The electronic double standard

By Princess Stomper

A Quietus piece on Bruce Springsteen that suggested that there’s an “assumption that electronic music is automatically more modern and progressive” got me thinking.

I’ve always had a dismissive view of certain bands. Any act that is described as “the new Strokes” gets an automatic snort of derision from me: I didn’t like the old Strokes. I hated The White Stripes. I thought Beady Eye were bloody rubbish, and don’t even get me started on Oasis. If asked, I’d come up with a glib remark about how it’s like xeroxing from a photocopy: the quality degrades with each iteration. After all, why listen to something that sounds like the Stones when you can just listen to the Stones.

Yet I don’t have this attitude towards the slew of electro acts that seem to be absolutely everywhere at the moment. They dominated SxSW – when Bruce Springsteen wasn’t playing – and they mostly sound like this:

I think this is absolutely beautiful. It’s not doing anything that Danielle Dax or Bjork hasn’t done before, but it makes me feel like a cat having its ears scratched. Or take this one:

Or this:

Cynical thoughts don’t pop into my head – I’m too busy reaching for my credit card and impatiently waiting for iTunes to load.

(continues overleaf) 

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by Princess Stomper

Princess Stomper is a former magazine contributor and music researcher, who now works in a marketing department for an academic organisation. She lives in the English countryside and runs the Reinspired blog.

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