Finally, we have gathered our research about and with Ican Harem and Kasimyn from Gabber Modus Operandi into an article that has been accepted for publication in the American journal Resonance – The Journal of Sound and Culture.
The article will be out in the spring of 2025 and carries the title:
Trance Against the Machine:
Transpositions of Aesthetics in Indonesian Electronic Music and Beyond
In case you’re interested, the abstract of the article is as follows:
This article explores the musical performances, aesthetics, and multi-situated reception of the Indonesian electronic dance music in Europe and Indonesia, focusing on the duo Gabber Modus Operandi (GMO). Since their first international tour entitled “Trance Against the Machine” in 2019, the duo has gained significant attention, especially in Europe, because they are seen as part of a “seismic shift” in the electronic dance continuum. The article critically analyzes this perceived shift in relation to GMO’s music. It advocates for a mode of analysis that simultaneously traces the situated and the multi-situated nature of aesthetics in electronic music. This analysis is inspired by an ethnographic theory developed in collaboration with the artists we study. We propose the term “transposition” as a translation of the Indonesian term alay, used by the members of GMO to describe their aesthetic vision, in order to pay attention to what might be called “aesthetic globalization” as both situated and multi-situated. We do so as part of an “aesthetic-anthropological” approach that seeks to bring aesthetic analysis into anthropology and anthropology into aesthetic analysis.
We’ll give an update when the final work is out.
