Futuresound: Techno Music and Mediation (Abridged, text-only version of an HTML document of the same name) Ethnomusicology Senior Project, completed on December 16, 1996 University of Washington, Seattle Author: Morgan Lang, mhl21@columbia.edu Project Sponsor: Aaron Fox Contents: Introduction: (a) "A Note on the Internet," and (b) "(Sonic) Facts Regarding Techno and the Author's Orientation to it." Part 1: Techno City: an Overview of the History and Diversification of Techno. Part 2: Techno Tribe: Utopian-Futurist and Future-Primitive Ideals and their expressions in Rave Culture. Part 3: Techno Logo: The Mediation of Techno. We feel affinities not only with the past, but also with the futures that didn't materialise, and with the other variations of the present that we suspect run parallel to the one we have agreed to live in. --Brian Eno Whether they're real or imaginary, animate or inanimate, one must form one's mediators. It's a series: If you don't belong to a series, even a completely imaginary one, you're lost. I need my mediators to express myself, and they'd never express themselves without me: one is always working in a group, even when it doesn't appear to be the case. --Gilles Deleuze Introduction To some, it is the "heavy metal of dance music," this music which has occasionally been disparaged as sounding like "car alarms set to disco," this typically beat-heavy, bass-thumping dance music which has, in fact, derived some of its sound symbology from disco, as well as from funk, rap, and numerous lesser-known genres. Techno music, the term I use as a top-level rubric for an ever-increasing variety of postmodern dance music (Hilker and Behlendorf) is, of course, more varied in its scope than either of the above mentioned descriptions would lead one to believe. Techno, depending on whom one asks, has existed for approximately ten yearsit is not new music when compared with some music genres of the '90s: Lo-fi, Neo-Lounge, and Grunge, but it is music which has diversified and evolved considerably since its beginnings in the mid '80's. The music appears fresh and compelling because of its frequent use of the newest and most powerful recording and sound-processing technology, and because of its role in the development of what is commonly termed "rave culture,"(with its concomitant argot, fashions, and utopian-futurist philosophies, its self-conscious marketing devices which simultaneously appeal to, contradict, and exploit music consumers' desire for the new and the rarethe "underground" stuff), and it can terefore be stated that Techno is perhaps the most compelling and cutting-edge of contemporary popular music genres. That relatively little academic attention has been devoted to electronic dance music is somewhat surprising, considering Techno's popularity, creative dynamism, and relevance toand reflection ofthe processes of cultural formation and mediation in information-age capitalist society. Those interested in learning more about contemporary dance music culture should read Sarah Thornton's excellent book, Club Cultures, which discusses in detail the cultural processes I only have enough space to allude to here. My purposes in developing this HTML document are as follows: (1) to provide a basic narrative of Techno's history and process of diversification, (2) to analyze representations of Techno's supposed transcendent/ utopian "meanings" by its devotees and its detractors as exemplified in aural, textual, and experiential/performance media, and (3) to examine Techno's role as a commoditized cultural focal point. I do not pretend to offer a comprehensive look at every aspect of Techno; rather, I want to suggest to the reader that there is much yet to be studied, and that Techno music and rave culture are appropriate and promising subjects for Ethnomusicologists and anyone interested in popular culture. The HTML format appears to be one of the most suitable for my purposes since it allows me to make examples of the music I will be discussing readily available to the reader. Words and phrases in bold type denote links to sound files I have provided; readers should click on these links in order to hear brief excepts of the music being discussed. Footnotes are available as hypertext links; simply click on footnote markers in order to view them. By using the WWW and the NEXIS-LEXIS databases in researching my "paper," and by presenting what would ordinarily be a "paper" as an HTML document I am, to a limited extent, ironically engaging the tropes of computer and communications technology as appropriately contradictory media for a general critical discussion of Techno music and its embedded processes of cultural mediation. When this project is made available over the World Wide Web, it will in turn contribute to the swirl of ever-changing perceptions regarding Techno, and will therefore become a mediator itself. A note on the Internet: Many documents used as source material for this project were obtained via the WWW, which has proved to be an invaluable resource for documents which describe people's deepest and most personal thoughts regarding music. It is obvious that the WWW is in some ways an ideal research tool in that it allows people residing in countries with well-developed communications networks to express their thoughts in coherent, tidy, and easily obtainable texts. It is also obvious that people who communicate via the WWW tend to be educated, middle-class white people, people who hardly constitute a representative sampling of any cultural affiliation other than that of a global association of individuals whose commonality originates in their ability to obtain and wield telecommunications technology. Texts which one may view via the Internet are carefully mediated, inherently contrived, and may or may not accurately describe what we may suppose to be "reality;" that is, in the case of Techno music, what we might observe on an experiential level at a dance club or rave. For these reasons, the Internet is usually not an appropriate research medium for ethnographers, even though it easily allows one to "meet"and conduct detailed interviews withpeople who in person would appear to be likely subjects for an ethnography. It is important for the reader to recognize that the WWW material I use does not and cannot act as a substitute for an ethnography of a broad category of Techno listeners; rather, it is representative of one segment of a broad category, a sample of people whose ideation concerning Techno and technology may be shaped in a circular and self-reinforcing fashion by their use of technology. In short: although the people who contribute to newsgroups like alt.rave are an important part of the Techno listenership, they are by no means representative of the entire spectrum. (Sonic) facts regarding Techno and the author's orientation to it: Overall, Techno is denoted by its slavish devotion to the beat, the use of rhythm as a hypnotic tool. It is also distinguished by being primarily, and in most cases entirely, created by electronic means. It is also noted for its lack of vocals in most cases. Techno usually falls in the realm of 115-160 BPM There are of course exceptions to every one of these rules, but these guidelines seem to survive the "what about" test most of the time (Hilker and Behlendorf). Here is an example of an archetypal Techno beat: consisting of a single looped drum machine sample, it features a perfectly constant tempo of about 140 BPM with equally heavy emphasis on every pulse. This is perhaps the single most "generic" sound in modern dance music, and one which has been frequently used in Techno. It should be stated at the outset that I am an enthusiastic but discriminating fan of many Techno artists across a wide range of genres. To point out another apparent link with Heavy Metal, I am, like Robert Walser and his interviewees in Running With the Devil (who are attracted by Heavy Metal's power in the form of distortion and sonic intensity), drawn to Techno mostly by its aural expressions of powerexpressions which in Techno are most often heard as over-accentuated bass frequencies, prominent drum and percussion samples, and an extreme aural density across the bandwidth. One may think of aural density as describing the proportion of silence to sound apparent in a musical event: if there is little apparent silence, the music thus has a high aural density. In positing the preceding description of what I believe to be the fundamental sounds of Techno, I am fully aware that there are, as always, exceptions which must be noted; for example, below the reader will find a discussion of Ambient Techno, a style of Techno in which all three of the aforementioned traits are frequently absent. Part 1: Techno City: an overview of the history and diversification of Techno. In August 1996, the Metropolitan Detroit Convention and Visitor's Bureau began a campaign to change Detroit's official slogan from the industrial-era "Detroit: the Motor City" to something which would evoke the city's eventual transformation into the postindustrial, service oriented city it is slowly and painfully becoming. Upon soliciting suggestions for a new slogan from its readers, the Detroit News reported that a popular suggestion was that Detroit be known to the world as "The Techno City," or "Techno Town," quoting one respondent as writing that "Techno Town is an ideal slogan because Techno music was created in Detroit" ('From Autos'). There are a few differing accounts of the "origin myth" of Techno, just as there are differing views of how Rock & Roll and Rap came to be; however, most accounts place the origin of Techno in Detroit in the early- to mid- 1980's. During an innovative period concomitant with the development of disco-influenced and vocal-laden House music in Chicago, musicians in Detroit developed a style of music based on more or less equal parts of European synthpop or "Euro Disco" like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, and domestic music such as Parliament/Funkadelic, Afrikaa Bambataa, and Detroit's Cybertron, who were making heavily funk-influenced, electronics-based music called, variously, "Electro-Funk" or "Electro," and who had also been influenced by the purely electronic bands of Europe. One of Cybertron's members, Juan Atkins, is frequently credited with being the sole inventor of both the term and the music "Techno," although it is known that Atkins was in constant contact with other Detroit musicians who were developing electronic dance music and who shared similar musical influences (Sicko 60). However, it is understandable that Atkins is seen as the music's great progenitor, as he did create the single "Techno City" in 1984, an independently-produced electronic dance composition which became a huge hit in Europe, particularly in London and Berlin, where it had the effect of sonically reconfiguring Kraftwerk's music and broadening electronic music's listenership; as a result, Europeans began producing their own "Techno," adding their own stylistic preferences to the palette they had been handed by Atkins and his now popular co-inventors in Detroit, all of whom shared the critical attention of the Europeans. It is interesting that European accounts of the Techno origin myth place the development of the genre at a later date in Manchester, England, where, in 1990, the group 808 State released the single Cubik. It is perhaps too easy to suppose that Techno never would have happened had it not been for the Detroit school, and it is important to recognize that the process of diversification has almost entirely occurred in Europe, particularly in London, Manchester, and Berlin, large cities which already had a well-developed array of dance clubs by the time Techno "arrived," and in which the first Techno-only clubs were opened. One may take a long view of the trans-Atlantic "waves" which crossed and re-crossed the spatial and conceptual European and U.S. scenes: Techno, having been originally produced in Detroit, influenced numerous European artists like 808 State, whose influence finally began reaching the vast American music consumership through the distribution of CD compilations which purported to provide a sampling of "underground" European dance music. The Record reported on this trend in 1992 by writing that "the techno represented by big sellers such as the Movement and 2 Unlimited has been tamed and is boffo in the [U.S.] 'burbs" ('The Masses'). The cyclical production-consumption-production process seems to have begun again, as Detroit is again producing "good product" and is experiencing something of a Techno renaissance: American and European music consumers may now purchase CD compilations of the newest Detroit "underground" dance music-- music which reifies the authenticity of the original Detroit Techno. Like the appellation denoting the Motor/Techno City's previous musical identity, "Motown," this referencing of the locality of production cleverly authenticates the music and thus the entire musical product. This is a very common marketing technique which frequently results in the back-formation of new musical genres; for example, Goa, which now refers to music which has its own original and distinctive musical characteristics, originally referred only to music which happened to be played at beach parties in Goa, India. The strategy in marketing the word Goa is to sell the desirability of being at Goa attending a beach party. One of the effects of the Detroit renaissance is a renewed interest in the city's original Techno: a documentary film, "The Architects of Techno," is being produced (Allen and Banks), and there is a sense that an attempt is being made by listeners to re-authenticate their interest in Techno music by familiarizing themselves, a mere decade after the release of "Techno City," with what is seen by many as being a kind of "roots music." In the late 1980's Techno had arrived in Europe and had begun its transformation into the variety of genres existing today. In Berlin, radio DJ Monica Deitl began broadcasting the new Motown sound, which immediately became desirable as a music product and which created demand for Detroit Techno at dance clubs. In response, DJ's such as Kid Paul and Dr. Motte began specializing in Techno, playing records in Berlin's first Techno club, UFO (Levy). In Britain, pirate radio stations like KISS FM began broadcasting the Techno that public and commercial radio stations refused to touch. (Later KISS would be granted a commercial radio license, thus negating its importance as a subcultural focal point in the minds of many listeners) (Thornton 146-51). These stations also disseminated notices regarding warehouse- and outdoor parties where Techno as well as the vocal-oriented Chicago genre House, promoted in Europe as Acid House, could be heard. These parties in unconventional locales were directly influenced by the beach-party culture of the Spanish Balearic islands, particularly Ibiza, where young vacationing Britons danced to Reggae and House. Following the re-emergence of the archaic appetite suppressant MDMA (methylene dioxymethamphetamine) as the drug "Ecstasy" in Dallas nightclubs in the mid 1980's, the drug began circulating among people attending Techno clubs and the parties which were now gaining popular notoriety as "raves" (Hilker and Behlendorf), events where, in the public mind, decadent and sexually promiscuous throngs of teenagers danced all night in a drug-crazed frenzy. The mass-mediation of this misconception both served to attract more young people to what was now being viewed as a "movement" and to form and cohere the subcultural status of "ravers," who then began reinterpreting their image in a complex series of processes to be discussed in the final section of this work. Among Techno's most well-liked genres in 1996 are Jungle and its derivative Drum & Bass, as well as Ambient and various eclectic forms which are in the process of becoming identified/ marketed as genres, most notably those musics which are currently being referred to using the optimistic label Progressive or the somewhat more skeptical Ethno-Techno. Jungle refers to music which came about as a result of the club- and rave DJ's artistry and skill at the on-the-spot creation of aural bricolage: consisting of a very wide range of stylistic "cuts" (Hebdige) placed in apposition to a "foreground" of altered hip-hop rhythm samples, Jungle sounds like 160 BPM funk combined with a very wide array of samples, turntable "scratches," and digital effects. The most common forms of music one finds sampled in Jungle are generally classic Reggae, Ragamuffin, Dub, Funk, and Rap, whose BPM rates are usually calibrated to be exactly half of the "foreground" beat, thus creating an effect which may be heard as "two songs to dance toone aggressive and fast, the other slower and relaxed. [One] can choose which beat to pay attention to when dancing" (O' Malley). Jungle used to be subsumed under the broader category Breakbeat, along with another style, Darkside (a style developed by DJ's in London dance clubs which uses "minor keys to create an eerie feeling" [Hilker and Behlendorf], but is otherwise similar to Jungle), but it has since been promoted and accepted as a genre in its own right, spawning in turn the creation of its own subgenre, Drum & Bass, which is now in the process of transformation into a genre from which further subdivisions shall depend. Drum & Bass is, as its name implies, a style of music dominated by drum and bass samples; in fact, it is really just a stripped-down version of Jungle, often using many of the same elements as Jungle, including scratching, but far more sparingly, which results in a sound often lacking the aforementioned "layering" effect. Drum & Bass has become very popular in the United States during the past two years, and many clubs now feature entire evenings devoted solely to it. Perhaps partly as a reaction to more frenetic musics like Jungle, there now seems to be a countercurrent trend in cities: Ambient is slow and subdued where most Techno is fast and "in your face." Clubs and parties which feature Ambient do not do so with the expectation that people will attend in order to dance, although a great deal of Ambient Techno is quite danceable. It is not a utilitarian sort of music in the way that a great deal of Techno ishaving been designed to do something to; i.e: dancebut rather it is frequently used to help bring peoples' interactions into the foreground, to provide a complimentary backdrop to conversation and even the playing of board games (Strauss). When compared to most varieties of Techno, Ambient seems anachronistic in that it recalls the environmental "art happenings" of the 1960's, the "Furniture Music" of Erik Satie, and, most clearly, the work of Brian Eno, who is alleged to have created the term "Ambient" in the mid-1970's in a deliberate attempt to create a new music genre, one which would not draw attention to itself while being played and which would have the effect of relaxing the listener. In clubs one finds Ambient, the "exotic" music of non-industrial cultures, environmental recordings of forests (sans chainsaws, of course), as well as what might be termed Eno's "classic Ambient" being played in "chill rooms" adjacent to the main floors where faster Techno is played as a main event. In this context, chill rooms function as places where "aural antidotes" to faster, more intense Techno can be absorbed in a deliberately relaxed atmosphere. In a way, this music is as pragmatically functional as dance-oriented Techno in that its function is often to counterbalance the apparent psychological and physiological effects of the volume, speed, and aural density of dance-oriented Techno. Recorded Ambient music often takes the form of a sound collage or bricolage, and frequently features compositions which are far longer than most Techno "songs" (that is, edited versions of long mixes and remixes), and which require more time to develop musical motifs and gestures than other genres which usually state and restate a small number of themes. In a club or rave context, of course, there is a continuous mix of music which may gradually shift from one to another emphasis, but, because of the vast differences between Ambient and other genres, Ambient is emerging from the chill rooms not into the main rooms, but rather into its own parallel scene at parties and cub nights devoted solely to Ambient. Among global industrial cultures there exists a well-documented process of "exoticizing" musics by infusing them with the music of romanticized "tribal" peoples (preferably from places far away from the actual site of cultural and economic production): the strongest recent manifestation of this tradition can be seen in the "world beat" and "world music" trends beginning in the 1980's and increasing in strength to the present day (Feld 266-8). In Techno we see this trend appearing most blatantly in the style sometimes called "Progressive" (although this term is sometimes also used to describe Techno which uses "real," non-digital instruments in live performances, and is also used as a term which modifies preexisting genres: i.e. "progressive Trance") or "Ethno Techno," a name sometimes used derisively. Here I use the term simply because it more plainly evokes the music's real content than the term "Progressive," which is becoming more vague as it is used more frequently as a term which ameliorates "hard" styles; for example, a recent trend has combined two very different, very widely listened to, and very profitable stylesDrum & Bass and Ambient. This seemingly improbable mixture has been promoted under the (assumed) name "Progressive Drum & Bass"that is, Drum & Bass which features washes and patinas of chord colors, "ethnic" sounds, and an overall lower aural density than typical Drum & Bass. That all of this labeling is "inorganic" and is intended to aid the process of the commoditization of art is a 20th century truismone which shall be more thoroughly discussed in the Mediation section of this work. It should be pointed out that "Ethno Techno" is also a term very frequently used by the mass media and by industry journals such as Billboard; therefore, it is definitely not a term which one would find commonly used among Techno's self-defined subcultures, except in order to indicate an ironic metacommentary on the mediation process. Ethno-Techno has a tendency to sonically associate the concept of primitivity with that of environmental righteousness, and to express these associations in compositions which place "ethnic" sounds in aural conjunction with "environmental" soundsthat is, real or imaginary soundscapes (see Schafer 77: 3-4) which feature a conspicuous lack of industrial or "first world" sounds (and increasingly this is indeed an imaginary soundscape). This conjunction equates romantic notions of pre-industrialism with a sort of lost innocence or a mythical idealized past now viewed as being represented in the lives and musics of "indigenous peoples." This is an interesting and contradictory facet of the Techno ethos: that a connection to a primitive, pre-technological (and therefore completely ahistorical) past may be created by "quoting" contemporary "ethnic" musics within a composition, frequently using the most advanced recording and production technology as well as the network of the global capitalist market as a medium of communication. Part 2: Techno Tribe: Utopian-Futurist and Future-Primitive Ideals in Rave Culture. For me, raving is probably one of the single most influential and important things in my life. It brings me up when I'm down, opens my mind to new people and lifestyles, promotes general feelings of happiness and grooviness, and provides a place where people from all walks of life can forget their problems and differences and dance and have a good time. It has introduced me to some of the most creative, intelligent, funny, caring, soulful, friendlypeople on the planet. And I know I'm not alone. So I wonder, if raving can bring this about in me and others, what can it do for the world? Obviously not everyone is going to like house and techno. That's not the point I'm trying to makeIf raves cansmash the walls of isolation and ignorance, it stands as a perfect example of how the world could be. The potential, energy, and technology are here to bring about sweeping global change. The age-old dream of one world, united inpeace, may not be far above the horizon[and] consistently I can turn to the music,the dance, and the vibe, [which] consistentlylift my spirits and renew my hope. If it can do it for me, it can do it for the world. --excerpt from an alt.rave posting by Noah Raford. We all know that PART of what makes our scene extremely special and sacred is the fact that there is no emphasis whatsoever on sex, sexuality, race, religion, etc. When we gather at parties we become ONEthere is no gay/straight, man/woman, white/black, old/young, rich/poorwe simply see each other as beautiful people and ultimately we can become one pure energy mass of love. --excerpt from an alt.rave posting by John Kawamoto. For me, Techno is the most lyrical, most evocative music I have yet found. It has inspired my passions and thoughts, and has connected me with my emotions like no other music. In its beat, I feel rhythm, patterns, a cycle like life or the beat of our hearts. The vocal samples, in their endless loops, hold for me such poignancy and longingthey are impossible, infinite, inhuman. Voices removed from meaningsave that which we listeners bring to [the experience of hearing] themtheir digitized humanity is so plaintive, electronically cut off from context, made "mute" in the face of technology, that they become paradoxically human and inhuman --excerpt from an alt.rave posting by Rhea Gossett. Spirituality has fuck all to do with the rave scene. It's just people getting off their heads and thinking they're having a spiritual experience, when they've probably never had one in their livesI live in Manchester, England, and we probably have the biggest club scene in the world, but there's no fuckin' spirituality, just people having a good timeas for cultures using drugs for religionfair enough, maybe, but you can't compare it to people paying to go in a club or going to a rave in a field and listening to stomping house or techno. --excerpt from an alt.rave posting by "Krispy." Rave culture developed out of an appreciation for Techno and House music in the late 1980's. When I use the term "rave culture," I am referring to the entire global group of people who listen and dance primarily to Techno music, but who may not consider themselves to be members of a coherent and self-aware structure, whether it is a culture or subculture. In addition, by using the term "culture" as opposed to "subculture" I adopt the terminology overwhelmingly preferred by those ravers who provide, via the WWW, poetic narratives (Fox 1991, 1995) which attempt to describe what it means to be a "raver." Some of the individuals who participate in these discussions may not be aware of the academic connotations and denotations of the word "subculture," but they intuitively believe that theirs is a "true" culture, one which, although it generally defines itself and is naturalized as a reaction or countermovement to a perceived hegemonic structure, ignores fine qualitative distinctions by simply accepting the label "culture." As will be discussed in the final section of this work, there is a continuum which flows between mediated representations of rave culture or subculture and self-defining poetic narratives produced by supposed members of these groups. The ethos of "rave culture" has been a very common subject of popular- and niche market press articles, Internet newsgroups, and involved, multi-participant "virtual" and "live" discussions among ravers. Most of those who comment on the subject agree that "raving" (outwardly manifested simply as dancing and enjoying the company of other people at raves) inspires and encourages the expression of feelings of unity and purpose among those who attend ravesparties which, amid all the hype and poorly-informed media representations, perhaps may best be generally defined as being public or invitation-only events taking place at one or more geographic or (increasingly) electronic locations where one can listen to Techno (although other forms of music are frequently presented as well, including live performances by non-Techno groups) (see 'Rave America'). The exact nature and purpose of the aforementioned feelings of cohesion among ravers is, however, a serious point of contention for those participants who are concerned about definitions and representations of what they believe to be "their" culture. Some of the issues which inform and shape discussions regarding the cultural ties between individual ravers are: whether the "spirit" of raving should be confined to the time and locale of a rave or whether it should extend into other social contexts in the "real" world as a social and political agenda or ethical bias; whether sexuality and gender are significant aspects of raving; how technology aids or detracts from rave culture; whether ravers actually constitute a coherent movement and whether that movement is political, musical, spiritual, or a larger amalgam; whether spirituality associated with raving should be inclusive or exclusive of "organized" religion, and so forth. In short, people who listen to Techno and who consider themselves to be part of a "rave culture" are attempting to define that culture in a variety of ways which often have the effect of instilling and reinforcing a sense of cultural membership, a process which in turn generates more press articles, poetic narratives, and discussions regarding the nature of this membership. Most people who consider themselves to be ravers appear to be convinced that raving promotes feelings of unity among people from varying sexual orientations, national, and ethnic origins, and classes who gather in order to dance in an atmosphere of cooperation and mutual enjoyment. The rave scene is supposed to be accepting of difference, yet we find that its identity is contradictory, for how can it remain as a distinguishable cultural entity if it indiscriminately accepts everyone? A rave is actually an elitist scene which depends on the systematic rejection of what it perceives as the "mainstream" in order to maintain a sense of belonging (Thornton 5). The ideals of non-discrimination, total inclusiveness, and "tribal" unity are continually belied by several important aspects of rave culture: the actual nature of the music production and dissemination process; the actual content of a great deal of Techno music; the actual exclusiveness of the Internet as a communications medium, the actual difficulty (for outsiders who wish to affiliate themselves with rave culture) of obtaining information regarding the times and places where a rave is to occur; and the actual door policies of clubs, about which Thornton writes: It is a classic paradox that an institution so adept at segregation at the nightly accommodation of different crowds, should be repeatedly steeped in an ideology of social mixing. The discotheque/ disco/ club/ rave regularly re-invented itself to maintain an eternal youth and to obfuscate dated relations to class culture (56). Thornton continues by discussing the gender politics of rave culture, citing Barbara Bradby's work. Bradby portrays the utopian promise of rave culture as contradicting the "ground zero" gender relations experienced at clubs and raves, where residual male orientations toward the ownership and control of technology still obtain, where most DJ's and Techno musicians are still male, and where Techno music is most often heard via media and venues which are owned or controlled by men. Bradby describes the club scene as a place where one can hear and dance to music mostly produced by men which features mostly female vocal samples, a "powerful restatement of traditional gender divisionsthe association of men with culture, language, and technology, and of women with emotion, the body, and sexuality" (168). Thus rave culture is able to refer to ideals it would perhaps like to see put into practice, but this mostly serves only to differentiate ravers from the racist, sexist, homophobic, and class- bound industrialized societies they place themselves in apposition to. Part 3: Techno Logo: the Mediation of Techno. Communications media are inextricably involved in the meaning and organization of youth subcultures. Youth subcultures are not organic, unmediated social formations, nor are they autonomous, grassroots cultures which only meet the media upon recuperative "selling out"On the contrary, the media do not just represent but participate in the assembly, demarcation and development of music cultures (Thornton 160). Listening to Techno music, attending clubs and raves, and discussing the nature of rave culture via the WWW are all leisure activities which are, for the most part, engaged in by individuals who live in industrialized nations and who have a surplus of both time and money. How did Techno music, once considered simply to be fun music to dance to, become the focal point of today's rave culture, which considers Techno to be a sort of cultural Great Attractor, creating "worldwide" networks of "cybertribes" (Beltane 3) and giving a sense of identity to its listeners, some of whom consider themselves to be harbingers of "sweeping global change" (Raford). During the late 1980's and early 1990's Techno music and the rave scene began gaining momentum just as personal computers and digital sound processing equipment began to be both affordable and widely availablemarketing innovations made possible by the increased globalization of manufacturing and distribution networks as well as by the cumulative effects of increased automation and computerization at all levels of commerce. At the same time, the Internet began a process of naturalization as a communication medium with the increased availability of online services. The combined effect of these processes was to give people who listened to Techno the tools to create and maintain cultural affiliations very quickly and easily. With cheap digital sampling and recording devices, individuals could creatively respond to Techno's "arrival" by producing their own recordings and distributing them directly to DJ's and specialized record shops (Langlois 232). With the popularization of the Internet, individuals could develop (more or less) substantive relationships with other people interested in Techno without being hindered by spatial separation; therefore, technology is the mode of resistance by which Techno- listeners were able to differentiate themselves from "the masses" and cohere into "rave culture" in a classic subcultural gesture. What complicates matters when examining this model is that the political and spiritual overtones of the missives contributed to alt.techno are really only useful as gestures, not as incitements of worldwide revolutionary consciousness. The use of political and spiritual rhetoric by ravers functions mostly as what Thornton refers to as "subcultural capital" (11), a signifier of difference and uniqueness with regard to perceived hegemonic structures and as a token of subcultural membership, regardless of whether the rhetoric is actually intended to produce social change. Apparently believing that youth subcultures without exception merely profess political concerns, Thornton takes a more severe view than I do, writing that These issues are clouded by the fondness that youth subcultures have for appropriating political rhetorics and frequently referring to 'rights' and 'freedoms,' 'equality and unity.' This can be seen as a strategy by which political issues are enlisted in order to give youthful leisure activities that extra punch, that added je ne sais quois, a sense of independence, even dangerThis is not evidence of the politicization of youth as much as testimony to the aestheticization of politics (167). This "aestheticization of politics" is continually re-mediated by the independent and major-label recording industries as well as by rave promoters, club publicists, Techno musicians, DJ's, and ravers, all of whomwith the exception of the lasthave a financial stake in promoting the idea that there is actually such a coherent entity as a rave culture. Individuals may purchase CD compilations of Techno or attend raves which display the allure of revolutionary spirit as an act of symbolic rebellion which, after all, may only serve to reinforce hegemonic structures by allowing individual "rebels" to derive meaning and satisfaction from the hegemonic relationship (for more on symbolic rebellion see Willis 1977). Techno is, finally, a thoroughly mediated music, from its continually recombinant musical genres and its constant (re)generation of new categories, labels, and self- definitions, to its circular processes of both resistance and acceptance. Works Cited Allen, Derek and Banks, Carl. "The Architects of Techno." (http://users.aol.com/dafilms/film.html). Beltane Communique. "Cybertribe Rising." (http://hyperreal.com/raves/spirit/politics/CyberTribe_Rising.html). Bradby, Barbara. "Sampling Sexuality: Gender, Technology and the Body in Dance Music." Popular Music 12/2 (1993): 155-176. Deleuze, Gilles. "Mediators." Zone 6: Incorporations. New York: ZONE, 1992. 285. Feld, Steven. "From Schizophonia to Schizmogenesis." Music Grooves.Chicago: University of Chicago Presss, 1994. 265-70. Eno, Brian. Quoted in Hilker and Behlendorf, listed below. Fox, Aaron. "The Jukebox of History: Narratives of Loss and Desire in the Discourse of Country Music." Popular Music (vol. not available) 1991. 53-71. Fox, Aaron. "Ain't it Funny How Time Slips Away: Talk, Trash, and Technology in a Texas 'Redneck' Bar (copy of author's manuscript). Gossett, Rhea. "Techno Music." Posting to alt.rave newsgroup. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: the Meaning of Style. London: Methuen. 1979. Hilker, Chris and Behlendorf, Brian. "The Official alt.rave FAQ." (http://www.hyperreal.com/raves/altraveFAQ.html#intro). "Jamie's Dance Music Genre Guide." (http://www.maths.ex.ac.uk~james/tekno/genre.html). Kawamoto, John. Posting to alt.rave newsgroup. Krispy. "Utter Shite." Posting to alt.rave newsgroup. Langlois, Tony. "Can You Feel it? Djs and House Music Culture in the UK. Popular Music 11/2. 1992. 229-241. Levy, Owen. "Techno Thrives in Unified Berlin." Billboard November 6 1993 (original pagination not available from NEXIS-LEXIS). O'Malley, Soren. Personal communication. Porcello, Tom. "The Ethics of Digital Audio Sampling: Engineers' Discourse. Popular Music 10/1. 1991. 69-84. Raford, Noah. "Dance for Tomorrow." Posting to alt.rave newsgroup. "Rave America Produces Sold Out Rave Party." PR Newswire report. January 1, 1993. Sanjek, David. "The Cultural Economy of Sound in Contemporary Music." Paper given at the Preconference Symposium on Music Technoculture at the 1995 annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology. Los Angeles, October 18, 1995. Schafer, R. Murray. The Tuning of the World. New York: Knopf, 1977. Sicko, Dan. "Techno Rebels: Detroit's Agents of Change." Urb Aug-Sep 1996. 60. Strauss, Neil. "At the Clubs, Murmers and Ambient Music." New York Times March 8, 1996. C1. Thornton, Sarah. Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan. 1996. Walser, Robert. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan. 1993.