Truly Dreadful Film

Let's be realistic.

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

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.

Modulations attempts to cover too wide a subject area in too little time. Electronic music is an all-encompassing label that is applied to musicians as diverse as Can, John Cage, and the Prodigy(!!). There are great segments here with pioneers such as Cage, Robert Moog, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, and Pierre Henry. There are too many segments of talent-short and ego-long knob twiddlers. And there's an inexcusable total lack of Kraftwerk or Cabaret Voltaire, the two groups who pioneered the crossover of 'electronica' from fringe to pop. And why no interview with Afrika Bambaata? He made it onto PBS' Rock n Roll Series, and he should have been talked to here. The lowpoint is reached when a German techno artist says that techno has absolutely no revolutionary potential....except for his own special brand of hardcore jungle!! Modulations is a fascinating but frustrating once over lightly look at this ever evolving music scene.

I saw Modulations as part of a film festival here in Adelaide; i wish now that i had gone and seen it twice. I finally found out WHY i like dance/electronic music while watching it. The first feeling i had as i walked out of the theatre was "ALL my friends need to see this so they can understand me better!"Unfortunately not one of them has- but i am still hoping!!For anyone who hasn't seen it; and are into dance or electronic music of any kind; GO SEE IT. You'll probably find your roots, come to a new and better understanding of your self and learn all sorts of amazing facts about the history and evolution of the newest form of music.For the producers.. not that you'll ever read this!! Make a second film.. there's so much happening in dance culture today that there needs to be another chapter written covering 88-2000 there have been huge advances in our culture!

If you are at all interested in electronic music - in just about any form, but especially techno/jungle/acid/dnb/house/etc. make sure you see this movie. "Modulations" is a brilliant little (73 minutes) film that is a perfect visual complement to the subject matter - including trippy graphics, beat-synched cinematography, thought-provoking interviews, live shots of wired-up ravers, and of course, a ripping soundtrack.Get your head together and check it out - you'll be glad you did.