By applylng phdosophical rigour to sonic &sru become a nexus for resistant musicians such a: Reynolds m*es the connections between Teul &obe&ence and hyperrnodern jazz
Imtlon the Gelman Mille Plateaux lcbelhas .Oval and Alec Empire In Fi,inkhi t , Slrnon onic hardcore, post-stru~tul~dlstthe01y d g t a l rankfurt is simultaneously Germany's financial capital and a longstanding centre of anti-capitalist theory. Most famously, i t gave the world the 'Frankfurt School' of Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer et a/: neo-Marxist thinkers who fled Nazism and landed up in Southern California, where their eyes and ears were affronted by the kitsch outpourings of Hollywood's dream-factory. Today, the Frankfurt School is mostly remembered for its snooty attitude towards popular culture, which ~tregarded as the 20th century's opiate-of-the-people, a soul-degrad~nginferior to High Modernism. Adorno in particular has achieved a dubious immortality in the Cultural Studies world, as an Aunt Sally figure ritually bashed by academics as a prequel to their sem~otic readings of 'anti-hegemonr resistance' encoded in Madonna videos and Star Trek.
There's no denylng Adorno deserves derision for his infamously suspect comments about the "eunuch-like sound" of jazz, whose secret message was "give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated. . . and you will be accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of Impotence with you". But in other respects Adorno's critique of pop culture's role as safety valve and social control is not so easily shrugged off. Witness his remarks on the swing-inspired frenz~esof the 'jitterbug': "Their ecstasy is without content. . . It has convulsive aspects remlnixent of St Vitus' dance or the reflexes of mutilated animals." Adorno's verdict on jltterbuggers "merely t o be carried away by anything at all, t o have something of thelr own, compensates for thew impoverished and barren existence" - could easily be transposed to 90s rave culture, which - from Happy Hardcore to Gabba to Goa trance - is now as rigidly ritualised and conservative as Heavy Metal.
The Frankfurt-based label Mille Plateaux shares something of Adorno's appositional
26 The Wire
