[Ramona_A_Stone]

Well Greedy, I think as an Eno fan you should realize that technology is simply a tool, and in the abstract there is no difference between a drum machine and, say, a violin. We think of the latter as requiring great technical skill, but it would seem, particularly in Eno's philosophy as evidenced in his own Oblique Strategy--"use unqualified people"--that one doesn't have to have consumate skill to tease something interesting out of an instrument. This extreme seems to illustrate that we can't really judge whether music is good or bad by the tools used to create it, and while perhaps how the tools are used is a good subject for dialog, ultimately it's a bit ridiculous to use such criteria as a substitute for discerning with our ears whether or not a music is interesting.

It's an old argument, as old as the analog sequencers and drum machines with which I made my first music. "Oh, anyone can push buttons to make music." Well, first of all, that's not literally true, but more importantly, even to the extent that we could concede that it is true, there is still an art to pushing buttons in such a way to create good or interesting music. I used to hand my sequencer over to people taking this stance and say, "well, here you go then, you make something interesting with it." This usually ended the argument.

If we are going to imply "automation bad, organic good," then a lot of Eno's own work is going to fall into the "bad" bin, for example: Wrong Way Up, with John Cale, which features drum machines on nearly every track, or Discreet Music, which is exclusively manipulated tape loops. The last example, while fully "automated," is one of the most beautiful and "organic sounding" pieces of music ever created as far as I'm concerned, and also beautifully points up that it isn't the automation element which is important, it is the choices made by the artist manipulating the machine. And as far as Eno's "mastery" is concerned, he himself credits a lot of his music's "interestingness" to his own "ineptness."

People make music with machines, always have, always will. Whether the machine in question is a Stradivarius and the choice is how much vibrato and portamento to apply, or it's a Korg drum machine and the choice is which quantized 32nd note to light up with a snare sample, human values, human discernment, human intentions are all that really matter. In the end, you have patterns of sound, and you either like them or you don't.

While it seems almost improbable that things could evolve beyond the present state of the art of automation, chances are machines will continue to become more and more important in the production of sound, but humans will be there every step of the way, giving direction and substance and saying "here's the music."

A tool is a tool is a tool. (sorry for the tirade)

On the iio piece, I liked it. Interestingly, a friend in the midst of a musical fit with it turned me on to it just a couple of days before this thread was posted. As he said, the lyrics are "a bit Donna Summer," but the vocalist has a lot of personality.