[retroafroman]

Actually, I mostly agree, despite going in thinking I wouldn't. Girl Talk is terribly boring live. There are many better, more creative artists in the EDM world. Araabmuzik as mentioned, RJD2 is a genre bending turntablist/synth junky/live performer, Pretty Lights mashes buttons on a monome and plays live with a drummer, and I think The Hood Internet does much better mash ups and has a better live show than Girl Talk (though they don't do the instrumachine thing so much).

I don't think I fully agree with 'the assumption that electronic music is the future'. It will be part of the future, but analog/traditional instruments will always be around, and will always be a significant portion of what music is created and what music is listened to.

Instrumachines aren't necessarily new, I'd even say the original electronic synthesizers of the 60s and 70s fall into the category. The just evolved into things with keyboards so they kind of got lumped into the 'instrument' category. I was glad you brought up turntablism, another example.

[freshbreakfast]

I mostly agree with you here, I think we're just starting from different starting points. The "electronic music is future" thing is sort of a counter statement to the idea that EDM is a trend. My only argument is that electronic music will only dig it's claws into popular music. I'm not suggesting that analog instruments die completely. At least I hope not.

I know the synths are a good example of a legit hardware instrument. From the fan's perspective though, it largely mimics the skill of a pianist (even if you upload crazy other sounds into the keys). I'm more interested when we start respecting performers who play instruments conceived entirely in the digital era, with very little vestigial leftover from the analog instruments. Just the concept of that is cool to me.

As for RJD2, that's a big omission on my part, I was such a huge fan in the early 2000s. And also PL, more recently.