Monolake, Carsten Nicolai, Ryoji Ikeda

Out to Tate Modern last night with Dan for an all-star lineup of post-techno, er, minimal techno, er, electronic minimalists, er, men with laptops… The turbine hall was twilit, it wasn’t too cold, the cushions were fairly comfortable, but the music… sound… sonic abstraction… whatever it was… was generally marvellous, as were the visuals, surprisingly (I hate the distraction that 99% of eye candy causes in a concert – and the 1% exception that proves the rule? Kraftwerk naturlich…) I’d have more than happily substituted Mika Vainio for Monolake, both because I’ve never exactly ‘got’ the latter and because I’ve been deeply immersed in Vainio and his work as Ø and Philus for some time now. Otherwise, parts verged on the jawdropping/sublime. A slew of questions came to mind including the relationship between this practice and that of Minimalism in both the fine arts and the ’70s school of Reich, Glass, Adams and co; the lack of demystification in the evening’s presentation; the relationship between this music and the environment, this music and the audience; the aforementioned question of visuals and music and a few other things as well. Proper review to follow (for Signal to Noise) which might mention some of these…