Whoa. Do I have a blog?

Ahem.

Okay, look…I know it’s been awhile. I’ve been busy. I also have a confession to make: I’ve been writing on another website. I know, I know, and I’m sorry for being unfaithful to you, but here’s the problem Dear Reader: who in the heck are you? The struggle I have with this blog is knowing what to write. I don’t want to write about my daily life, that’s just automatically out. I’d love to write about video games, but only some of you care. I’d love to write about movies, and I regularly do, but I don’t like the notion of this being a one-topic enterprise.

The problem is, you’re too diverse, Dear Reader. Made up of too many different walks of life and attitudes. And since I can monitor this page’s viewership, I know which posts are tickling your fancy and which aren’t. I know, I should just write what I want and not mind, but we both know I’m an entertainer. I like to please my audience, and you are my audience.

The point is, I’m sorry I’ve kept away from you. Can’t we take it back to the way it was? When we first began? Oh how I miss those days.

Anyway,

I’m Now Into Electronic Music.

I’ve experienced the biggest tidal shift in my musical taste since I did away with country music in the seventh grade (I’ll always owe you for that, Offspring). Unlike that first change, this one is not exclusionary: it does not alter what I loved before, it simply adds a whole new limb to the body of my iTunes library.

Now “electronic music” is not a good name for what I listen to, it’s better to call it IDM, which apparently stands for “intelligent dance music.” I know some of you are thinking, “Oh no, not that terrible techno crap, why does he like that stuff?” Let me reassure you: it’s not that. That genre is referred to as “house,” or “dub/dubstep.” I’m not completely impervious to house, Massive Attack and Crystal Method do some nice work, but they’re not the core of the sound.

IDM is better defined by acts like Autechre, Proem, Deru, Squarepusher, Ben Frost, Aphex Twin and Amon Tobin. There are almost never lyrics, and the running times are typically on the long side. Most of the IDM I like is very dark and stripped down, and it relies on nuanced dynamics to build momentum in the song. I especially like the melding of distortion-heavy aesthetics with a computerized, futuristic feel. If you’re into science fiction literature at all, this stuff is the best imaginable companion to a good sci-fi novel. Grab yourself some Heinlein and slap on some Autechre, you’ll think you jumped dimensions.

(FYI: Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor are interchangeable terms. NIN isn’t really a band, it’s just him plus whatever touring band he’s got on board. The creative decisions begin and end with Trent.)

I guess there are two relevant things to address here: how I came to love it, and why I came to love it. The first one is easy: Nine Inch Nails. I was working on a very dark spy thriller a few years back, and needed some mood music to help me build the tension in my mind. I stumbled across a NIN instrumental called “A Warm Place” and liked it, perhaps against my better judgment. I mentioned this off-hand to a friend, who confessed that he too had been surprised by how palatable Reznor’s music seemed. I had always associated NIN with Marilyn Manson, seeing as the two were on the same label and aimed for a similar audience, and since I deeply hated every piece of music the latter ever made, it didn’t bode well for Trent. I had also always hated electronic music, although I don’t really know why. Something eventually compelled me to buy “The Downward Spiral.” The opening track was called “Mr. Self Destruct,” and it was the biggest smack in the face I had heard from rock music since Rage Against the Machine opened up “Killing in the Name” on me.

It took me days to figure out what I liked about “Destruct,” which seemed little more than a wall of angry noise. Upon repeated listens, it dawned on me that Trent Reznor was actually molding harsh industrial music into pop song structures; he is famous for stubbornly referring to himself as a “pop musician.” This gave the music a “diamond in the rough” taste with just the right ratio of sweet to bitter. I had gobbled up his entire discography within months, and never met an album I didn’t love. From that point on, electronic music was waiting to happen.

A year or two later, Trent Reznor released “Year Zero,” a post-apocalyptic concept album that he promised would be a massive divergence from his other work. Each song would be written in a character from some over-arching story he had planned out, and the sound would no longer be “metal” by any reasonable standard. When it came out, I discovered two things about it immediately: the lyrics were forgettable, and the music was breathtaking. Trent has never been an exceptional lyricist; he’s certainly not bad, and he hits something real a few times each album, but a lot of it just functions well to be ignored. “Zero” was a brave attempt to make the lyrics a much more key player, and while it wasn’t enormously successful, the risk did force him to craft a new audio environment that was mind-bending. This bold new sound-scape was constructed from wave upon wave of rhythm, synthesizer and noise, crunched together and blasted from every direction, creating a sound that felt…deep. You couldn’t just listen to it, you had to listen inside of it. It wasn’t even bordering on metal, in fact sometimes it didn’t even feel like rock, it was…electronic. Shortly after, NIN developed the sound further when he released a massive compilation of instrumental tracks called “Ghosts,” and I was hooked.

I’m not sure if it clicked right away that other musicians might be doing something similar. I had the Chemical Brothers album “Dig Your Own Hole” and quite enjoyed it, but that was explicitly dance music which happened to be appreciable through earphones. The concept of electronic music made for introspective listening did not occur to me for quite some time. According to my iTunes purchasing history, it officially hit me on November 11th, 2008, when I purchased a song called “Overand” by a two-man outfit called Autechre. I don’t remember how I stumbled on them, but I knew they were a big deal, and I went ahead and purchased an album of theirs called “LP 5.” This turned out to be a minor mistake: while very good music, “LP 5″ was deliberately clean and mechanical in its tone, and I wanted something dark and grimy. A browse through their back catalog revealed a song called “Dael,” which hit right on the money. Now I was intrigued. What in the heck was this stuff?

I next stumbled on Proem, who proved to be the landslide artist. Proem was not necessarily dark or grungy, but he was incredibly minimal and foreboding, and he accomplished something that surprised me: he infused hard line, stripped down IDM with a real sense of emotion. This is harder than it sounds, because synthesizers are always in danger of sounding ridiculous, especially since the horrible new wave crap of the 1980s. Richard Bailey (his actual name) had a gift for creating dynamics and mood without sacrificing that tight, satisfying sensation electronic music can only achieve when it remains austere. He could sweeten a bass line at just the right moment while sustaining an ominous, threadbare aesthetic. I descended on this guy’s albums like a wolf on fresh meat, and after that IDM became a thing I knew about. The rest is history.

The next question is why, and that’s much shorter: the stuff is great to write to, and I’m always writing. Wherever I’m going, whatever I’m doing, my mind is spitting images at me, trying to find triggers that spin me off in a new direction. IDM is graceful enough to lubricate this process and stimulate me without getting in my way. It’s a hard target to hit, and no other music I’ve encountered can do it: if it’s too direct it draws attention to itself, but if it’s too remote then what the hell am I listening to? Any good IDM song must stand up to precise scrutiny, must work when you listen to it while doing nothing else, and then also fade into the background when needed. No simple task.

(IF YOU READ NO OTHER PART OF THIS POST, READ THIS UPCOMING PARAGRAPH. I LIKE IT)

I’m also more and more fascinated by topics such as technology, neurology, abstract physics, computers, philosophy, and religion (well I’ve always loved that one), and IDM always feels right for any of them. I also think it’s quite exciting to listen to a genre of music that is defiantly of its time, and no other. In other words, the guys and girls making this stuff owe nothing to the Rolling Stones, they’re not trying to recreate music as it was in the 70s or any other time. They are doing something you literally couldn’t do a few decades ago. They follow different rules of composition, rhythm, aesthetics, even song titling, and their rules work. What they’re making is complex, interesting and good, and it achieves real things that rigid song structures cannot. This is music of right now, it belongs to this time and no other. The past is great, you’ll never hear me speak ill of history, but I’m not one of those people who believes the present is always inferior to “the good old days.” I like to embrace what is, to assume I am meant to be a part of it, and to cherish everything that makes it unique.

Here are some of the cream of the crop. This is some really good stuff from my private stash, the result of a lot of iTunes gift cards and time. Now when you listen to it, let me give you one piece of advice: think of it as jazz. Real jazz, I mean. If you’ve ever enjoyed the breathless improvisations of Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk, you know how to listen to for what isn’t expected, and how to let a song carry you along instead of making it sit in front of you. That is the spirit with which IDM is best digested. I recommend you emulate it here.

-Autechre–”Dael” (ignore the video). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG6O3-_RO3Q

Autechre’s music is long, dense and unrelenting. Utterly stripped down, very minimal and sexy. Like the films of Kubrick, it’s based around patterns and repetition, it’s almost mechanical. This is a menacing track built from a sinister set of loops, and yet there’s something hypnotic and seductive about it anyway.

-Proem–”I Don’t Know How To Tell” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FbjE_jbkfo

This is what I’m talking about when I say that Proem puts real emotion into IDM. The sound is stripped and precise, and yet the melody has such warmth and longing. An exquisite meld of soul and substance. Listen for that incredible bass line that drops in at 00:58.

-Justice–”Waters of Nazareth” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJu_3CPhC4

This song captures IDM in a way. For the first ten seconds, it just repeats a horrible, grating sound over and over. The listener is just about to start worrying when the rhythm kicks in at 10 seconds, and then we never look back. This is the essence of good IDM: the threat of devolving into pure noise must ALWAYS be there. We must feel like we’re on the very edge of what music even is. That’s the thrill of it.

And also, if this thing doesn’t make you bob your head and want to drive a car very quickly with the high beams on, then you need your pulse checked.

-Nine Inch Nails “10 Ghosts II” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnY3aePtg9Q)

One of the most foreboding and sinister pieces of music ever, and an absolutely perfect IDM song. Literally it cannot be improved. Again, notice how the first 20 seconds make you wonder if buying this wasn’t a horrible mistake, before a bellowing piano line drops in at 00:28 and creates melody from discord. NIN has a gift for finding the music in chaos, the order in audio anarchy.

Bands like Slipknot can’t be half this scary with twice the number of musicians.