Obama's Got the Techno Vote
L.A.-based art and tech collective The Looking Class has worked to get people psyched for election day tomorrow through a project called Radi-o-bama. It's an online channel offering electronic dance mixes intended to get you into the Obama spirit.
The Looking Class
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Unlike the songified debates produced by The Gregory Brothers or Devo's kitschy anti-Romney single, Radi-o-bama isn't so explicitly political. Instead it offers electronic music inspired by Obama's messages of hope (2008) and progress (2012).
Featured mixes draw from 30 years of American EDM. Averaging about four hours, each collects and re-imagines styles of the genre throughout the years -- samples include Daft Punk, Fatboy Slim, Frankie Knuckles, and LCD Soundsystem. Fans interested in the evolution of EDM through the lenses of genres like disco and acid house can find detailed histories.
"We wanted to do something positive and challenge anyone who engaged with our ideas to go a bit deeper than we've all been asked," says TLC member Thomas Kelley. "The EDM history is in a way a parallel to that depth, the idea that there's a lot more to our present than we may know or want to recall. And we wanted to do it in a context that was broader but also more untrodden."
As the collective says on its website:
Techno stands as a beguiling outlier of the American future. Just as the Detroit auto industry rose from the ashes of the Great Recession to become a bright spot of economic and technical revival, techno (EDM) has finally reached a critical mass with the mainstream. And as Obama has struggled to find his voice in the narrow corridors of Washington power, lashed every step of the way by an equally powerful code of old resentments, techno reminds the new generation of what is still possible in 2012. It is not just a dream. It is the human spirit motoring at infinity.
Now let's party, democracy style!
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