Modulations (1998)
Less a documentary than a primer on all electronic music. Featuring interviews with nearly every major player past and present, as well as a few energetic live clips, Modulations delves into one of electronica's forgotten facets: the human element. Lee travels the globe from the American Midwest to Europe to Japan to try to express the appeal of music often dismissed as soulless. Modulations shows that behind even the most foreign or alien electronic composition lies a real human being, and Lee lets many of these Frankenstein-like creators express and expound upon their personal philosophies and tech-heavy theories. Lee understands that a cultural movement as massive and diverse as dance music can't be contained.
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Purely Joyful Movie!
The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
A broad range of people linked to the current and past techno scene have made it into the film and it would be mean not to note how great Holger Czukay's dancing is. But the publicity for Modulations says it "traces the evolution of electronic music", which is not quite true. There's quite a leap from the jumble of clips involving Pierre Henry and John Cage into the familiar material on disco, Kraftwerk and Derrick May.A more serious documentary might have challenged what the techno movement has to say about itself. Techno's rhetoric is borrowed from the modernists of the 50s and 60s, but maybe the real story is a more familiar one for pop music: the dancefloor's appetite for the next big thing.
Smash cuts! Hardcore coverage! Dozens of dizzying locations around the globe, get ready to enter the world of electronica and meet its makers and mad doctors, blending the sounds to breathe electric life into the air injecting culture breeding a living being with a generation riding the tide of true music and electric emotion.From filmmaker Lara Lee comes this epic, documentary examining the electronic music scene on a global level. Spanning its history in culture from its earliest beginnings, get the music, slamming dancefloor footage, and interviews with all the exotic experts who exist within the electronic universe where all minds may enter!
Being a fan of electronic music for several years now, I was surprised that a full scale documentary on the history of techno was produced.I got a chance to catch it at the Motor Lounge in Hamtramick and what I saw surprised me. This documentary is incredibly well done. It covers the history of electronica from its earliest origins in the 1950's to the modern day rave scene.The audio is fantastic and any music lover should appreciate the facts presented within the movie. Modulations covers most of the bases, including the various techno scenes across the world. They interview many artists and the man who started it all (inventing the Moog Synth). This is great stuff.....The audio and video are fantastic and I hope that they release this on DVD in the near future.
This documentary film takes a look at the electronic music scene all over the globe. Loads of great music, picture material from big venues, parties and of course great interviews with experts like Derrick May, Frankie Bones, Squarepusher, Mixmaster Morris, Carl Craig etc etc. This documentary is huge, it covers the whole electronic music era from the beginning of 19th century. Essential!