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Out To Lurch: Lo-Fidelity All-Stars' How to Operate with a Blown Mind

RJ Smith, The Village Voice, 19 January 1999

MAYBE THE SWELLEST thing about the first wave of electroboogie funk in the early '80s, 'Planet Rock' and the Jonzun Crew, Space Invaders and all the rest, was how, without making a fuss about it, a whole different way of feeling about the city jumped out of the ground. This was something new and weird: optimistic fatalism. The music embraced a digital technology that you couldn't fight, and it was made by people losing the fight with the forces of technology in their community—Bambaataa's South Bronx, Juan Atkins and Derrick May's Detroit. Yet optimism rocketed, though you could call it optimism only because it was so fearless, single-minded. Bring it on, electroboogie taunted the future.

Total word count of piece: 805

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