Kodwo Eshun on Synths and Race

More synth pondering, from Kodwo Eshun's More Brilliant than the Sun, which incidentally is an amazing book.

'Then there's the synth race, entering the synth race, which is Techno, the whole interface between the first Detroit guys and what I call the Import Ear. The guys listening to this stuff coming out of Europe, coming out of England, listening to the whiteness of the synthesizer and using it because that sound would make them alien within America. That's the secret behind all the early Detroit records. All those guys - Model 500, Cybotron, they've all got these affected Flock of Seagulls-type accents. Why do they have this? Because they want to be alien in America. How do they do this? By singing like white New Romantic English kids. So it's the idea of white music being exotic to black American ears. So it's trying to turn the exotic eye back onto the English, because that's part of the process that happened. Also what happened, Techno was happening without the registering mark of the UK media, without the traditional steps in which America comes out with an original music, and it's usually bastardized in England and Europe and mixed, remixed and then sent back. That was reversed; in this case, it was America bastardizing, taking English music and doing strange things with it. Hence the famous embarrassment when English journalists would head to Detroit to say, 'Where's this music come from?', only to find out this music had come from where they'd just been, only to find out they were the origin. This is the first explicit case where white music is the origin, and where the black American musicians who are the adulterators and the bastardizers. So Techno's a complete reversal of the classic 60s myth of the blues and the Rolling stones, the entire rock heritage which starts out with this famous myth of Muddy Waters and the Rolling Stones. In Techno, you've got an immediate reversal. In Techno, Kraftwerk is the delta blues, Kraftwerk is where it all starts. In Techno, Depeche Mode are like Leadbelly. A Flock of Seagulls are like Blind Lemon Jefferson. So Europe and whiteness generally take the place of the origin. And Black Americans are synthetic, the key in Techno is to synthesize yourself into a new American alien. So I look at the synth race in terms of various developments of that...'

Synths

I've been such a lazy blogger. If anyone is reading and interested, apologies, but I'm sure you've had plenty to fill the time with.


Heartbreak on stage at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, performing Akin to Dancing

Anyway, I've had synths on my mind lately. Have just been wondering about why it is that the synth seems to create a projection of time, either forwards to The Future, or nostaligia for The Past. Or, and this happens plenty, nostalgically back to a point when the future was full of hope.. retro-futurism? Back to the future? Whatever it gets called. A lot of the stuff which falls into these categories is massively good music, there's no suggestion otherwise, but what is it about the synth which has that particular effect? Is is the music people are inclined to make at the moment which is so forward or backward looking, rather than present in time here? Or maybe it's something inherent in the hardware, the sounds brought out of it are so associated with genres and times they just seen to call them up.

gatto fritto-beachy head by cloudofzeus



The other thing so distincitve about the synth, or some of the music people make with it - the sense of embracing of the future and technology, whether that's a touch dystopian (witness Cerrone's Supernature) or just plain positive (Living on Video, phaps - and that also illustrates the real vintage-futurist bent - hurrah, we're all living on video! how very modern). Italo disco is particularly strong in this last vein, and more relevant to today there are no shortage of producers (Ali Renault, Professor Genius, Subway, Gatto Fritto, Moon Gang, Heartbreak, Casionova etc etc) making music whose draws more or less heavily on synth-laden Italo idealism.


Naum Gabo, Dmitri's Darkness from the incredible The Fright Line release

Dali Dinner Party