Hello World!
What's the value of celebrating the cultural history of electronic music? Let's find out together.
This might seem like a strange time to type out "hello world". And an even stranger time to start a content site dedicated to the history and culture of electronic music. But perhaps uncertain times are the best times to dig back into our cultural and creative roots, anchor back in the foundations of where we drew out inspiration, and look for new opportunities to create again.
In my case, I've spent the last few months in the Manchester, partly in preparation to relocate. I'm currently in my hometown of sunny Brisbane, Australia, where it looks like I might be staying longer than expected. The reports of a respiratory virus in China seem to be spreading to the UK as I was flying out. With suggestions that this may need some time and care before passing.
So on that note, after much of the last decade spent working in tech around the world, I'm taking some time to dig back into my music archives. This week I began unpacking the studio gear I've left in storage from my time making and performing music (writing as Segue and in bands like Superfluid and D-KO). And it feels fresh and exciting again, perhaps partly the nostalgia that comes from a decade or so on. But either way, music for fun (rather than for the industry) has been a surprise benefit of time otherwise waiting to see how this global situation pans out.
So what is this?
The Voltage Control is a music technology and culture blog. For many years I wrote for street press and music magazines. I wasn't always great in archiving them - such as a double-page piece I wrote and photographed of a Daft Punk album launch in Mixmag that I've never even seen in print. So this feels like a good way to keep better records of writings, and to use this feeling of nostalgia productively.
The Voltage Control is a celebration of the people, the place, and the equipment that made the history of electronic music so magical. And it's very obvious where I need to start. Not just in the first record I can ever remember hearing as a child, but with the act that all modern electronic music draws some of it's heritage from. And that is of course... Kraftwerk.
