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BETH COLEMAN

Interviewed by Analog Tara in Manhattan, March 2002.

Beth Coleman, a/k/a M. Singe, is a soft-spoken force on the New York music scene, making big noise through her work as a DJ, producer, and co-founder of SoundLab/Cultural Alchemy, New York City's renowned crew that has staged experimental multimedia happenings since the mid-1990s. SoundLab events have been experiments in electronic architecture, exploring how digital arts can intermingle in time and space. In this extensive interview, Singe talks about the early history of SoundLab, her DJing and laptop production methods, and how her music navigates across arty- and club-scene divides; and she offers opinions on the politics of gender and race in electronic music culture.

As for her music, smoldering, festering noise is the common thread in Singe's work. Running her recent tracks "Ghost Breaks" (Mille Plateaux, 2001) and "Motor Down" (SoundLab Records) through a set of small speakers made the whole unit sound as if it might spontaneously combust and disintegrate. Splintered beats are held together by a current of static, vocal fragments are strewn across the stereo field, but all elements are ultimately drawn back in by the rhythmic force. Technology is maxed to its breaking point, but one can still dance to the apocalypse. Perhaps Singe captured the vibe best when she said: "I've made a lot of noise over the last 5 years. I've definitely mashed and crashed and bashed stuff and really enjoyed it, and wanted to get groove and swing within the explosion." More details follow.

Q: So what's your main way of working these days?

A: Well, most of the production I'm doing is with Logic, and I'm starting to work with Max. I'm trying to do something that's minimal and grooving at the same time. I like using Logic as a platform because it still can do more things than I'm doing with it, and that's exciting for me. I'm working with an engineer to see, if I'm building Max patches and using those as plug-ins in Logic, what kind of manipulation can I get with that. One of the projects we're working on in the studio as a crew, which is primarily me and Howard [Goldkrand, a.k.a. Verb], is a software piece where we're looking at finding not just audio data but multiple types of streams of information. Because, again, if a signal can be translated into digital format, which many things can be, then why can't that be part of a mix? What I'm coming from with the whole history with SoundLab is, music in some ways is the most identifiable part of it. But it's been full environmental installations from the beginning, where we're working with new media and new tech and trying to see what can we make talk, what's the question of interface going on - that's in some ways the idea of architecture. So I'm working on music output, but for the live performance, what I'm working off and kind of testing out on different levels, is that other idea of a whole electronic architecture interface. And I don't have to run everything. I like to be able to play solo, like have my own space where I get control of - whether it's a laptop or a laptop and decks - everything within that zone; but I like working with MCs, I like working with live musicians - well, I don't know if I like working with live musicians! I've worked a lot with live musicians, but I'm not really an improv kind of person.

Q: You like to have your plan in place, more or less.

A: Well, I have a really different sense that very much comes from somebody who cut her teeth on electronic music, and not playing an instrument, not an acoustic instrument. Because a lot of what I've seen with improv, it's very interesting in terms of being live and spontaneous; but working with machines, working with these programs, you have a whole different question in terms of what's spontaneous and what's live. If you press playback, I mean, some of the live sets that go on with this stuff, people may as well just play the CD, because there's nothing interactive. Or the risk is, can I load all the programs at once, is it going to crash? It's different kinds of things, which is not exactly in the tradition of John Cage; I don't think Cage is worrying about, "Is the piano gonna break? Is the program gonna crash?" I've done a couple of solo laptop sets, which is my preferred mode of working at the moment, as I build up the different pieces of vocabulary. And what I brought in [for a set at Joe's Pub in New York in December 2001] were my Logic mixes that I could then effectively dub out live, because I had certain things that were set in terms of what the different choices were of the audio I was mixing, so that wasn't being regenerated live, but then I would change parameters so you'd get a different kind of effect, different kinds of overlapping and dubbing out.

Q: Sort of like DJing but within the confines of the laptop.

A: That's right. So that works for me. As in with DJing, you have a certain amount of presets, in terms of: you brought these records. So there's that finite thing - that's not improv as such, but then within that, the way you make that combination, it's all improv. So in some ways, it's more conservative and also totally more blown out than what's going on with traditional acoustic or electroacoustic improv. I like to have some chance operations going on, but in DJing or electronic music you can make cacophony in 2 seconds. Like one of the easiest things you can do is make noise. And I've made a lot of noise over the last 5 years. I've definitely mashed and crashed and bashed stuff and really enjoyed it, and wanted to get groove and swing within the explosion. And people have been sort of hip to hearing that; so that's a very cool thing when people hear what you meant....

Like the sound system we work with, the Hill Foundation system, which is kind of a classic Soundclash/West Indian sound system made by Scrambles, who's this Trinidadian cat, and his crew, Hill Foundation. Scrambles came from a more dancehall background, like big bass, and music with power, but not necessarily machine gun and broken beats and that kind of stuff. We really came up together, like I started DJing a little before he started coming in doing sound systems with it, because SoundLab, between like '95 when we started and '97, kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, so we went to bigger locations and had bigger systems. I'd come in and basically play a set at all of the events, and I always wondered what Scrambles thinks when I break out the noise and whatnot. And one night, I think I was playing an electro/dance set, a more chilled out set, and he said: "So what happened? Where's the noise?" And I said, "You like that? You like that sound on your system?" And he's like, "It's your sound. That's what I hear when I hear you play, so I feel like you haven't played your set until I've heard your sound."

My feeling is you have to play with conviction, and you have to love what you're playing. And because the whole DJ scene and market is very hardcore in terms of, it's gotta be user-friendly, you've gotta give the client what they want, you know? If somebody wants you to play a party, or a bar, the bar wants to know if drinks are increasing during your set; at the party they want to know if their clients were dancing or whatever. That's very, very heavily the culture. And I have respect for people who have their craft and can go kick it like that, but in that way, I'm much more a producer, where I hear a specific kind of sound, and that's what I reproduce pretty much whether I'm playing a DJ set or playing more and more my own material, and it's added incentive to create more of my own material, because what I'm doing is not the traditional club-DJ kind of thing. You know, I had a piece in P.S.1, the Whitney - those kind of art zones... So people tend to think: "Oh..." You know what I mean? Because those zones tend to be so different.

Q: They almost become a separate arena of "difference".

A: Yeah, which I think is not so great, but I understand more why, in some ways, to preserve their own identity, the zones make sure they're somewhat separate. And I like jumping the fence, shifting things, adjusting things a bit. It's a challenge. I did a mix for Chanel for their store, because within the vocabularies that I'm working in, I felt like I could design something that would be signature style, and meet the needs of that "modern" new sound they were looking for. And I enjoyed it. It's one of my favorite mixes, a very cool-out electro mix, and since that's part of how I've been working - it's not how my [solo production] record's gonna sound like, but maybe people who've been listening over the years will be able to kind of connect the dots in terms of what kind of portrait is created with this combination of sounds.

[For the solo project] I think the first thing's gonna be an EP, and after that, a full-length. I've done all my own production, which is not always important to me, but I also didn't see any other way to do it. Because, in the same way that I don't know how interested I am in improv as I kind of understand the history, I've worked with various producers and engineers a little bit, and I don't know how to work unless I'm actually making it. It makes me kind of frantic to sit next to someone and say, "Can you make something like this?"

Q: Because what you're making is such an extension of yourself?

A: Yeah, or also, I don't necessarily know what the hell it is before I make it. Sometime I go in with an idea of, I'm looking for this kind of sound, or this kind of rhythm, and often that's the clearest and fastest way to work, for me. Because once I get the rhythm matrix down, then I can stretch out a little bit in terms of: Here's how the bassline works, here's how the top end works. But I'm very beat-oriented. It's not surprising I get along very well with drummers. Like I played with [funk/jazz/electric trio] Harriet Tubman on some tours last summer [with drummer] J.T. Lewis, who was part of Herbie Hancock's Rockit tour... and he and I were totally vibe, because even though it's a different touch, it's very much a touch issue with DJing and the way I play live electronics. That's the point of intersection where I feel I'm a percussionist, but I'm doing this totally vinyl, electronic thing.

Q: Could you talk a bit on how SoundLab got started, and how you got started making music?

A: It was because of SoundLab. Howard Goldkrand and I started SoundLab in '95 after we'd been to Berlin for the summer with some friends from the UK. We basically invaded Berlin summer of '95, and it was a real transitional time where people were so off-balance with the Wall coming down, and there were a lot of empty spaces that got filled up by underground scenes, club nights, installations. And it was massive; the music was incredible, and the whole feeling of: We can do whatever we think of, as long as we can figure out the technical way to pull it off. Nobody had any money, you just kind of scrambled to put things together, and because the spirit and the style - it was cool. So we showed up in the middle of this and would do performances within people's things, like show up someplace with this really weird East German school record player, with the built-in speakers, and we'd attach a mic, and that was our basic setup. We got this big light one night and made these giant shadows, and started this whole puppet/dance/crazy thing in the back of the party so the whole energy in the population shifted.

We did this kind of stuff where you just went and exploded all the time, and didn't worry about this, that, or the other thing; and it was a time and a place where it was really good to be able to flow and not worry about the consequences. Not like you'd break something and leave, but that you could show up and add your kind of weird sound input into the place. And my side of it was always kind of on the music mix, not so much the performance end. I don't really feel the performance stuff so much.

So when we got back to New York, Giuliani had just become mayor and started the whole no-dancing-in-bars policy and all the rest, and we were really keen to kind of have a speakeasy scene, under the cover of secretiveness, discretion, and basically those who hear about it come and hang out, listen to music, make music, make art, talk to each other. And, you know, Spooky would play there every week, and what was known as the "illbient" crew; people were working things out, doing their new music. SoundLab wasn't a club, so all those demands, like making people drink, it wasn't an issue. Anyone who showed up, they showed up because they wanted to see what the scene was - what people were listening to and what people were doing - not because they needed a certain stabilized, recognizable environment. And it was 5 bucks, so if you didn't like it, you could leave.

So it was in that context that I learned about making music and the equipment by setting up the equipment. It was me and Howard and Manny Oquendo (kind of a central character in this whole scene). At 5 o'clock or 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, we'd go to the Haus of Ouch on Walker Street, and start literally laying the floor out, 'cause it was a dance studio, we needed to protect the floor. And then we'd build a whole installation from the ground up; set the sound system up, set the visual installation up. And different people would come in and debut their stuff, like Caspar Stracke, the filmmaker; Panoptic... One night we did a whole goldfish installation, where we got like 50 goldfish and strung them in bags of water and then had illumination on them, and we tried to figure out whether they liked the bass vibrations, whether they seemed happier, or do fish have ears, this kind of stuff... So some of SoundLab was analog, some of it was all teched out; but essentially it was - and is still - very much a laboratory space where people are invited to work at their limits, debut new stuff, test out new stuff - that's what it's for.

So I was listening to Spooky, and Wally, and Soulslinger, and drum-n-bass was starting; it wasn't hitting quite in '95, but by '96 people were really buzzing about that, and my first set was January '96. And Dr. Walker and Khan were there, Walker was in from Germany - he does the Electrobunker festival and has like a million releases out - so they were in town, I knew they were going to play. So I remember their record was part of my set, and some dancehall; and that was my first official set at SoundLab, where I wasn't just playing at the jam at the end. And then I started playing basically weekly from there. I had the most ideal context to start working, 'cause I had really good teachers, really inspiring people to watch and to listen to; and it was my own event, I was the co-collaborator on making this happen, and booking... so there was enough of an edge in terms of, heads are in the house, if you're bad, everyone will know! But I wasn't doing the bar at the Tribeca Grand, I was playing a set at SoundLab. And in some ways, the rule was: you had to do something interesting, which is not easy. But yeah, I was really nervous the first time I played, and I also was really elated, because it's cool - it's really exciting to DJ. And it's really exciting to produce music, and for me, the two are very closely related. Some people maybe wouldn't feel it the same way, but I was like: Wow, this is good, and I can hear this. I don't necessarily know how to make all the things I want to make, but I know, fundamentally, there's something I really hear, and it feels kind of solid and important to find that, to work that out. So that's how I started.

Q: And since you've been doing it, music technology has changed pretty significantly. It seems, to me, like it's become rapidly more software-oriented, and you've probably experienced that on a creative level.

A: Yeah... In '95, people weren't playing laptop sets, the computers weren't able to do that; the software was kind of in a more academic vein. Things were more hardware- and instrument-oriented, more MIDI-oriented in terms of how you connected the dots to make things play; and in the past 5 or 7 years, it certainly has become more within the box and software-oriented. Which has suited me just fine, because I stepped into it just at the cusp of that change, so there are things I'm totally an idiot about in terms of some of the older craft using hardware and the connections there, and things that are pretty instinctual for me in terms of what it means to work with purely different softwares. I started on ProTools and then started to work with Logic. And a lot of people started to go to Logic. There was a phase when everybody was doing stuff on Cubase, and there was also a period of time where a lot of things were very similar, so it didn't matter what you used.

Q: It was just a means to an end.

A: Right. And in some ways, philosophically, maybe that's still the same idea. But I think there's also been some real forks in the road in terms of how things have developed. And also, because it takes a certain amount of time to learn something, and to be able to use it, that it's not totally easy to be able to flip between programs, and you kind of have to choose your targets. Like a year ago, I really wanted to start understanding more about Max, because I've seen how people are working with it, you know; I'm a fan of Kit Clayton and that kind of stuff... I want to expand my pallette, I want to be able to fold everything up into a laptop and go someplace.

Q: What made you choose Logic? Was it just what you got used to over time?

A: It can do what I want. It can automate the things that I want, it can deal with MIDI... I'm Mac-based; Cubase was originally PC; Logic was designed for Mac. All the signs were there that this was a good step up, more flexible than what I could do with ProTools. I loved dealing with ProTools; that's where I started doing this kind of retarded hand-splicing and remixing and tiny recalibration of beats. And whether that becomes something where people hear my production, that's up to me. Because in some ways it's easy enough to just automate everything so it snaps to grid, snaps to time in a certain way. I'm still working with combinations of interest, perversity, and how far can I go with this and what do I need to make the other parts sound like what I want. Which is part of the incentive to go in from time to time and work with other engineers or other producers, because I'm not opposed to hearing my music better or a little differently than it's in my head if I can translate it with somebody else. Because the bottom line is, I want to make the music so it sounds like whatever it should....

There's so much in production that's amazingly repetitive. I think when people are practicing scales on piano, there is this technical thing about what is correct, what is perfect - but there's a real physical aspect to that repetition. And one of the things that's really bugged out about doing it all in the computer is that it's absolutely repetitive in those same ways, but the gesture is not in sync. Which I think is too bad, and when I play the stuff back to do live shows, there is more relationship between the physical gestures and, like, stomping on my keyboard, in relationship to what's happening with the sound, which is really fun. That kind of studio thing, it kind of suits me, because I like that repetitiveness; I think that's why I make this kind of music. It works for me, it helps organize what the zone is, even if it's annoying repetition. But, for me, electronic music is so much that really stupid slave-like repetitiveness mixed with a totally unbounded frame of what you can make there, and I like that.

Q: I'm wondering if you could talk on the theoretical end in regards to gender and race; how you think gender and racial identities can or can't be articulated through digital instruments and electronic music.

A: I did an interview with Tricia Rose [in the anthology Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life, NYU Press, 2001], and we were talking about gender and electronic music, and I think in our conversation it was kind of given that we were talking already within the frame of black communities and gender. My primary feeling about women and electronic music is that already we've seen a much larger ratio of women involved with electronic music, DJing, and production than you did in rock. You see already, if we're looking at a decade, let's say the '90s, you already have many more women who do this work in a recognized way professionally and also on the more underground tip; you go to a bar and chances are at least one DJ of the night is gonna be female. The thing I said to Tricia about that was, I think with gear, whether it's guitars or computers, one of the primary ways people learn, especially with a DJ culture where it's primarily informal, is you're just around it. Like gangs of boys who skateboard together and then go home, do whatever they do, and play music. It's just your crew, it's part of what you do. Somebody must've had the initiative to get the turntables, 'cause that's money and organization, but you could have an 11-year-old who learns how to DJ because his 16-year-old brother has got a whole group of boys who are doing that, and you just learn basically through osmosis. It's less likely that in this posse of boys you're gonna have an 11-year-old girl who learns it as easily. So, you either get crews of girls who are learning it themselves, or you get mixed groups of both boys and girls. You don't get a total equal number because, in general, by the time you get to that junior high age, more often you get a diversion with girls dealing with dating, clothes, and that kind of stuff, and for the boys, the equivalent of dating and clothes is skateboarding or tech or whatever. And it's still very much laid out in the culture that, whether it's your choice or not, that's often how people are directed.

But despite all that, we still see bigger numbers of women involved with electronic music right now, having seen that over the past 10 years and in growing numbers. I've been involved in a few too many roundups of "who are the female DJs", and between like '95 and '99 or something, I said: OK, I'll talk to you, I'll be involved with this article, because in some ways it is nice to know that other people are doing things, even if you just think: Oh, she's doing it, I could do it too! You know, it's not like sisters are always so charitable with each other... But, now that we are where we are, I'm like, all well and good, now fuck it. People can either say, I'm interested in Singe, she's a good producer, or I'm not interested in her, I don't think she's a good producer; I feel like we're along this road enough.

In the background, I do have a vested interest in doing media awareness and teaching media with groups of girls, different ages; some are adult women and some younger. I did a birthday present for a friend's daughter who was turning 9; I did a DJ workshop with her and her little homegirls. She'd come to see me play, especially at the park gigs during the day, and she was like: Wow, that's really cool that she does that, and it meant something to her that I was a girl, and a brown girl, doing it, because that's what she was - just a littler version.... Howard and I have taught at art schools in Europe and done a couple of things in high schools in San Francisco; David Goldberg, who's part of [online music provider] Beta Lounge, he'd been teaching at public schools, so he invited us to do something in San Francisco where we brought the turntables in and just did sessions with people, and talked about DJing, but also talked about using other technology as well. Because you don't just have to use turntables - the basic message is, hack whatever gear you need. If you're designing websites, then look to see what's in the field, look to see what people are doing. The basic intimidation, being afraid to touch something or to find information, get over that and just see where you are. If all these people wanted to become professional DJs, that'd be a little grim - I doubt they do. But that fundamental skill of being able to identify something and convert from in your head to on paper, on the screen, or on CD... that's an important skill to stimulate with people. I mean, I wasn't trained to be a DJ; I just happened to really like it!

In terms of coming into places and playing, a couple of times, people have said, "Where's the DJ," and I said, "I am the DJ"... but they get over it. Usually, it's more an issue of "What the fuck did you play?" And, happily, it's more often good shock than bad shock, because I think it's worthwhile to play something that deals with the present moment. Unless you're in a really foul mood and just want to blow a place out and fuck them up, I don't really want to go in and play a set that nobody wants to deal with. I mean, that's a really weird calculation; you're dealing with the devil on that one, 'cause you don't know what your audience wants to hear, you only know what you want to hear. So what that imagination is about, in terms of what's enjoyable, what's interesting, what can I invite people to listen to, that's interesting to me....

I've had some really irritating moments dealing with some local New York crews, and some of them kind of my own crew, where I just figured this was initiation - any new DJ gets this - where more senior dogs in the pack come over and start woofing at you while you're on the decks. Whether it's "Hey, how ya doing?" or "Don't play that" - well, people don't quite say "Don't play that," but a couple times people reached over and changed my EQ, and I'm just like, you can't fuck with that. If my stuff is making their ears bleed in the back of the room, and I'm too dumb to know it, then that's my bad, and people are free to not invite me back, but you cannot step to my mixing desk and touch it, because it's just ill, you know? So I feel like I've gone through a certain degree of the big dogs woofing at me when I'm trying to play sets, and one strategy is, and this is totally ill, but it's like driving a plane during war. Like the bombs are flying but you've still gotta drive the plane. You still have to be able to do it even when something just broke, your needle just glitched, the record you want to play just fell to the floor and is scratched - you still have to play. And that's part of, hopefully, the excitement. Like NASCAR racing, any moment you could wreck up on the side of the walls, but the people listening don't know unless you crash!

You need nerves of steel to do this stuff, and it doesn't mean that you're a hardass, it just means that you're dedicated to what you're doing, whether it's in your studio or live, because that's the sweet part of it and that's also the rugged part of it, to be able to follow it through. Whatever, maybe I'll get sued for this, but I don't think that women are very often encouraged to be dedicated to their projects. I think they are well encouraged to be dedicated to their company, their man, their partner, whatever; and the women we know - I mean, we both have met incredible producers - like people who are crucial making projects happen, but more often than not they are not the directors of the project, they are not the artistic directors, they are not the vision people. They are the totally capable second-in-commands. And I see this over and over again, in the same way that in grade school the girls are smarter, but by the time you get to college, girls are no longer participating in math and science courses, and in general - there have to be a million and one signals to girls and women to be good at what you do, but don't be too good at what you do, because are you ready to take the fire for it? So, we can still count on solo female artists who are really huge and really inspiring, but it's still disproportionate in the same way that if 10 of the people are DJs, one or 2 of them are women, and that's better than maybe 20 years ago....

We both, and especially you, have been involved with initiatives where it's just women making music. And I think we'd probably agree on some of it, in terms of it's a little forced to ask people to unite under the sign of gender, but like some old school feminist initiatives, it's still necessary. I think it's worth doing, and if there's an idea of there's something in common 'cause we're all women, we could deal with each other more, work with each other more, and support each other more. I think that women could be chilling with each other on purpose. Like making a point, and also make it not personal. You don't have to like everyone; there are people we all work with who might not be your personal preference, but there's a bottom line of respect.

In terms of the race thing, it's like the difference between arty music in galleries and museums, and club music for clubs and bars. The zones are largely separate. I mean, you tell me if the experimental music scene in New York is not predominantly white. Obviously, there are exceptions: myself, some other people... In the same way that, are we gonna say that underground hip hop in New York is all black? No, we're not, but there certainly is a certain kind of vibe and aesthetic going on. Like Def Jux, that's an incredible crew. And everything about them is, if hip hop's black, then they're black, because that's the way they're doing it... And the producer for that label, he's a white cat, doing most of the production. Anyway, the point I'm trying to get to is, one of things Howard and I had in mind in setting up SoundLab was "cultural alchemy" - that despite this city being so incredible a mix, and so sophisticated in how it does its mixes, he and I would go to different events in different places and it'd be totally segregated. I mean, it's not strictly segregated along race lines, it just often falls that it matches that way. But in some ways, the first point of segregation is aesthetic - what you think your crew is. If you think your crew is part of the tradition of the whole Cage thing, then you get a more academic, more white scene. And if it's more club oriented, if it's hip hop, electro, certain brands of Detroit electro, you get a lot more brothers. I mean, like the drum-n-bass scene here is a largely white scene, and largely post-rave, and in the UK that shit was not like that. In the UK, it was very underground, garage, black. And the splits where production went into different ways, got more techno, and got more and more white by degrees... you can see the fractures in terms of the differences in production and also the differences in the crews.

It's absolutely boring for me to be the only person of color involved in an event. I think it's moronic; I don't see any reason for that to happen. In the same way, having women appear on bills, I think it's absolutely fucking boring that people have to make an extra effort to make sure that there are women or cultural diversity on a program. In general, dealing with clubs and dealing with bar scenes, there's always some kind of a mix. It's rare, even if you're in Germany, to find a totally white scene. I went into Electro, this huge, classic temple of techno in the middle of Berlin that was in this old electric power plant. And I come in, there's chains on the walls, the room is shaking, people are dancing, and looks like a primarily like white, gay boy scene on the dancefloor. So I go up to the decks, and there's this sister from Detroit flexing it! Now, that was not about affirmative action, that was not about "We're looking for a black woman to fill this slot," this was about "We give respect to Detroit techno." It was Kandi who was playing, and she ruled, so that was what it was. The same way with K. Hand... These are women working in the tradition, and that's just the way it is. So there's a way in which the mercenary logic of commerce and clubs and bars, for whatever reason, more often, if they're good and interesting, they will have a bill with different kinds of people playing.

What I'm dealing with there [on the bar and club scene] is, if I'm doing divergent beats - beats that are not all within the same pattern in a set, which, believe it or not, is a very radical thing for a DJ to do, to play divergent beats - and that's part of what I do - it's more of an issue on that. On the more esoteric arty scene, I'm always surprised that people are so corny about what kind of [gender or racial] mix can happen. I've had pretty good luck on both sides of the track, and because I've had that, I also am down with, if I can be helpful for some other people, I'll do the event. But there's also some shit I'll say no to, because I'm like, "Don't call me 4 weeks late, with no money, and need a woman of color on your fucking panel, because I don't care. You figure it out."

[Last year's MIT conference] "Race in Digital Space", that was really cool, because it was nice to have a gathering of the tribes. A lot of different people were involved; I was happy that we were able to talk about things. In the same way that it's too bad, but necessary, that we still need to organize things under the title of "women in music", it is too bad, but necessary, to have a big, bold placard that says "Race in Digital Space." This world still works that people need the placard. They need the subtitles, they need an explicit reference - even though I don't remember Wired ever being called "white digital culture". You know, it goes without saying that things are white, if it's mainstream culture.

Q: Even the more underground electronic music magazines too often fuel the myth of white-boy genius composers.

A: It's funny, because I felt like they started out with the initiative that this is about cultural mix. All these places understand that sampling something about hip hop culture, and hip hop style, is a mandate. It doesn't even have to be a black face anymore, there's just something about graphic design, Triple 5 Soul and all these things, that this is part of cool youth culture, and it just is... The advertisement of what this last decade was going to be, some of it got swept away with the media/tech revolution, and while people were trying to assimilate so much information about the new and the rich and the software and the tech, some of the identity issues and cultural politics of who's there as part of it fell into a lot of default mode.

But it's a good time to be working. And I say that even when things are crappy, and maybe it's just because I'm interested in doing this!

More on Singe + Verb at www.soundlab.org.