Anyway, this is starting to get awry so I'll drop this line now.

Something I did like by PC Music was that video of a Danny L Harle DJing in front of a white-screen with booming commentary over thet top and a man dressed as a skeleton interrupting proceedings at regular intervals. Funny, weird, subversive and surprisingly not-too-smug, which made a nice change.

backlash against electroclash

backlash comes after the event. has nothing to do with perception at time

perceptions at time an be read on a number of sites including ilxor.com and electrocla.sh

backlash
ˈbaklaʃ/Submit
noun
1.
a strong negative reaction by a large number of people, especially to a social or political development.

you can't really link to ilxor.com and a specialised electroclash site to gauge general popular opinion at the time really can you? none of us can. but i definitely remember early articles in mixmag/JS being a bit 'lol, wtf is this stuff?' when electroclash first broke in, what, early 2001/late 2000?

OK, will check out that clip - out of curiosity, what else should I watch or listen to from PC Music so that I'm not missing anything in my blanket dismissal of them?

you could compare ilxor.com with ilxor.com and electrocla.sh with pcmus.ic

this song is the single biggest current factor in my defence of pc music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn7NT1dbem4

a huge part of early house and techno (Juan Atkins, Drexciya) was future-facing, sci-fi-centric. electroclash used the past as its main jumping-off point; continually referencing the past, and deliberately making a deal out of its own retro-futurist outlook.

― hongro strulkington (dog latin), Wednesday, June 10, 2015 2:33 PM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

juan atkins... he of "jazz is the teacher"

we could talk about what we think electroclash was, or we could talk about a perception of what strawpeople said about it at the time, none of whom appear to be here to defend the point of view we are attributing to them.

xxpost really like broken flowers by him too.

Record above is causing feelings of anxiety

The higher the proportion of written words to seconds of sound, the greater the abomination. Much like the EOY poll, this is the sound of flora and fauna being destroyed to make way for a new housing development. Each year there is a new fad and a new style, but the result is the same, the destruction of the environment

finally some sense

depressing that dog latin's inexhaustible vapidity has outlasted a lot of the music being referenced.

who are you anyway?

Danny L Harle - In My Dreams

Why are vocals are so.... not good? Is this part of the shtick?

why are you being so rockist about pop?

is it pop really? it's indie music innit.

Huh? This doesn't really sound like pop to me. The whole thing feels and sounds like a parody of pop music, hence the crappy vocals. And the lyrics...

Well, why do I like it as music, then? I think it's gorgeous.

you lie to yourself, imago.

I think maybe this music was designed to produce anxiety in way that electroclash wasn't.

tbh I've gained the distinct impression that ILM is full of reactionary pop snobs who believe in pop's proper values and who feel ~personally violated~ by any sort of lo-fi production values or musical intricacy

300 pointless posts by nightfall

listening to this song that imago describes as "gorgeous"

what I'm hearing is an infantile Jamie XX song with terrible vocals

I do not think this is "gorgeous"

You'd get those chord-changes and synth lines in a Jamie XX song? Kthx

Well, why do I like it as music, then? I think it's gorgeous.

― the discussions, the slanging matches, the banter, the lot (imago), Wednesday, June 10, 2015 11:14 AM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's spelled "bourgeois"

I also feel like someone listened to early Basement Jaxx and went "the problem here is that this isn't shrill enough"

to be fair, it wasn't

Is there such a thing as terrible vocals? Or just vocals you don't like? I suppose terrible vocals occur when a vocalist fails to do what they think they're doing, hut I don't think this is the case here.

The vocals sound "terrible" or crappy as an inherent part of the production strategy to me. They're deliberately out of tune and out of time, and then excessively auto-corrected to accentuate the fact. The euphoric lyrics "that's the feeling, I want it forever, all the birds sing, they sing together" is presented not only as completely fabricated and synthetic, but flat and banal; the vocals are utterly at odds with the content of the lyrics.

I mean, I really don't see how you could read it as anything other than a parody, at best, a blank parody, but still.

You don't think that there is any sincerity in the lyrics? That the lyrical sincerity plays off the nervous, melancholy production and tune to evoke something a bit more complex? You think it is just parody?

They're not out of tune, that's just how white British sing.

STOP TALKING ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE LIKE THEY ARE OF ONE BODY AND ONE MIND ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE ONE OF THEM FUCKING JESUS

you heard him, if you're white stop fucking jesus before you start to post

There's a kind of psychedelic aspect to what they do, which is the most appealing and possibly the least pop. But even that isn't especially pushed forward far enough to make it really grab me.

In all seriousness, are we really moaning about manipulated vocals in electronic music today?

I don't see how you can hear those synths and come away with flat, banal and parodic. Is PC Music's problem the privileging of the synth over the holy Voice?

Is PC Music's problem the privileging of the synth over the holy Voice?

its problem is the sound it makes

actually on-topic: vocal quality is subjective and out of the purview of this... discussion, but the problem with that song upthread isn't the vocals, it's that it sounds like an already bad stargate track sped up to get around copyright filters