Electronic Dance Music and Academic Music Genre, Culture and Turntables
Eoin Smith · 2010
‘Found sound’ has become a more prominent element in electronic dance music in recent years. Artists such as Mum, Fourtet, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Luke Vibert and Boards of Canada include elements from the world of ‘found sound’ into their music, either as full sound art compositions or minute gradients of field recordings incorporated into more rhythmic based tracks. This leads to a blurring of genres and sound worlds; however, an interesting anomaly is that while these artists seem to embrace this blurring of genres, it is my belief that the same cannot be said for the more academic side of sonic art. Within academic institutes who cater for the sonic arts, the influence of electronic dance music is not always noticeable. An instrument which seems to have transcended genre is the turntable. It is now accessible in both the world of sonic art and electronic music culture. But how is this so? What I intend to look at in this paper is why this dichotomy of sound worlds exists, concluding with a look at how the turntable could act as an intrinsic element of performance and composition but also as a milestone instrument in the fusing of genres and cultures.