*Or, some techno guys making some bangin' techno irritate a music critic with their baloney design fiction about how easy it is to make techno.
http://www.spin.com/blogs/edm-made-ez-really-not-really
(...)
"But what got me thinking again about this issue is a new video for Fedde Le Grand, Deniz Koyu and Johan Wedel's "Turn It" (Flamingo Recordings). The premise is pretty simple: the three musicians visit each others' studios, bang out a track, own the night. It begins with Wedel plugging a USB stick into his laptop and playing a new production for Koyu. Then, they're off to Le Grand's pristine, sci-fi boardroom of a studio. After handshakes all around, we follow the USB stick's path as it enters Le Grand's desktop computer, and the screen explodes into Matrix-like green lines. (Clearly, Le Grand has one hell of a computer.) "Loading Project," reads the screen, and Le Grand turns a knob. The speakers dance; the boys do trance hands — something like jazz hands, but trancier. The USB stick is withdrawn, and the trio heads to the nightclub to try out the track. The USB enters the CD deck, and, as you'd imagine, the party gets, like, way awesomer.
"Flashing lights; dry ice; hands in the air. Boom!
"Finally, we're transported back to Le Grand's studio, where the three producers listen approvingly to their work. A big red button emblazoned with the word "easy" sits temptingly next to a synthesizer; Wedel smacks it. A computerized voice squawks: "That was easy!"
"Okay, okay, it's just a video. But isn't it weird that these guys would portray the process of music-making as so, um, automatic? Wouldn't they rather we think that they do actually have to, like, do something? Do they really want Dave Grohl to take back his apology and start saying mean things about us house-heads again? Granted, I've sat in on "collaborations" where one member's role was to lie on a sofa, endlessly rolling joints, but that's not the rule. According to the logic of this video, all you have to do is to swap a USB stick from computer to computer, and a track gets magically better...."
