Women in electronic/dance music

Some things I just want to highlight...

i think sometimes music fans regard musicians in the way that creepy folks regard the objects of their desire in their real lives, and the idealized notion of who they ought to be can result in further enamoring or a whiplash sense of betrayal and subsequent hatred or condescending disappointment. maybe it's more pronounced w/dudes and how they regard female musicians.

A thousand times yes. Though music fans do this with artists they admire of both genders, most men are so homophobic as to utterly repress or deny the "creepy" aspect of their obsession with male musicians, in a way that they feel totally justified in doing to females. (I fully cop to being guilty of this phenomenon myself, with the genders reversed - but it's amazing how much more flack I get for that aspect of my fandom.)

it's interesting that pretty much all of the techno women we've been talking about also (co-)run their own labels and other projects - maybe to gain recognition even within a female-friendly scene like techno, you have to be the sort of focused and driven woman who will also take on the business side of stuff?

This is something that Frances used to say a lot, before she basically friend-dumped me.

Maybe it's that you have to be the slightly insane and driven enough to survive in an all male environment without being run off. (How I often feel in threads like this.) Maybe it's because traditional labels (mainly the majors, but the indies are just as bad) where they say, in all seriousness, things like "we'd sign you but we've already got a female artist." If you want to do things on your own terms, in your own way, without being squished into someone else's box, you have to create your space. Especially if you have to be an independent minded person in the first place to even *survive* doing this stuff.

Anyway, I'm gonna try to stop carping and check out some of these artists.

I suppose it's very different for the other people on this thread, because it is all just THEORY for them. Whereas this is the kind of shit that actually affects me every day of my creative life.

A thousand times yes. Though music fans do this with artists they admire of both genders, most men are so homophobic as to utterly repress or deny the "creepy" aspect of their obsession with male musicians, in a way that they feel totally justified in doing to females.

This is totally true, and I think it's more obvious and emphasized in largely male-dominated genres like electronic music, where there's not too many women to obsess with.

You'd be one of the non-homophobic non-repressed ones tho I take it Tuomas?

Yeah, but I don't generally obsess over musicians, male or female. Except maybe Marc Almond and Grace Jones.

Maybe ILX can arrange a meet'n'greet

So far, I've liked Ada and... erm, didn't catch the name of the artist with the light fixture the best. But that could be down to genre familiarity more than anything else.

I always get caught out by the trainspottery hair-dividing nature of the genre categories. I know one has to have labels with which to assign one piece of music's relationship to another, but I'm just not familiar enough with the terminology of electronica to have any meaningful discussion.

Oh, the artist with the light fixture just got really, really good. I like the use of the stereo field and the kind of slippery noises that ricochet about. What genre is this, oh hair-splitters of ILX? ;-)

Add Estroe to the list of producers I had no idea were actually female. I'm not sure what you'd call her really, just straight house music really.

i would like to see more (any?) f/f and m/f duos.

I don't think I even understand what "house" music is any more. It meant something completely different in the late 80s/early 90s, didn't it? There's not one single "OOM-tish" in that entire track. It's much more organic and textural.

kate, that's estroe. i'd just call her techno i guess. she fit into minimal when that was released, i guess, but hardly rigidly so.

xps

xxp there really was no-one who gave a shit about that last Miss Kittin & The Hacker album was there (me included)?

it was rubbish, but the miss kittin solo one last year was surprisingly great!

I'm listening to more Estroe stuff on YouTube, yes I like this. A lot.

"Not everyone understands house music. It's a spiritual thing. A body thing. A soul thing"

(^_^)

Um. OK, I don't understand house music then. Keep 'em coming, The Lex! I really enjoy the video linkage, good to have them all up in a line to listen to at work.

(Do you have to understand something to like it or enjoy it, tho? perhaps another thread.)

Sorry, not related to the post, but just thought I'd stick it here for clarity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WpERMtL-AY&feature=PlayList&p=C40218B3F32E55D4&index=0&playnext=1

Just my little "joke", nothing personal.

Anyone like Vera's stuff? Only just heard her because of her remix of clan destino's last single, moodsupport, really love this! 'hooked up with da drums" is pretty good too

And Miss Fitz/Mayaan Nidam, too.

oh shit yeah i knew i was forgetting someone - really enjoyed the maayan nidam album this year. good late-night stuff.

yeah i like vera a lot, cherry blossom. will definitely check that remix. the first LLFO was one of my favorites from last year (ultra spacey minimal house tool)

i love vera, she's probably my favourite out of the whole oslo camp. very tracky in an aspect music/melchior productions sense. great dj as well.

how comes kate bush never comes up in these discussions? the dreaming is one of the great fairlight albums imo

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2099/2068101929_e5ccb65484.jpg?v=0

http://www.lgblog.de/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/delia_derbyshire.jpg

beate bartel from liaison dangerouses?

http://paulineoliveros.us/site/files/Image/PO_Pieter_Kers.jpg

delia and pauline, yes?

also a fan of ursula...

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/ursula%20bogner.jpg

gah http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/ursula%20bogner.jpg

and we can't forget daphne!

http://lh6.ggpht.com/abramsv/SKzrVrB3o-I/AAAAAAAAbAE/sWqhCTcIA9M/s640/Daphne276.jpg

johanna beyer
clara rockmore
bebe barron
pauline oliveros
daphne oram
delia derbyshire
cathy berberian
ruth white
alice shields
wendy carlos
eliane radigue
daria semegen
joan labarbara
annea lockwood
ruth anderson
maggi payne
maryanne amacher
laurie spiegel

― Friday, August 27, 2004 5:49 AM (4 years ago)

micheline coulombe saint-marcoux
else marie pade
beatriz ferreyra
pril smiley
priscilla mclean
laurie anderson
mireille chamass-kyrou
monique rollin
megan roberts
constance demby
suzanne ciani

that's through 1980

+ annette peacock
laetitia sonami
hildegard westerkamp
cynthia webster (have not heard her stuff, but she founded Synapse

Um, psychgawsple, isn't Ursual Bogner actually Jan Jelinek? And therefore not actually a woman?

Oops, I mean Ursula Bogner, of course.

as in Usual Boner? sorry, read it that way...

ALSO: cannot believe i fucking forgot ZEENA PARKINS.

also Carla Kihlstedt, from Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Tin Hat Trio=== yeah, trad instrument but she uses lots of processors and pedals, etc.

Also, I've only read the recent posts, but nobody seems to have mentioned DODDODO yet. Not doing a vast amount at the moment, but she did play a show earlier this year, so still around.

Um, psychgawsple, isn't Ursual Bogner actually Jan Jelinek? And therefore not actually a woman?

from what i know this is just speculation, since jelinek was behind the reissue, etc.

also maryanne amacher deserves high honors for pulling off the feat of being the only artist who can consistently make me physically ill when i listen to their recordings

^^^fwiw i mean that as a compliment

Also, I've only read the recent posts, but nobody seems to have mentioned DODDODO yet. Not doing a vast amount at the moment, but she did play a show earlier this year, so still around.

― emil.y, Thursday, July 2, 2009 1:57 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^truth!! 100% incomprehensible 100% entertainment

What the fuck was that burst of vitriol in aid of?

In fact, that's pretty creepy and more than slightly stalkeresque to not even write your own burst of vitriol, but to dig up and quote someone else's words from, like, several years ago? I kind of have some sympathy for Tombot, considering what he was going through at the time he was writing vitriolic stuff like that but to dig that out and repost it in a thread that has nothing to do with it is almost borderline psychotic.

..................................

Drawing a line under that,

Anyway, I think the reason that no one brought up such goddesses as Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram was that it would be nice if this thread concentrated on people *currently* making music.

Barging into this thread only to say that I wish both Solex and Mira Calix would release more albums (yes I know they're still working, but still)

Followups to pinknoises.com ?

(replying to 2-day-old posts time, Mira Calix xpost synchronicity)

Re Anja Schneider - I have seen some people dismissing her work as the product of her various co-producers.
ellen allien got a lot of the "so her boyfriend produced it?" remarks

Yeah, this seems a common thing with, ahem, Women In (not just) Electronic Music. The number of Autechre fanboys who'd get very upset about Mira Calix being terrible dull uninventive and not like their heroes at all, oh and by the way clearly Sean Booth writes all her tracks... well then why aren't they sparkling Autechresque genius? You can't have it both ways!

(I have no real axe to grind for her, but have read many IDM heads rant about her out of all proportion to her music, which I found a bit dull but hardly distinctively terrible or "the first bad act on Warp" as I have seen claimed, and not really shifting too many undeserved millions as far as I noticed)

also on the UK side of things is mary anne hobbes

I don't even know if Hobbs is another example of this, since I've heard "oh she just likes whatever her producer tells her is hot", but on the other hand her show seems so faddish that it almost made sense. And then I felt dirty for thinking that, since it's such a common dismissive trick.

hobbs has a lot of cred in the dubstep/uk bass scene, at least. "faddish" - people's taste changes, scenes come and go, esp the underground ones that she covers.

forgot akiko kiyama yesterday too...nothing on youtube. youtube is so bad for some of these.

I love the way Mira's music can be dry and unfriendly and academic, a lot of the moaners hate her because she doesn't pander. That said, her last album was a lot more colourful and conventionally pretty and generally all-round pleasurable.

Why does she need her producer to tell her something's hot in order for her show to be faddish? Has she not ears of her own - or eyes - to read the blogosphere to tell her the same thing?

I think the argument was that her show suddenly became predominantly dubstep at the same time as getting a new producer. No idea if the second part is true (suspect not, now I've written it down), but as I generally care for dubstep less than the technoish end of things I'd noticed the former.

But I'm sure a lot of other people's listening habits did the same, and it probably is just down to her own enthusiasm, and some genuine enthusiasm for new scenes and strains is good to hear on the radio, especially now most of that support seems to be bundled off onto 1xtra or whatever.

The number of Autechre fanboys who'd get very upset about Mira Calix being terrible dull uninventive and not like their heroes at all, oh and by the way clearly Sean Booth writes all her tracks

Are they a couple then? Really glad I don't bother fucking with IDM msgboards or whatever, people who are *really into* the genre kind of seem like the worst people sometimes. I did however see a nightmarish clusterfuck when someone called Aunt Acid (who eventually released stuff as Syntheme, who I mentioned on the locked thread) uploaded some tracks on the Planet Mu forum - cue 100 douchebags convincing themselves that this was another Aphex pseudonym