Catchiness and repetition are staples of successful commercial music. But there have been some amazing advances in the recent past, especially in the field of technology and computerization, that have opened up some new and interesting possibilities for the modern musical media.

The Rave

One development is the increasing popularity of the rave. These all-night parties are defined by electronic music, drug use, and light shows. In Cosmopolitan magazine, Nick Paul describes the philosophy and even spirituality of the rave:

All words are subordinate to the beat, all politics are subordinate to the party...

And the easy spirituality of rave is appealing to kids who've rejected the old, uniquely South African gods of their parents but decided that they do need a god after all. At a time when ecological issues have elbowed their way into the popular consciousness, the neo-pagan earth-worship of some adherents of rave is becoming increasingly popular.ⁱ

There is no doubt that the music makers who find themselves on the edge of Earth's greatest millennium are desperately trying to find the ultimate expression of art through sound and music. They have long since come to realize that, in the words of Jimi Hendrix, "music is in a spiritual thing of its own."

Psychology student Hellenique Angerou researches subcultures, including the rave culture. Nick Paul interviewed Angerou, and explains her views in this same Cosmopolitan article:

She sees rave as a positive spiritual force in many young lives, and is interested, she says in the fact that it combines archaic, ancestral, tribal influences with technology and cyberia. She points to "trance music and drumming as 'a possession of the id impulse', and lofty and esoteric as that may sound, there is something truly primal and compulsive in the way the rhythm and lights capture one at the rave" (emphasis added).ⁱⁱ

The Virtual Dance Party

A further development of the musical media is the virtual nightclub.

Visitors access virtual nightclubs such as long-running Club Equinox from their homes via the Internet. They can then create an online alter-ego, and use this online character to interact with other club guests or staff online, and enter a variety of three-dimensional club environments.

BLAH, BLAH magazine tells how Guðjón Már Guðjónsson, CEO of the Icelandic computer company Oz Communications, developed a method of recording electronic music using a built-in "intelligent agent" that causes the music to adjust itself according to its environment:

"The sound is influenced by space" explains Guðjón. "Information about what's happening externally is streamed into the computer creating the music which responds accordingly. If a lot of people are up dancing or the club is very busy, the tempo and type of music will reflect that. In future all music will respond to its environment. We won't need DJs at clubs either."ⁱⁱⁱ

The music industry is poised, yet again, for another major transition. The public, already saturated and overexposed from the information explosion of the late 20^th century, will now be subject to another, more effective way of planting demonic ideals into the soft, pliable recesses of the human brain.

Maybe Nick Paul was right when he said, "Perhaps rave truly is the music at the end of the world."^iv

Read more about the brain's reaction to overstimulation in the next article