motorik

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This term is inextricably linked to Neu! and its offshoots, for understandable reasons, but where has the style progressed to since then? This thought was inspired to by one of Ned's Muslimgauze reviews on AMG, which quite rightly described the style of the recording as a kind of ethnic motorik (the exact phrase escapes me). To me, the term conjures up hypnotic, supple rhythms, with an overwhelming sense of propulsion.

― baboon, Monday, 3 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

It's a word that is very very overused in reviews, esp. in the NME

― electric sound of jim, Monday, 3 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

ethnic motorik

I hope I didn't put it like that per se -- might need a rewrite! What I was hamhandedly trying to get at is that Muslimgauze definitely has (or rather had) a sense of, indeed, propulsion-via-trance, something steady and potentially steadily evolving, though many Muslimgauze compositions obsessively focus on one key rhythm with little or no variation throughout.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 3 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

Maybe motorik beat wasn't really meant to progress. One of the things strange about Neu's music, for me, was how it sort of came from nowhere, and only made any sense within the confines of their records. That beat, it's just so simple and hopeless, I don't know that there's much else to be done other than trance into a stupor.

― dleone, Monday, 3 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

I've always thought of Motorik as either Neu's "Hallo Gallo" or Can's "Mother Sky". The feeling of the beat is very much like driving 60mph, in constant 5th gear over segmented pavement. Or at least that's what I always think about when I listen to them. Actually Loop's cover of "Mother Sky" is even more evocative.

― Spencer Chow, Tuesday, 4 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

It's the precise opposite of "heavy".

― Kris, Tuesday, 4 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

Rather than any feeling of "motoring" down a highway, it suggests to me the piston in the actual motor under the hood or a mechanized hammer on a factory assembly line.

― Curt, Tuesday, 4 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

three years pass...

i was listening to electrelane's the power out tonight, and it got me thinking about motorik. i had always considered motorik to be an essential part of electrelane's sound, and the biggest reason why i like any song except for "the valleys," which is just generally pretty and interesting. so everything is clean with electrelane's motorik, putting them more in the neu! camp than the can camp. but what's weird is that all the things i thought that neu! made extreme and awesome in defining the motorik sound seem somewhat to be done to an even greater extreme by electrelane, to no good effect.

i guess i thought that motorik = clean and repetitive and precise. electrelane's drums have super-clean production and theyre totally repetitive enough. but they almost sound TOO PRECISE! if the beat sounds like a casio keyboard beat, and motorik is supposed to aspire to mechanicalism (mechanism?), why does it come off to me as a little amateurish in a bad way, and not the perfect example of motorik? have they made an aesthetic choice, an even stricter aesthetic choice than the normally cited prototypes did?

WHAT IS MISSING? IS "SWING" AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF MOTORIK? jaki from can swings, there's no doubt. thats why he's not exactly THE MOTORIK DRUMMER. i always thought that it was dinger's swinglessness that made him the prototype - now electrelane comes along, working for approximately the same aesthetic, and swings LESS, and it's like "eh, we wanted mechanical, but not THAT mechanical." what is it about dinger's drumming that makes neu! motorik, where can and electrelane (and a billion other bands; e-lane just brought the thought to mind) subtly diverge?

in the other thread, dleone mentions an actual beat like this:
++-+++-+++-+++-+++-+++-++ kick
--+---+---+---+---+---+-- snare
+++++++++++++++++++++++++ hats

is THIS motorik? what else will we call motorik? what minimum standard must it meet?

― petesmith (plsmith), Wednesday, 16 November 2005 06:13 (eighteen years ago) link

it's been a while since I spun that electrelane album but I think I see what you mean. it was very straight-ahead "boom-boom-thwap-boom" iirc, whereas with dinger you get those little fills here and there for variety... possibly the source of the "not quite a machine" quality? it's a tough one to work out. you are right about jaki though, definitely too swingin', even on "mother sky". he's definitely out on his own tangent though.

I love that dinger himself calls it the "apache" beat! THERE'S ALREADY A PRETTY GOOD "APACHE" BEAT, THANKS KLAUS.

― revolting upstairs (haitch), Wednesday, 16 November 2005 06:40 (eighteen years ago) link

dleone's description of the motorik beat matches what I always though it was:

Snare on 2 and 4, and bass drum on every 8th note except for where the snare hits.

I don't think the hi-hat is essential to the beat, but if it is there, it wouldn't sound right doing
anything except for every 8th note or every quarter note.

― Zach S, Wednesday, 16 November 2005 06:55 (eighteen years ago) link

Motorik is just Kraut chug.

― Mestema (davidcorp), Wednesday, 16 November 2005 10:15 (eighteen years ago) link

I prefer Motornik.

― Lady Totteringby-Gently (kate), Wednesday, 16 November 2005 10:22 (eighteen years ago) link

motorik is static, but only to a degree. it's the most obvious element of the beat, sure, but it's still essentially human, and does actually swing. i've always thought it was the imperfections and sliiiiiiiiiight variances that make it interesting to listen to - like, it's so precise that you actually notice the little changes even more. to use the manmachine thing, it's an analog mechanism, not a digital one.

― ZR (teenagequiet), Wednesday, 16 November 2005 15:02 (eighteen years ago) link

keep on chooglin

― detoxyDancer (sexyDancer), Wednesday, 16 November 2005 15:20 (eighteen years ago) link

sexyDancer OTM..motorik is just the way Germans choogle.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 16 November 2005 15:21 (eighteen years ago) link

fifteen years pass...

this is one of the funniest threads on ilm

― Karl Malone, Saturday, 30 January 2021 22:12 (three years ago) link

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