Techno and the Cut-up

A Much has been made of the connection between techno and Futurism B C and there have always been, since bebop and early rock and roll, mutterings of Jack Kerouac and the “beats” D in pop music critical writing. On the other hand little true connection has been established between music and postmodern technique except in classical music. E There is much mixing of forms but that's as close to postmoderism as music gets. Techno is one form of music which in some respects fits into the postmodern form. F

GGysin and Burroughs, Dreamachine session.

In its original form, a Dreamachine is a work of light art made from a cylinder with regularly spaced shapes cut out of its sides. The cylinder is then placed on a record turntable and rotated, depending on the scale, at either 78 or 45 revolutions per minute. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder with the rotation speed making light emanate from the holes at a consistently pulsating frequency range of 8–13 flickers per second. It is meant to be looked at through closed eyelids, upon which moving yantra-like mandala visual patterns emerge, and an alpha wave mental state is induced.

William Burroughs, a literary uncle of the Beats and one of the only pioneers of literature in this half of the century, along with Brion Gysin H created the cut-up method which is, to an extent, the cornerstone of postmodern technique. This physical action of cutting up paper and rearranging the order of the words has added a new dimension to the linear tradition of writing (and music), (Art had long before begun it's explorations of this type). I

JKurt Schwitters, Merz 250 (Grand Dance), 1921 & Merz 19, 1920

”Merz denotes essentially the combination of all conceivable materials for artistic purposes.” — KS

W.S. Burroughs: “Any narrative passage...is subject to any number of variations, all of which may be interesting and valid in their own right. A page of Rimbaud cut up and rearranged will give you quite new images. Rimbaud images—real Rimbaud images—but new ones...Cutups establish new connections between images and one's range of vision consequently expands... K Either/or thinking just is not accurate thinking. That's not the way things occur, and the Aristotelian construct is one of the great shackles of Western civilization. L [Cut-ups are a movement toward breaking this down. I should imagine it would be much easier to find acceptance of the cut-ups from, possibly, the Chinese, because you see already there are many ways that they can read any given ideograph. It's already cut up.]” M Using samples and beats “cut” from different sources is one of the ways of employing the cutup method in creating a new piece of music. N Critics of the cutup say “This is all very good, but you just got it by cutting up." To which Burroughs replies, “..that has nothing to do with how I got it. What is any writing but a cutup?”

OFaltonia Betitia Proba, depicted in De mulieribus claris (The famous women) by Giovanni Boccaccio, 1362.

Proba's most famous work is a Virgilian cento—a patchwork of verses extracted from several works of Virgil, with minimal modifications—entitled Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi.

A cento is a poetic work composed of verses or passages taken from other authors and re-arranged in a new order. The pieces may be taken either from the same poet, or from several. The individual fragments of poetry used should be no shorter than one half-line (one hemistich) and no longer than a full line and a half.

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Jeff Mills: [...] I had the plan to construct my studio in the form of a spider. Alexander Kluge A spider’s web? Jeff Mills: No, the music was meant to be the web, that’s the thread I’m spinning. But the mixing console in the centre of the room, the heart of the studio, was going to be in the middle and every element, the percussion machine and another part of the equipment were going to be placed around it in order of importance. And the whole thing had the form of a spider.

Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination

Similarly, among those who know little about how techno is made there is the belief that 'anyone can do it'. P But, as Burroughs says, “Somebody has to program the machine; somebody has to do the cutting up.” It is not mere (italics in this case indicates irony) technical expertise that makes a good track but firstly, the selection process. “Out of hundred possible sentences that might have used I chose one.” Techno's influences, to start with is Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Q etc. but are many and seemingly endless. R Then the final process of putting things together into a finished piece is where the true art of techno comes in. S

TIliazd (Ilia Zdanevich), 1919

DJ's also employ the cutup when the two records being played combine to make a third song. In a sidebar, techno and dance music in general may be performing a cutup on the music industry by changing the way and speed with which the music is made U, distributed V and marketed. W

While some believe that postmodernism X may have already run it's course and the music industry in general is a strange mixture of avant-garde and reactionary conservatism the time for techno is now. Techno is the music to began to bridge the gap between artistic technique, such as postmoderism, scientific advancement and popular culture. Y And also between seriousness and good plain fun. Z