Modulations: Cinema for the Ear
by Iara Lee
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DVD details
Actor: Afrika Bambaataa, Arthur Baker, Carl Cox, David Kristian, Derrick MayDirector: Iara Lee
Brand: Music Video Dist
Cinematographer: Marcus Burnett
Cinematographer: Paul Yates
Editor: Paula Heredia
Producer: George Gund
Writer: Peter Shapiro
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 75 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-02-18
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Mvd Visual
DVD Reviews of Modulations: Cinema for the Ear
DVD Review: Trash
Summary: 1 Stars
Ok, look at the cover of this DVD. It says it all:
Limegreen wording. An asian girl, with a purple-tinted face, wearing huge bug-eye glasses, big headphones over both ears. WHAT does any of this have to do with House/Techno/Drum'n'Bass, the 80's/90's Rave Scene, the developing music in Chicago and New York in the birth of Underground Dance music?
Absolutely nothing. Like most of the project, it plays to popular misconceptions of the electronic music scene (crazy teenagers having sex, high on drugs! Baggy pants! "Drum N Bass was 'invented' because people did too much ecstasy, and needed darker-sounding music!)
It's an outsider's view, misinformed, fetishized, meandering.
-------
UPDATE:
If I could make some additional points:
A LITTLE ABOUT THE WORD ELECTRONICA
In the 90's, Underground Dance Music began making it's way into the mainstream in a way similar to its last head-rearing in the 1970's. Disco was a popularized version of underground dance music, understandably despised for it's excess and apparent superficiality, just like we have today's popularized (read: diluted) versions.
In the 90's, a corporate entity called "Billboard" made a decision. Now, understand, the people who work at Billboard are not musicians. They may have taken guitar lessons when they were 15, but they not musicians. They are accountants, marketers, executives, etc. Necessary to society, but NOT to be confused with musicians.
They decided to come up with the marking name "Electronica" to describe certain styles of music gaining popularity in the 90's. This taxonomy is based neither on musicology, extensive industry experience with the music, or anything beyond catchphrase convenience. It unfortunately groups styles of music together that have very little intrinsically in common. So here's your first bit of advice - people who use the word "Electronica" got into this game via a mainstream marking taxonomy.
Please let me make something clear: marketing is necessary to the sale of music - but it is not a path to learn about music.
Now get this. We all know that DJ's, who comprise the largest group of electronic-media sound artists, play other people's records to create their "sets". This means that record companies cannot publish a DJ set as their own entirely. They have to authorize and pay for *every single record* that is played in a set (as opposed to one or two samples, which we find in hiphop/rap). This means a very slim profit margin and a very complicated royalty distribution. Companies don't like that, so DJ's, even GREAT DJ's don't get picked up by large labels.
But, there is still a lot of buzz surrounding this music, and now Billboard has branded a marketing catchphrase, so the major labels *tend* to sign and produce groups which create their own material entirely, but are frankly MEDIOCRE artists - generally speaking. I'm not saying every non-DJ electronic artist is mediocre, but when an entire population of musicians is essentially out of marketable bounds - you're left with detritus.
Modulations is one of the business spin-offs from the spike in interest in electronic music in the 90's. It is derivative, unoriginal, uninformed. Enthusiastic, yes, but without focus or merit. It is born of detritus. Iara Lee has never had anything to do with any of these fields, and it shows in the documentary. A recurring interview in the documentary is with a culture/fashion/lifestyle magazine writer. You know, the types who can always comment, no matter how vapidly, on every subject. It makes for nice sound-bites, and maybe an easier editing job for film production. But... don't you want to learn what all this beautiful music is really about?
Her aesthetic and presentation of the disparate worlds of Underground Dance Music, the European avant-garde (and the deeply misguided implication of specific connections between the the two), electronic experimental, and all other turntable-based musics, for me, encapsulates the very essence of the very contrived word: Electronica.
Don't let the fact that they drop names of concert-music composers like Cage and Stockhausen impress you. It's a documentary, not a cocktail party.
If this documentary amazed and inspired you to learn more about all the different types of electronic music - well, great! It's serves some purpose. But I would encourage you to drop any this sugar-candy edited-for-radio version and really go out to explore the good stuff.
Some recommendations:
Informative movies:
Paris is Burning
KIDS
Informative books:
You better work
Last Night a DJ Saved my Life
Description of Modulations: Cinema for the Ear
MODULATIONS traces the evolution of Electronica music as one of the most profound artistic developments of the 20th century! By cutting back and forth between avante garde composers, kraftwerk?s innovative synthesizer drones, giorgio moroder?s glacial eurDance & DJ Music CDs
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