> -----Original Message-----
> From: robin [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: 03 February 2004 15:09
>
> i think there is a lot of looking back to previous musical movements
> happening at the moment... it does make me wonder where things can
> go in the future....
>
> ....which is the whole point, right?
Definitely. Since around 1998 I've had this worrying vision of the
future of techno music as being merely another retro/revival scene,
where we all get minibuses down to a venue and dance around to
tracks that are all over fifteen years old, with *nothing* new
played at all. I'd hate that!
The fact of the matter, though, is that as time goes by the amount
of recorded music available to any particular listener just grows
and grows. Imagine it was the 1960s, when a lot of styles of music
were simply uninvented, and there was a relatively small amount
of recorded music one was able to get hold of. Fast forward to now,
and we're crawling around on this immense pile of recorded music
dating back more than half a century. For the average listener, a
new record is going to have to be pretty special to distract them
from the plethora of older material they could listen to instead.
Revivalism in music will never go away; it'll only increase, I
think, as time goes by. Around ten years ago revivalism was really
the sole preserve of more "cheesy" fields of music ("disco" revival
nights like Starsky & Hutch here in London, for example). These days,
however, it's pretty much everywhere - even in "our" scene. The
challenge is to make sure it doesn't become ubiquitous, and that we
never end up in a situation where we reject every new record out of
hand. The original thread title mentioned the "death of techno" -
*that* would be the death of techno, it becoming completely overtaken
by revivalism.
Brendan
