REFRAMING "COMMERCIAL" VS "UNDERGROUND"
PART III of THE DANCE MUSIC REFORMATION
Read the previous sections of Modern Rituals Vol. I: The Dance Music Reformation:
The Introduction, Rave as Rapture, Rave as Resistance
Part I, Social Media and Social Tensions
Part II, Content Consciousness and the Degradation of Craft
Each article is accompanied by original abstract paintings, also by Whitney Wei. All essays are available, read aloud, in audio format.
In September, Resident Advisor published “The Great Regression,” an article decrying the algorithmic capture of electronic music culture, with a magnifying glass on Keinemusik. Fronted by Adam Port, Rampa and &ME, the middle-aged DJ crew from Berlin have made a robust commercial enterprise out of their distinct brand of nonchalance, aided by social media savviness and attracting an audience that reflects their same posturing in kind. In her critique, editor Rachel Grace Almeida observes the outward symptoms of a far more troubling, subcutaneous phenomenon. Any viral footage of Keinemusik reveals the backbone to their success: organic marketing aided through the transmission of thousands of phones. With all these eyes fixed upon them by rave neophytes, they remain apolitical—almost brazenly so in a culture lineage constructed by anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian precedent. It’s almost as if the values of electronic music don’t even exist.
And this is precisely the point. Neil Postman wrote about the dangerous erasure of moral codes in his prescient 1992 work Technopoly. The eponymous phrase of his book refers to the ways in which new technologies have an extensive influence across all spheres of human existence—what we think about, how we think, and the fabric of the communities where we exchange thought—constrained without bounds.
Into this void comes the Technopoly story, with its emphasis on progress without limits, rights without responsibilities, and technology without cost. The Technopoly story is without moral centre. It puts in its place efficiency, interest, and economic advancement. It promises heaven on earth through the conveniences of technological progress. It casts aside all traditional narratives and symbols that suggest stability and orderliness, and tells, instead, of a life of skills, technical expertise, and the ecstasy of consumption. Its purpose is to produce functionaries for an ongoing Technopoly.
Electronic music’s narrative has been redefined by the dominance of technology, and specifically the totalising effect of social media, so that our original definitions of its significance are rendered invisible. Keinemusik in particular represents such functionaries who have, in their clutches, purloined dance music towards the furthest extent of content consciousness and economic logic. They may have acquired all the ostensible, enviable measures of success—luxury van, A-list trysts and all—by commercialising the political and spiritual ideology of the rave into an innocuous and vapid peace symbol.
Yet they are certainly caged in a prison of their own construction. Advance by heavy-handed algorithmic means and there comes with it an audience that views the artist as not a maker of meaning, not a steward of profound experience, perhaps not even entertainment at this point but an accessory to their performance of life. A technological accessory cannot form true connection, nor does its audience want it to. In this Keinemusik example, we can see how their form of dance music culture, “Seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology,” Postman wrote. Adam Port, Rampa and &ME are victims of virality, as it were.
“It’s hard not to feel a pang of despair knowing that, surely, this isn’t why the group started making music in the first place. They’re certainly not the only artists trapped in this space—nor are they the most craven participants,” wrote Almeida. Crucially, this line underscores the sectarian conflict in dance music—and perhaps even within each of us—at the moment. There is the rift between an artist’s original intention before the supersedence of a platform’s economic logic.
Some frame this as mainstream vs underground, but given electronic music’s institutional legitimacy—reaching the heights of Venice Biennale Musica, Cannes Film Festival, the Tate Modern, Bourse de Commerce, Haus der Kunst, as well as other major museum retrospectives—these distinctions no longer capture the stakes. There are mainstream or commercially successful artists that still embody underground values. The real distinction here is ethical. This Dance Music Reformation is between materialists and moralists. This isn’t a hard distinction either. Each of us exists along this spectrum.
Materialists are the artists some might pejoratively label a “sell out.” Commercially minded, these individuals are not so much concerned with the unquantifiable aspects of electronic music culture—such as authenticity or the sacred or its historic values—as they are with extraction for personal benefit. This extraction can range from harvesting a culture’s aesthetic to geographic capture, say, moving to Berlin to jumpstart a career, only to move away once established and then speaking discourteously about the struggling artists who remain.
More often than not, these are the artists who have achieved a level of mainstream popularity and a global touring schedule that allows them to forgo investing in their local community. You will not find them supporting—vocally or otherwise—the underground clubs where they got their start despite their enormous platforms. They often don’t go out anymore. They are not mentors to younger talent. This is to say, once they’ve met their own needs, they have severed from the lifeblood of the scene.
Politics and other values, in the materialists’ eyes, are obstacles against widespread audience capture and lucrative brand deals. Quantity over quality, these are the artists who will maintain their right to play certain festivals, such as with the MDL Beast controversy several years ago, despite the event being a form of culture-washing for an authoritarian government regime. Materialists are blind to the irony of aligning themselves with oppressors who, up until recently, punished homosexuality with death when the music culture that bore these artists emerged from gay liberation.
This cognitive dissonance between the lineage of values to which the materialist owes their artistry and their conflicting actions is often explained by roundabout justifications or compartmentalised away. But despite their financial affluence, materialists suffer from immense spiritual poverty and a loss of respect from their peers. To them, integrity is an inconvenience. Unfortunately, once this fragmentation and betrayal starts, it becomes harder to stand by any totem of ethical behaviour because, beyond money, perhaps there never was one. While they might sell out stadiums, fly on private jets, and dress head to toe in luxury clothing, one cannot deny the palpable emptiness of their work.
Crucially, though, materialists don’t necessarily have to be commercially successful to inhabit this form of subjectivity. Power either means these artists became corrupted, or they no longer have to hide who they were all along. Materialists are among us, growing stronger in numbers, because of a larger culture that precisely incentivises a hollow moral core.
British philosopher and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist discusses the very world this creates through comparisons of the right and left hemisphere of the brain. The activation of the left-hemisphere of the brain and its uniquely linear, logical, intolerant, and manipulative ways of attending to reality has subjugated the right hemisphere’s holistic, integrated, curious, and generative aspects. The materialist mode of cognition belongs to that of the left hemisphere.
In his address given to Cambridge University, McGilchrist said, “Since the Industrial Revolution, and particularly in the last 50 years, we’ve created a world around us which, in contrast to the natural world, reflects the left hemisphere’s properties and its vision. What we see around us now, looking out the metaphorical window, is rectilinear, man-made, utilitarian, each thing ripped from the context in which it alone has meaning.“ Materialists themselves and the music that they either produce or transmit is ripped from the context that gives their craft any sense of meaning. More crucially, after repeated thoughts and behaviours that reinforce this subjectivity, this perspective is no longer about moral choice. There is hardly autonomy here when it calcifies into a reflexive way of being, a way of life, and with that, the ethical and sacred dimensions of their music disappear.