I am still trying to figure out what electronic music is, I mean I know what it is, but there are so many subgenres that I am totally lost. It is essentially electronic dance music that is going strong these days, but there is so much more than these repetitive beats, and when I listen to electronic music composers, the ones who don’t incorporate dance beats, it seems that only random soundscapes are left: the possibilities are endless, there are no rules, they can incorporate anything or any sound they want into their strange soundscapes… On Friday night, indie band Wilco’s own keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen and his wife Cassandra C. Jones were hosting Friday Flight at the Getty center, and I attended a bit of the event. Too bad for those who expected something even remotely close to the Wilco sound, Jorgensen is an electronic guy — he was first Wilco’s tech-savvy and synth-wielding sound engineer and became a permanent member in 2002. He has released electronic music under his own name and with other artists, and when I say electronic, it is pure electronica, no EDM territory, but rather complete randomness to me. First he paired up with James Merle Thomas (an art historian of the Cold War era) as Quindar with a sonic identity borrowed to NASA – the name of the band even comes from the ‘beeps used by NASA (called “Quindar Tones”) to signal the start and end of radio and satellite transmissions with spacecraft during the post WW2 era’… Jeez can you be even more precise and specific? Their music integrated audio archives of NASA, and mixed them with cinematic synth swirls and weird noises, building rather slow soundscapes slurping into space, blending cathedral organ and the sound of rocket taking off. Still, I am not sure I was convinced, but if you are curious, the duo should release their debut album in 2015 on Butterscotch Records. Mikael Jorgensen continued as himself and the music turned more intricate with weird buzzing noises and siren-like alarm, his meticulous soundscapes were humming, buzzing, puffing, laboriously building a noise forest and slowly introducing beats… but he was obviously not interested by dance beats and the result was a bit visual, but quite abstract, intellectual, like an exploration of unknown soundscapes or the cool and detached soundtrack for a museum courtyard. I left just after this but the ever-reinventing-himself Jorgensen had another set with Orpheo McCord (of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes) as Prism Break, may be this would have been a more captivating as their sound has been described as using early 70s German experimental groups like CAN, NEU!, Cluster and Kraftwerk as a point of departure, mixed with ‘state-of-the-art music tools and software while retaining a flexible, improvisational, musical and most importantly, human feel.’ I am still not convinced about the attraction about this kind of electronic music, may be I will never be, I don’t feel much of anything during such performances. I am not a dance person but when the beats are gone, you have to give me a bit more than these blank robotic soundscapes which seem inhabited by nothing alive.
