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Anorak News | Arcade Fire Are Arcane Dire: Guitar Band Takes Swipe At Electronic Music

Arcade Fire Are Arcane Dire: Guitar Band Takes Swipe At Electronic Music

by | 24th, April 2014

Arcade Fire performs at the 2014 Coachella Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, April 20, 2014, in Indio, Calif.

Arcade Fire performs at the 2014 Coachella Music and Arts Festival on Sunday, April 20, 2014, in Indio, Calif.

THROW a brick into the air and, chances are, you’ll hit someone who likes guitar music who just can’t accept that electronic music is ‘real’.

Even though electronic pop music has been  a thing since the ’60s, rock luddites still can’t get their heads around it. It’s just pressing buttons isn’t it? Just like owning a typewriter makes you an amazing novelist.

Arcade Fire – the very definition of catholic rock ‘n’ roll music – hit out at Coachella for the amount of non-guitar acts on the bill. Of course, attacking electronic music has an implied ‘that’s music for stupid people – they don’t realise how much more they’d like ‘real’ music… sheeple.’

Arcade Fire’s frontman, Win Butler, told the crowd there’s a lot of “fake VIP room bullshit happening at this festival, and sometimes people dream of being there – but it super sucks in there,” and later gave a “shout-out to all the bands still playing actual instruments at this festival.”

Get that? Actual instruments. Because people who play an Am on a guitar are obviously superior to anyone who can work out the hugely complicated systems that lie in synths, processors and samplers and THEN write melodies that are loved by millions.

Deadmaus has hit back at the Arcade Fire. In a series of tweets, he said: “arcade fire needs to settle down. some dudes devote their lives to instruments, others to electronic composition by cpu, dafuqs yer problem.”

“i dont expect to see daft punk pull a steve vai on stage…i expect to listen to some decent music, n see cool robots. no problem.”

“if i wanna watch real artists perform, id pick the opera before wasting a fucking minute of my life with arcade fire. #do youevenscorebro?”

“but since some EDM is enjoyable to me, ill go watch them fake it, and enjoy it more than you hate the fact that they cant play guitar.”

“inb4 some fucking hipster throws a hackeysack at me.”

He then went on to endorse his comments about the opera, adding: “… but seriously, im just sayin… you should get out to the opera if you ever get a chance, the orchestra pit is a cespool of pure skill.”

Deadmaus has a point. If you want ‘real’ music with ‘real’ instruments, you should ditch sellouts with amplifiers and stick to the realest of the real – chamber orchestras, symphonies, folk singers with modal instruments and men simply humming to themselves in a field.

Arcade Dire more like.



Posted: 24th, April 2014 | In: Music Comment | TrackBack | Permalink