Message 24/26
Date: 27-Feb-00 @ 12:08 PM -
RE: electro
I don't think I would call that electro, as much as well done experimental breaks. It's well done, and the idea is good for ponderance, but one of the spirits of electro is a solid drive. Mike Banks explained it me something like this: 'You have to have it pumpin, and it's got to be loaded with bass because wmen are sensitive to that. See, if you got bass groovin and the rythm movin, the booty will follow, then the fellas. It's about gettin a hard funky groove pumpin to get the ladies on the dance floor, cuz if they're there, then the fellas will be too, and they'll be too busy to be fightin amongst one another.' I'm not sure if that was the exact quote, but that's exactly what it amounted to. Detroit Electro and Tekno came about as the next evolution of hiphop, trying to put something new out there, that the commercial mainstream didn't have and didn't realize that it should have. The idea was to get people together in the ghettos of Detroit, which I assure you are some of the roughest in the world I have ever seen, and give them a sonic identity, and a spiritual unity stemming from that identity. It brought some peace and self-respect to the people of that region, giving them hope. I don't know if you'ever been to Detroit, but that place needs hope. Life is hard there. It's a real war zone in some parts, even today. It's as bad as Gary, Indiana. Not a place to fuck around in. Anyhow, it's capturing that driving funk, without too much abstraction, but more raw drive. I mean, you can see it in their cars. It ain't Mercedes town, it's Motown. People still drag race on the streets there with muscle cars that would blow you away, You ought to see Mike's car. Thier like that there, and that raw, funky muscle/drive/power is what is reflected in that music.
With regards to the Linn Drum, that was an expensive unit that the rich studio guys like Harold Faltermeyer, and his ilk were using. I guess if you want to call those guys the progenitors of electro, them and Kraftwerk, maybe Can, and those types, sure, but guys like Mike and Jaun couldn't afford that stuff. That's why later they'd get 808s and 909s out of pawnshops, and cz101s and dx100s. The Oberheim dmx was another real influential box, and the drumulator, even that little Pearl drumbox, and a 606. They still swear by that shit.
A lot of those sounds in Reelphatty are square wave modulations applied to sines, like a modulated filter in self oscillation. I can get a lot of those types of noises out of my mini (a piece that Detroit couldn't afford at first), but I think you could that out of a dx100 as well if you tried. That makes it slick, and electro'esque, but the groove is an off-kilter thing with really nice triplet rolls, and beautiful syncopation, but lacking the straight ahead drive of true electro. You know, that stuff that makes you want to get up and robo-boogie. Reelphatty is more thinkin music, tough, but not straight enough to keep the floor rockin at a slammin party. That's my thoughts. On that one. My partner's th real electro-master. I am still but a student.
Ape