Alice Deejay - Better Off Alone

As I remarked in a previous post, techno music has a spectacular healing power. For every political, emotional, or physical scrape, there is a techno poultice waiting to salve the wound.

Look, for one, at Alice Deejay's "Better Off Alone." Imagine this: you're fresh out of a heart-shattering breakup. Every face you see is hers; every little sound sends you rushing to the door, thinking all is well again. You take a walk to cool down, when the strains of "Better Off Alone" suddenly come wafting through the air.



Inexplicably, a great weight lifts off your shoulder, and you know exactly what you need to do. Quick! To her apartment, boombox in hand. As your karaoke rendition of "Better Off Alone" draws to a close, she comes down, teary eyed.

"I'm not! I'm not better off alone."

In the immortal words of J.K. Rowling, all was well.

-ADL

A Cause Des Garcons

I want to continue the theme of lyrics for this post. Techno lyrics have a reputation for being spectacularly lame. To hear an example, just listen to "Castles In The Sky (Club Mix)."






What the fuck is a castle in the sky, anyways?

One way of skipping the work of writing actually good lyrics is to write your (or sample someone else's) lyrics in another language.

That brings us to the title of this post, "A Cause Des Garcons."



I really like listening to techno in other languages because, regardless of what the words are saying, you are forced to focus on their sound instead of their meaning. "A cause des garcons" translates to "Its because of men." I don't know what the rest of the words are, but its not hard to imagine that they are equally cheesy. But it doesn't matter, because its in French!

Well thats all for this post. Au revoir! (See what I did there?)

Mauro Picotto - Komodo

According to a comment on the YouTube video of Mauro Picotto's "Komodo," this is the "last cry of the successful heritage of late 90's italo-progressive-pop-dance."

I couldn't agree more.



As a side note, isn't the singing in the middle (the African dancers in the video) to the same tune as the singing in the original "Where the Hell is Matt," but in English?



See?

- ADL

I have never seen that video or heard that song before ADL posted it, but I knew it was going to be good when I saw the hot chick with snake eyes in the very beginning.

- Myers

Alex Gaudino - Destination Calabria

About a week and a half ago I found myself in Amherst about to embark on a camping trip with a mixture of people I knew from the school year and people I had just met. I volunteered my car for this venture and loaded it up with gear and people. The last time I was home I had downloaded a bunch of techno songs and loaded them on my iPod and, seeing as how I am the type of person to saturate myself with music that is new to me, I was playing only those songs over my car radio. Right as we were about to leave on our trip, Destination Calibria played, and someone in the car recognized it and mentioned something about how awesome this song is. When it was over, another techno song played, and then after that another, prompting that same person to ask what awesome, commercial free Pioneer Valley radio station we were listening to. I couldn't help but chuckle.



The coolest thing about this song is that there is actually another song, "Calabria 2008" by Enur, that shares the same main loop but has a completely different sound.



- Myers

There's actually ANOTHER version of this song--my favorite, and I think possibly the original--found below. This one is by Drunken Monkey.



Having lots of remixes is clearly a mark of true techno greatness. The fact that this single, incredibly simple loop can be repeated over and over with absolutely no loss of quality is a testament to its brilliance. If this song were to continue forever, I wouldn't care... in fact, I would be happy.

Seeing an endless loop of the girl in the Destination Calabria video also wouldn't hurt.

- ADL

Arabic Techno

The aptly named "Arabic Techno" is one of the greatest pieces of meta-commentary released in the past 15 years.



The name lays bare its listener's most deeply held prejudices. The ethnically reductive "Arabic"--switched, within the first few seconds of the song, with an equally oppressive "Arabian"--mocks the average white Western techno listener's lack of racial knowledge, and their tendency view all Middle Easterners as one and the same.

Then, the words. Beautiful, melodic and deep despite their lack of legible Western meaning, they reveal the essential flaw of my commentary on Bob Sinclair: an over-reliance on the pillars of white aesthetics. What are lyrics? What is content? What is meaning? After listening to "Arabic Techno," it becomes impossible to say.

The video's image, too, is important. The mysterious spikey ball stands in for all the fears which the white Western techno listener attaches to the Arabic 'Other.' From terrorism and fundamentalism to guilt at our own mistreatment of the Middle East, the spikey ball is rife with important symbolism.

In the latter half of the song, English lyrics leak in. The understandable words meld with the ethnic feel of the melody to hint at new possibilities of peace in the Middle East--and within our own subconscious--through a creation of a common culture. If President Bush had listened to this paradigm shifting techno opus in the days after 9/11, is it not easy to imagine his reactions following more along the lines of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

An aside: a friend and I discovered this song while browsing for music to play in my 'Lively' (the name of a new Second Life-esque Google application) harem. If hanging out in this Lively harem appeals to you, find me here:



-ADL

Bob Sinclair - World Hold On

There's something deeply visceral about enjoying a techno song. The listener enters a level of base physical engagement with the music which few other musical genres can attain. In most techno songs, a pounding, inexorable bass paired with a repetitive but ever-building melody guarentees the listener will, as DaRude would say, "feel the beat."

In techno's quest for the perfect beat, though, a key feature of the total techno experience is often left by the wayside: lyrics. The best of techno lyrics are subliminally brilliant, eating away at your conventional wisdom as they rebuild your brain into a fuller, more perfect organ. The combination of absurdity and order in techno lyrics hints at things beyond human understanding--a form of communication that transcends language.

Just read these lyrics, from Bob Sinclair's "World Hold On:"

World, hold on
Instead of messing with our future
Tell me no more lies

World, hold on
Wonder you will have to answer to the children of the sky

Children of the sky…
Children of the sky…

Fucking earth-shattering.

-ADL



A man stood in front of his living room window early one Sunday morning staring out at the torrential rain pouring down. His son asked, "Are you trying to decide whether or not we should go to church in this downpour?"

"I already decided son," his father replied. "More than 20 years ago."

That family goes to church. I listen to "World Hold On."

-Myers

Kaskade - Be Still (Extended Remix)

Every once in a while, I'll find myself at one of those parties where everyone, except for me, seems to know everyone, except for me. I'm not that outgoing, and at events like this I usually end up drifting aimlessly through the lonely crowd, sipping on something or other until I feel tipsy enough that my time didn't seem wasted, and heading home to wallow in my discontent.

Sometimes, though--when I'm unusually lucky, or unusually tipsy--I manage to find someone in the same situation, someone I can relate to, someone to commiserate and complain with. Our friendship may be fleeting and arbitary, but is deeper in that moment of shared sorrow than all but the truest love. Whether or not I see them again, a bond is formed, the fact of chance only adding a sheen of significance to our meeting. The strange, bittersweet warmth created by the encounter is profound.

Be Still (Extended Remix) gives me that warmth. It is a revelation in the form of techno music. To listen to Be Still (Extended Remix) is to know--nay, to feel--the depths of human experience. It hints at the divine.

"Be Still," said Kaskade.

"(Extended Remix)," said God.

-ADL

Welcome to Tripping Balls.

Content soon.