Tonight, I’ll be part of a panel on Swedish national radio where we will discuss how pop music will sound 2019 instead of summarizing 2009. Preparing for that, I remembered a track that completely blew my mind ten years ago but which has aged horribly. Which is surprising, given the quality of it. That’s the thing with electronic music: It can never say anything about the future.
In December 2001, Squarepusher released a white label 12″ without title. The only thing printed on it was “Squarepusher” and I believe the reason for this was that it actually was listenable. At that time, Tom Jenkinson had distanced himself from anything that didn’t sound like a plane crash (which I loved, of course).
That 12″ was magic. “Untitled”, as it was referred to in lack of better choice at the time (it was re-released a year later as “Do You Know Squarepusher”) sounded like nothing else at the time, neither something the genius himself had done nor any of the imitating clones.
I wrote a review of the track for then Swedish music site Bomben. Although the exact wording is lost, I remember it had something to do with the idea of the track’s having been back in time from a future hitlist. I believe I claimed this is how the music of 2010 would sound.
It still balances on the thin line between genius and madness, but now it blatantly sound like an echo of years past. Back then, it felt like something absolutely new but today the software synths are spiritless and the insane 2-step-drums are more reminiscent of a distant summer with Artful Dodger than a promise of the future.
It hurts to write that, because to be fair, it still is a one of a kind fistblow of a song. But… Sorry. It really hasn’t aged well.
The evolution of electronic music is connected to the evolution of the tools. And in that is a rather exciting contradiction: To be relevant here and now, a producer needs to follow the flavour of the month in sound and production. But to survive weather and wear and be relevant ten years on, he or she has to go outside the boundaries of their tools and make music that’s atypical for it’s contemporary period.
I love music that’s bound by it’s time. All good club music must burn for a short period of time and then be forgotten. But this puts producers in a precarious situation since I basically demand that their artistic ambition should be not to make a mark.
All electronic music from years past that I still listen to has one thing in common: It is unique, it distances itself from the contemporary standards. Like Plastikman’s “Musik”, or Orbital’s “Belfast”. It’s very difficult at any given moment to predict what music will age well and what will sound dated.
Only one thing is certain: Electronic music will never say anything about the future, only about today.
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