Consisting of sound stripped to its core, or compositions created grain by grain on a microscopic level, "post-digital" music allows for a dizzying array of heretofore-unknown textures and timbres. Used as a term to separate laptop music from the constraints of pop music spectacle, "post-digital" suggests both a critique of digital culture and an evolutionary history that succeeds the digital revolution. In this article the author offers an alternative term "extra-digital" to describe a music outside or beyond the either/or limitations of binary code. He redraws connections with myths and cultural beliefs that existed long before the advent of the computer, archetypes that he argues will continue to prosper long after "digital" becomes a dead word.
The Extra-Digital Axis Mundi: Myth, Magic and Metaphor in Laptop Music
Bach, Glenn
2003
Contemporary Music Review 22(4): 3-9.
Language: English