|
the influence of minimalism in trance
I just wrote this paper for a class. I haven't proofread it or anything, but it's just another theory on how trance came to be from the perspective of classical music. It's really long, but i think it contributes a bit to the historical discussion.
12-16-2002 Final Paper
The influence of minimalism in electronic dance music
“The mantric experiments of 60s experimental music married with 80s sequencer programmes ended up entertaining millions of people in Trance clubs in Ibiza, Goa, Manchester and Tokyo” (Prendergast I).
This quote by Brian Eno, one of the foremost pioneers of conveying electronic music to mainstream culture, effectively summarizes the ever-lasting impact that the avant-garde musical movement known as minimalism has had on the electronic dance music world from its foundation to the present day. Ever since electronically produced dance music began its conquest of clubs and dance floors around the world with the disco revolution of Donna Summer and the invention of electro breaks by the German group Kraftwerk, critics have dismissed electronic dance music as repetitive, soulless and uninspired. However, these subjectively biased accusations do not take into account the historic precedent that paved the way for the ever-increasing popularity of dance music that was structured by layers of repetition. Although the media and some critics have successfully branded all electronically produced dance music as ‘techno’, this term should be avoided because it actually refers to just one of the dance music movements that compose the diverse field of EDM (from now on electronic dance music will be referred to as EDM). EDM connoisseurs, artists and djs from the different movements take offense on the “techno” brand whenever it is used in an inappropriate manner. Hard acid techno purists that do not even like being associated with Detroit much less appreciate when euro dance pop music such as the Venga Boys is called ‘techno’. Respectively, trance and jungle djs and producers usually fail to understand why their music is typically branded as ‘techno’ in the media and mainstream culture when their musical philosophy is so far off from the original techno sound. Even though it could be considered that Detroit techno initiated the industrial and tech-evoking sounds in the basic 4/4 beat that EDM is now known for in the mainstream world, it was hardly the founding movement and starting point of the wide gamma of genres that proliferate in the modern world of dance. Many different significant movements could be analyzed as being influential for the development of the different variants of EDM. Credit should be obviously given to the founding pioneers of avant-garde electronic music movements that created a solid base for the development of all forms of electronically produced music. Some of these influential artists were Pierre Schaffer, John Cage and Luciano Berio in their revolutionary work in tape sampling music; Ian Xenakis with his electro-acoustic experiments; Edgard Varese and Pierre Boulez as leading experimentalists of musique concrete; Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog in their groundbreaking work with synthesizers; John Cage with his limitless exploration of music in any way as ‘the art of noise’; and Milton Babbitt with his mathematical rigor in the creation of electronic music were among others prominent composers that shaped avant-garde electronic experimentalism (Shapiro 8-24). Nevertheless, the inventor of ambient, Brian Eno, singles out the pervading legacy of the Minimalist movement of the sixties as the originator of EDM’s basic characteristic, the layering of repetition as the fundamental base of its sonic landscape. Eno goes even further and points out to the genres of ambient and trance as the direct descendants of the Minimalist musical ideals in the EDM world.
In order to understand electronic dance music from the Eno/minimalist perspective, the movement should be evaluated within its historic context in the Western art, or classical, music world. By the 1950s, music academia had adopted the serialist style of Arnold Schoenberg and his followers as the new ethos of standard classical composition. Serialism limited the composer to absolute atonality by its structural formulation based on repeating every one of the twelve existing tones before playing the same tone again (Koenigsberg 1991). Many young musicians, composers and audiences simply did not agree with the dominance of this compositional technique. Amongst these critics stood out a group of young composers that included Steve Reich, John Adams, La Monte Young, and Phillip Glass. Steve Reich attacked the then established academic music as “unappealing and nutty”, describing Schoenberg’s and Boulez’s works as having “no rhythm nor melodic organization” (Prendergast 92). Phillip Glass described Serial music as “a one-way ticket to nowhere” (Prendergast 92). The broader form of composition in the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage and their exploration of sound was more appealing to this group of young musicians. Influenced by the non-Serialists such as Cage and the lengthy explorations of sound by the open jazz music of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, the group of composers was inspired to create music in a new way, which will later be branded as Minimalism.
The definition of Minimalism can be constructed after a closed reading of Steve Reich’s essay titled Music as a Gradual Process (Reich 1968). Reich talks about the musical process that characterizes his works, one that “happens extremely gradually” and, unlike Serial music, “facilitates closely detailed listening”. Reich alludes to the influence of John Cage by admitting that the meditative quality of his work is a result of sounds that are almost perceived by chance. The process has a degree of ‘indeterminacy’ and when the music is loaded it runs by itself. However, this similarity to Cage’s musical philosophy ends with his statement that the music and the process are the same thing (Prendergast 91). The actual process of creating the music by adding and subtracting different musical elements is what Minimalism is all about.
By listening to the music, one can immediately tell why Brian Eno compares Minimalism to contemporary electronic dance music. The minimalist composers use of processes is an approach for conveying the most with the least musical elements possible. In a piece such as Reich’s New York Counterpoint, the composer utilizes various techniques to express the music. There are repeating rhythmic pattern of various duration, volumes, speeds, phasing of tonal structures, fading out of melodic lines, and a constant pulse that maintains steady throughout the song (Reich Nonesuch). The process consists of adding and subtracting these musical elements in other to instill an uplifting or emotional spillover effect on the listener, a characteristic that is critical in most of the genres of electronic dance music.
Other social aspects were also critical in the development of Minimalism and its influence on electronic dance music. According to the renowned Minimalist composer John Hassell: “The history of drugs in America is inextricably interlaced with early Minimalism. There was a need for a music that one could actually enjoy listening to and that you could float away to” (Prendergast 93). Needless to say, EDM has been inextricably linked with the emergence of club drugs such as Ecstasy since its early development during the late seventies and early eighties. Modal folk and ethnic music from India was also influential in Minimalism as a result of the rising popularity of eastern “psychedelic” music during the sixties. This can be said of EDM just as well, where Goa trance, one of the genres referred to by Brian Eno as being a successor of the Minimalist ideals, was founded on a “hippie-haven” area of western India known as Goa. Minimalist composers such as Terry Riley have said that his influences include jazz, the psychedelic drug known as mescaline and traveling to exotic “hippie havens” like Morocco. In his essay titled Making Sense out of Post-Modern Music? Garth Alpert argues that the blur brought by between popular and modernist classical music genres with the avant-garde minimalists was a direct reaction against the arrogance of Serialist composers such as Pierre Boulez, who once said that “Every musician who has not felt-we do not say understood, but felt, indeed-the necessity of the serial language is USELESS!” (Alpert 3). Minimalist composers reacted against the rigidity of academia and the avant-garde establishment by creating a new form of music that borrowed characteristic from non-Western art music cultural landscapes such as jazz and Indian ethnic music, blending them with their own avant-garde processes that would revolutionize the electronic dance music world as its historical development unraveled.
Just like in a study of the historical development of Western art music and the emergence of Minimalism, the history of electronic dance music cannot be oversimplified in a linear manner where a starting and end point could be mapped out as its factual development trajectory. The music should be analyzed from a consequential perspective, where reactions to other anteceding movements led to the development of new styles and genres. Since the purpose of this paper is to discuss Brian Eno’s hypothesis that ambient and eventually trance are the most direct inheritors of the Minimalist music ideology, the historical development of EDM will be centered, but not limited, around these two genres. The direct linkage between the world of the avant-garde and EDM is without a doubt Brian Eno, the author of this paper’s hypothesis and the inventor of the Ambient genre, who brought the Minimalist ideals into the mainstream. Eno found great inspiration in the tape loop experiments of Steve Reich, Terry Riley’s use of tape delay and even performed some of some of La Monte Young’s work when he was at art college (Prendergast 93-96). Fusing what he had learned from the Minimalists with the philosophy of John Cage he invented Ambient in 1975. Following Reich’s theory of ‘music as a gradual process’ and the idea of ‘automatic music’, Eno created music that would be characterized by the creation of atmospheric and environmental music that would capture the tones of nature “just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain” (Prendergast 93). For the last three decades, Eno has been experimenting with sonic atmospheres in a wide array of ways. Eno gave his music its name when he released Ambient 1: Music for Airports, a milestone in electronic music history, highlighting how Minimalism had fused its ideals with the changes in technology to a maximum effect. Some of the techniques he has used for creating music include running two pre-recorded tapes together running out of synch with each other. It was not random or chance music, since his artistic judgment in ‘loading’ music in and out of the music-producing process guaranteed that the result would be the best possible outcome, just as Minimalism would strip down and add musical elements in the process to make the best with the minimally required techniques. Ambient, like its predecessor, is music designed to uplift or alter the emotional state of the listener with the instantaneous music-making process itself.
However, unlike Minimalism, there is neither rhythm nor a structural narrative in the music of Eno. Eno admits this himself: “One of the most important differences between ambient music and nearly any other kind of pop music is that it doesn’t have a narrative structure at all, there are no words, and there isn’t an attempt to make a story of some kind” (Shapiro 159). Minimalist-influenced music would finally be incorporated in the dance music world when it adopted a rhythmic structure with techno and Ambient-influenced house, eventually developing a structural narrative with progressive trance/house in the nineties. To understand how electronic music became the prevalent form of dance music, one has to analyze the everlasting impact that the pioneering music of the German band Kraftwerk has had in the culture. Their music created a sonic landscape of the modern world full of technology, accompanied with danceable electro broken-beat pop. No discussion of EDM would be either complete without mentioning the “techno” movement in Detroit and the “house” movement in Chicago, spawned by the influences of Ambient, the 4/4 beat of disco and the technological infusion of Kraftwerk. Both of these genres were characterized by being percussion-based electronic dance music, stripped down to the point where bass lines and drum beats were the foundation of the music, which djs would mix and phase to control the audience in the same way Minimalists emphasize the process of making the music as being the music itself. House was a direct descendant of disco, using its diva vocals and soulful roots. Techno rejected the funk roots of disco-house and like Kraftwerk, evoked the sonic images of the post-industrial landscape that was Detroit in the early eighties (Reynolds 20-37). The introduction of the Roland 303 drum machine and its use in house (now called acid house due to the psychedelic effect of the 303) paved the way for the first full-fledged conquest of EDM over a generation. In 1988, young British music fans embraced in the charts and adopted as their own the music being produced in the Detroit techno, Chicago house and New York dance scenes. It also helped that this was the summer a new drug called "ecstasy" really took off in British clubs: leading to what was known as "second summer of love". Londoners such as Danny Rampling and Paul Oakenfold imported this new music they heard in the New York and Ibiza clubs and opened up their own clubs in Britain (Prendergast 369). The UK-rave culture was created and over the next few years, this culture split into many different distinct scenes and sub-genres of EDM. There were the hardcore-style genres of acid and breakcore (such as jungle, acid house, rave etc.) in one extreme that catered to drug-induced clubbers, and in the other extreme there were the ‘progressive’ and ‘intelligent’ genres (such as ambient/progressive house, ambient techno such as Aphex Twin, trip-hop etc). The proliferation of genres, their fusions and overlapping, would make it impossible to analyze each one from the Eno/Minimalist perspective. However, it is necessary to understand the basic history of how genres have evolved as reactions to other movements in order to understand what were the origins of trance and why would Eno consider the genre as being an inheritor of the Minimalist/Ambient legacy.
“As one century tipped into another, dance music was still a primary source of interest and creativity as Trance, a futuristic blend of technology and House and Techno, became a chart-topping, globe-girdling sensation” (Prendergast 367). Mark Prendergast might offer a suggestion with this quote about why Eno gives such prominence to trance over other genres of EDM at the turn of the century: its global appeal and its ability to take the roots of dance music culture, which were initially influenced by Ambient and Minimalism to start with, to a whole new level. In the present year of 2002, the predominance of trance as the most popular genre of non-commercial genre of EDM culture (excluding commercial hip-hop and electronically produced pop) is undeniable. DJ Magazine, the most respected dance music magazine from the dance Mecca of the UK, releases a year Top 100 DJs list of a popularity-based ranking amongst clubbers, producers and djs that should be proof enough of the prevalence of trance. Using a broad definition of trance that encompasses the ‘intelligent’ genres of progressive trance/house (they overlap too much to be considered apart), the hard styles of hard and tech trance, and the middle ground of epic, uplifting and melodic trance, the trance genre dominates throughout the list and includes nine of the top ten spots (DJ Magazine November issue). The over-classification and multiple subdivisions of the trance genre is even made less practical by some djs, such as the one that was ranked number one this year, DJ Tiësto, who spin a wide array of different styles including, but not limited, to the ones mentioned above. The original House and Techno blueprint survived the extreme diversification of EDM that would have otherwise made it obsolete with the emergence of trance as the leading popular genre of the Twenty-first century and by DJs and producers such as Tiësto and the legendary Paul Van Dyk who have emphasized the diversity of electronic music by ‘loading’ diverging styles into their musical sets.
Trance originated in Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany during the early nineties with producers such as Pete Namlook, Sven Vath and Jam & Spoon with productions such as Stella (1992) and Follow Me (1993). These producers gave the sounds of Detroit Techno and UK acid house and gave it a layered Minimalist feel, using repetitive but at the same time uplifting rhythmic and melodic patterns. A perfect example of these techniques can be listened to in the song Love Stimulation by Humate, featured in one ofPaul Van Dyk’s first albums: X-MIX 1: The MFS Trip (1993). The ‘loading’ of hi-hats and snare rolls, crescendos and the harmonic progressions caused by lush riffs, piano melodies and moving bass lines along the track would stimulate the clubber’s emotional response just like the adding and subtracting of musical elements was supposed to do in a Minimalist composition.
In the mid-nineties, trance gained popularity in the hippie-haven of Goa, India, where the fusion of trance with ethnic Indian music resulted in the psychedelic Psy/Goa Trance genre with the likes of Astral Projection and Infected Mushroom, giving trance an Eastern outlook on the use of repetition as a hypnosis-inducing element (Reynolds 127-128). However, in scales of global popularity, Goa peaked in the mid-nineties and was overshadowed with the newly evolved progressive and uplifting trance movements of Europe in the late nineties.1995 also saw the emergence of hard trance with the productions of artists such as Talla 2XLC and Jones & Stephenson, which retained the basic characteristics of trance but with an approach that was faster and louder, usually at speeds of over 150 beats per minute. Countless trance productions during the span of the decade were over-simplistic and uninspired, however, the trance Renaissance was yet to come. Finally, in the late nineties came the trance revolution that brought the genre to the mainstream of club culture, with DJs such as Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, and Paul Van Dyk when they played to massive audiences at super-clubs such as Gatecrasher in the United Kingdom and Space in Ibiza. These djs and producers combined various elements of Goa, hard, ambient house/techno and other styles into their own interpretation of what should be the fusion that best defines the electronic dance music of the Twenty-first century.
Examining the trance DJ sets as a whole work of art instead of focusing in the individual tracks is essential for understanding how they took the Minimalist ideals of loading the music process to a further degree by mixing into their sets diverse styles and atmospheric nuances to alter the mood of the listener in a narrative way which is guided by ‘musical process’. Trance music has been accused of being limited because it utilizes a very rigid DJ-friendly structure which, similarly to most Techno and House-derived EDM, dictates that every musical alteration of the preceding patterns most be done in every 8-16 or 32 beats. It is true that most commercial and chart-topping trance such as ATB’s ‘9 pm till I come’ (which made it to the #1 position in the UK charts of 1999) is based in said structure, making the simple guitar sample melody sound contrived and pop-like. However, progressive trance was a reaction against that rigid commercial structural quality that characterized ATB’s music (Prendergast 373). The progressive trance djs did play tracks that were structured in factors of eight among others, but the critics have failed to understand that these individual tracks are not representative of the DJ’s work in the broader sense. The whole set and the mixing of these tracks into a long piece is what represents the DJ’s art, in which case the structured tracks serve the sole purpose of being tools for the DJ to work with in the music making ‘process’. As Steve Reich has argued, the process of adding and subtracting elements (which would be the tracks in the case of the DJs) doesn’t just support the music; the process is the music itself. (Reich 7). One can observe this in a close listening of legendary trance sets from 1999 such as DJ Tiesto’s Live from Innercity Amsterdam or Sasha’s Global Underground Ibiza 013. These sets both follow a narrative with tastefully done buildups, climaxes and explorations of diverse sonic landscapes, where the use of diverging styles of tracks make it evident how encompassing trance music became at the turn of the century.
By the early seventies, Steve Reich became tired of the rigidity and pre-determination of the musical process he had previously developed and wanted to increase the role of intuition to allow a variety of materials and tonal contrasts within a single composition, employing these in his composition titled Music for 18 Musicians (1976) (Reich 10). In 2002, trance djs are reacting to their own rigidities of musical process by exploring even more styles and genres than before. Sasha’s newly released artist album Airdrawndagger, is a characteristic example of how trance artists are even breaking with the traditional molds of production and mixing by utilizing broken beats that are reminiscent of Kraftwerk’s electro revolution but with an unique and original trancy twist. Nonetheless, the general tendency that has always characterized and united Minimalism, Ambient, Trance as its greatest common factor is still there because it is what defines the essence of each of these genres: music that builds an atmospheric sonic landscape, whether narrative or not, by adding or subtracting elements sparingly along the way for maximum effect. Even if there are certainly other genres of electronic dance music that share similar elements with this trance producing techniques such as the orchestral intelligent ambiance drum and bass of Goldie, Brian Eno singles out trance as being the most relevant genre in this day and age that has inherited the Minimalist legacy, due to its global appeal and its parallel inherence to the modernist avant-garde ideals in constant fusion with the latest technological advances in the world of music making.
Alper, Garth., Popular Music & Society, Winter2000, Vol. 24 Issue 4, p1, 14.
Morley, Rich. Global Trance, Dance, and Progressive House. http://www.global-
trance.co.uk/ . London: 1996-2002.
Prendergast, Mark. The Ambient century: From Mahler to Trance-the Evolution of Sound
in the Electronic Age. Foreword by Brian Eno. Bloomsbury. Great Britain: 2000.
Reich, Steve. Music as a Gradual Process. New York: 1968.
Reynolds, Simon. Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture.
Routledge. New York: 1999.
Shapiro, Peter. Modulations: A History of Electronic Music. Caipirinha Productions. New
York: 2000.
Last edited by Pio on Feb-19-2012 at 15:19
|
