Beep Generation / Futurevisual / EVNTS / Exhibition / Conference / Participate
Beep Generations
John Robb
April 2007
Futuresonic 2007 is a story of four decades of maverick and pioneers.
1967 was the year of the pyschedelic Spring; when the immense promise of pop culture hit hyperdrive in a brief, beautiful pyschedelic explosion of creativity. If the sixties was the decade when the drab post-war monochrome went colour, then '67 was when those colours seemed to burning most brightly.
This was the year when the drug culture combined with the art underground and a whole new way of life was unleashed. 1967 saw the birth of the counter-culture proper. For sure there had been signs of this before. The beats had been onto this in the early fifties.
In 1964 Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters took the magic bus across the USA while Tom Wolfe scratched out his gonzo observations on its Kool-Aid drenched back seats. In 1965 Syd Barrett was getting filmed on his first trip in a Cambridge wood. In 1966 the Beatles sang 'Tomorrow Never Knows' - an astonishing mantra that managed to get the Tibetan Book of the Dead into a trippy hypnotic pop song.
But 1967 was different - in that year the world truly turned dayglo. The Beatles delivered 'Sgt Peppers' and Syd Barrett wrote the debut Floyd album. The mavericks were taking over, and pop culture was enflamed by their magical counter-culture spirit.
In London UFO club broke all the rules and invented the whole modern concept of club culture. From its multi-media multicoloured light shows, to house bands like Pink Floyd and Soft Machine's hypnotic tripped out grooves, the beautiful people sat cross-legged in stoned-stunned admiration or idiot danced at the interstellar overdrive unfolding in front of them. This was acid house a good 20 years before the rave scene detonated its smily-faced electro grenades across popular culture.
In 2007 Futuresonic is reinventing UFO for one night only, a nod to the club that is arguably the birthplace of the very culture and the forward-looking music that Futuresonic celebrates.
The UFO and the surrounding scene were never big clubs, but their legacy is huge, from the post Syd Barrett Floyd hitting the mainstream (with a watered down take on UFO experience) to the extra sensory overload of the modern super club - pop culture would never be the same again.
By the mid seventies it didn't have to be rock n roll any more. The first time Kraftwerk appeared on British TV was on 'Tomorrow's World'- a mainstream seventies TV programme that detailed the inventions and gadgets of the future. How apt. Kraftwerk were so ahead of the pack it was astonishing. Four androids playing keyboards and singing dispassionately about an autobahn, it's one of the greatest musical moments ever and it was nowhere near Top Of the Pops or the denim-fest that was Old Grey Whistle test. Arguably the most influential band of all time, Kraftwerk totally changed the face of music. Without them there would be no electro, hip-hop, techno, dance and rave culture and no one has come that close to catching up with them. No even themselves.
In 1977 a generation created punk rock, as the music landscape was democratized in a thrilling and dangerous primal rush of guitars. Pioneers pushed out beyond the frontier - Captain Beefheart, The Stooges and Krautrock. Perhaps the most interesting band to come out of Krautrock were Faust whose short series of album dislocated any notion of just what rock music was in the seventies. A new electronic, multi-layered soundscape had been born which Joy Division and others reared and refined.
In 1987 Acid House hit the mainstream with an astonishing speed. Bored of the grey world of indie rock, power ballads and divas in spandex, a generation were raving in fields and broken down warehouses all over the UK. For many it was a summer of knotted hankies on their heads, smiley t-shirt and a crafty E. But there was also an artfulness as a new wave of DJs, producers and musicians began to push the envelope just a little further...
Acid House gave electronic music a huge shot in the arm. It created space for the maverick and a whole generation of fascinating music poured out of its slipstream. Post acid house the mavericks are still there chipping away at the coal face of popular culture bending and twisting sound in astonishing new shapes.
Futuresonic is a celebration of this. It looks into the future but it also understands the past. It acknowledges the traditions. The pioneers of this freewheeling creative sprit. In this year's programme of magical sounds you still find the same spirit and visionary sparks whether in the dense, dark sounds of Apparat or TTC's complete rip-it-up-and start again attitude to hip hop, in Clark's majestic compositions and experimentations.
And it's because the festival recognizes this maverick spirit in all music of all generations that it can comfortably recreate the UFO club in 2007. Of course it will be a great party, but it will also draw a neat line through all the frontline cultures from the shape-shitfting late sixties, through bloody revolutions of punk rock to the heady daze of acid house. Futuresonic looks back while always moving ever forwards.