« Summer is sprung | Main | Does a bat beep in the dark? »

Out of the fray

gz1.jpg

Back from MUTEK, with round one of reflections posted on Pitchfork, under the unsubtle title, "The Month in Techno." And what a month, at least first eight days of it. I've got a suitcase full of dirty clothes, some 500 photos to sort through, and more promos than I have time to listen to, but mostly I just want to go back to the live set from Galoppierende Zuversicht (pictured here) and figure out which passage swept my brain away like a shady van with tinted windows. Styro2000 did have some amber-colored buttons on his homemade gizmo... Coincidence?

gz4.jpg

gz3.jpg

gz2.jpg

Comments

nice mix, got to it thru blentwell.. compliments from italia, check out my mixes on omnidrive.blogspot.com!

nice mix, got to it thru blentwell.. i publish mine on omnidrive.blogspot.com, feel free to check them out!

Nice piece for Pitchfork P, you'll have to carry the instant-Mutek coverage this year, I'm no longer doing the daily ramble on the fest -- rather I'm considering the return of acieed house .. (for e/i) .. Do you really hear it as new? I enjoyed the Swiss duo and Atom's collaboration as you did, but doesn't this sound all so similar to a mid-90s techno? Perhaps it's more or less hearing a bit of the MidWest influence, as it seems much of what was heard at Mutek this year was undertaken some 10 years ago. Is this a decade too late or the prescient showcase of what should have happened regenerating the future? This IS of course our present, but isn't acieed's haunting return simply techno's electroc(l)ash moment?

It may have been a better dance party, but was it at all laying out the cutting edge for electronic music as Mutek has managed to do the past few years? (Unless that edge is its retrogression ..).

I mean the Swiss duo to me sounded like Prototype 909 live.

What a DJ brings -- I like how you opened with this -- is historicism and the narratology of continuity and rupture. A DJ spins not only the blend of the year's crop, but the remixing of the old with the new, to see where we've been and where we're going. Mutek, by eschewing DJs, has also unfortunately eschewed its own historical tangents, and this year I can't help but feel that it seems to have fallen for the make-up of the past .. because it has neglected an important segment of its past: the dj as part of the electronic circuit.

On other notes and levesl, nice subtle cuts on Ricardo's fade-away. I hope the V. reasserts his time in the studio and decides to honour his contracts -- these music careers are never as stable as anyone thinks.

Good to see you, albeit briefly.
Keep it up.

best, t

great article philip - next best thing to being there ;)

so pete doherty and ricy v - seperated at birth?
www.plasticbag.de/junk/villalobos_des_monats.gif

nice one!

nice article! i was "there" but i was busy interviewing everybody all the time. zuversicht were quite adorable when we filmed 'em... i'll send you a copy of the video if you like!

wow, that foto of Villalobos, las drogas destruyen!!!!. Im so bummed out missing mutek this year, oh well, next year, with bells on. saludos.

"Ricardo Villalobos, one half of the headlining duo Sense Club, had "missed" his flight and/or "lost" his passport (perhaps the Libertines are looking for a backup laptop player?)"

that's the funniest thing i've read all year.

eji! te extrañamos, te veremos el año que viene, seguro....

LOVE the pictures, too.

Dear Philips,

Yes, thank you. We are so glad everything went so well. Did you fly in an airplane? We hate airplane food.

Your truly,
Charles Fat

Great article in Pitchfork...
your writing is always on point, and super detailed - you reminded me of things I had forgotten, which are recalled to the front of my mind upon reading. Equally funny, the PLURy comment made me laugh! :)

yes, i liked the plur comment too. have seen anyone type that out in a while, and never thought i'd see it on pitchfork.

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)