GFOTY makes racist comments online, Lotic expertly replies

Yesterday was a dark day for dance music. While on one hand the homophobic comments that Ten Walls made on his Facebook page resulted in him being dropped from festival line-ups, PC Music artist GFOTY caused her own media storm when Noisey published racist comments from her as part of a Field Day review.

The article was formed of a series of iMessages from GFOTY about her experience at the festival, during which she referred to Malian duo Toumani & Sidiki Diabaté as "Bombay bycicle club [sic] blacked up."

The comments were quickly covered up but The Quietus and several other outlets had already picked up on it. In the time since, GFOTY has apologised on Twitter, stating that she "was actually trying to make a joke about appropriation, but I fucked up and it wasn't funny".

Tri Angle producer Lotic took to his Facebook page yesterday evening to deliver a very poignant reply.

The Berlin-based, Texas-born producer touched upon the role of the press in highlighting the work of Ten Walls and GFOTY, PC Music and his views on conceptual music:

"i told you" isn't even the right response to this. like, i understand that white people don't feel like they have 'tribal' music or any 'real culture' in general, but to me this is more a result of press/club culture over-intellectualizing music and being too curious about 'mysterious' producers, congratulating mediocrity and creating false heroes because we're so desperate to save our clubs. and i get it.

but. you can congratulate pc music et al. for their mystery and 'clever' use of 'irony' or you can just investigate and realize that it's merely a vapid art project by a handful of rich kids (mostly male, with female avatars btw) that's diluting the club pool and that your making excuses for their boring music is part of the problem. you actually don't have to pretend that anything that's even vaguely non-conforming is good or cool?

there is so much music being made by incredibly talented queers and people of color that it's almost always comical to read headlines about straight white musicians. i personally never click on them, and i would actually bet money (of which i have little) that no other queer/poc gave a shit about pc music or ten walls until, like, today. and that's because, for some people, music is still a medium reserved for genuine expressions of emotion or feeling (the last one?), as opposed to a way to explore a concept.

this, and the ten walls incident, is upsetting, but there is absolutely nothing surprising about either incident to anyone that has a real investment in protecting these spaces, to anyone who NEEDS these spaces in order to survive. not monetarily, but NEED in terms of staying sane, in terms of exploring themselves, in terms of being free and escaping the world and the status quo, even if just for a night.

and i want to be clear that i'm not vehemently against conceptual music. i think it's important and has its place. concepts help us keep our bigger projects on track. everyone loves a new perspective! but 'conceptual' and 'mysterious' usually turn out to be an abdication of responsibility (there's nothing brave about not showing your face and nothing exciting about having nothing real to say). and we can't be afraid of emotional or confrontational music. since when has music not been political? since when have we not turned to music when we need uplifting or comfort?

really sorry to get so dramatically romantic and i usually just channel my frustrations into my own music but i'm actually just *not having it* in general right now and neither should you and i'm upset that we all just kind of allowed these people to 'blow up' based on hardly anything. it's a fucking distraction.

also, who doesn't know who toumani diabaté is?! and anal is amazing?!?"