Abstract
This chapter investigates the Austrian band Elektro Guzzi performing techno live on stage. It focuses on their specific constellation of musical production, musical design, and live performance as key elements of electronic dance music. Methodologically, the chapter combines focused ethnography (Knoblauch, Sozialforschung/forum: Qualitative social research, 6(3), 44, 2005), musical analysis (Butler, Unlocking the groove: Rhythm, meter, and musical design in electronic dance music, Indiana University Press, 2006), and performance analysis (Sanden, Liveness in modern music: Musicians, technology, and the perception of performance, Routledge, 2013; Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture, Routledge, 2008 and The Oxford handbook of new audiovisual aesthetics, Oxford University Press, 2013; Butler, Playing with something that runs: Technology, improvisation, and composition in DJ and laptop performance, Oxford University Press, 2014). The combination of these analytical approaches provides new insights into the challenging musical practice of the performance of liveness, as exemplified by Elektro Guzzi.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I use the term electronic artists to describe DJs and live acts. I describe a DJ as “a person who puts together a continuous musical program by selecting, combining, and manipulating tracks […] with two or more turntables and a mixing board” (Butler 2006: 326). For the term live act there are also other common terms, e.g., “live PA” (Butler 2006: 33, 70f., 326) or “laptop performer” (Butler 2014: 6f., 13). I use the term live act to refer to a performing artist, who “manipulates studio technology in real time to (re)create his or her own music” (Butler 2014: 13).
- 2.
I understand genres as “a set of musical events (real or possible) whose course is governed by a definite set of socially accepted rules” (Fabbri 1982: 52). Brackett (2016: 6–13) discusses this much cited definition, which Fabbri reinforced several times (1999: 7; 2012: 188), in detail in the context of current genre debates.
In the following I will primarily use the term techno as a subcategory of electronic dance music. Firstly, because techno (or, less often, technoid music) is the preferred term within the musical scene focused upon within this chapter. Both the musicians and the music journalists who write about them use this term: “We’ve always […] called it techno and we still do. Because that’s where it comes from and that’s what we want” (Hammer in Breuer et al. 2018). Secondly, the term electronic dance music, especially in its abbreviation EDM, is rather associated with mainstream pop (Rietveld 2013: 2; Butler 2014: 5), while the music examined in this chapter is more associated with underground culture. Thirdly, the chapter utilizes the approach of Butler, who ascribes his study to electronic dance music in general, but consciously uses the term techno in his more detailed analysis (Butler 2006: 25). Regarding the difficulty of genre names within electronic dance music see McLeod (2001) and Lena (2012: 78).
- 3.
The profile description on Facebook (without author n.d.) also emphasizes this: “The Band started in 2004, taking 5 years to shape their skills before ever entering the studio. This may explain why they have been one of the few acts so convincing that they got a tour of Japan and appearances at Barcelona’s Sonar and Berlin’s Berghain booked before any recording was even promoted.” (see also Teichs and Wick 2012, 8:28–8:32).
- 4.
This process indicates why they experiment also with samplers and sequencers (e.g., the Elektron Octatrack DPS-1, Roland TR 808, see elektroguzzi 2017). They emphasize several times the importance of advancement and therefore exploring various approaches and setups, e.g., the tempting possibilities of the studio environment (Hammer in Breuer et al. 2018).
- 5.
Butler describes a third type as diatonic rhythm. The fact that these do not exist here (and no other ones either) underlines the dominance of the other two types.
- 6.
For detailed considerations on the 4/4 in electronic dance music see Butler (2006: 76f., 113–116).
- 7.
A grouping dissonance is a “[t]ype of metrical dissonance created through the nonalignment of two or more layers with non-congruent cardinalities. The layers involved in a grouping dissonance, unlike those found in a displacement dissonance, will align at periodic intervals” (Butler 2006: 326).
The G indicates the phenomenon of grouping dissonance, the 5 and the 2 the cycles of repetition with the smaller numeral of an eight note; the 4 and the 20 refer to the numerals larger quarter notes (Butler 2006: 155–166).
- 8.
In consideration of the interpretive multiplicity of temporal experience (Butler 2006), I thank Schneidewind for pointing out his bass pattern as a 5/8.
- 9.
An embedded grouping dissonance is “[t]he simultaneous presentation of more than one grouping dissonance at multiple metrical levels.” An embedded grouping dissonance “arises when the cycle of a lower level dissonance is incommensurate with the meter, thereby generating a higher-level grouping dissonance that unfolds at the same time as the lower-level dissonance” (Butler 2006: 326).
- 10.
I therefore speak only about a theoretical grouping dissonance.
- 11.
According to this, the interruption of sequence A′ by the drums is meaningful: the adding of the woodblock in bar 34 has established a four-bar meta-plane, which is completed exactly after 48 bars and thus does not lessen but rather reinforces an orientation toward four-bar structures.
- 12.
Auslander (2016) also refers to these two dimensions in a more recent explanation of the term live performance as “an event in which two sets of people (performers and spectators) are co-present in the same place at the same time.”
- 13.
For the relationship between sound and movement in electronic dance music, see also Ferreira (2008).
- 14.
- 15.
On the contrary, it should be noted that the degree of electronic devices plays a crucial role due to the influence on their sound aesthetics. For example, the tactile energy is achieved by amplifying the sound through the PA and directing it to the audience and the band. Moreover, the sound engineer (FOH) also optimizes (and expands) the sound, even if he is not visible to the audience. Even if the sound originates from the acoustic instruments and is modified by electronic devices only afterwards, the resulting sound is significantly electrified by a mediatized environment.
- 16.
A historically informed examination of genre definitions of electronic dance music/techno may illuminate this: Recent definitions in particular point out the growing diversity, dynamics and even the dichotomies of electronic dance music cultures (Rietveld 2013: 2; Butler 2014: 16). Therefore, it seems to be useful to understand electronic dance music as “one of the great cultural-musical hybrids of the past century” (Kirn 2011: ix) which encompasses a network of related musical styles (see Butler 2012: xii). For this reason, the term can be viewed as an “umbrella term” (Rietveld 2013: 2) for a “metagenre” (McLeod 2001: 60), to which Elektro Guzzi can be attributed.
References
Archiv österreichischer Popularmusik. (n.d.). Elektro Guzzi. Retrieved August 09, 2018 from http://www.sra.at/band/40638
Auslander, P. (2008). Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. New York: Routledge.
Auslander, P. (2013). Sound and vision: The audio/visual economy of musical performance. In J. Richardson, C. Gorbman, & C. Vernallis (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of new audiovisual aesthetics (pp. 605–621). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Auslander, P. (2016). Afterword: So close and yet so far. The proxemics of liveness. In Experiencing liveness in contemporary performance: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 295–298). New York: Routledge.
Bath, T. (2014). Threshold people: An interview with Elektro Guzzi. Retrieved August 04, 2018 from http://thequietus.com/articles/16892-elektro-guzzi-interview
Brackett, D. (2016). Categorizing sound: Genres and twentieth-century popular music. Oakland: University of California Press.
Breuer, B., Hammer, B., & Schneidewind, J. (2014a). Interview with the author, 3 April [not published, trans. by the author]. Heidelberg, Halle 02 (at Heidelberger Frühling).
Breuer, B., Hammer, B., & Schneidewind, J. (2014b). Interview with the author, 30 August [not published, trans. by the author]. Wien, rehearsal room/recording studio Elektro Guzzi.
Breuer, B., Hammer, B., & Schneidewind, J. (2018). Interview with the author, 2 June [not published]. Potsdam, FreiLand (at Lalonova Open Air).
Brooks, C. (2017). Music interviews. Elektro Guzzi. Retrieved August 04, 2018 from https://thepartae.com/elektro-guzzi/
Butler, M. J. (2006). Unlocking the groove: Rhythm, meter, and musical design in electronic dance music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Butler, M. J. (Ed.). (2012). Electronica, dance and club music. Surrey: Ashgate.
Butler, M. J. (2014). Playing with something that runs: Technology, improvisation, and composition in DJ and laptop performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Collins, N., Schedel, M., & Wilson, S. (Eds.). (2013). Electronic music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dancity Festival. (2011). ELEKTRO GUZZI – interview at DANCITY FESTIVAL 2011. Retrieved May 20, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWgfq89zCGc
Fabbri, F. (1982). A theory of musical genres: Two applications. Popular Music Perspectives: 52–81. Retrieved May 24, 2019 from https://www.tagg.org/xpdfs/ffabbri81a.pdf
Fabbri, F. (1999). Browsing music spaces: Categories and the musical mind. Retrieved May 24, 2019 from http://www.tagg.org/others/ffabbri9907.html
Fabbri, F. (2012). How genres are born, change, die: Conventions, communities and diachronic processes. In S. Hawkins (Ed.), Critical musicological reflections. Essays in honour of Derek B. Scott (pp. 179–191). Farnham: Ashgate.
Ferreira, P. P. (2008). When sound meets movement: Performance in electronic dance music. Leonardo Music Journal, 18, 17–20.
Fritsch, M., & Strötgen, S. (2012). Relatively live: How to identify live music performances. Music and the Moving Image, 5(1), 47–66. Retrieved May 20, 2019 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/musimoviimag.5.1.0047.
Guzzi, E. (2017). Parade. Denovali Records, den272, Germany. [Sticker attached on the front].
Kirn, P. (2011). The evolution of electronic dance music. Milwaukie: Backbeat Books.
Knoblauch, H. (2005). Focused ethnography [30 paragraphs]. Forum qualitative Sozialforschung/forum: Qualitative social research, 6(3), 44. Retrieved June 10, 2019 from http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/20/43.
Lena, J. (2012). Banding together: How communities create genres in popular music. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
McLeod, K. (2001). Genres, sub-genres, sub-sub-genres and more: Musical and social difference within electronic dance music communities. Journal of Popular Music Studies, 13, 59–75.
Musical Instruments Museum Online (MIMO) Consortium. (2011). Revision of the Hornbostel-Sachs classification of musical instruments. Retrieved May 27, 2019 from http://www.mimo-international.com/documents/Hornbostel%20Sachs.pdf
Parkin, C., & Red Bull Music. (2013). Elektro Guzzi: Creating music by mimicking machine sounds | sounds like. Retrieved May 20, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L89Sy0TrbKI
Peel, I. (2001). Dance music. In S. Sadie, J. Tyrrell, & G. Grove (Eds.), The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians (p. 909). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rietveld, H. (2013). Introduction. In B. Attias, A. Gavanas, & H. Rietveld (Eds.), DJ culture in the mix: Power, technology, and social change in electronic dance music (pp. 1–14). New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Sanden, P. (2013). Liveness in modern music: Musicians, technology, and the perception of performance. New York: Routledge.
Snoman, R. (2014). Dance music manual: Tools, toys, and techniques. Burlington: Focal Press.
Stange-Elbe, J. (2015). Computer und Musik. Grundlagen, Technologien und Produktionsumgebungen der digitalen Musik. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Teichs, R., & Wick, H. (2012). ELEKTRO GUZZI (Slices Feature). Retrieved May 20, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEo9LgkR3oU
Udvardyová, L. (2016). Jakob Schneidewind talks about his bands Elektro Guzzi, Demi Broxa and Monochord. Retrieved May 20, 2019 from http://shapeplatform.eu/2016/interview-jakob-schneidewind/
Without author. (n.d.). Retrieved May 27, 2019 from https://www.facebook.com/pg/elektroguzzi/about/
Discography and Videography
elektroguzzi. (2011). Elektro Guzzi – Pentagonia. YouTube. Retrieved May 20, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWviLy1BiCs. Published 24 October 2011 [music video].
elektroguzzi. (2017). Elektro Guzzi – Achse Dachse. YouTube. Retrieved May 27, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxX24pk98eo. Published 22 October 2017 [music video].
Frühling, H. (2014). Elektro Guzzi in Concert – 3.4.2014. YouTube. Retrieved May 20, 2019 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu2SHy1i7mM. Published 13 April 2014 [live performance].
Guzzi, E. (2011). Pentagonia. On Parquet. Macro M27.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schaubruch, J. (2020). The Human Modular Synthesizer: The Musical Design and Live Performance of Elektro Guzzi’s Pentagonia. In: Jóri, A., Lücke, M. (eds) TheNewAge of Electronic Dance Music and Club Culture. Music Business Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39002-0_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39002-0_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39001-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39002-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)