After the gold dust: this is a very odd, and perhaps very bad, article. A review of the new Chemical Brothers album, it comes to pretty much the same conclusions I would (same old same old) but it comes to them via one of the oddest bits of contextualisation I think I’ve ever read. ‘Techno’, apparently, was music for the dot-com boom and makes no sense – indeed, is rather embarrassing – in its wake. There is no suggestion that the late 90s had any other cultural backdrop, and no suggestion that the Chemical Brothers’ music might be informed more by developments in British music (Britain being where the band are from, not a fact you’d pick up from the article) than by the San Franciscan bubble economy.
In fact, the article’s obsession with the dot-com glory years speaks mostly about Salon’s own neuroses, and its acknowledgement that that glittery period was its own peak. But in a way all this is admirable – Michelle Goldberg’s article, giant-size blinkers and all, could be a fine piece of personal music writing. Presenting her office-party reminiscences as a historical take on electronic music or the Chemicals’ own career is, however, mental.
(Also be warned – the article includes the September-11-as-cultural-dividing-line idea which is rapidly becoming popcrit’s No.1 cliche despite so far having very little evidential basis.)