"This current round of gigs, I'm just doing it using pure electronics"
About this Quote
There is a quiet provocation in Tom Jenkinson calling a tour “just” pure electronics. Coming from a musician whose catalog is obsessed with the friction between machine precision and human chaos, the phrasing reads less like a technical note and more like a boundary being drawn. “Current round of gigs” frames the choice as temporary, almost clinical: this isn’t a manifesto, it’s an experiment run in public, night after night, under club lights.
“Pure electronics” signals restraint as much as extremity. In an era where “live” electronic sets can mean anything from pressing play to wrestling a modular rig, Jenkinson’s wording implies a deliberate narrowing of variables: fewer gestures borrowed from rock performance, fewer comforting signifiers (a bass guitar, a drummer’s sweat), more commitment to the circuit as the instrument. The subtext is credibility, but not the clichéd kind. It’s credibility as risk: if the set fails, there’s no band to blame, no acoustic alibi, no “the room was weird.” It’s you and the signal chain.
Context matters because touring culture has become content culture. Fans want proof-of-liveness; promoters want reliability; algorithms reward sameness. “Pure electronics” pushes against all three. It suggests a refusal to cosplay authenticity and a willingness to let the audience hear the seams: timing jitter, brutal transitions, the aesthetic of systems behaving. Jenkinson’s intent isn’t to reassure; it’s to reset the terms of what a gig can be when the machine isn’t a tool, but the point.
“Pure electronics” signals restraint as much as extremity. In an era where “live” electronic sets can mean anything from pressing play to wrestling a modular rig, Jenkinson’s wording implies a deliberate narrowing of variables: fewer gestures borrowed from rock performance, fewer comforting signifiers (a bass guitar, a drummer’s sweat), more commitment to the circuit as the instrument. The subtext is credibility, but not the clichéd kind. It’s credibility as risk: if the set fails, there’s no band to blame, no acoustic alibi, no “the room was weird.” It’s you and the signal chain.
Context matters because touring culture has become content culture. Fans want proof-of-liveness; promoters want reliability; algorithms reward sameness. “Pure electronics” pushes against all three. It suggests a refusal to cosplay authenticity and a willingness to let the audience hear the seams: timing jitter, brutal transitions, the aesthetic of systems behaving. Jenkinson’s intent isn’t to reassure; it’s to reset the terms of what a gig can be when the machine isn’t a tool, but the point.
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| Topic | Music |
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