Hell-bent on Illbient

by Sean Kennedy

Down in Manhattan where cross streets lose their numbers and become nouns, past Washington Square Park and the Bowery district, Broadway turns into an avenue quite different from the neon stroll of legend. Instead of the feet of happy theater-goers on the ground, you hear the shuffle of a lone homeless man, or sirens. Smoke seeps out from behind closed doors. Taxis rush past, seen in the light of the few street lamps still working or through the shattered glass windows of a car. You pull your coat against you and hurry on because suddenly the city seems less like the one portrayed in headlines of sky-rocketing stocks and low crime and more like the one your parents always warned you about.

That's the world that illbient music, a new form of electronic music currently thriving in New York City, conjures for its listener. Illbient is ambient music plus the "ill" -- not mere sickness, but a profound societal unhealthiness. DJ Spooky, the most well-known of the New York illbient crew and arguably the originator of the style, has described illbient as ambient music that "comes to New York City, sees what's going on with the pollution, the smog, the extreme noise, the density of the crowds, and goes completely insane." It's an effort to capture a five-sense urban reality in sound and to impress that reality on the listener.

"One would enjoy an illbient song in the same way that one would enjoy a painting," says Nikolai Soudek, a third-year College student. "It's more mental [than other electronic music] -- like it's the kind of thing that you sit and listen to because it creates virtual landscapes." This in fact is exactly what illbient does. By combining a wide array of musical sources with the intention to reflect real life, producer/DJs like Spooky and the group We turn mixing into a true art form. No one can claim that ambient music, although soothing and sometimes beautiful, is linked in any way to life. Historically, the purpose of electronic dance music in general was (and is) quite the opposite; it is meant either to simulate or enhance a drug experience. Techno, then, not only exists independent of the world in which it was created, it caters to an activity generally engaged in to escape that world. Illbient does neither: it's inseparable from the same reality it doesn't want you to escape.

This year the art establishment even recognized the artistic merits of Spooky's work when he was included in the sound category of the recent Whitney Biennial, perhaps the most prestigious showcase for contemporary American art in the country.

Spooky's real name is Paul D. Miller. Raised in Washington, D.C., he graduated from Bowdoin College with degrees in French literature and philosophy, and moved to New York City in 1993. Now 26, he's a veritable 20th century renaissance man. Aside from producing electronic music, he creates installation exhibits for art galleries, writes for downtown Manhattan magazines like the Village Voice and Paper, and is currently working on two books, one on the DJ's role in society and culture, another a science fiction tale of war between genetics and technology.

But he is best known for his music. His 1995 debut Songs of a Dead Dreamer (Asphodel) intertwines his own bass playing with drums -- both recorded then looped back to sound like samples -- obscure records, noises pulled directly from the surrounding urban environment (like the rumble of trains on tracks or a ticking clock), and random sounds (like tape hiss or vinyl-record surface noise) manipulated to seem as if they were taken from the street. Necropolis: The Dialogic Project (Knitting Factory Works), his follow-up, is a mix of tracks by other producers that aren't necessarily illbient. Spooky, however, turns them into something that is. His latest effort, Riddim Warfare, is coming out later this year.

Charlottesville recently got a dose of the illbient scene when DJ Olive, of the New York groups We and Liminal, came to town on September 9 to accompany drummer William Hooker at Tokyo Rose. The stop was a part of their tour to support Hooker's new album, Mindfulness, on which Olive appears.

The show was "very avant-garde [in its] finding some way to shatter previous conceptions about rhythm, because the beat was so unpredictable," says Ashley Banes, a third-year College student, although she concedes this may have been due less to Olive's spinning than to what she perceived was Hooker's dominance throughout the set. Still, performed live, illbient was "captivating," she says. "I've never seen an audience so attentive."

Soudek, who was also at the show, agrees that Hooker "tended to drown out all of the little intricacies in Olive's set," but, despite illbient not being a favorite of his, he was able to appreciate the "artistic moment," calling the show good.

Banes brings attention to a conspicuous element of illbient music, one that further sets it apart from other genres of electronic music: its undanceability. Whether you're listening to Spooky's albums in your room or seeing DJ Olive spin live, you won't be getting your groove on any time soon. "I'm surprised he lasted for five minutes," she says, speaking of one lone audience member who attempted to dance, but eventually gave up and squatted for the rest of the show. But even she was expecting "more typical electronica, which is more something you can dance to." For a rave aficionado like Soudek, this is illbient's main drawback. "It doesn't make me want to get up and dance like all other forms of electronica do at some level," he says.

But whether you can dance to it or not is ultimately beside the point -- illbient has other aims. It seeks to make you think, and as Spooky himself points out in the liner notes to Songs of a Dead Dreamer, "that ain't illegal yet."