Electronic Artist You'd Most Like To Put In Your... Y'Know

Moka, I'm not going to spam up this thread arguing with you, but if you want to take a look at any of the million threads about gender and gender presentation, and the dichotomy of "men act, women appear" and the Male Gaze, you will see that we have been through this a million times before.

Why is it that you have to GIS for "gay DJ" in order to find sexualised photos of men, while standard photos of female musicians are sexualised in a way that your "not specifically packaged for the gay scene" male musicians are just not? (See also: the assumption that sexualised men are "for the gay scene" and not for a female audience, because that's annoying, too.)

This isn't just about club culture, this is about *all* of culture and how women are generally automatically presented as sexually appealing in a really standardised way (and also a really impossible beauty standard) before anything, in a way that men just are not.

And a couple of shirtless photos of men does not redress that balance, because men are always given the *choice* of whether they want to portray themselves in a sexual light, in a way that women are pressured, both subtly and overtly, to do the FHM thing.

I'm so fucking tired of this argument, and look, here I am having it again. ARGH.

I completely understand the argument and I don't support it. But I'm not sure if sexism works in the club context. My point in here is that it really depends on what electronic scene we're talking about. On the minimal techno / IDM scene you'll hardly find a dj male or female that uses sex as a presentation card. In the dance / house club scene you'll find semi-naked men and women all of the time, all over the place. It's a scene fueled by looks and sex and if you frequented clubs at one point of your life you know exactly what I'm talking about. This isn't about war of the sexes.

The problem here is that we started comparing male IDM artists with house female djs, and I'm responsible for it. Female artists like Nina Kraviz, Andrea Parker, Grimes, Bjork and all of those you mentioned are much better fits and you wont see them using their bodies as marketing weapons.

I just can't do this any more.

L@@K!!! HERE IS A PICTURE OF THOM YORKE'S ERECTION!!!

http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i67/soundship/album%202/mygod.jpg

LOOK AT IT!!! LOOK AT THAT YORKE BONER!!! L@@K AT IT!!!!!

Female artists like Nina Kraviz ... you wont see them using their bodies as marketing weapons.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's not really the impression I get with Nina Kraviz.

Female artists like Nina Kraviz ... you wont see them using their bodies as marketing weapons.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's not really the impression I get with Nina Kraviz.

― French Cricket in the USA (NickB)

Why not? In every photo I've seen of her she's always dressed very conservative, I don't think I've even seen her showing cleavage.

Well, she's definitely more sophisticated than that phwoar-look-at-my-tittays stuff upthread but she is definitely using her looks as a marketing thing in stuff like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=605bwlAz_iQ

If an artist dancing in his/her own music video is a symbol of sexploitation then I'm completely out of tune with you guys.

from very tail end of 2011 - its almost pastiche but i don't really mind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW6Xox7lDcc

hmm i think i may have posed this in the wrong thread

Yeah, I don't think I would claim that Nina Kraviz is being exploited in that video. That being my first exposure to her though, my primitive man-brain is now having a hard time dissociating her looks from her music.

I never really know what anyone looks like but of the ones listed here I'd say Ben Klock though he's not really my type as such

Yeah, I don't think I would claim that Nina Kraviz is being exploited in that video.

well, i'd say she's def walking on a thin line

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJtf-Mmkx-Q

this vid is almost embarrasing, like she's on the verge of being literally raped by a bunch of drunken fellas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckjKUPVWRts

h: In the international underground DJ scene, there’s only recently more women that have a lot of respect as DJs. Have you found it difficult to be accepted or difficult to get respect from the crowds because of this?

NK: No, no.

h: Or have you found it worked to your advantage in any way?

NK: I can definitely tell you that I have so many things to think of, and I really don’t want to go down the topic of living in a sexist world, being such a poor lady and stuff like that. I have a personal problem with one thing…

h: Sure.

NK: I don’t want to talk about more women in the industry or this. My problem is that people are still taking… A driver, does he have a sex?

h: Sure…

h: I’ve seen you DJ a few times and I had no question that you knew what you were doing, absolutely no question. I was trying to approach the question more from the angle that I understand that you do actually do what you do, and I understand that you’re actually really doing it, but I still hear a lot of people, even people that I know that I respect in the music scene, that will talk about the way you look before they talk about the way you play.

NK: Well that’s not a problem for me. Of course it’s not a problem! I’m a girl… if people stop looking at me as a girl I’d be very upset. Didn’t you see the real girl who doesn’t like to look at the mirror and check how pretty she is, or if the makeup is perfect? Come on! I’ll always be a woman and I like my femininity. I like to be attractive and have people constantly watching me and stuff, definitely.

h: Yes.

NK: I mean, I believe energy is one of the most important things that makes everything move. That’s the most important point in the whole thing! Coming back to the question, I would say I have no problem with people taking me as a woman behind the decks. No problem! But only if they are really educated enough to realize the difference between just any woman behind the decks and me is huge, enormous… it’s immense, it matters. So when they realize the difference and they realize I’m a professional first and can mix my tracks and have my own style and sound, then no problem. Look anywhere you want! Enjoy my ass shaking, anything, feel free, but only if you realize that and enjoy what I’m doing and the music, only if you take it as the whole concept. If you take it separately, then get lost really! Then this is sexism, I don’t want to be the doll really or a puppet.

https://halcyonline.com/2011/qa-nina-kraviz/

so russian

so amazingly russian <3

ARGH see this is so complicated, because it is, and it isn't.

Like, the whole thing of, sexuality is INHERENT in music, and especially dance music.

Dancing is sexual display. It's an artform and an expression, too, but it's also very much a sexual display. And it's not as if male musicians from Elvis Presley to Thom Yorke have not taken advantage of that. Because, on one level, I really don't see any difference between that Nina Kravitz dancing video posted above, and this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfOa1a8hYP8

Sexy artists doing their sexy thing, to sexy music. That's what it's about.

But it gets complicated by, questions like, why is Nina doing her thang in a leotard, while Thom is doing his thang in a pair of jeans and a non-revealing shirt? They're sexualised in different ways.

But it's also about the sense of entitlement which exists in the eye of the viewer, of how many men take a woman being in revealing clothes, doing a sexy dance as entitlement, that that means not just that they are entitled to the Gaze, that THEY ARE ENTITLED TO THEIR BODY. In a way that, when most people see Thom Yorke doing sexy dancing, they think he's just sexy dancing because he's ~feeling it~ in the song, and that doesn't reduce Thom to solely being his looks and his sexuality, or that we, as viewers, are entitled to his physical being. The expectations are different, and that's the ugly thing. But also, that a man being sexy is just adding another layer to him as a human being, while, if a woman gets sexy, it seems like it utterly subsumes everything else they're ~allowed~ to be. They get reduced to sex and nothing else. Which is blatantly unfair. And it's not about ~man-brains~ so don't give me that crap, it's about how women are portrayed and the expectations that our society has around women and female beauty. And it's bullshit.

But, you know, I just want less dudes talking about women's bodies and sexualities on this thread because you guys have the rest of the internet for doing that, and there are very few places that women and gay men get to discuss men's looks and sexuality in the same way without being punished or penalised for it, so can we just go back to enjoying what we were enjoying?

You know, Nina, I am happy for you to have the option of being pretty-girl and enjoying your own looks and your sexuality.

But I would like to be a girl, and be accepted as a real girl and a true girl, as someone WHO DOES NOT LOOK IN THE MIRROR THAT MUCH and wants to be free to be accepted as a woman in the same way.

Like, I want to have the freedom to have the same attitude towards my looks that the Aphex Twin does.

And not have these expectations of "what girl doesn't like looking in the mirror?" foisted on me, because you know what, I would like to be a woman and be free of *those* expectations of femininity. That infuriates me.

I would like a world where Nina gets to be sexy, and I get to schlump around in baggy combats with my hair in a messy ponytail and both of these be OK options for us to be ~taken seriously!~ as women.

As women, and as *musicians*.

Obviously there's a difference to "being exploited" and having one's sexuality serve as part of one's persona and music. Surely there's loads of counter examples, but I think it's straight up naive to say there isn't a disparity in representation in a male dominated market.

And I think it was Ronan who once made the very OTM point here that there's so much subliminal (homo)erotic hero worship placed on djs that when you finally get a high-end female djs it suddenly becomes acceptable to be "omg cassy i luv u ur so beautiful"

Wait sorry, he wrote: isn't half the problem the fact that most techno writers are single dudes used to ranting about how militant and dark whatever music is and then they're all "oh cassy ur musics are so beautiful i luv u"

In any case, the point still stands. And yeah, I think this thread has discussed the matter: Women in electronic/dance music

Well, yeah.

It's just like, I thought this was just a stupid parody thread that was gonna be me and the ILX gays going "Ben Curtis and Lindstrom, are they hott or what?" for about 10 jokey posts but instead we're all up in gender theory and presentation of electronic musicians and it's like, that's fine and there's a place for that, but I just want Thom Yorke in overly tight trousers, dancing like a fule.

Argh, sorry for kicking this off again. I guess another question is, Moka, do you actually fancy those women? Because I read this thread as for posting electronic artists you actually fancy, rather than posting half-naked DJs because they're 'supposed' to be sexy.

Anyway:

http://www.electronicbeats.net/sites/default/files/imagecache/teaser_2x2/img/mouse_on_mars.jpg

Completely agree on Nina Kraviz. She's really hot.

― Moka, Thursday, 12 April 2012 03:10 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ip4vYybJgic/TV7kvxDdpYI/AAAAAAAAARQ/I1YikHFgDo0/s1600/harald.jpg

***caveat: this is the best photo of this man***

That album cover gives me...feelings...so I was disappoint when I got the reissue from RVNG and it used a different pic.

anagram, that's one. Moka put up lots of images.

Now we're considering silvery German electronisch guys, what do you think about Riechmann?

http://images.plixid.com/imager/w_500/h_/e44254df37f7ac8793fff47cca7d0bd7.jpg

Wait, Mouse on Mars look like *THAT*?!?!?

I am suddenly starting to see the point of them!

Hahaha, MoM are H0TTTTTTT.

I can certainly see the ~appeal~ of Abb's and Emil's silvery teutonic electronischmensches, they are visually exciting and pleasing aesthetically, but I'm not getting the "want that, in the orifice of my choice" feeling.

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/45429731/Doris+Norton++1983.jpg

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/28179467/Doris+Norton+doris.jpg

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/36950777/Doris%20Norton%20nortondoris70s1.jpg

Wow, I had no idea what Mouse On Mars looked like. At all. They should TOTALLY make more of a thing of their looks, they are BEAUTIFUL. Shame about their music, but, y'know. Holy shit, they are amazing looking.

But... um, not getting back into Feminist Theory again, but - this is a thing. That it's possible to think of five male electronic artists, and they can be faceless - like, I had no idea what MoM looked like, I still have no idea what Drexciya look like. That they have the freedom to be completely faceless.

Yet, if I did a thought experiment, of told us all to think of five female electronic artists off the tops of our heads, I bet we would have clear images of what they looked like. And although I'm sure that was the choice of each of those individual artists to use their face or bodies as part of their image, when you put it all together, you realise that choices don't get made in a vacuum. And that options exist for males that don't really exist in the same way for women.

But. Well. I'll shut up and look at the hotties.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVM6iClGRpU

masonic boom = horniest fucker since pacino in carlito's way

Well, you know I love MoM as musicians as well as hotties, but I'll let it lie.

I'm afraid my attempt at the experiment may be an outlier, as out of the first five that came to mind, only two have strong images associated with them, and neither of those two are particularly sexualised. HOWEVER, I am a nerd, I feel a kinship to music based on interiority, and I have poor facial recognition.

LOL that's actually quite hilarious considering I am pretty much functionally asexual. I have almost zero interest in having sex with anyone any more, but I sure do like to look at pictures of attractive people.

x-post to Dwight.

a vote for BOTH numbers guys

i think there's consensus that jackmaster is hott

http://redbullmusicacademyradio.com/uploads/show_pics/jackmaster_456_004.jpg

but spencer is just ridiculously good looking imo

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/58969_432828467185_687352185_5725329_443916_n.jpg

I don't know what interiority means, because I'm uneducated and big words perplex me.

Partly, perhaps, with truly faceless records it's that (inherently sexist and much noted) tendency to attribute "anonymous" to men, even when the authors were female but unknown? Perhaps it's that in order to *gender* an artist in the first place, we have to see their face or body, so that's why I know what they look like? Because I discovered that they were female by... looking at them? I don't know.

I do have to admit that part of my irritation on this thread is kind of... argh, men colonising space intended for women. (Thought obviously that doesn't apply since Lex is one of the biggest posters of hott boys and Moka is one of the biggest posters of semi naked ladies?)

I do feel caution and I want to call out mine own heteronormativity in being disturbed by the highly gendered (and sometimes sexualised) presentation of the women. I mean, it's not like there aren't female electronic musicians that I *would* actually like to put (in the orifice of my choice.) But it's just that the qualities of my attractions to women are so different to the quality of my attractions to men.

That if I'm attracted to a woman, it's because she's SO AMAZING that she's triggered a state of sexual superfluidity in me. And the amazingness of her has little to do with what she looks like, it's about who she is, what she's like, and all of the individual things that make her so amazing. It's not like, "see nose, see hair,
see cheekbones, WANT" like it is with men.

That my attractions to men, 75% of it is purely what he looks like, and 25% of it is him not being a complete idiot. (Ok, with the single exception of Thom Yorke, because with him, it's not what he looks like. Even though I do think he's physically attractive, he's physically attractive *because* of the inherent ThomYorkeness of him. I fancy him *like* a woman. Which is completely strange and odd and unusual. And probably why it's persisted for so long, unlike crushes that fade when the dude gets an unfortunate haircut.)

How can I decide, from a picture of a lady, with her hanging breasts out, whether she's AMAZING or not? In fact, if she's willing and prepared to pitch herself as her sexuality first and her musicianship or intellect or whatever second, it's unlikely that I'll find her amazing. Which is shallow, perhaps. But. It's complicated.

Anyway, here is a funny picture of Thom Yorke being sexay. It is hilarious. But also hott.

http://i.imgur.com/OejsC.jpg

...and x-post but the second of Lex's dudes is more attractive than the first. But still not someone I would orificise. He's a bit too 90210.

I have no idea what Grimes looks like. Pretty sure I could think of other examples if I went through the CD collection.

oh i'm pretty sure that's true in your case nick

If you asked me to name female electronic musicians, the first folks I think of would be Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire, Eliane Radigue, Maryanne Amacher etc and then people like Laurel Halo, Rachel Evans aka Motion Sickness of Time Travel, what's-her-name aka Stella Om Source. No idea what a lot of these actually look like, think I'm probably an outlier too though. Still have a soft spot for Mira from Ladytron though.

arrggh, too many thoughs, am prising those keys off my keyboard with pliers.

Because I discovered that they were female by... looking at them? I don't know.

heh, i thought tama sumo was a dude for a while, embarrassingly - had only half-seen a ~moody~ promo shot of her, and her style is totes butch.

i agree with you re: options - i think women and gay men are much more conscious of themselves as a (potential?) sexual or visual object, and more ready to present themselves accordingly - which applies whether they're doing that in a conventional FHM style of getting their tits/chest out (as per moka's pictures upthread) or in a more "arty" fashion (björk's name came up as someone who that wouldn't apply to, but she's shown a lot of flesh in her videos).

idk where i was going with that except to say that from another angle it seems like an option that's closed off to male electronic musicians. can't imagine a single one of the male DJs posted in here doing an interview where they ended up saying, as nina kraviz does, "yeah sure people can look at my ass if they want".

tama sumo dude

I think I used interiority rather than 'intellectual' or 'abstract' there, due to the fact that the latter descriptions often have connotations of elitism, but I may have shot myself in the foot by doing so. I guess it's head-thinking music over rump-shaking music, and what that means for the visualisation of the acts creating such music. But even then, that's not really true for me all the time.

Also, I think your description of attraction to women is closer to my feeling of any attraction ever, really. Like, I wouldn't be transfixed by the h0ttness of MoM if I hadn't started out by loving their music.

Well, Bjork is someone who is such an interesting case, because although she doesn't do any of the standard "tits out" type sexualisation, she is STILL someone whose image, whose physical attractiveness, whose looks are a huge part of her whole act. But it's more like, she's made her body as much a work of art as her music. She's just taking her personal style and fashion choices as one more artform. I wouldn't say it was sexualised at all, but sexuality and looks are organic parts of the whole oeuvre.

I would LOVE for a male musician to go "sure, people can look at my ass if they want." It seems like there are actually male DJs or whatever who would totally say that, if anyone ever asked them, or if given a chance for that to be viewed as... OK for a man to want or enjoy.

x-post to Lex obv

we've gotten this far without
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FINvJrKyCUs/TNGmUI4T6wI/AAAAAAAADDg/WoHtTyUrDAM/s1600/Laurie+Spiegel+L.jpg