It's a tired cliche'. A nagging topic that has seemed to do nothing more than fester like a speading infection since the Spice Girls started strutting their stuff globally. Riot Grrrrrrrls. Girl Power. Hear it, See it, Buy the doll....

Unfortunately, this whole topic effects the electronic music world more than almost any other scene. The reason being that the severe lack of female producers, leads to both a completely biased perception of music as we know it and causes the representation of women in this genre to become twisted through marketing strategies. This new world of sexless digits requires neither physicality nor gender seperation. Which is why I cannot understand the rate at which girls in the music industry slide so easily into such primitive and contrived behavorial patterns.

The progession and availibility of technology definately promises a future filled with women working with digital audio, however I can only feel confusion when I consider what is presently happening around me. One too many times I have witnessed cover-ups for the real reason (which I still am not sure of) as to why I can count women producing their own electronic music on two hands....

For example- April 1998 issue of a Vancouver college music paper called Discorder I read an interview with the infamous Gina from EC8OR. Although I have wondered about this topic a couple of times, Gina answered my question without even having asked.

"On DHR we set a sign that in every band there is a girl in front, so we don't give the people the possibility to think that women or girls don't have anything to do with electronic music."-Gina V.D.

This statement made me realize that this is a valid topic worth addressing. I cannot comprehend why a strategy like this would be put into action if the front was so obviously transparent. If there is such an absence of women doing music that just the act of having a woman in front of the stage somehow equals out these tipped scales, then there is a real problem.

The answer must be to let the natural progression of this situation work itself out. There is nothing positive, supportive, nor constructive in putting up a facade that both blinds outsiders to the reality of this topic and pressures women interested or involved to follow a narrow path of do's and don'ts.

To the girls at VOID (London), to the two-sisters Stella and Poka Michaelson(France), fellow American Laura Grabb, Robotnics Crossing (Berlin), BlackSista (Montreal)and countless others out there-keep it up, if only for such selfish pleasures as filling up my record collection.....