From: awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford)
Newsgroups: rec.music.industrial
Subject: Re: othe DVA
Date: 14 Dec 92 10:24:28 GMT
Reply-To: awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford)
Organization: The University Of Edinburgh - Department Of Computer Science

And lo, Mark.Wagner@f99.n121.z1.fidonet.org (Mark Wagner) spake unto the masses saying:
>
> Some other ClockDVA thoughts:
> 
> Great ideas.  Anybody want to talk about them?  Not musical mind you, 
> but the DVA make it fair play here.
> 
> What other band would write songs about technology and mathematics? The
> liner notes are always interesting--I've looked up a few refernces
> myself. Who else would put a picture of Turing on the CD insert, or for
> that matter, mention Klein (discoverer/creator of the "Klein Four" group
> in group theory).  Or have the refrain "Man is a machine"?

I personally find Adi Newton's sleeve notes entertaining but pretentious. I
can live with the mysticism/technology mumbo-jumbo (even if his
juxtaposition of names who have an established scientific background with,
erm, the less scientifically based does rankle a little) but I think you
raised the basic problem above - "who else would put a picture of Turing on
the CD insert"? A good question. The fact that the release with the Turing
picture ("Bitstream"?) has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Turing
or any of his work does reinforce my suspicions that a lot of Newton's
presentation and information is really far more art than science -
composing images and text for effect and impact rather than for more
directly connected reasons. Hence we get the gratuitous picture of Turing
on the back of "Bitstream" and so on. OK, so the blurb in "Bitstream" is
connecting computers and sexuality while Turing's field was computers and
it was persecution of his sexuality that eventually lead to his topping
himself, but it's a pretty weak link and not really in tune with the tone
of the blurb.

As for mentioning Klein - sure, I'll admit to being oddly interested when
names from my discipline crop up in the DVA texts (has any other musician
namechecked Marvin Minsky in his lyrics yet?) but it does seem that
sometimes he's just namedropping frantically.

> Unfortunately, I would charcterize their latest (Man Amplified) as 
> musically weak.  Perhaps they should spend a little more time on the 
> music side of things.

I rather enjoyed his recent work (treating _Man-Amp_, "Final Program" and
"Bitstream" as one rather than as separate releases) - it's perhaps a
little lacking in imagination musically but the digital clarity and
sterility of the sound suits the subject matter nicely and those dark,
atmospheric pieces work *soooo* well.

> There is a great change in style from "Thirst" (REM with a sax instead of 
> a guitar) to "Buried Dreams"  What's up?

Ahem, I'd hardly describe _Thirst_ as REM with a sax. The band's evolution
from _White Souls In Black Suits_ through to _Advantage_ is fairly clear,
starting out as avant-garde jazz-industrial noodlings and moving through to
something a lot more mainstream (but utterly wonderful) in _Advantage_. The
differences in the DVA sound over the years seem to arise from the frequent
large-scale changes in lineup. The *only* constant factor is Adi Newton
himself. So you've got one lineup on _White Souls_ and _Thirst_, another
much different lineup on _Advantage_ (most of the original lineup having
left to form The Box), yet another lineup on _Buried Dreams_ and
_Transitional Voices_ and I think there's even been a change between then
and _Man-Amplified_.

-- 
			Al Crawford - awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk
	  Department Of Computer Science, The University of Edinburgh
   Rm 1410, JCMB, Kings Buildings, Mayfield Rd, EDINBURGH, EH9 3JZ, Scotland
	     Tel: +44 (0) 31 650 5165  Fax: +44 (0) 31 667 7209
Newsgroups: rec.music.industrial