Quote of the Week: Vestigial Beats
This is New York Times music critic Kelefa Sanneh’s pitch-perfect description of how abstract electronic music tracks differ from their dance-music counterparts:
they are the electronic equivalent of flightless birds, with vestigial beats that serve only to evoke the music’s phylogeny.
From Sanneh’s March 8, 2004, overview of recent mix CDs (nytimes.com).