November 11, 2004
Techno, Techno, Techno, Techno, Techno
Techno, Techno, Techno, Techno, Techno
Do you, dear reader, thoroughly enjoy the music of Philip Glass, but don’t find it sufficiently repetitive? Do you, dear reader, thoroughly enjoy the music of Philip Glass, but don’t find it sufficiently repetitive? Do you, dear reader, thoroughly enjoy the music of Philip Glass, but don’t find it sufficiently repetitive?If you answered “Yes” to any of the above questions, techno “music” may just be for you.
And what, you may ask, is techno? Well, first, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” should note that most techno is created in the soul capital of the world: Brussels. Yep: Belgium is not only known for its excruciatingly obnoxious EU red tape; on the contrary, it is also home to a brand of music so irksomely iterative that a monkey, upon hearing it, would immediately start pummeling you with feces.
In essence, techno is dance music for those who find rap a bit too subtle and sophisticated. It offers its listeners an incessant thud, thud, thud beat and a small assortment of industrial-esque sounds repeated ad nauseam. (And, depending on whether you are enjoying techno whilst drinking like an Irish sailor, the sounds may actually repeat literally ad nauseam.)
In order to fashion a really popular techno song, it seems, one must record a snippet from an eight-year-old British girl and repeat this over the mind-numbing beat. This little tot should say something such as “Mommy likes the carpet,” or “Excuse me, mister,” or “I’m high on a shoe-shine”—in short, a nonsensical phrase. This, apparently, is the sine qua non of techno artistry.
All this may lead you to think, dear reader, that becoming a famous techno “music” producer isn’t particularly hard. Simply ransack your old Steve Reich albums and water them down with a viciously inept 4/4 beat. What could be simpler?
Well, dear reader, it ain’t that easy. First, one must come up with a suitably hip name; kids these days aren’t going to buy records by a guy named Norman Shapiro, now are they?
And this new name could prove very difficult to invent. May we humbly suggest a few? How about “DJ Herniation and the Blind Bat”? Or “Growth Stunt”? Or “Rabid Toes”? Or, following the Belgian theme, “Aan & Uit”?
Or why not offer a bit of truth in advertising: “DJ Guy Who Can’t Read Music Attempting to Cash in on the Fact that Some People Seem to Enjoy Music that is the Aesthetic Equivalent of Chinese Water Torture”?
Sure, it isn’t very catchy, but it has a certain, as the French Belgians say, “we don’t know what.”
