We can always twist things around and use technology to be creative, instead of just replacing the natural world or the acoustic instrument. That's my main preoccupation with the investigation that I started with Synthetic Pleasures and continue with this new film. Modulations explores philosophical questions about technology's alternately alienating and connective potential. It is also a lightly sociological study of the conditions that led to the birth of electronic music's multifarious microgenres. Juan Atkins explains the birth of Detroit techno as an imaginative defense against rust-belt despair.
Machine music is the only way forward.
And though there's little talk about electronic music's drug culture, there is an attempt to link different genres to their chemical companions. Music changed dramatically in the mid-'90s when people started experiencing the dark sides of Ecstasy. Beyond all the theorizing, though, Modulations is a who's who of techno music and turntable culture, featuring interviews with Carl Cox, Danny Tenaglia, DJ Spooky, Goldie, Moby, Prodigy and, from the Bay Area, Meat Beat Manifesto and the Invisbl Skratch Piklz. Sometimes, Lee had to interview three musicians in three countries on the same night. Some artists were more comfortable talking virtually, anyway, and their aversion to human contact adds a skeptical note to the film.