BTM0009 - Outputmessage - Conversations in the Radical Library
Artist: Outputmessage
Release: Conversations in the Radical Library
Date: December 9, 2022
Tracks: 1
Tracklisting
01 Conversations in the Radical Library
Clocking in at over 50 minutes, Conversations in the Radical Library by Outputmessage is the 9th release on the Black Techno Matters music label and features a single live drum machine set performed by Bernard Farley, founder of Black Techno Matters. The music was originally recorded in November 2021 as part of a curated discussion panel titled “Black Queer Aesthetics --- Blackness. Queerness. Nightlife.” It took place at the Radical Library inside of the Eaton Hotel in Washington, DC and was organized by the underground QTBIPOC techno collective Noxeema Jackson. “I enjoyed the challenge of playing live techno in a library setting while the audience and panelists were having small talk. At first, I was fiddling with more traditional techno rhythms and sounds, but then I landed on this minimal beat that literally caused several heads in the room to turn toward me. And so I made it the motif and just tried to keep it going as long as I could without ever changing or doing too much. It felt like mutual musical meditation, a calibration of consciousness.” The subtle slow-motion beats and expansive textures of Conversations in the Radical Library at times whisper and at other times rumble the speakers, evolving in complexity so as to provoke the listener while always allowing enough space for them to add to the conversation. The music also doubles as the transition piece between Outputmessage and B_X_R_N_X_R_D, Bernard’s newest musical incarnation. “I see Conversations now as the radical waiting room music for the arrival of B_X_R_N_X_R_D, my new decolonized musical identity.”
BLACK TECHNO MATTERS
Black Techno Matters is a collective whose mission is to reclaim techno as a manifestation of Black expression in a society that has oppressed it by creating spaces, both virtual and IRL, that celebrate the black roots of techno. An assertion and a reminder that Techno IS Black. It was started in October 2019 when its founder, Bernard Farley, did a google search for “Black techno artists” and was disappointed with the lack resources highlighting black techno artists, especially considering that techno is a genre invented by three black teenagers in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan (The Belleville Three). Since then Black Techno Matters has highlighted hundreds of black electronic music artists through its robust Instagram Take Over series (where black artists highlight other black artists on a daily basis), spotify playlists, radio mix series, livestreams, outdoor events such as the Techno in the Park series, and most recently Liber8 US, a historic Juneteenth event spanning 7 cities and involving over 40 artists from across the country.