Whether you call it house, techno, club, dubstep, witch house, or drum and bass, it’s all the same to me now – the mortal enemy of my ears and my sanity. It doesn’t matter where I go in this city: techno-esque music permeates the peace of every street, apartment, and metro station in Montreal. I once liked this particular brand of music. You know, when I was really stoked on amphetamines.
Have you ever seen the hordes of people at festival raves where this music is played for hours upon end? Let me describe what it looks like. Picture your generic 300-person lecture hall class. Multiply that by four. Add roughly 600 pills of ecstasy. You cannot escape the repeated, pulsing drumbeat, as it is played on gigantic speakers until five in the morning. The end result resembles a fucking zombie apocalypse.
House music, like a significant other, gets old after a while. Everything’s good and dandy until you move in with each other and realize that everything that comes out of their mouth is boring and repetitive. There were the days in which I once enjoyed these genres of music in moderate doses, at least when I ignorantly listed “Ghosts N Stuff” by deadmau5 as one of my favourite songs, but now these synthesized scores of faux-European sentiment haunt my every move.
Don’t get me wrong: if I’m as drunk as a 20th-century author, at a club on the Main, and in the middle of accidently violating the personal space of many a lovely woman, then bring on the electronic-based eardrum bashing. I’m all for that. It’s most effective in an environment of debauchery, dancing, and drug-laden adventures. Not, mind you, in any place where you’re trying to study, hang out, or sleep.
It’s always there. In the study room of my residence. In the elevators of the hotels that I sneak into in order to use the bathroom. In the Eaton Centre. At each of these locations, I find my head subconsciously bobbing to the rhythm of electronic nonsense. What happened to normal pop music? The kind that deserves to be hated on. Techno is harder to make fun of than, say, Justin Bieber.
I miss the days of getting shitty 90s music stuck in my head, because I could easily listen to it and cure the auditory itch. Unfortunately, every single damned club remix smorgasbord has a ridiculously forgettable name, and is made by DJ something-or-other. Thus, when a song like this gets stuck in your head, you’re completely fucked. Techno, please get out of my life.
Adam Banks is a U1 Arts student. Tell him what you think about house music at adam.banks@mail.mcgill.ca.