The Rejection and Redemption of Technology in Black Metal
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2023-01-16
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en
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With the arrival of technological advancement in music came also new ideological discourses. Musical objects are “made under late capitalist labour conditions” and sell the pretence of being able to become a rockstar from the comfort of your bedroom (Prior 1-2). The advancement of being able to record or produce your own music on your laptop or your phone had “significant changes in how music is produced, who makes it and where” (2). Music cannot be analysed anymore without considering the technological mediation through which it is circulated, produced, and consumed because music as we know it now is “always already technological” (3-4). Even an acoustic guitar was at one point seen as a technological invention. Yet there has always been a binary opposed to classic rock music and electronical music, as the latter would not involve ‘real musicianship’ (6). “[T]he paradox being, of course, that rock’s affirmations of authenticity are possible only because of modern technologies like microphones and guitars” (7). This paradox between technology and authenticity interested me greatly, hence the following research question: In what way does black metal, a genre that would not have existed without the technological progress in music inherent to the 80’s, reject that same progress?
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