| -----Original Message----- | From: marc christensen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | Sent: 25 November 2002 22:01 | | And his attitude, which might not be great for hangin' out with, is | perfect for approaching Sun-Ra, and the Martian, or the pre-revealed | Drexciya. Who else besides Dan S. went out of their way to | demonstrate **belief** in the stories of extraterrestrial (or | subaquatic) origins that these acts clearly saw as part of the deal?
This is also the reason that I persisted with Eshun's book, and have even revisited certain chapters from time to time. When I first came across Red Planet records, with the mysterious "produced by the Martian" credit, I pretty much decided that I was going to believe that these records *were* from Mars. When I came across Drexciya, again, I never found myself desperate to find out what humans were behind these noises, preferring instead to believe that the music was produced by amphibious extra-terrestrials. It certainly enhances the listening experience, and I think that by buying into the context the artist has constructed for his/her music you come closer to understanding exactly what they are trying to convey. It's the same with Sun Ra - for me, he's not dead; he's just returned to Saturn! I guess that if Eshun was on this list he'd defend himself by pointing out that electronic/futuristic music is so new, comparitively, that the conceptual framework for describing it - in terms of its construction as well as of its effect on the listener - is yet to be developed, and so he's pretty much obliged to write in such a bizarre scat-poetry style when talking about Drexciya, UR, Alice Coltrane and Parliament. A rock journalist writing yet another Beatles book has decades of cliches and reference points to rely on, but someone writing about Drexciya has no real precedent to rely upon. Eshun certainly did take it to the extreme, but I think you're right in that, amidst the prosaic flights of fancy, there are a number of very good and very big ideas which he manages to put across in that book. Brendan
