HISSNLISSN HAS MOVED

CASE STUDY

From Peter Chambers' Sounding Off @ Resident Advisor

Case study: big-box festivals

One of the key symptoms of the appearance pie shrinking has been the dramatic increase in big-box festivals. Ten years ago, large-scale 'super' events would have relied on one or two big name internationals, with the other slots filled by local DJs. But as the number of tour-dependent internationals has skyrocketed, greater and greater numbers of interstates and internationals are corralled into one event. Here, dance music has pulled a Walmart; everyone is sheltering under the umbrella of scale: promoters distribute risk by diversifying their portfolio and increasing their own profile by marketing the whole she-bang as a branded lifestyle event (and appear to be doing quite well, thank you very much); ex production-based artists receive the income they would formerly have received from producing; while audiences addicted to names, brands and spectacles increasingly reluctant to go out (but for the appearance of their favourite international producer/DJ) now happily fork over a three figure sum on the prospect of seeing him or her—and a few other artists they're kinda keen on.

Big box events like this have come to represent "good value" for punters, promoters and producers, and they've been very lucrative for the X Van Ys of this world, but they show in miniature how networked computing has destroyed the profitability of electronic music production, undermined the local DJ scene and forced dance music to become almost completely dependent on practices that are profitable because of affordable civil aviation; they're are also, for the same reasons, disproportionately environmentally destructive and ultimately unsustainable.

The dominance of this model as the profitable one, and the thorough un-profitability of electronic music that is exploratory, ambient, dissonant or in anyway incompatible with dancing (pushing it from a cottage industry to a closet industry) has meant that many producers who formerly could have scraped a measly living out of non-standard music have been forced to either adapt to the big box, surrender any hope of profit, or shelter in academia and government-subsidised sound art scenes—notice the evaporation of chill out rooms and the other small niches that supported those wee spaces for weird music. If you're a producer and you like both modes of music and are good at making 'em, this mightn't matter to you much. But if you are an electronica savant with dubious social skills, no interest in live appearances and a hatred of flying, sunglasses or VIP lanyards, you'll have some tough knobs to chew on, in your ample spare time.

Local DJs—those who don't produce—now find it more and more difficult to get high quality gigs, missing out on opportunities to build their profile without recourse to production. In all but a handful of cities (Berlin, London, New York), this has hollowed out the local scene, driven the over-production of mediocre tracks and labels, and forced a lot of talented people who are exclusively DJs to look for other work. These are sociological issues to ponder and questions of personal life choices for DJs and producers, but they pale in comparison to the third factor, the environmental question.

Thoughts on this forthcoming. Depressing, though, isn't it?

CAMINO DEL SOL

MISS YOU, WARNER

HAPPENINGS THIS WEEK IN CHICAGO

THE WIRE WITH A LAUGH TRACK

WHIRLPOOL

UPDATE / WOMAN OF THE WORLD

FYI: HISSNLISSN is moving soon. Everything I hoped this site would be (before it became a place for me to dump random Youtube links) will be taking place there - mixes, project news, and other exciting stuff.

Enjoy.

OWLS ON THE INTERNET

VERSION>09

MONDAY APRIL 27, 2009

Electronique Night
Sonotheque, 1444 West Chicago Ave
9:00 pm • $5

Video program and musical performances

(I'll be doing an Ableton set before/between/after all the performances, all night. Have some v. special stuff planned, hope you can make it out.)

VERSION>09

SOUND WAGON

KENNY ROGERS' CONFUSION BED

THE FOUR HORSEMEN

Been stuck inside my head ever since hearing a v. interesting mix this weekend. Was considering purchasing a copy on Discogs when I realized that I already have the record - for some reason I overlooked this song in a big way, or it's just been that long since I've picked it up that I completely forgot about it. Either way, this seems to happen to me a lot, and it's annoying - I would have totally brought this with me to Phyllis' on Sunday and played it like five times, just like I wanted to do (but ultimately didn't) with "S-S-S-Single Bed."

Speaking of Phyllis', here are some lists.

Tracks I did play: Liars, "Broom"; some Will Oldham song that's way better on Youtube/the radio than it is in studio; Imagination, "Just an Illusion (Lindstrøm Vocal Edit)"; the whole 9+ minutes of Neil Young's version of "Down by the River"; "Jeepster"; "Dead Souls" (Still version); and I can't recall what else, but not much, really.

Things I wanted to play but didn't / forgot to: "Seen All Good People"; "Going Mobile"; "Sunrain"; "The Precise Temperature of Darkness"; "Take a Chance"; and this way out Circulus song.

Point: the set that didn't happen seems a lot more interesting / fun than the one that did.

DUB IN THE MIX

(S)HE KEEPS ME ALIVE

S-S-S-SINGLE BED

MORE D(-)DEVIL(S)

(BONUS VIDEO)

(BONUS LYRICS)
Judgement Day
The day has come!
Judgement Day!
It`s Judgement Day!
In the North:
Computers are taking over the world.
In the East:
Humans are becoming slaves to their own creations.
In the South:
People are running for their lives.
In the West:
You have to choose!
You can run, or you can hide!
You can talk, or you can fight!
But remember...
Everything you say, can and will be used against you...
So shut up and dance!!!
Whether you`re in the North, East, South or West...
Everything you say, can and will be used against you...
Judgement Day!
North, East, South, West!
Judgement Day!

(BONUS ANALYSIS)
Ok, so this is obviously from the same show, but it's the only other footage I could find, so I guess I'm at least somewhat wrong about point #3, above.
That said, I feel like some contradictions / oddities from the lyrics to "Judgement Day" should be pointed out here. I know what they say about glass houses and all, but still...

The North, where computers are apparently taking over the world, and the East, where humans are becoming slaves to their creations, sound like they're having similar issues, computers being man-made and all.
What, in fact, are the people in the South running from? A bit of detail would go a long way toward securing my credulity, Devil Man.
And I guess the big issue here is, do we, as Westerners, have to look forward to other than a choice? I'm going to go ahead and assume that whatever we choose, we'll ultimately end up opting for "shut up and dance," but I wonder why this apparent world-wide plague has yet to reach an entire quadrant of the globe.

DANCE WITH THE DEVIL

Four notes about this:

1. Do you ever get the feeling, when telling someone who's not "down," that you're into / dj techno, that this is among their immediate associations with the term? For me it's either this or "Firestarter."

2. Best comment:

52772 (4 hours ago)

I will rather hear gothic music!

3. The video is under four minutes. That's quite an elaborate stage setup for a four minute song. Do you think D-Devils had other songs that they played at this show, or was it just "Dance With The Devil" and fin.

4. What do you think these guys are doing now? Any chance they had something to do with Dubfire's remix of "Grindhouse Tool?"

(BONUS INSIDE JOKE)
5. I laughed not because I remember this song from the ads on B96 for haunted houses in Joliet, but because my initial thought was of Snooch.