Richie Hawtin: Transitions

[Tyler]

Originally Posted by Jason Roth

When Underworld ends a track, and you stop dancing, and you see Rick go back to the computers to load up new loops, do you boo becuase the music has ceased to make you dance? Of course not.

Speak for yourself. (well not actually booing, but I am dissapointed when the sets aren't continuous)

I'm also pretty ambivalent towards hawtin's latest output, but I think that might mostly be due to his track selection than any technique issues. I do think that one thing that using ableton tends to do is make all sets have a kind of featureless 'grey' sound. Since every track is totally atomized down to it's smallest bits and then effected and built back up, it has a kind of 'sameyness' feel to it. I thought that Surgeon's ableton set that I saw had the same kind of problem to it. To use a crappy food metaphor, it's the difference between a fruit salad (the standard dj set), where the individual character of each element is still noticable, and a completely blended fruit smoothie, where there is more of a uniform flavor.

I also feel like there is a little bit of a 'danger' or 'struggle against technology' element in the standard dj set that is kind of missing from the digital dj techniques. It's still a very young technology, compared to the hoary old 1200's + dj mixer, though, so I can forsee some really neat things coming from it.