SF WEEKLY
April 29, 1998, Wednesday

WEEK 2 OF THE 41ST S.F. INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The follow-up to last year's cult-hit subculture documentary Synthetic Pleasures, Iara Lee's Modulations bravely takes on the daunting task of telling the history of electronic music in the 20th century, from John Cage's noise experiments to Prodigy's chart-topping techno rock. Much like the music she covers, Modulations is a cut-and-mix job, her camera leapfrogging across the planet -- from Mount Fuji to Detroit to Chicago to Berlin -- to snag interviews with some of the music's major players from the past and present: LTJ Bukem, Robert Moog, Can, DJ Spooky, even S.F.'s own local turntable maestros Invisibl Skratch Piklz. Interspersing the interviews with some Koyaanisqatsi-style shots of urban landscapes, the film has an appropriately ambient, pleasant feel to it. However, while Lee's juggling of history -- moving from Kraftwerk's '70s to Atari Teenage Riot's '90s to John Cage's '40s -- might be intriguing for viewers familiar with the artists, those looking for a straightforward introduction to the so-called "electronica" world might be left with more questions than answers -- and wondering if in the end it's really anything more than, as Moog puts it, "the hot-rodding of the '90s." (Mark Athitakis)

By Gregg Rickman, Michael Sragow, Jeff Stark, Gary Morris, Heather Wisner