Monday 12 January 2009

Techno music illustrating the platonic realm

For those unfamiliar with techno or dub, Moritz von Oswald is one of the most influential and highly regarded producers of techno and (second wave) dub music. He forms one half of legendary labels such as Basic Channel, M (Maurizio), and Rhythm & Sound, and is well-known for almost never appearing on photos or in interviews...until lately.
In a recent lecture/interview, he talks about, among several other things, one of his (in my opinion) most profound pieces of dubtechno: M4.5. The most notable idea he put forward was that certain tracks have a quality about them which he described as music which is standing still. Although it is an inherent quality of techno music to be repetitious and sometimes monotonous, the quality of standing still is more apparent in some tracks than in others, and is not directly related to being monotonous. The M-series is indeed an evolving type of techno, although it does not evolve to any specific point, and can therefore not be said to be progressive. Still the tracks on the M-series induce an effect of a picture, rather than a movie.
It seems that what von Oswald is talking about is the possibility of eliminating the timeline from the experience of techno music. Of course this doesn't mean that the music is not moving forward as the track progresses, but that it induces an experience in the listener more like a fixed picture than a moving series of sounds. This opens up the fascinating possibility of techno music taking on more of the character of the unchanging objects of mathematics.

No comments: