By Ines Schinazi
From the moment I entered the throbbing box, I knew it was going to be a long night. Electro beats seemed to drop like heavy pounds of steel, hammering against our skulls, until we finally slipped into a mixed state of trance and headache.
Electronic music. Like blood gushing. Constantly in the back of our minds, waking us, plunging us back into the rhythm of life. Far away from the decadent party, the electro beat still chases us, stalking us through our day to day. Choreographing this frenetic dance called “our life.” As malleable as it is disposable, it’s a constantly evolving soundtrack. Revealing fragmented instants neatly sliced up like specs of broken glass. Playing back to the millions of clicking keyboards, mute touch screens, invisible headphones, built in cell phones, GPS gadgets, bloodshot eyeballs hypnotized by glossy screens, e-mail monsoons, sacred text acronyms, Neon scoops of mini-micro-macro feeds, gracing us with our 2 seconds of fame. We don’t need to press play. This is the soundtrack of our life. Dum, Dum, Dum, Dum: a prompt response to our overly accelerated heartbeat, reassuring us that someone else feels the same way, becoming a musical painting of our lives. Infectious rhythms flowing freely in their addictive nature, fixing us up with just the sort of drug we need. And yet, the music we find “so cool” today quickly loses its sharp edge tomorrow. So we eagerly gulp down the machine-constructed notes, before the smooth milk turns a sour blue.
Our generation feeds on instant gratification, eagerly disposing, and constantly reinventing. We want “the new” right now.
I believe that electro music clearly depicts that attitude and mind frame. Its rhythm represents our overly sped up pace. Machine manufactured beats are a clear reflection of our digital world. These days we no longer need instruments. We can simply rely on our laptops to produce instrumental sounds.
Most of electro’s omnipresent “expiration date” illustrates our society’s disposable attitude. A great deal of music has become a sketch of a particular second in time. Quickly forgotten, it fades into the background, as the next “song of the moment” takes its place.
Of course, it’s important to note, that there are currently incredibly talented artists, producing really amazing music, but they do seem to be a minority. Also, I don’t mean to say that all electro is of poor value. I am actually a fan of some of it, and I do believe that some of it will go down in history, as certain artists skillfully manage to be avant-garde, while still capturing the moment in which we are living. However, it does seem that these talented artists are few and far between.
I think about how much incredible “old” music has stayed present and relevant. And I wonder will our generation leave much music to the world? Or will there be a large gap in musical history? A wide blank space corresponding to our existence, sandwiched between all the greatness?
In the song “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” Leonard Cohen sings the brilliant line “We are ugly, but we have the music…” So I ask Leonard (and you) what happens when the music fades? Well, I hope we never find out….
