Not-so-clever children: the reputation of experimental electronic music*
As a way of inaugurating this blog, I thought it'd be good to explore one of the issues that prompted me to set up a blog in the first place: prevailing attitudes towards experimental electronic music (EEM). One interesting thing about these attitudes is they actually provide a useful way of linking together various disparate genres and styles (which has the handy bonus effect of giving this blog some coherence!). From the glitchy degraded techno of Autechre to the calm drones of Chihei Hatakeyama, from the field recording-based work of Francisco Lopez to the funky IDM-dubstep of Ital Tek, maybe we should be surprised at the consistency of attitudes to different forms of electronic music (though of course reactions aren't homogeneous, and certain attitudes are more prevalent with some styles rather than others). By 'prevailing attitudes' I don't necessarily mean common instinctive reactions of listeners to such music. So for instance, I'm not going to disc...