The Cure for Dance Fever
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Javor, who started listening to experimental electronic music when he got bored with the industrial scene about five years ago, was moved to promote concerts because while following his favorite acts on the Internet he found that they frequently skipped Chicago on tour. He used his connections as a contributor to the on-line electronica magazine Urban Sounds to get in touch with them and arrange shows. In May he kicked off a performance series called “/bin” with a showcase of artists who record for the small LA label Plug Research, and last month he put together an impressive international bill with California’s Shuttle358, Germany’s Tom Steinle, and local Labradford side project Pan-American. Both shows were at the Nervous Center, a cozy basement space that usually hosts avant-garde jazz and improv. In contrast to DJ gigs at Karma, Crobar, and even Smart Bar, where most people are either dancing or at least nodding their heads, the fans at the Pan-American show hunkered down on old wooden chairs or long makeshift benches, watching abstract images manipulated live via computer and listening.
Javor’s explicitly interested in “the fringe of more popular forms of electronic music,” so none of the acts he’s booked are exactly household names. But “giving a recognizable identity to the series as a whole will help out, especially with some of the acts most people don’t know about,” he says. The average rock fan will probably still have no interest, though in some ways the new artists seem to be reacting to the mindless hedonism of rave music the way rockers reacted to disco.
Samba Pra Burro, a 1998 album by singer Otto that just turned up at Dusty Groove, may turn out to be my favorite Brazilian record of 1999: Otto jury-rigs Brazilian forms for electronica much as the late Chico Science did for hip-hop and rock, mixing live and programmed percussion in catchy, seductive electronica-bolstered pop songs that put American attempts at the same to shame.
