I’ve used some samples of different speech synth voices saying “algorave generation, we love repetition” for a while. It’s a great joke, because you can keep doing it forever, over and over again, and it keeps getting funnier (maybe). The ever-curious Lu Wilson asked me “where did it come from, how did it become ‘the line’, and why, and so on”, and this is what I replied:
Heh well when I was a (failing) student the first time around in the 90s I came up with “mdma generation, we love repetition” as a joke while messing around with a synth iirc and later reappropriated it..
For me though “algorave generation, we love repetition” as a statement sits in the context of UK university computer music departments around 2010, with their institutionalised electroacoustic music culture where virtuosity is all about the number of genelec speakers in your multichannel array, and where repetition was regarded more or less as pure evil. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of this guy Adorno but for some reason he’s taken seriously by music academics despite every quote I’ve read from him coming across as unhinged.. He reckons repetition is “psychotic and infantile”. Believe it or not, these people group together all music that isn’t electroacoustic or european classical as ‘popular music’ and repetition would be a mark of that. I think there’s a small world mindset inherent in rejecting repetitive dance music and it doesn’t take much imagination to link it to racism, homophobia, classism etc.
So basically to say “we like repetition” is a kind of rejection of that kind of weirdo performative seriousness that we were talking about in the pub. 😉
I can understand why some music academics have rejected repetition, I think it comes from a rejection of fascism. But people have danced to repetitive music forever, everywhere, it’s an important part of being human.. and repetition isn’t about listening to the same thing over and over again, unchanging, it’s about really getting to know something, through spiral loops, as it’s changing, and as you’re changing…
@yaxu yeah – having just read your post and "gardening" this patch (which I'm making for a @disquiet track) to stop it being _too_ repetitive. Despite the snobbishness (I get what you are saying about facism BUT – snobs ;-)) doing repetition well in music is a skill
The more I think about it it's quite a deep subject though – systems music totally embraced it, and philosophy has a field day (Deleuze, Derrida) – I kind of want to throw Samuel Beckett in there
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@junklight @yaxu @disquiet i aim to do repetition badly. i'm not interested in listening to good repetition
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@yaxu
I first encountered Adorno from a different direction. And tho I agree with your general sentiment in that quote, and Adorno definitely had some bizarre takes on music (and probs racist when it comes to his thoughts on jazz), it's more his stuff on dialectics that I find so compelling. And for me, I have always seen live coding through this lens! It's the best kind of dialectical art praxis! Nothing fixed, constantly in motion, embracing contradiction at every opportunity.
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@yaxu
I love repetitive beats, but if I really try to nail down making music, for me it's the moments of difference in repetitions that make something compelling. Repetition alone is a dead groove. For live coding, it isn't so much 'repetition' that I think of, it's more revolutionary! Temporally & politically. A constant unmaking & remaking of the territory. So rather than repetition perhaps more like a constant reinscribing? Reenforcing? Which fits w/ the 'let code die' attitude of pastagang.
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@yaxu
Anyway I just found it funny. I've no interest in defending Adorno without reservation, but he is part of a trajectory of thinking via Marx/Engels/Jameson that I cannot help but see live coding in relation to, whereas you're one of the people who created all of this in the first place and if anything it was a reaction against him.
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@polinski @yaxu but having music change all the time makes it uninteresting to listen to. it's the balance between repetition and change that is most important in music: the repetition causes the change to stand out
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@Tijflalol @yaxu i agree and am not dismissing repetition at all. i meant that i prefer to think about it dialectically in the sense that i don't want to find 'balance' between repetition and difference. rather i want to accept the tension between these two things pulling in opposing directions as a kind of constant struggle. hence a permanent 'revolution', or a deliberate 'reinscribing' with every cycle of a musical pattern.
the unbalancing is the fun part!
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@polinski @yaxu oh i don't mean there's one single balance you should strive for in music, it's mpre like a constant interplay between change and repetition, between chaos and order. and i think this struggle is different for every genre
@polinski @yaxu let code die goes hand in hand with repetition tho
write n("9 8 3@3")
then let it die
then write n("9 8 3@3")
then let it die
then write n("9 8 3@3")
you cant repeat writing something unless you unwrite it
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@polinski @yaxu if u really love repetition u do it yourself. u dont let the computer have all the fun
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@TodePond @yaxu
i suppose what i might be trying to get at is that the third time you type let it die is a repetition but it is also inherently different than the first two? because of its relative context. it shows you *really mean it*
like how the exact same drum loop hits different after 10 minutes of repetition than after 10 seconds.
at once the same and different.
also: i never let my computer have fun.
@polinski @yaxu yes it's at a slightly different time of day. thats why i cant get behind any anti-repetition vibes
@TodePond @yaxu anti-repetition vibes?
@polinski @yaxu anti-repetition vibes
@TodePond @yaxu anti-repetition vibes?
@polinski @yaxu anti-repetition vibes
@TodePond @polinski @yaxu
you are probably mostly all too young (maybe @yaxu isn't) but this thread is really giving me Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 vibes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Justice_and_Public_Order_Act_1994
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz9I0WJxF84
@junklight @polinski @yaxu well its called algorave after all
@TodePond @polinski @yaxu
I realised after I posted – for those of us who were around back then – all that stuff has an emotional resonance I guess
this is a case of "when you get older all your cultural references stop working" ;-(
@junklight @TodePond @yaxu for sure. i was just too young to go to any actual raves, but remember it all happening. made up for it by listening to jilted generation non-stop for about 90% of my teenhood.