Thursday, August 16, 2007

CD - Various - The Tyranny Of The Beat (A GREY 1) UK



1. In Flagrante Delicto - SPK
2. See You Are - Throbbing Gristle
3. Automotivation - Cabaret Voltaire
4. Solidit - Carter, Chris
5. Wahre Arbeit Wahrer Lohn - Die Krupps
6. Co Co Pina - DAF
7. Tanz Debil - Einstuerzende Neubauten
8. Cruenta Voluptas - Non
9. Oh Yeah - Can
10. Our Swimmer - Wire
11. Midget Submarines - Swell Maps
12. Shivers - Boys Next Door
13. Cruel When Complete - Dome
14. Candy Man - Gazazza, Monte
15. Thirsty Fish A/Dirty Fire - Hafler Trio

The Grey Area
Of a sudden the Beat is the All and The End of music. A good thing, too, we thought, after weighing up the con of musical harmony that has persisted through the ages. Shatter the harmony and you shatter the social structure, went the saying, and many of us were glad to see the Beat come down hard, cracking the brittle social surfaces reflected in pop's glaze. With documentary zeal, Bears best practitioners from the realms of hiphop and rap shot dance through with healthy doses of realism. And its musical practice, of stripping down to rhythm first and thereafter to rapidfire clusters of pure Beat, was both invigorating and cleansing. But like any form that goes unchallenged from within its own internal structure, the Beat has grown into a massive, monolithic force out to crush any challenge to its authority. The Beat has become the negative image of the musical utopia it once usefully shattered. In short it has evolved into Utopia's exact reverse, a totalitarian regime dedicated only to its own preservation through the elimination of all dissenting voices.

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