MPR’s Lorna Benson interviews Philip Blackburn and Chris Strouth about the creative world of electronic music. Blackburn is with the American Composers Forum in St. Paul, which promotes the work of avant-garde, jazz, classical and new age composers. Strouth works for Twin/Tone records, the label associated with Minneapolis' most famous rock bands, like The Replacements and Soul Asylum. Strouth also runs his own experimental electronica label, called "Ultramodern."
The fifth annual electronic music festival gets underway at the Science Museum in St. Paul. The four nightly events bring together composers, musicians and multi-media artists from all over the world, but maybe the most interesting part is the different local types taking part.
Transcripts
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[MUSIC PLAYING] CHRIS STROUTH: It allows people to create sounds that they really couldn't do otherwise without full orchestras or anything else. But also, I think as far as just a general street level thing, it just looks so darn cool.
I think it's a relatively safe stereotype to say that there's a big difference between rock guitar guys and electronic music geeks because they tend to refer to each other in that way. It's a little bit more fun. It's a little bit cooler than walking around in Spandex. It's a little bit smarter.
PHILIP BLACKBURN: Yeah, and I think it hits the same testosterone high as primary organists get with a very large and powerful organ. This is a postmodern equivalent of that instrument.
SPEAKER 1: So perhaps it's a little bit of an intellectual exercise in sound.
CHRIS STROUTH: Yeah, I think-- but there is something a little bit more primal than that. I mean, especially when you look at things like rave music, where-- there's a very tribal sense about it. There's this whole movement called-- with the Zippies that's like technopaganism and-- I mean, where the whole idea is like, we're going back to our primal roots of techno, which is silly. But there's a definite primal urge to it that just gets people to move, too.
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SPEAKER 1: I wondered about the techno aspect of it because when I was listening to some of the selections off the various electronic CDs, it really struck me as perhaps the newest incarnation of techno music.
CHRIS STROUTH: I think actually it's the oldest.
SPEAKER 1: The oldest?
CHRIS STROUTH: Well, especially stuff like on the sonic circuit CD, it's just a continuation of a trend that's 50 years old. The electronic music has been around pretty much since the beginning of the 20th century. And techno is an extension of it. All this postwave electronica stuff is the same thing.
SPEAKER 1: You mentioned the sonic circuits CD. Now, of course, I have to ask you about the selection radios silent. It's about talk radio.
PHILIP BLACKBURN: Yeah. Well, this, I think, comes from more of the tradition of sound poetry, maybe William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, where there's a cut-up technique. You take phrases and sections and words from many different sources and cut them up to make a brand new context.
SPEAKER 2: People in the grocery store are taking thoughts out of my head. We're coming after you. We're coming after you. We're coming after you. They act strange. They do funny things.
SPEAKER 3: --stand their children on top of the toilet seat and--
SPEAKER 2: We don't understand people who have diseases of their brains.
SPEAKER 3: You just unzip, get it out and go, zip, and off you go.
SPEAKER 4: Now you're talking.
SPEAKER 1: Chris, I'm curious, what do you think of sonic circuits? Now, this is a very eclectic CD put together, sampling composers from all over the world. It doesn't strike me as the kind of CD that you'd just pop in and sit back and relax and listen to it and shoot for one experience. It's all over the map. And it requires some heavy listening, some serious listening.
CHRIS STROUTH: Yeah, actually I do just pop in and listen to it. I think there's this idea about a lot of the music that it's too much on the intellectual side, it's too tony, but really it's not.
PHILIP BLACKBURN: Also, I think there might be an assumption that because it comes out of speakers and there may not be much to watch, you can ignore it pretty well. You can have it on in the background. And I think people really don't have much chance to sit down and listen very intensively to a piece of electronic music in the same way as they might listen to a string quartet. And I think that's unfair to a lot of the music.
[LAUGHTER]
SPEAKER 1: There's a lot going on in some of the selections, though, and a lot of discordant sounds that sort of demand your attention. I can't imagine just sitting down and reading a book, I guess, is what I'm saying and listening to this in the background.
CHRIS STROUTH: Yeah. Well, there's this idea that--
SPEAKER 1: Is my ear untrained? Is that the problem?
CHRIS STROUTH: No. No. I mean, I think it's pretty common. There's this idea of music has to be, either background or foreground. But really, what's foreground music anymore? I mean, it's not like people are listening to rock radio and going, oh, yeah, I'm remembering all the words to that "Macarena" song. Yeah, this is great.
I mean, a lot of it is just general, mind candy. Music like this functions on two levels. You can play it in the background and it's just there and you can ignore it or not ignore it, depending on what your sensibility is, or if you bring up the volume enough so that you can actually hear it, I mean, you can be really transformed by the experience.
PHILIP BLACKBURN: I think there's another aspect to how people might appreciate this, which is from the tech end of it. A lot of people are into computers these days, whether they like it or not.
And there's a lot to be fascinated about how this music was made. And I think whether people open their ears or their eyes or not to the artistic end of it, there's a lot of buttons to be fascinated about and a lot of software that people can come up and go, ooh.
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SPEAKER 5: I'm always just thinking about it.
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