In “Everything Popular Is Wrong,” Stefan Goldmann claimed that the more artists deviate from the known and established, the better their chances are for success. But why should this be so? Now he offers a detailed examination of the psychosocial framework that underlies what we listen to, looking into the factors that decide what is culturally relevant and what is not — with surprising results: exploring the unknown is not only more fun, but also more rewarding. You can read Part 1 here.

Life cycle: crystallizing fields and the avant-garde

For an obscure speech, held in 1961 in the German city of Lübeck, anthropologist Arnold Gehlen designed one of the most accurate descriptions of how culture works in the big picture. If there ever was a valid explanation of how cultural styles emerge, grow and die, that’s the one. Let’s have a look:

He called the concept “crystallization”^[1]: any new, emerging field of culture grows to the point where its boundaries, basic rules and antitheses are found. Once these are accepted, the field “crystallizes,” which means it doesn’t grow further beyond but develops ever smaller subdivisions and variations within ever smaller categories. Novelty and some surprises still occur regularly, but the field’s boundaries are not crossed and the basic rules don’t get violated anymore. Basically any metacategory of 20th century music of the western world seems to have reached the stage of crystallization, be it jazz, rock, contemporary classical or techno. Since all big subcategories within these have been discovered and occupied a long time ago, we now have shallow novelty of the kind of disco edits or “slowhouse.” When there is no clear path ahead, moving back and searching for the overlooked crumbs is just as good an option (in the earlier stages no one bothers looking back). Becoming aware of crystallization effects is the reason why we feel there was greater music being created in the past. When a new cultural field opens up, exciting new categories emerge and those discovering and promoting them have a far greater time at it than later explorers of the field.

Along these lines we can also define a widespread term: Those pathfinders traveling virgin roads are described as the “avant-garde.” In the language of the military, avant-garde used to refer to those troops of the cavalry who went into the battle first. In the arts, avant-garde means nothing but identifying a new category and occupying the lead position in it. Then it is all about waiting for the flood to set in. It is the only definition I can think of that makes sense in conjunction with the military meaning of the term. It is not about making weird sounds and shocking the public as often assumed. Once something has been established, it doesn’t make much sense to label mimicking or preserving efforts avant-garde anymore. The association of avant-garde with earpain is grounded in a different observation: every truly new aesthetic seems alien and unpleasant at first. Only later we learn to process it and enjoy its characteristic features.^[2] That usually happens when more artists enter the scene. When no one follows the avant-gardist, things stay alien.

Extended cycles: museum categories

Categories emerge, grow and eventually fade away. So do the careers of their inhabitants. When no one is interested in one category, leadership doesn’t mean much. Even most successful styles and fashions in music disappear sooner or later. Those categories that survive along their representatives often exist for the lifespan of the fans that spent the time to learn the category’s cultural codes. You know those concerts where everyone is 60+. Some categories are so strong that they live on for centuries, if not almost infinitely. Probably ever since someone beat a stick on a stone for the first time there has been some equivalent to the 4/4 beat we call techno today.

Every generation rediscovers the category and feeds it with its own stars. This is most obvious with classical music where every few decades there is the new superstar soprano, conductor or violin virtuoso. It is also a “museum category” preserving the live performances of works written sometimes centuries ago (a recording is still a poor substitute for an acoustic live performance). So does every new generation form its own rock superstar and a lot of electronic music seems to enter a similar road. In a crystallized environment eventually a prototypical subcategory is deemed worth to become a museum category. Then there come musicians who want to sound like the prototype from back in 1715, 1923 or 1988.

Case study: Minus vs. Richie Hawtin

Let’s examine the story of the Minus label. When Richie Hawtin founded it as an outlet for his own productions, he already was the main exponent of minimal techno with a string of hit singles and extremely refined albums under the moniker of Plastikman (most notably Sheet One, Concept 1 and Consumed). The Plastikman project was so influential and successful that people had its logo tattooed. When he opened Minus up to other artists, two things had happened: The first wave of minimal was over, leaving basically only Hawtin and Basic Channel as still widely reknowned artists. And Hawtin had almost stopped releasing new original material (except for the artsy album Closer and two mix CDs). Minus formed a crew around Magda and Troy Pierce, and facilitated associates like Marco Carola and Mathew Jonson. A second wave of minimal techno swept the world, much bigger than the first one and went on to dominate dance music almost to a degree only trance had reached before. The Minus crew was probably at the top of it, accompanied by the likes of Ricardo Villalobos, Luciano and many others. Intriguingly Richie Hawtin, who hadn’t released one track contributing to the renewed minimal style, peaked his career in terms of reach and reaped rewards, becoming techno’s number one DJ. Compared to stadium rock, minimal techno is still a miniscule niche market. Yet its leading artist mentioned in a recent interview that he sometimes plays up to three performances a night, often in different countries, which is only made possible by employing the services of a private jet.

It is a wonderful example of how categories develop. After helping to form a first minimal subcategory of techno, Hawtin was recognized as its leader. Branding the Minus label and opening it up to others, their efforts accelerated his position as the one “owning” the style in the minds of the audience. With thousands of enthusiasts and artists jumping on the bandwagon and deepening the category to gargantuan proportions, Hawtin got leveraged proportionally to the size of the category itself. Once it outgrew the other subcategories of techno, he automatically became the leading artist of “all techno,” although the thousands of tracks that actually formed and defined the second wave of minimal were all produced by others. The critical point was making the transition of personal “first call” status from old minimal to new minimal. As we see, this can be achieved even without actually producing any new music in the style in question. This is not to be misinterpreted as unjust recognition though. Hawtin had shifted away from primary production to pushing new means of production, presentation and distribution. He spearheaded promoting a whole industry from Native Instruments to Ableton to Beatport, shaping the infrastructure of new minimal and beyond like no other artist. He’s also a really nice guy.

The gap between the category leader and the next on the ladder might be so wide that it even tolerates severe flaws in the primary sector: you might get away with continuously unexciting or even bad performances. In several interviews Hawtin cultivated an attitude of method over content, claiming he doesn’t even listen to the tracks anymore before he plays them and instantly forgets about them afterwards. I listened to a three hours set of his recently and indeed it seemed like watching a factory production line rather than a performance of music. It’s alienating and amazing at the same time, truly avant-garde in its dedication to taking things to the extreme. A new arte povera (a 60s Italian movement of making art from trash materials) seemed to have formed. As you see, at the end of the case study we are not with the label anymore, but with its leading artist. That’s what category leadership does.

The artist: category elasticity and time factors

Most great categories are discovered rather quickly by those who manage to move in boldly without giving it too much second thought. Whatever is possible will eventually be done. That is also why the audience doesn’t grant artists too much time to prove their talent. For visual arts, Chris Dercon, head of Munich’s Haus der Kunst museum, once estimated an artist has about seven years to break through^[3]. In music it might be less. Especially after you have some initial success there will be limited time for your full “potential” to unfold. Slow growth is a concept punished severely by the social environment. If people come to your concert in order to find a half empty room or you deliver a poor performance, they are unlikely to try again unless they have some very good reason to believe next time will be dramatically different. If you already spent a couple of years on the circuit that’s an unlikely scenario. Also the media and promoters will think you aren’t “hot” anymore if you don’t deliver accelerating results early enough. That is also why a cover story or other overblown exposure too early in an artist’s career might bring things to an early end: rewards associated with fully shown potential require just that. It is of benefit to an artist’s development if rewards and recognition lag slightly behind her actual level.

Then also once you have your name associated with a category, it is extremely hard if not impossible to move on to a different category. Once people know you as a black metal goddess, you won’t seem credible in pumping out dubstep tunes. It is actually easier to change when you are below superstar status. The only super-prominent historic counterexample that comes to mind is Miles Davis, who changed over the whole jazz world every couple of years throughout a career that lasted half a century: Birth of the Cool, Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew, On the Corner and Decoy are just a few examples, all differing wildly from each other. Yet they include some of jazz’s biggest (including the biggest) commercial successes ever plus separately inspiring thousands of musicians to follow and deepen the styles Davis designed. Although he regularly alienated his fans, he also managed to build up new followings every time change stroke. If the fans stay, it usually indicates that you didn’t leave your category.

On a side note, superstars also regularly fail to take into account that they are such only within one category at a time. Jeff Mills and Ellen Allien are still all over as DJs, but their fashion lines never went anywhere for instance. Miles Davis’ appearance in “Miami Vice” didn’t quite make him a Hollywood celebrity and his much advertised late paintings haven’t make it into the MoMA so far, too. The ultimate fallacy is when established artists try to reposition themselves by reacting to new developments imposed by others: they regularly fall to the bottom. When wild pitch pioneer DJ Pierre started to play the post-minimal hits of the day, it was the last time we heard of him. Unless you have pioneered the new thing, you’d better ignore it entirely.

Do we still need marketing?

Don’t expect a description of how hits are crafted or what kind of supportive promotional efforts are necessary for an artist to actually get his categorical findings into the minds of the audience. That’s a slightly different thing that’s too deep to discuss here. Yet the relation between category leadership and marketing efforts should be clear: no marketing effort will get an obvious “me too” artist’s profile sufficiently off the ground (this is the one point 100% of music marketing books fail to discuss). Within the range of the possible, the avant-gardist of a new category will have the biggest chances to be considered the best and therefore will be the easiest to promote. All categories are not created equal though. Some will have bigger potential than others, since they will address a need that is culturally relevant to more people. That’s usually where trial and error begins and predictions fail. Categories compete, too. The bigger the gap between them the smaller become the competitive effects. An isolated, small category might have bigger problems initially communicating the means necessary for understanding and enjoying it. So the initial promotional effort will have to be bigger. Once it is established though it will be more stable because fewer other categories will overlap with its position. Vice versa, a new category closer to existing ones is easier understood, but also more threatened by competition. It is quicker to establish and quicker to be forgotten. Closeness to the known is the prerequisite for hyped fads. That’s why we regularly encounter two word style names that start on “new” (or “nu,” for that matter).

Of course, marketing allows for some severe distortions, too. The most notorious is known as “payola,” referring to purchased exposure. In its contemporary form, usually ad money leads to overexposure of certain artists (attention they wouldn’t get without money being exchanged). When a song is on rotation on the radio it must be popular, social proof teaches us. Even in cases in which the connection is obvious we seem to assume that if an artist is willing to invest more than others there must be a reason (i.e. his talent justifies the investment)^[4]. And we move along too often. I know of concert promoters who booked artists on the basis of the number of “fans” on their social networks, even when they did know those numbers were manipulated by a piece of software adding random people.

Randomness and self-regulation

Ancient Greek philosopher Democritus (circa 460–379 BC) used to define “chance” as the ignorance of the hidden cause of an event^[5]. Often we attribute some unexpected outcome to random factors, since we don’t see any pattern that would allow us to explain what happened. The arts seem to be a field whose dynamics we regularly fail to understand, which results in a constant stream of surprising events. The very nature of competing categories means the other rules are constantly changing, making exact predictions regularly sound idiotic. One would wish to have clarity at least that the arts are a contest of ideas and the bolder new idea shall win. In reality, crossfire comes from even more factors than just marketing abilities. Someone figured out that pianists competing at a piano competition regularly had greater career chances if they played later than others. Juries happen to be in a better mood in the afternoon. Years later those who played in the afternoons had more concerts and better recording deals^[6]. It is impossible to identify all such biases. When you hear someone lamenting that “the time wasn’t right,” he might be referring to this complexity of the unknown. The deep insecurities of which outcomes to expect actually promote diversified culture. Many attempts that turn out to have no chance to succeed nevertheless do get initial support (“trial and error”). A lot of category depth has been gained by the belief that what worked once might work twice. And a new category’s reach won’t be obvious before it has been actually built and tried.

Yet the concept of category leadership by definition works for a minority only. When it seems to install the same hierarchical structure in any new category, this is only true as long as the majority wastes its time chasing categories that already exist. Innovation seems possible because we clearly know what the mainstreams are. If every artist would first and utmost try to differentiate from all others, we would face a self-regulating process. If the mainstream gets fragmented new rules will emerge, requiring new approaches.

The garden of the closing paths

If the above descriptions hold some truth, it is not the most hostile environment to be in. Most musicians have marveled over which marketing strategy would help them and how to adapt their sound to fit “the market” — just to wonder why what worked for someone else simply doesn’t work out for them (exactly because it worked for someone else). In the light of the mechanics of category leadership such considerations seem plainly wrong. The need to differentiate from the established encourages experimentalism and individuality — not the worst things around. On a sad note, going deeper in an established category is not rewarded. For the cultural (and economic) success of any piece or style of music quality is overrated. Eminence is gained because of the potential for social distinction. Any social group within a new generation builds its identity to differ not only from previous generations, but also from its social peer groups. That’s why it will embrace anything that seems new and different, no matter how stupidly new or different that might be. Listening to a “better” song never did the job, exactly because it lacks the effect of clear cut social distinctiveness.

Our culture is not so much cluttered with successful bullshit because we have no taste, but because our brains are built to pay more attention to novelty of form than to variety within a form. The stone age application: your chances of survival increase when you recognize clearly unfamiliar patterns rather than variations of familiar patterns. It’s some kind of deer, so eat it. But beware of that new snake, insect or other tribe with unclear intentions. Quality helps only later on to sustain the life of a category (not necessarily the life of the one who delivers it). Once we grow aware we’ve been listening to trash, we eventually move on and the category fades. On the other hand our culture is cluttered with unsuccessful bullshit, too, because we simply don’t learn about how our minds function. It is a default on the side of the musicians, concert promoters, labels and distributors of culture, deeply misunderstanding the audience. Instead of pursuing individualism, they keep searching for repeatable formulas. As the joke goes, “I don’t understand why nobody is interested in my music. It sounds exactly like anybody else’s.” Ironically, what is called “commercialism” regularly fails in the market at an astonishingly high rate.

Once we learn the aesthetics of one category, we stick with it. People are very loyal in their tastes of music. We only change our preferences on flat fads and fashions. Search and learning “costs” are too high to change complex, deeply built tastes regularly. That’s why our parents still enjoy the same music they enjoyed when they were twenty (“gerontorave” becomes a less futuristic outlook every day). This encourages artists to build categories aesthetically as deep and strong as possible in order to engage their audience “for life.”

Stefan Goldmann is an electronic music artist, DJ and owner of the Macro label.

stefangoldmann.com

Footnotes:

In “Everything Popular Is Wrong,” Stefan Goldmann claimed that the more artists deviate from the known and established, the better their chances are for success. But why should this be so? Now he offers a detailed examination of the psychosocial framework that underlies what we listen to, looking into the factors that decide what is culturally relevant and what is not — with surprising results: exploring the unknown is not only more fun, but also more rewarding.

The amplified champions

In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Bluebeard, its protagonist Rabo Karabekian muses on the origin of special talents and the diminished opportunities in modern societies: “I think that could go back in time when people had to live in small groups of relatives – maybe fifty or hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn’t afraid of anything and so on. […] of course a scheme like that doesn’t make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communication has put him or her in daily competition with nothing but the world’s champions. The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness.”^[1]

Science has had a thought on this subject, too. This development has been named the Superstar Effect^[2], in which presumably only minuscule differences in talent or slight advantages in competitive situations snowball into the domination of a whole market by one or a few performers. If you want to buy a recording by a soprano opera singer, you’ll most likely want to buy one by the best — the number two soprano will have a hard time moving any CDs, since the presumably slightly better number one will have preempted the market. The CDs cost about the same, so why spend any second thought on lesser talent? The superstars obtain what I’d like to call a “first call” position: it is not just about income, but mainly about opportunities. That’s where things strike culturally. Everybody prefers the top performers. A festival wants to present and a label wants to sign the best artists, a movie producer wants to hire the best actors and playwrights, someone who goes to court wants the best lawyer, and so forth. Only affordability and availability seem to give the rest of the list any chance. That’s why the superstar gets the greatest choice to pick from the best opportunities, earning disproportionately more rewards and spreading out to even wider recognition, while the other contestants service whatever is left over.

This cumulative aspect of superstardom has been described by sociologist Robert K. Merton as the Matthew Effect^[3], named after the verse from the Gospel of Matthew: “For unto every one that hath, more shall be given, and he shall have abundance, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” In other words, the rich get richer, the poorer get poorer and success breeds success.

What are rewards?

An artist feels rewarded when she receives the attention of the audience and of those mediating between artist and audience. Rewards are people coming to hear a performance, spending time listening to recordings, learning the specific style, recommending the music to others and following the further offerings of the artist. Rewards are receiving critical acclaim by experts and peers, finding followers who copy the style, getting the aesthetic message distributed with the help of those who service the media or manage the venues where artists meet the audience. In short, the more social interactions the artist’s efforts produce, the more those efforts have been rewarded. That’s the way society views an artist to be “excelling.” On the economic side, all these interactions produce fees, royalties and other sorts of material exchanges. People pay to attend concerts, to listen to recordings or to consume media coverage. In varying shares, these payments eventually reach the artist. Usually income will develop in parallel with these social interactions. Respectively some economists have argued that social relevance and monetary rewards match, i.e. whoever ends up earning more is also the better artist, offering the higher quality works of art^[4]. Such reasoning makes most of us cringe simply because we don’t trust the market to be a good judge on matters of quality and relevance. Investigating this assumption, in what follows I’ll discuss some theories that separate quality, relevance and the rewards system and examine how they interact.

Birth of the star

But how do we decide who is “best”? Even experts often disagree on the qualities and talents of top performers. And we all have encountered the notorious prevalence of some cultural product that no one we know in person seems to consider even “good,” yet it is inescapably all over the place. It’s not as if we’re all listening to the Rolling Stones or whoever dominates the stadium act category in music. There are many artists who comfortably occupy a place of their own without having the reach of a stadium act. So there must be something else going on as well.

Reasons given for the emergence of superstars range from differences in talent, amplified by mass media^[5], to the need to communicate about the same topics when socializing with others^[6]. I don’t think these models match what we experience in reality. I’d like to offer a different explanation based on the effects of mental shelf space limitation and social proof. The concept of mental shelf space is analogous to the shelf space limitations in retail: a shop can store only so many CDs, books or brands of cereal. In any given category our minds only comfortably deal with between three and seven items and zone out on the Long Tail, limiting the number of names we can memorize^[7]. Most people will not bother to regularly follow more than a few novelists, musicians or movie actors. There are simply not the psychological capacity, enough time and funds to compare thousands of contestants in order to figure out who should receive our limited attention. The search costs would be too high. Therefore we try to minimize them by employing shortcuts. Sticking with the best is one of those shortcuts. And in order to quickly identify the best we look out for social proof. Social proof is a psychological principle that states that one means we use to determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct^[8]. We assume that enough of the others have gone through the search process and have identified the best when choosing one over the others. Whenever we are uncertain of what to look for, we’ll try to figure it out by looking at the choices of others.

This can go to bizarre lengths: Participants in an experiment were told that two shown, obviously different geometrical objects were the same. Astonishingly, when social proof is overwhelming (actors pretending to be other participants identified the objects as being identical), an MR imaging of the brain indicated that the objects were actually seen as being identical^[9]. In other words: In the right social context, we override our own judgments and rewire our brains to see, feel or hear what’s actually not there^[10].

Music is a means of social distinction, too. We actually do want to associate with certain groups of people and disassociate with others. With social proof we can figure out what others do and match our behavior accordingly. Social proof is so attractive because it helps us socialize, identify our group and save a whole lot of time, too. We might end up watching a mediocre movie, but we’ll enjoy the company of like-minded friends. In cultural contexts we rarely ever experience severe pain from following that strategy. Well, unless the movie was “Cowboys & Aliens” of course. In the bigger picture, social proof and limited mental shelf space promote diversity of categories and monoculture within categories at the same time.

These psychosocial factors are the reasons why the Long Tail doesn’t work (within one category) and people flock to the upper end of the scale. Against what a lot of propaganda claims, no distribution model or technological measure has ever changed this. Only a few geeks and professionals will ever bother to check out more than a few alternatives, and we all end up with the superstars. In a self-fulfilling prophecy these eventually do get better than the rest since they are exposed to better opportunities, get more funds to reinvest in their work and education, as well as better access to and allocation of other supportive means.

Quality is overrated

The Académie Francaise, photo by Niviere/SIPA

A nineteenth-century French novelist named Arsène Houssaye coined the phrase “the 41st chair” to describe the plight of talented individuals, deserving of rewards or recognition, who are nevertheless bypassed as these rewards are garnered by a select few. Houssaye’s phrase was inspired by the Académie Francaise. This elite institution, founded in 1635 during the rule of Louis XIII, was designed to identify and reward the nation’s greatest talents. If you are elected to one of the 40 seats you retain your position for life. These positions are so important to French society that the members of the Académie are called the “immortals.” The immortals that have held seats include some of France’s most famous citizens, from Dumas to Poincairé to Voltaire. It is intriguing though that the likes of Descartes, Molière, Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Diderot, Stendahl, Flaubert, Zola and Proust never got in. It was not that they lacked the ability. It was just that the limitation in numbers made them inhabitants of the “forty-first chair.”^[11]

Houssaye’s phrase is a good analogy to what happens to the other contestants within one category. Once the shelf is full, they are relegated to the forty-first chair no matter how great or valuable their actual contributions are. Mental shelf space has two varieties though, a vertical and a horizontal one. Vertically, within one category there are a few superstars and many inhabitants of the 41st chair. Horizontally though there are many more individual categories, each with its own superstar structure. That’s why we don’t all listen to the Rolling Stones exclusive, but also Theo Parrish, Carsten Nikolai, Pierre Boulez, Meshuggah or Fred Frith. This is intriguing, since horizontal mental shelf space for anything seems to allow for the coexistence of much more items than vertical: we know more separate supermarket product categories than brands of ketchup for instance. In marketing theory the according strategy is known as category positioning: if you can’t be number one in an existing category, create a new category. That might be a good explanation why culture is always changing. The contestants’ determination to reach “first call” status (and the impossibility to get ahead on crowded paths) makes them invent categories. Whoever creates a new category into people’s minds is likely to be associated with it due to social proof snowballing effects.

The horizontal dimension is a social one in the first place. Individuals don’t follow all categories available, but have preferences of a few, becoming “fans” of a style and its representatives respectively. Still, whenever we decide to engage with something less familiar (“let’s go to the opera tonight”), we consult social proof again. Then we join the already existing fans and skyrocket the chosen superstars’ social exposure. That is why the artist who is considered best by the public is not defined by talent or social chatter, but by category leadership, which is usually obtained when the category receives its initial public recognition (“Oh, that’s interesting — who does this?”). That’s why the actual quality, say of works in a new style of music, doesn’t matter much for success. This explains why often artists creating great works later on receive seemingly unjustly little recognition, while others reap the rewards. Some had their names identified with the category earlier on. Deepening a category is an activity that leverages those already on top. It is a paradoxical situation in which increased competition actually helps the predetermined winners by inflating the category’s rewards (more attention and funds flowing in).

This failure of readjusting the “class” structure within a category once the positions have been distributed is also named the Ratchet Effect^[12]: those on top do not fall much behind. It would cost the audience too much brainpower to readjust regularly. If you wonder why someone is still around artistically despite failing to keep up the quality that’s the reason. “Once a Nobel laureate, always a Nobel laureate” as Merton put it.

That effect is not always obvious. For instance, I recognize that virtually all techno superstars of the last decade now seem to lose their grip on dominating the distribution of recorded music. Their singles and albums don’t move that much anymore and their labels are shrinking to levels where they have to be cross-subsidized (even if that’s through the cheap labor of and endless supply of new interns). Still, their touring schedules are packed to the max. They do lose some ground, but no one replaces them. The Ratchet Effect applies to the internal hierarchy, not to the category itself. Categories often decline or get repositioned by other (sub-) categories, but even the captain of a sinking ship is still its captain.

Categorical morphology

In music, categories are often defined by but not limited to styles. One might be the leader of post-minimal technocumbia, but acting in a movie or wearing a mouse mask might do the job, too. “Gimmick categories” like these are usually exactly one artist deep, but at the same time they are subcategories of wider styles of music, too.

Things often get mixed up and attributes from outside music often define what artists stand for. A lot of pop has been highly influential with unimpressive musical foundations and inflated political, social or other agendas. Eventually such agendas help to break new aesthetics, too. Punk’s social and political relevance was probably earlier understood than its groundbreaking musical implications.

An initially small stylistic category might grow big and then split up into subcategories. Think of rock, having branched out in tree-like fashion with countless levels of subcategorization. It is sometimes hard to draw the line whether contestants happen to be in the same or in separate categories. Each of the 40 members of the Académie has his own story, and so have the artists on top in a bigger category. They share an audience, but develop individual profile in order to make it worthwhile for the audience to engage with more than one artist (even if that means putting on the mouse mask). The clearer the differences are the more likely we look at separate categories.

At a higher level, a subcategory might grow to become so enormous that entire other subcategories get repositioned. Once minimal outgrew loop techno (you know, the stuff Adam Beyer used to do), the leaders of minimal automatically became “bigger” than those of loop techno. The personnel’s structure within the subcategories didn’t change, but the metacategory (“techno”) found itself being transformed.

Read Part 2 of “Quality Is Overrated: The Mechanics of Excellence In Music” here

Stefan Goldmann is an electronic music artist, DJ and owner of the Macro label. stefangoldmann.com

Footnotes:

Stefan Goldmann on why Web 2.0 can work for you but won’t for most, where all the money went and how working against the market consensus can be a winning strategy.

Electronic music. What we believed for a long time was that anyone with a bit of talent had a chance at a career of about ten years before eventually retiring from the circuit. Of course there are exceptions for whom this does not seem to apply. Francois Kevorkian has probably had the longest career here (unless we count Kraftwerk as part of our little world); and it’s hard to imagine techno or house without Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills or Laurent Garnier. That’s the good news: it does not necessarily have to meet a predetermined end. On the other hand, artists emerging now face the hardest times ever to establish themselves. The lifespan between breaking through and being laid off seems to have reached a historic low point of half a year. The reasons behind this “haircut” to artistic longevity are the radically lowered barriers to participation, as well as the hectic marketplace discovering today’s new talent and abandoning yesterday’s new talent.

Let’s clarify “barriers”: in the old days of the music business, which was basically before the end of the 1970s, the main barriers to “making it in music” were studio time and access to distribution. Whoever wanted to be heard adequately needed well distributed releases. That is, having recorded material in the first place. The means for producing such recordings were so expensive that at some point only big corporations could spare the funds to pay for the required studio time and personnel. The effect of this economic barrier to resources was that a couple of hundred artists and bands gained access to an audience of millions. Once a recording was produced it enjoyed a long life in the market due to the lack of competition that otherwise would have pushed it off the store shelves. Only under these conditions did the huge, continuous investments in promotion and distribution actually make economic sense in those times and circumstances.

What a typical recording studio once looked like

This model experienced a serious challenge with the advent of the affordable 4-track recorder, which enabled home recording that could deliver marketable results for the first time ever. For instance, the whole late ’70s/early ’80s New York downtown scene can be pretty much explained by this piece of technology. Progress in affordable music equipment in the form of synthesizers, drum machines and samplers gave birth to a plethora of innovative styles in music, including hip hop, house, techno and drum ‘n’ bass. At the same time independent distribution was born, conquering channels previously serviced exclusively by major corporations. The new distributors were capable of connecting with ever smaller target groups. Fueled by enthusiasm, small businesses could survive on small quantities of product previously considered not to be worth the effort. Tango from Finland and death metal from anywhere found comfortable niches with worldwide followings.

These enabled artists and the people around them to become professionals, i.e. to make a living on the music instead of funding a hobby through an undesirable day job. That was the core economic feature of the independent music culture: no riches, but still sufficient funds to avoid wasting time on activities not related to music. Anyone busy generating income from 9 to 5 wouldn’t be able to gain the deep skills necessary to sustain a career in music and hold an audience for long. By the way, this comfortable indie-constellation was never really threatened by the majors, who only occasionally dropped by to sign away the most successful artists of any niche. Working within your own artistic preferences became a pretty comfortable thing to do back in the ’80s.

Closer to what today’s typical studio looks like. Richie Hawtin’s bedroom studio.

The next level was reached when it took nothing but a standard PC and a microphone (if required) to render an entire production. The software that emulated the previously needed pieces of gear came mostly for free thanks to piracy. Therefore, production costs practically hit zero and the record sales you needed in order to sustain a release fell almost to the cost of the manufacturing of the records themselves (with a few bucks for promotion). At that point, at least in dance music, sales figures of just around 5,000 physical units were considered a “hit,” whereas a bit earlier it would’ve required a few hundred thousand units. Many soon realized that even the expense of pressing up records or CDs was not really necessary. A digital download has no costs at all. The logical outcome was distribution that granted any piece of music total availability, with the downside of being the most inefficient way of distribution ever: what should I download when there are five billion files to choose from? Whom should I bless with my attention? Do I have any attention to spare?

Contrary to public perception, this didn’t affect the majors all that much. Their problems were mostly in their inability to maximize the advantages they already had instead of wasting resources on trying to revive an overthrown order. Soon enough it dawned on them that big artists (i.e. those with the biggest turnover) can generate reasonable income through so called 360-degree-deals, covering live gigs, publishing rights, merchandise, etc. all under the control of one company. Even the smallest labels engage in a similar policy nowadays. But the required resources to participate in the game of filling stadiums, really cashing in on movie and advertising deals today are almost exclusively in the hands of majors. Interestingly, the so called “democratization” of music production and distribution didn’t change this allocation of relevant income to the majors’ detriment at all.

The world is at your fingertips

Others fell victim to it. Absurdly, the complete disappearance of economic barriers to distribution (offering a free download doesn’t cost more than the time to upload the file) hit the wallets of the “indies” first, stripping a substantial part of their income. This mostly affected the artists and the personnel around them: designers, engineers, studio musicians, promotion and label professionals, music journalists, et al. The mass of competition they encountered meant anyone with a limited marketing budget had a difficult time surviving in the market. With the same promotional tools available to almost anyone, they lost their efficiency. The professionals listed above basically lost their income. In 2000, an average vinyl single generated a return of a couple of thousand Euros, while in 2011 the same single generates a loss of a couple of hundred Euros, even without what were formerly known as “production costs.” Anything on top, like a bigger production, a decent mastering, or proper sleeve design became factors of deepening material loss. That area of the craft gets subsequently cut off and replaced by an undiscriminating routine of two-step-distribution: “save as” and “upload to.”

Fleeing to a purely digital distribution doesn’t look that much better in general: only an established artist backed by a strong physical release experiences significant digital sales. The overwhelming majority goes by unnoticed. The average “digital only” dance single generates around 100 Euros of profit, for both artist and label, now most often being the same person. And these figures go down, too. Today a couple millions artists try to reach a few hundred people. Or like the contemporary pun puts it, “In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 people.”

Vinyl pressing plant from the days of yore

The result is a wide spread de-professionalization. If an artist regularly loses money on her efforts, she faces an economic end to her endeavors sooner or later. Being a “musician” is increasingly becoming a profession for those coming from inherited wealth or being mercantily exceptionally clever. It’s less then ever a question of the intrinsic quality of the music. What used to be done by professional enthusiasts now becomes the domain of the artists — turning them into designer, PR dude and distributor. It all subtracts from the time spent actually creating music. This puts additional pressure on the remaining professional environment. Nowadays it is increasingly harder to get hold of well executed services. Mastering, manufacturing vinyl, music PR — no one qualified enough is willing to tolerate the miserable working conditions and hilarious paychecks of these jobs for an extended time. Whoever has the chance seems to flee the music industry for something more prosperous. The error rate in manufacturing and distribution grows exponentially and actually feeds the market with ever shabbier products in content and execution.

Good luck learning to use one of these while holding a day job

There’s this die-hard belief that income, at least for the musicians (but not for the professional environment), will come from the fees for live performances instead. But how do you get live performances in the first place? Well, press helps. The problem encountered there is that the media has adapted to the state of the music industry. In electronic music that means whoever succeeds in producing two singles may find himself covered by all relevant press and booked throughout the club circuit, just to be replaced by the next “lucky fool” (a term from stock speculation) about three months later. New artists get “pumped and dumped.” What about a year old break, a production that takes longer, or time for having a baby? Two weeks without a release are perceived as a career flaw for those who had their breakthrough in the last three years. A longer shelf life in the media and on the circuit seems to be granted only to artists who started before the big flood came, which is pre-2005 approximately (if I were to spend a year on the beach, most likely I’ll be able to continue exactly where I had stopped). Or to those who buy their coverage — although that only works over a longer period of time on a five-figure budget. Most others face the high probability of approaching music as something you do between college and some dull job.

The artists’ disillusionment leads to ever lamer results in music — why bother? A single produced hastily in two hours work sells 500 units, while a delicate masterwork moves 800 (plus a bit of beer money from Beatport). These figures are in constant decline, too. The market average first pressing of a vinyl 12″ is 300 units now, which regularly indicated sales below this figure (deduct records given away as “promotion” and to friends).

Beatport’s top 100 downloads

What have we learned here? The so called “democratization” didn’t work. Everyone did believe they gained access. This access by itself is stripped of value, though, because no one cares that DJ XY from Z has that new record out. Through any available channel I get dozens of requests per day to listen to somebody’s track. That’s after a spam filter and a disclaimer that I don’t want to receive files. The result is that I don’t listen to files at all — I do buy vinyl regularly. DJ XY doesn’t get the gig. If he does by accident, that’s for the cab fare. In Berlin, with its conspicuous population of 50,000 DJs, promoters and club owners don’t have to try hard. There’s always someone who will play for free if asked. Hey, that’s free promotion for the new DJ XY record. Meanwhile in the provincial town of Z, the locals “practice” for free, so they develop the skills they’ll need to “make it” in Berlin one day. That’s where things come full circle. No proper gigs, no record sales, no income. Anyone who is not already “there” doesn’t seem to arrive anymore.

The propaganda that the future will have us all giving away music for free in order to make a living on gigs has been proven wrong by reality. Because basically everybody does exactly this and still doesn’t get booked all over (or not often enough, as with most “mid career” artists). The exception being Radiohead, of course, but only after a decade on the million-dollar budget of a major. The only profiteers here (and biggest fans of piracy and Creative Commons) are the stock holders of the Nasdaq 100. If you want to make a living on music, buy the relevant stock and live off the dividends. That’s where all the money goes that used to pay musicians and music professionals some time ago. It says a lot about the other side of “democratization,” too: the individual in search for music experiences no upside. He pays for the returns of Apple, Google, Beatport and the speaker fees of Larry Lessig and Chris Anderson by being lost in a flood of irrelevant, crappy music and the feeling that others had more fun before (hence the retro obsession in today’s music). The total de-motivation doesn’t manifest itself only in the musicians’ under achievements, but also in the annoyance of everybody else. A frustrated DJ plays lame tunes in front of people bored to tears. That’s the average event out there. Alternatively, a collective nostalgia for some era of “old days” prevails. Everyone keeps doing the same thing out of the fear that the slightest deviation from the norm will scare away the small remaining, yet patient audience who goes along because of a lack of alternatives (we dance either because we paid or because the drugs kicked in).

Nasdaq studio

Did that depress you? Now, here comes the good news: exactly because everyone seemingly performs to the lowest still acceptable standards, all you have to do as an artist is to unleash disproportional waves of creativity. Since nothing promises secure success anymore, all considerations to what “works in the marketplace” can be freely dumped and forgotten. The more out there you get, the better. It’s the only way to stand out in a totally dull environment. The advantage is, put cynically, that the old channels are jammed. Whoever tries to break through them following “proven” old ways (which usually means emulating other people’s career paths) is wasting time and energy. We can’t learn much from studying the careers of Carl Craig or Ricardo Villalobos anymore because the conditions that enabled them don’t exist any more. The channels that do work are found elsewhere and are open to those who possess endurance, individuality and substance — the values that are disappearing most rapidly now.

To an extreme extent, success in the arts is subject to random factors (we see many successful people who have no clue how they got there, how to stay there or how to repeat it). The more radically and frequently you stand out, the more often you get exposure to those factors, thus increasing the probability of channels opening up for you. That is not spamming the Internet but creating radically individual great music in the first place. Once you enter the channel, you allow more factors to work for you, since these tend to add up (path dependency). Art always had to be great (whatever that is) and move people in order to succeed, too. But now there’s that third dimension of having to create a wide gap between you and the competition, even if that’s just within one genre. If you can implement this idea in your work, the flood is not threatening at all anymore since it works against itself. “Unique” is the most valuable word in a crowded environment of generic ideas and overwhelming redundancy. Striving for this quality is also exactly what is most rewarding artistically. Besides screaming fans and free drinks, that is.

What the music buying experience used to look like

A very odd example for creating stand out events: I had that funny experience when I recorded an album for cassette last year. No one involved expected anything more than to have some fun with it. Still, I spent a lot of effort on this one, specifically on getting my head around the question why to use a cassette at all. No one else would have put more work than necessary into such an obsolete format. And just that brought in a lot of attention, which any file on Beatport, regardless how good it is, wouldn’t have done at all. And there was no free lunch involved. On the contrary, distribution was severely cut down to a very few sources. Today it’s actually so much easier again as long as you can get your head around the notion that “anything popular is wrong.” Especially in mainstream media like Germany’s Der Spiegel or UK’s BBC (in features, not the usual playlists), I’ve only been covered because of totally odd projects. For the same reason new opportunities follow, which artists who cling to functionality and marketplace consensus never encounter. I don’t play techno clubs exclusively now, but also find myself scoring a ballet, performing in museums or getting calls from classical performers for collaboration — my techno background makes me stand out in these settings as well. In return, crossover encounters of this kind add that edge to the artist’s profile which feeds back into the club scene. It’s definitely more rewarding than spamming the internet with “listen to this track” emails.

Highly individualized, lightly advertised work is way more attractive nowadays than consensus-style work, advertised to death (short, unsustainable hype is the most one can hope for there). People are starting to realize this. Many top labels stopped promoting their new singles for instance. It just appears in the shops and that’s it. It’s not unlikely that artists will increasingly lose their interest in having their output available all over and seek for a more intimate exchange with the audience. Why plaster the Internet with files? Who finds that valuable anymore? Imagine an incredible piece of music available only once — on dubplate. Or let’s consider falling back in history — music only in the presence of its creator. No release. Come to the concert. Enthusiasm will be back when you get this feeling of attending something really special. How to create this feeling for the audience is the core task of the creatives, if they deserve that name.

—————————-

Postscript:

That said, it still takes a huge amount of time and dedication for an artist to develop a standout profile. This raises the issue of financing a career in music. Since the indies mostly lost their capacity to fund musicians, the artist’s required initial investment has become higher again. Usually people argue there will have to be some sort of day job then. As aforementioned, that would be perfectly fine if being occupied all day with something not relevant to music didn’t actively hinder you from devoting yourself to developing your artistic edge. Your mind will be occupied with other stuff instead of exploring the areas of sound where it gets deep. To be able to create stuff that outlasts two weeks, you’ll need to go full time at some point.

Even after tolerable initial periods of day job-cross-finance, those who succeed are never safe. Since the available funds (those remaining after the Nasdaqs sucked out what they could) get distributed to more and more people, even electronic music’s top and near-top level artists’ income drops rapidly. Periods of sufficient remuneration are followed by periods of economic frustration. Therefore there is a need to have sources of income that are independent from your own music’s direct returns. That is, any income that can be obtained with spending very little time on it — no day jobs allowed unless you are a grossly overpaid consultant for a few hours a month, like I am occasionally. One may consider the pros and cons (there are such) of grants and fellowships, commissions from the industry or institutions, as well as sources of passive income. The latter means that once set up, a scheme generates income without investing further time — interest, the concepts of arbitrage and leverage, or exploiting details of copyright law may serve as rather abstract examples here. How to make them work for you would be a topic of it’s own. Separating income and music in your head can be deeply rewarding. The freedom experienced in creating music to your own criteria first and even “against the market” if necessary is way more elegant than trying to squeeze as much as possible out of music that has to produce your paycheck. That is another factor contributing to an artist’s longevity in the market — having guts and principles. Get your head around it, do your homework and you’ll quickly see solutions that work for you.

Stefan Goldmann is an electronic music artist, DJ and owner of the Macro label. This article, which first ran in Silo magazine, is translated from the German.

01. Dexter, “Junofest” [Rush Hour Recordings] (buy)
So far Dexter’s 2010 output has only gotten better with each release as his Redbox EP for Steffi’s Dolly imprint (a sub-label of his Klakson) was soon followed by the even better remix of Midland’s “Play The Game.” To these ears he’s managed to top himself again with the Not The Only One EP for Rush Hour Recordings. The title track and its instrumental dub are both incredibly catchy but the cut I keep returning to is their close cousin, “Junofest.” Swells of aquamarine synth chords rush along the contours of the swinging beat, each proptly answered by a multihued retort of Juno bass in a call and response fashion. Slightly raving synth pitches seethe through any open spaces, providing a bed of shifting texture that steps to the fore during the build up and breakdowns. Simple yet sophisticated, accessible without being cheesy, it’s exceptional for most producers and par for the course for this talented Dutchman. Here’s hoping the level of quality only continues to grow and fill his forthcoming debut album.

02. Stefan Goldmann, “The Maze” (Part 1)
[Macro] (buy)
For a producer with such an experimental bent, Stefan Goldmann’s tracks are almost always at home in the club and make as much sense arriving on Cocoon as Mule Electronic or his own Macro imprint. His combined mastery of conceptual execution and dance floor utilty are in fine form on The Maze, his latest for Macro. White all three of its sections are cut from the same singed cloth, “Part 1″ is the most straightforward and useful for DJs. From a restrained base of clipped kicks and hats and (what seems like) sharp guitar licks erupts a volcano of modular synth strains that sizzle like aural magma. Sometimes Goldmann fires off complementary torrents, othertimes he lets it boil over the edge and melt everything around it, relishing the squeals and groans of the abused synth. Occasionally abrasive and always coursing with energy, “The Maze” is nearly impossible to ignore and quite likely to whip dancers into a frothy, heaving mass.

03. Sebastien San ft. Aaron-Carl, “Faces”
[Room With A View] (buy)
Considering his instrumentally focused work for Echocord Colour, Figure SPC, Rush Hour and Planet E, I was somewhat surprised to find Sebastien San had invited a vocalist to spice up his latest release. Yet the French producer chose well, asking Detroit’s late, reigning male diva, Aaron-Carl, to lend his considerable talents to his Faces EP for Room With A View. This unexpected pairing yields some quite wonderful results: “Faces” sounds like Carl Craig creating a trilling, undulating techno throne from which AC sings about his long career and the pursuit to “keep me amazed.” However, I tend to gravitate towards the “Other” mix which thickens the synth lines to hug tightly to Aaron-Carl’s vocals, augmented by buzzing upper registers, lending them even more heft. This world-weary anthem in waiting is a fitting reminder of Sebastien San’s versatility and Aaron-Carl’s vocal genius — especially in light of the latter’s recent and untimely passing from lymphoma. He was one of Detroit’s greats and a friend of LWE. Our thoughts are with his loved ones.

04. Gabriel Ananda, “Serengeti” [Sportclub] (buy)
Considering how quickly dance music audiences and selectors tire of popular artists it’s not entirely surprising Gabriel Ananda is no longer running at the front of the pack. But while the author of the once inescapable “Doppelwhipper” and the well liked Bambusbeats LP has fallen from the tip of tastemaking tongues (and coincidentally slowed his pace of releases), his knack for writing catchy techno tracks hasn’t abandoned him as easily. Take for example “Serengeti,” his contribution to the second of Sportclub’s five year anniversary samplers, the vinyl for which is sadly only available on Decks.de. Reliant largely on a low, gritty synth line that creates friction as its long legs stride through unfussy percussion, Ananda waits until the second minute to let the progression reveal melodic variations. It catches you off guard with how catchy and simple it is, a sensation made even more accute when breezy pads and arpeggios add to the dreamy, half-remembered mood. If Ananda can get away with stowing such a fantastic track on a sampler EP, it’s only a matter of time until he’s back on our radars again.

05. Tomson & Benedict, “Rainy Things”
[Freerange Records] (buy)
I’m thankful Freerange Records seems content to release well produced music that holds up over time rather than going along whatever the trends dictate. A more fad-conscious label might have hesitated to sign a single like Rainy Things, the debut single from Manchester’s Tomson & Benedict, because frankly it has a lot in common with the colorful tech-house prevalent in 2007. In the case of “Rainy Things” this is actually quite refreshing — an engaging glide through kaleidoscoping arpeggios that dart up and down the register like graceful dancers. Complemented by soothing counterpoint pads and assertive, Juno-like bass notes, the track builds to a peak of pulsating ostinato strings that recall Tiger Stripes and Âme in the same breath. Rather than sounding out of touch, Tomson & Benedict sweep up audiences in familiar motifs that prove relevant and enduring, even if it does have me a little nostalgic. They’ve even planned for the grumpy novelty addicts with the “Telepathy Dub,” which sounds like an Agnès remix — always a good thing in my book. What will be the most interesting is where the duo goes after this fortuitous start.

06. Jichael Mackson, “Sugar Hill Mountain”
[Musique Risquée] (buy)
07. NDF, “Since We Last Met” [DFA] (buy)
08. Barker & Baumbecker, “Candyflip”
[Ostgut Ton] (buy)
09. Matthew Dear, “Little People (Black City)” [Ghostly International] (buy)
10. Terrance McDonald, “Mind Over Matter”
[M>O>S Deep] (buy)

Staff Charts:

Chris Burkhalter
01. Pinch, “The Boxer” [Tectonic]
02. Moody, “It’s 2 Late 4 U And Me” [KDJ]
03. Commix, “Be True” (Burial Remix) [Metalheadz]
04. LD, “Mastermind” [Soul Jazz]
05. Duplex, “AM Death” [Field]
06. DJ Rum, “St. Martins” [On The Edge]
07. Cosmic Metal Mother, “Rat’s Poem” (Prins Thomas Miks) [Panacustica]
08. Ibex, “My Mojo” [Yore]
09. Anodyne, “Corrosion (Bitten By The Black Dog)” [Psychonavigation]
10. Nacho Marco & Raoul Lambert, “Delicate” [We Play House]

Luke Hawkins
01. STL, “Seductive Temptation” [Something]
02. Marcello Napoletano, “This Movement Must Be The Start” [Mathematics]
03. Ø, “Kuvio” [Sahko]
04. Audio Atlas, “Alaska” [Mathematics]
05. Aaron-Carl, “Crucified” (XDB Edit) [Millions of Moments]
06. Emmanuel Jal, “Kuar” (Olaf Dreijer Remix) [Innervisions]
07. Roof Light, “Midas” [Millions of Moments]
08. Northworks, “Through” [Millions of Moments]
09. Giorgio Gigli, “Interneurons” [Electronica Romana]
10. Erosion, “3″ [Chain Reaction]

Anton Kipfel
01. Chicago Skyway, “Resolution M” [Uzuri]
02. Oskar Offermann & Moomin, “Joe MacDaddy” [Aim]
03. Skudge, “Overture” [Skudge]
04. Axel Boman, “Purple Drank” [Pampa Records]
05. Portable, “Find Me” [Perlon]
06. Kassem Mosse, “We Speak To Those” [Nonplus+]
07. Jichael Mackson, “Sugar Hill Mountain” [Musique Risquée]
08. Aaron-Carl, “Crucified” (XBD Edit) [Millions Of Moments]
09. Azari & III, “Indigo” [Turbo]
10. Nick Turner, “Out Of Your Love” [Trendy Mullet]

Chris Miller
01. Harmony Funk, “Can’t Let You Go” [Clone Jack For Daze]
02. Ace and the Sandman, “Let Your Body Talk” [Trax]
03. John Roberts, “Navy Blue” [Dial]
04. Portable, “Find Me” [Perlon]
05. Matthew Dear, “Slowdance” [Ghostly International]
06. Terrance McDonald, “Mind Over Matter” (New Mix) [M>O>S Deep]
07. A Made Up Sound, “Extra Time” [AMUS]
08. 2400 Operator, “Footsteps” [Underground Quality]
09. Addison Groove, “Sexual” [white]
10. Kassem Mosse, “We Speak To Those” [Nonplus+]

Andrew Ryce
01. Discreet Unit, “Shake Your Body Down” [Prime Numbers]
02. Arkist, “Out of the Sun” [Deca Rhythm]
03. Skudge, “Convolution” (Marcel Fengler Remix) [Skudge]
04. A Made Up Sound, “Demons” [AMUS]
05. Downliners Sekt, “Selfish G” [Disboot]
06. Brendon Moeller, “Close Up” [Ann Aimee]
07. Damu, “Mermaid” [Local Action]
08. Barker & Baumecker, “Candyflip” [Ostgut Ton]
09. Raffertie, “Rank Functions” [Super]
10. Phaeleh, “Afterglow” [Afterglo]

Colin Shields
01. Mike Dehnert, “Biface” [Fachwerk]
02. Victoria Wilson James, “Through (Drop Deep Dub)” [Epic]
03. John Roberts, “Ever or Not” [Dial]
04. Candi Staton, “Evidence” (Pépé Bradock Reconstruction A Rebrousse Temps) [Honest Jon's]
05. Mr Fingers, “Stars” [Alleviate]
06. Omega II, “Sonic Boom” (Delorian Mix) [Debonaire Records]
07. Daniel Wang, “Like Some Dream” [Balihu]
08. Chicago Skyway, “Resolution M” [Uzuri]
09. A Made Up Sound, “Demons” [AMUS]
10. Joi Cardwell, “Goodbye” (Victor Simonelli New Vocal Mix) [Eightball Records]

LWE’s excellent 20th podcast came from Macro label owner and multifarious producer Stefan Goldmann. Don’t miss your chance to download it before it retires this Friday, September 3rd at 10 am CST.

[Macro]

Writing in 1626, Francis Bacon described “…sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation… we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds… We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances.” (The New Atlantis).The manipulation of sounds, found or manufactured, into the futuristic and new is an impulse that has accompanied the musical urge, it would seem, for hundreds of years. It motivated Luigi Russolo to build his intonarumori at the turn of the last century: these were huge horns attached to boxes, the full set of which would fill a large room. In performances with classical orchestras after the first World War, Russolo elevated his mechanical tinkering into something that might have been the first true electronic music. Around the same time, Igor Stravinsky released his “Le Sacre Du Printemps,” a piece widely thought to be a cornerstone in musicological development.

Lately Stefan Goldmann has been serving up genre-melting house, tech, and dub-tinged excursions that have varied from tepidly engaging to wildly good. With a re-edit of Stravinsky’s 1913 piece, delivered on his Macro imprint, Goldmann has taken a clear stab at flinging himself beyond the ranks of those creative in a scene, towards the likes of Stravinsky and Russolo. His “Sacre du Printemps” interpretation is befuddling on first listen. Carl Craig and Moritz von Oswald’s “Recomposed” took famous classical music and wholly remade it electronically. Goldmann opts for a bolder route: He uses samples from fourteen performances of Stravinsky and cuts them into what the press release assures is no fewer than 147 segments, brushing them ever so lightly in his studio, and stitching them back together into an eighteen minute version all his own.

The obvious question, then: is it any good? The answer, I think, is yes. Goldmann’s edit combines subtle layers of tone in ways that jar and frustrate, because no orchestra should be able to combine them in one sitting. Goldmann’s track is creepy. The familiar feeling of hearing an orchestra perform, subverted minute by minute by a collision of sounds that shouldn’t quite be with one another, gets under the skin. Whether it does more than this is probably a matter of interpretation. To some, Goldmann’s efforts here might pale in comparison to any one of the fourteen recordings he samples in their unmolested versions. For me, though, the wonderfully subtle feeling of standing on wobbly ground Goldmann creates here is a real treat. If you prefer the original way of doing things, he’s included two of the classic recordings he’s used. But for those that want a track made with a hint of Stravinsky and Russolo’s brave approach, it’s all about the remix.

It’s somewhat of an anomaly that Stefan Goldmann’s profile isn’t writ as large as his thrilling productions. The German producer and owner of the Macro label inhabits a special place in electronic music, constantly wowing with each subsequent release, be it twelve inch, full length album, remix, or concept re-edit of Stravinsky. Even from his earliest beginnings on Derrick Carter and Luke Solomon’s Classic label it was evident Goldmann stood out from the pack, not afraid to move in his own direction and moreover always pushing himself further. It was 2005′s “Sleepy Hollow EP” that finally awakened many to his unique musical charms, and since then he hasn’t put a foot wrong, releasing a string of twelves culminated in an album that housed them all (The Transitory State) and notching up a slew of remixes that eclipsed the originals (Force of Nature’s “Sequencer” and Sideshow’s “African Cheri” immediately spring to mind). It’s less surprising, then, that the scope and sheer quality of Goldmann’s work earned him a nomination for the German equivalent of a Grammy award. But then rather than keep reading about how great we think he is, it would be much easier to check out his exclusive podcast mix and hear for yourselves.

LWE Podcast 20: Stefan Goldmann (65:17)

Tracklist:

01. Jeff Mills, “Man From Tomorrow” [Axis]
02. Brothers’ Vibe, “The Difference” [Mixx Records]
03. Santiago Salazar, “Arcade” [Macro]
04. Sound Stream, “Soul Train” [Sound Stream]
05. Raudive, “Christmas Tree” [Poker Flat Recordings]
06. Dennis Ferrer, “Son Of Raw” [Ibadan]
07. Loco Dice, “Tight Laces” (Marcel Dettmann’s Response 2) [Desolat]
08. Jacktronix, “Gasoline” [Antipop Records]
09. Kenny Larkin, “Bassmode” (C2 remix) [Planet E]
10. Monobox, “Trade” (Ricardo Villalobos remix) [Logistic Records]
11. Sylk 130, “When The Funk Hits The Fan” (Mood II Swing When The Dub Hits The Fan) [Ovum Recordings]
12. Norman Nodge, “Untitled” [Marcel Dettmann Records]
13. Stefan Goldmann, “Art Of Sorrow” [Victoriaville]
14. Racquet-Ball Club ft. K. La Dawn, “Gravy” [Downtown 161]
15. Stefan Goldmann, “Untitled” [unreleased; CDR]
16. Peter Kruder, “Chordal” (Macro)
17. Santiago Salazar, “Arcade” (Stefan Goldmann remix) [Macro]

When and where did you make the mix?

Stefan Goldmann: In my studio. I hadn’t unpacked my records from the Macro residency at Panorama Bar. It was such a brilliant night: Santiago Salazar, Raudive, Finn Johannsen, Sound Stream were all were on fire and the crowd was really into it. I had so much pleasure playing on this night, so I tried to get a bit of that vibe across in this mix.

What’s the concept behind the mix?

This time I went for an almost pure club mix.

Who are a few of your favorite DJs and why?

Theo Parrish! Because he can make a crowd scream while changing styles all the time. He can be so good at mixing the weirdest stuff together and keeping everybody dancing. People (including myself) clearly have more fun with this vibe than with any of the DJs who only play the narrowest slice of a sub-genre for hours. Theo is my favourite proof the opposite works in the hands of a skilled musician. And it’s really the better party. Also Moritz von Oswald is a hell of a DJ. I mention him because he’s very picky about where he spins, so not many people get a chance to hear him live. He really blew my mind on a Sunday last summer. There are quite a couple of people whose sets I enjoyed recently — Sven Väth’s house set when I played at his birthday party at Cocoon, for instance. On a totally different tip I need to mention Mika Vainio, who plays some of the best experimental sets I’ve ever heard. I had booked him for my Elektroakustischer Salon night at Berghain and I wasn’t disappointed.

What can we expect from you for the rest of the year?

I’m still enjoying the waves the “Art Of Sorrow” single makes. Which doesn’t mean I’ve been lazy! Next up is a CD for Macro with a very special edit I did of Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 masterpiece “Le Sacre Du Printemps.” I don’t really like the idea of classics being edited, but this one is pretty different from the usual cut ups, I believe. I also just did a remix of a track that I’m really proud I could sign to Macro: Santiago Salazar’s “Arcade.” 2009 looks quite busy again, but I won’t tell you more for now!

LWE Podcast 20: Stefan Goldmann (65:17)

[Victoriaville]

After a year that saw Stefan Goldmann in top form with “Radiant Grace” and the issue of his collected singles as the album The Transitory State, 2008 ebbed with “Wolverine,” a slightly lackluster affair that failed to deliver the same punch as the string of previous impeccable releases. Goldmann’s first offering of 2009 will address that balance with a startling double header on the new Victoriaville imprint, a mixture of melody and mayhem that is setting alight techno and dubstep camps alike.

“The Art Of Sorrow” has been doing some club damage for a few months now, and borrows from the ecclesiastical vibe Goldmann visited with “Lunatic Fringe” in late 2007, this time opting for the church organ as a source of inspiration. Goldmann’s ability to make bedfellows out of disparate elements in a track is what truly sets him apart from the majority of producers. Building on an air of suspense and drama from the outset, when the big brash tones of the organ are released you almost miss the subtlety of the flute, orchestral strings and several other incidental sounds that follow. The bass line worms its way around the melodies, a rotund sluggish beast to be reckoned with. For all the tension and melody packed in to “The Art Of Sorrow,” “Radar Opaque” is a raw, reverb heavy affair. Its broken, staccato beat and bleak, industrial outlook will be favored by fans of Scuba, Shackleton and those who like their techno/dubstep hybrids with a post apocalyptic feel to them. Most interesting is that the track actually breaks down in the last few minutes to a slow pounding house beat that will either confuse the hell out of people hearing it in a club or invoke some sort of frenzied meltdown. Strictly limited to 666 vinyl copies, this is essential gears from Goldmann.

[Macro]

With a resume including releases on Perlon, Classic, Ovum, Innervisons, and his own Macro imprint, as well as a reputation for being a clutch DJ, Stefan Goldmann is one of the more pedigreed producers on the scene. Goldmann may be well-respected and popular with listening audiences and other DJs alike, but he hasn’t reached “superstar” level by any means. With that in mind, the release of the two-CD set The Transitory State provides ample evidence both as to why Goldmann deserves to be mentioned in the same breath alongside the shortlist of power players, and why he likely never will be.

The first disc, Works, is a collection of Goldmann’s vinyl releases dating back to 2005; and it’s here he shows his uniqueness, primarily through his startling, strange and diverse sonic palette. “Lunatic Fringe” fuses a bulbous bounce to a female choir of extraterrestrials; “Radiant Grace” works a classical guitar riff that sounds a bit like the Law & Order theme with a horror-show string run that would make Bernard Hermann proud; “Sleepy Hollow” is a shimmering robot getting down with itself; “Blood” is uptempo funk mayhem, disintegrating discos with a stuttering laser-beam of a riff and clattering percussion. Nothing sounds quite like the next thing, but it’s all united by its utter weirdness and daring inventiveness. These aren’t your standard variety tracks; these are songs set apart from the norm with purpose.

The headiness continues and is expanded on the second disc, Voices of The Dead (also released as a limited-edition 5×7″ vinyl set), a concept album that “searches for the common root of all music in an electro-acoustic setting.” Roughly translated, that equates to nearly an hour’s worth of bizarre, squirm-inducing “ambient” music, far more suited to a walk through Arkham Asylum than to any chill-out room. Uncomfortable nature aside, you can’t keep your ears off it, as textures burn themselves out under heat lamps and melodies turn themselves inside-out in fun house mirrors. This isn’t background music; this is the soundtrack to a drug-fueled nightmare that’s as brilliant as it is unsettling.

In terms of fusing the avant garde with the dancefloor, Goldmann is one of the few who consistently gives Villalobos a run for his money. It’s brilliant, challenging work — the kind that doesn’t exactly put you at Sasha and Digweed level. Regardless, as with most capital-A Artists, perhaps Goldmann is just ahead of his time or a mad scientist. In either case, The Transitory State deserves your time and attention.

[Mule Musiq]

Ramping up to re-release their album III this summer, Force of Nature enlisted a couple of high-profile remixers to re-introduce the album. Force of Nature, a Japanese producer duo, keeps their arpeggiators slow and wide-eyed enough to be pretty malleable fodder (a trait shared with M83). So it’s no surprise that “Remixed” is as good as it sounds on paper. Unlike the earlier remix work of Prins Thomas and Matt Edwards – who slowed down Force of Nature’s tracks to emphasize the groove and menace – “Remixed” has two artists ready to speed off into other directions.

For Stefan Goldmann, it means throwing away all the defining characteristics of “Sequencer.” Gone is the heavy throb, the playful imbibing of Jean-Michel Jarre’s “Arpegiator” melody, the slo-mo Doppler EQ effects. Goldmann sounds like he’s still chasing the hiccup and pop of his “Lunatic Fringe.” Rebuilt from the woodblock up, glimpses from “Sequencer” are gradually layered until the remix hits full gear (and full shimmer) in the back third. It’s bucolic enough to be mistaken for Border Community but never gets lost grazing. And Goldmann even gets upstaged by Still Going’s take on stand-out “Transmute.” The original pours arpeggiators on like warm syrup, but Still Going hollows the track out. Leaning hard on the Schaffel, the duo peppers the track with just-there ticks, a delicate soup of delay, and a two-note bass. After Goldmann’s rehaul, Still Going’s remix of “Transmute” might sound straightforward. But the track is pitch-perfect – from the modest start to the monster denouement – splitting the difference between Balearic bliss and ambient house.