[mantis]

The following is my "rant" on moby. Do what you will with it, email it, format it for errors, make an anti-moby website, go for it! Have fun! Try to keep your attention span up to read the whole thing.


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Techno music is easy to make, but it is quite hard to make good techno music. Ask your average 97.5PST listening, TRL-watchin, commercialized dumbass who knows nothing about electronica, his opinion on techno and with undoubted assurance he will reply, "Moby is pretty cool."

Moby - Richard Hall Melville, the american "pioneer of Electronic Dance" is the Americanized version of what good electronica ever was. Gaining it's popularity from the UK as well as tech-city Detroit, electronica has been becoming mainstream but with no doubt, keeping to it's roots in the underground. By underground, I don't mean the horrible E! filtered raves which pump monotonous house music so that the "ravers" don't fall asleep. I mean the actual beat junkies that created and embraced the genre. Many of them have sold out and gone mainstream, respectively their music has gone "mainstream" as well.

Yet, at the core of it all amazing electronica still survives. Many beat-junkies from the Roland 808 and Roland juno days evolved and produced stunning sounds. As well as the razor tipped lyrics of several industrial acts, who offered more than the same guitar riffs over and over again. For those who want names; photek, prodigy, propellerheads, DJ Shadow, Amon Tobin, KMFDM, Front Line Assembly - Delerium, Apollo Four Forty, BT.

Than the apocalyptic era began with the introduction of Moby. The rave culture embraced his stale jazz/blues/gospel dubs as something "original" and one way or another, the critics did as well. The truth was abandoned and the hope was lost. The recognition of Amon Tobin, BT, and Massive Attack, Aphex Twin, MDFMK, Crystal Method, Underworld, Leftfield, Fluke, were harmed by the astounding Moby. The problem was, unlike Moby, the others made music for what it was, music, music for people, not commercials and billboards.

Moby was the new fat of the land offering such "provocative" albums such as "play". Critics hailed his "amazing talent" to compose music. Yea, this really was "amazing" since the other electronica artists must have somehow manifested their music by themselves.

Moby's devout Christian beliefs made him hope for every good kid, with anal parents, who was ever afraid of buying Aphex Twin because of the "Scary Videos". Instead, these types would read the reviews and picture in their head an incredible magnate of techno music. When they hear the songs, most probably from the overhyped "play", they would consider him the second coming, when in fact "play" is the most overrated album, ever.

Inside of the CD, Moby would write essays and inform the American youth of things like, Religion, Veganism, the Environment. Most of the ravers who bought the CD learned something, others, as I, were just assured of his arrogance. Later, his preachings would be broken. His ad campaign for Calvin Klien did not exactly confirm his beliefs, in fact, it completely went against them. Moby posed in a crucified pose, with his arms hanging out and his head to a tilt. Considering his sacreligious, hypocritic views, his music doesn't have much to offer.

I don't think Moby is the ultimate worst of music. I do think his music is vastly overrated and overall pretty crappy, mediocre at best. Recently, my friend borrowed my BT CD and loved it, he told me, "I am so sick of the same old Paul Oakenfold, NYC Underground, Moby stuff, they all sound the same. Do you have any other good techno?". Sure, I have a lot of other bands that he would probably enjoy but if he was never introduced to BT, he would know of Techno as the same moby-NYC underground-stale-808 music that encompasses most of Moby's talents.

mantis.
out.

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I killed the king of deceit, wake me up in anarchy. I made a god out of blood, not superiority.
. Kein Mitleid F�r Die Mehrheit .

Arpan . B
[email protected]
currently down. . .

[mantis]

To add to that, Amon Tobin - Supermodified = OWNS.

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I killed the king of deceit, wake me up in anarchy. I made a god out of blood, not superiority.
. Kein Mitleid F�r Die Mehrheit .

Arpan . B
[email protected]
currently down. . .

[faustgfx]

duh.



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sky high with a heartache of stone you never see me 'cos i'm always alone

[email protected] /
icq#35983387

[balistic]

BT, Underworld, and Crystal Method are pretty much as mainstream as Moby is, and none of them fall anywhere near techno.

Techno isn't a blanket term for electronic music, it was coined by the Detroit innovators of the late eighties and early nineties. Any music that doesn't evolutionarily draw from that Detroit sound, no matter how electronic it is, ain't techno.

So why didn't the Detroit pioneers become household names like Moby? Probably because American record labels want black musicians to be "entertainers", and weird-looking ghetto kids twiddling knobs hardly fit that mold.

I could care less about how popular Moby is, because in the end, he's just another pop act. He means about as much to techno as Metallica does. I don't mean to sound like I'm ragging on you, its just that the "underground" artists you mention have had a lot more commercial success than any techno musician I can think of . . . a techno record is considered a hit if it sells 4000 copies.

Some recommended techno listening:

Artists:

Derrick May
Jeff Mills
Juan Atkins (Model 500)
Alan Oldham (DJ T1000)
Carl Craig
Maurizio
Dan Bell
Robert Hood
Kevin Saunderson
Kenny Larkin
Aril Brihka
Underground Resistance
Richie Hawtin (Plastikman)
Stewart Walker

Labels:

Axis, Transmat, Kanzleramt, Force Inc, Submerge, Planet E, Basic Channel, Tresor, 430 West, Red Planet


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"What we're hearing, techno, is the process of trying to create something of the future." - J.M.

Brian "balistic" Prince
3D Artist
Eggington Productions
www.bprince.com

[A.Buttle]

While electronic music is far from my forte, I must say that the new Dying Fetus album fucking kicks ass.

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Larry Flint's right! You guys suck!

Joe Dillingham
[email protected]
Three Times A Day