So, you may be asking, how can a writer with a column that's purportedly about electronica say there ain't no such animal? Simple enough, really: The marketing juggernaut that would have you buy dozens of electronica albums down at Tower is hawking a chimera, an invisible beast, a myth. All music has been "electronic" for some time now -- at least since Ray Davies of the Kinks figured out how to perforate his speaker cone to make the guitar sound distorted and noisy. See, every album you buy (at least on the major labels that dominate sales), even from the most dedicatedly naturalistic acoustic folkie, has been picked over with a fine-tooth comb in the studio. Voice compression, noise limiting, echo, reverb, a little digitally enhanced sustain, cleanup of a muffed syllable, you name it, every note has been processed somehow.

OK, you say, we can call electronica that music which is -- composed electronically, or played on electronic instruments, using samplers, analog synths, drum machines, skipping CD players, etc. etc. But that's hardly a genre switch -- it'd be like saying of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew that it's not jazz because it uses electric pianos. (Come to think of it, that's what they did say at the time -- but now the album is firmly installed in the jazz canon, even if it did fire up the jazz-rock fusion revolution.) No, the only people who think of "electronica" as a genre in itself are the marketing wizards trying to figure out how to wrap a lifestyle around music that's pretty much detached from mainstream habits -- at least in the U.S., which for the most part lacks a solid tradition of dance clubs.

Case in point: the "Big Beat" explosion. Big Beat is the British post-house, post-rave, post-everything superfunkalicious answer to rock 'n' roll -- built on the 4:4 foundation of techno with a little bit of breakbeat, a lot of silliness, and always, but always, a very catchy tune. The Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers are Big Beat bands that have already had their hype wave (and rather lackluster sales performance in America), but there's a new crop on the way. Fatboy Slim, praised in this column a couple of months ago, and the barely-distinguishable labelmates Bentley Rhythm Ace, are just a couple of the new breed. But what unites all of the Big Beat bands is a commitment to the rock format: they write _songs_, sometimes longer than three minutes, but songs nonetheless. And the driving beat gives a familiar ring to Americans raised on the hip-thrusting rhythms of everyone from the Rolling Stones to Pearl Jam.

Formally speaking, there's absolutely nothing new in any of these acts. All of the grand rock 'n' roll traditions are there: misogyny (the Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up"); flat-out boogie (Chemical Brothers' "Block Rockin' Beats," Fatboy Slim's "Everybody Needs a 303"); superfluous silliness (Bentley Rhythm Ace's "flattopskodacarchase," a sort of musical interpretation of a Love Bug movie); adolescent rebellion (every song). The only measurable difference? Yep, you guessed it: synthesizers, drum machines, samplers, and a very small dash of hip-hop attitude. And it's just that difference that the marketing moguls want to exploit. Business is business, after all, and record companies have to sell records.

More power to them. But while record execs trundle out re-orchestrated versions of the same old same old, and critics like the Village Voice's Robert Christgau lament the death of the musician and the ascendancy of allegedly "postmodern," non-narrative dance music, the excitement of "electronic" music is very much below this major-label surface. It's not necessarily the electronic underground, either -- the fiercely independent drum 'n' bass scene has been marking time, producing mostly formulaic jungle since 1995 or so. It's the handful of bands that, although they've received some excited critical attention, keep cranking out their genre-exploding experiments without sizzling sales figures to pump up their bank accounts. Think Tortoise, Trans Am, Mouse on Mars -- come to think of it, almost anyone on the Thrill Jockey label. Or Stereolab, who despite a less-than-thrilling new CD are still the best post-punk drone-rock act in town (and their live shows are truly breathtaking). Or Ninja Tune -- the label that delivers reliably fun, progressive downtempo funk and drum 'n' bass with fresh sounds from the likes of the Herbaliser and Amon Tobin (not to mention the cheez-funk spectacular of Coldcut).

What unites all these acts? It's the casual shrug they give when asked the inevitable genre question. It's just not an issue -- electronic technology happens to make it a little easier to smelt different traditions into something new. Elvis had to rely on plain old guitars to fuse hillbilly tunes with black rhythm 'n' blues; Pink Floyd (in the Syd Barrett days) had a few keyboards to meld bluegrass to the psychedelic sound; Jamaican DJs only had turntables and instrumental B-sides to invent dub reggae. The current technology makes matters a bit simpler, maybe, but the gadgets are basically incidental to the musical ideas. Perhaps the only question to ask about genre in today's electronic world is: Who gives a shit? Actually, that's the second question -- the first is usually "What the fuck do I call this?"

Obviously, the record companies do give a shit; they're simply not used to selling product without a label. It's not the first time the music establishment has been confused, even hopelessly clueless, in the face of a new tide of sound. And it certainly won't be the last time, either. But late capitalism has proved itself quite capable of dealing with cultural recombination and ironic reappropriation in the past. It's only a matter of time before they figure out electronic music, too. The question is: Will they succeed in grafting their nice, neat labels on the music, or will they adapt and figure out how to keep the dub virus alive, working from within but on its own terms? I keep hoping for the latter -- but I'm betting on the former.

PICK OF THE MONTH
Coldcut
Let Us Play
Ninja Tune