Thomas D. Cox, Jr. wrote:
its like they lose the history of the music altogether,
what happened in the past is no longer relevant, the only thing
that matters is what will happen tomorrow. IDM has some great
classic albums: surfing on sine waves, selected ambient works,
etc. but now the music has gotten to the point where none of it
even sounds remotely connected to its past. i guess thats the
appeal of the whole IDM thing to some people, to constantly
progress without looking backwards, but personally i think it cant
last too long. everything in music eventually doubles back on
itself, and IDM will be guilty of it one day as well.
I'd qualify this by stating that, while music (and the general
zeitgeist) tends to loop back somewhat, there is also an overarching
sense of "two steps forward, one step back." And if you reach far
enough back into cultural history, you'll find a lot of things that are
just plain dead - no one's lamenting the lack of influence of 13th
Century French chanson or Notre Dame organum on contemporary music.
That music is gone - it exists solely as an historical object.
So in that sense what happened in the past IS no longer relevant. And
if you embrace IDM in a modernist context - that what's important is the
lack of precedent and the constant striving for the new, then you can
make a case that that music is as strong as ever - not in spite of but
BECAUSE of the fact that it lacks a connection to its roots.
This isn't a discussion about objective quality - I don't even try to
have a stand on those issues one way or another. It's just a claim that
some people could make exactly the claims you've made above, but use
them as a defense rather than a criticism.
My $.02,
--
Dennis DeSantis
www.dennisdesantis.com
