All posts for Music in July 2016

Music: Major Malfunction (Keith Leblanc)

Bonus beats for a world that lives technology rather than just using it.

By Serdar Yegulalp on 2016-07-06 12:00:00 No comments

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I once read an interview with experimental percussionist Z'ev about the problem of making music with technology that's critical of the world that produced said technology -- "you're like, stuck!" he quipped. The very act of trying to critique what's around you ends up glorifying it, making it seem cool -- the same problem François Truffaut had with war films. But every now and then someone cuts through the crap: Oliver Stone made Platoon, and as Roger Ebert pointed out, it did not make war seem like fun. And drummer Keith Leblanc, of the original Sugar Hill Gang and its spinoffs, including the industrial-funk machine Tackhead, made the drum-machine and sampler workout Major Malfunction, and it manages the neat trick of being a product of the very technology it's designed to critique without seeming hypocritical about it.

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