As a genre, electronic music is still in its infancy.
While its roots lie in early tape music from the 1930s and 40s, as a form of popular music, it’s been around for 50 years at best. And when you look at the advent of widely available drum machines, samplers, and synthesizers in the 80s that gave birth to hip-hop, techno, and house, we’re really only looking at a time period of 30 or so years that electronic music has had a wide, popular audience. When historians are drawing the timeline of the history of recorded music a couple of centuries from now, we’re still barely at the beginning of the line. We still don’t know where music–and electronic music specifically–could go. As an electronic musician, I’m excited by this.
Unfortunately though, there’s a lot of talk today about how so much electronic music is starting to feel stale. “Bpms are getting in the way of feeling.” “Hardgroove is just a rehash.” “There’s too much emphasis on image, not artistry.” These are common grumblings in the current music scene. Regardless of where you stand, there’s never a bad time to look at ideas that might be turning stale and reorient the music towards the future. In fact, looking to the future is arguably electronic music’s most essential founding principle.
FREEDOM IN RESTRAINT.
To move forward, rather than just look for the next trick——a new tempo, a new synth sound, a new forgotten genre of samples resurrected——I think the best path for electronic music, and all of music really, is to embrace restraint. Over the past few years, there’s been a noticeable tendency towards adding more and more. We’ve gotten lost in embellishments. With the proliferation of tutorial videos on YouTube that claim to help young producers get “That [insert popular artist here] sound,” too many tracks these days trade on the power of effects, signal processing, or non-musical SFX to breathe life into music that is, at its core, still essentially the same as what came before it. There are lots of tracks out there with the same riff over the same bassline and drum pattern from a track that scaled the Beatport charts, but the only thing that’s been tweaked (and slightly at that) are the synths and sound design. Don’t get me wrong, sound design is a key part of electronic music artistry, but this approach to music making that trades exclusively on sonic tweaking while overlooking any other musical invention has gone too far. At a certain point, the underlying musical content itself needs to be different, otherwise it feels like we’re just swapping out sauces and condiments on the same dish being served over and over again.
Too much emphasis on “the sauce” means not enough emphasis on fundamentals. And that’s a shame, because critical elements like rhythm, harmonic content, and arrangement are ripe for innovation today. If anything, it’s an exciting time to be making music. Going back to basics is never a bad idea. Say “no” to more and more embellishment. It just gets in the way of the important, foundational things we should be saying “yes” to.
Embracing restraint is the key to this. Limitations and constraints can be some of the most powerful generative tools. When musicians have fewer instruments and tools at their disposal, there’s less temptation to just heap more and more ideas into a track, and more importance is placed on getting the absolute most out of the sounds already present.
Restraint as a path forward has frequently opened up new possibilities in the past. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 deploys a few core synth sounds, break samples, and leads across an entire album with minimal FX and embellishment beyond some very specifically chosen samples. The result of this aesthetic focus is one of the most harmonically rich, melodically innovative works of electronic music of all time. Some of Basic Channel’s most innovative ideas have also come from restraint and pure, aesthetic focus. For much of their music, they burrowed in on a specific conceptual element: taking the everyday non-musical sounds of electronic music that DJs and producers know deeply but often ignore, like the sound of a crackling needle across the groove of a record or analogue tape hiss, and pushed them to the foreground to be defining elements of the music. What resulted was a catalogue that stands as one of the most texturally innovative and influential collections of music within the genre. One of the ultimate examples, Robert Hood’s Minimal Nation LP, is still one of the most rhythmically powerful and forward-thinking works of electronic music to this day——and for most of the tracks, he’s using nothing more than a drum machine and a single synthesizer. Minimal? Yes. Focused? Absolutely.
So, as musicians, DJs, dancers, and listeners, I think it’s our duty to take this moment to reevaluate where the music is going, and not get too lost in the temptation of endlessly recycling old ideas–adding more when we could be doing less. In the next track or mix you make or listen to, it’s worth asking: do I really need more elements in what I’m hearing? Is it possible to get more out of the material I already have in front of me? Instead of five FX sounds in a track, choose one. (Or better yet, choose zero.) Instead of three or four decks competing for space in your mix, choose one deck, playing one truly great track. It takes focus, and it takes restraint, but when you stick to it, you might find yourself somewhere new. In a culture of excess, restraint can be freeing.
Some recent 90s track selections:
DJ Stone - Nocturne
Driving and detuned peak track from DJ Stone. Nice stuttering high hat line leaving pockets of empty space for the lead to duck in and out. 1998.
Paldrame - Deset
Warm drive from the Paldrame duo. Digging that subtle reverb clap every other backbeat. 1995.
Gayle San - Get Crystallized
Gayle San with some killer sample layering. The main synth riff is so nicely supported by the samples at the top and bottom end of the spectrum. 2000.
Gene Hunt - Arcadia
Loopy, austere, lots of feel in the sub-bass. Nice urgency in the hats to play off the dead-ahead lead. 1998.
S.O.L. - Pollenflug (Mix 2)
Really beautiful, perfectly modulated saw wave melody on this one. Matches so well with the persistent, careening drums. 1998.
Ignacio - Skyance
Perfectly stripped back, Hood-influenced minimalism from Ignacio. One of my favorite Steve Rachmad aliases. So much to learn from in this one. So dialed-in and restrained yet still so musical. Nice subtle reverb dub throws on the lead element too. 1998.
Jay Denham - Three
Love the slightly off-grid, anti-quantize chords on this one. Denham never misses, always so much in his back catalogue to discover. 1999.