| -----Original Message----- | From: J. T. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2003 11:57 AM | | i'm not trying to draw a line in the sand, my feelings | arent all one way or another, just talking y'know..
Exactly - I'm coming from the same position myself. While I'm prepared to come out and advocate these newer technologies, on the other hand I hold the notion of performance in pretty high esteem. The bad thing with newer tools when it comes to performance, IMHO, is that a lot of the things that are being "done" by the performer are happening on a screen that only the performer can see. When DJs like Jeff Mills, Claude Young, Short Kut or Dummy are performing, though, the nature of the technology they're using is that the audience can see everything they're doing. Every touch of the record, every move on the faders, it's all there before our eyes. Because I come from a background of "traditional" DJing, if I were to ever play a live set using Ableton, I would think hard before doing it about what I could possibly do to make it look even minutely as interesting as a decks'n'mixer DJ set... because it's true that someone bent over a laptop and clicking a mouse isn't much of a spectacle. On the other hand, I was at Basic Channel's PA at Lost back in the mid-1990s, where they performed the whole set while hidden behind a white sheet, and I don't think I've enjoyed any live PA more than I did that one. In terms of performance aesthetics, the person who most does it for me right now is Matt Herbert (his set as Radioboy at Ether last year was really fun to watch - he managed to give the impression that the music was controlling *him*, rather than the other way around...) Brendan www.lunarselector.com
