By Kim Skotte Photo: TM B/A

To a greater extent than ever before, Roskilde Festival '97 revolves around the younger rock music of the future.

Musicians sniff around each other in much the same way as inquisitive mongrels. That's the way it has always been. But mutual inspiration has never been as widespread a phenomenon as it is today. As we approach the new millennium, rock music has become a patchwork of cross-roads and nobody gives a hoot about the musical equivalent of racial purity.

Musicians from different genres have always been inspired by each other. In a sense, the very fact that genres stimulate and cross-fertilise in every conceivable direction is the driving force behind modern music. But mutual inspiration has never been such a widespread phenomenon as it is today and, in particular, it has never been so easily accessible and quickly communicated before. Anything which in the past might have spread like gentle rings in water is now spread at the speed of light by mass media and computer technology. The picture is constantly changing. And that goes for music in particular.

The question is to what extent rock is alive, dead, or has outlived itself. The big, all-embracing rock concept with the lecherous guitar, lighter ballads and packed stadiums is no longer the natural common denominator for youth culture. Rock has become middle-aged and today you are in danger of getting a soothing, muzak version of Led Zeppelin's „Stairway to Heaven" in your ear while you wait for an answer on the phone. Even though young groups like Live, Green Day and Smashing Pumpkins are proof positive that rock can still summon up an enormous sense of togetherness, the days of the classic rock spirit's supremacy are gone.

Rock lives

Nevertheless, rock lives on in the best of health. Huge amounts of important and challenging music are being produced within a framework which can still be defined as rock. In fact, the overall musical picture appears more colourful and lively than ever. In fact, rock has done well out of no longer having to be the big common denominator which sells chewing gum, crisps and tampons to all sorts of young people. Rock is no longer a young rebel. Nor has it been reduced to the status of an unctuous door-to-door salesman with an ear-to-ear smile and a checked jacket.

Foo Fighters, Pavement, Tindersticks and Radiohead are rock groups who sound anything but outdated. Supergrass suck juice and power out of the old marrowbone of rock. New names like Eels and Swell find it completely natural to combine the guitar and sampler, and they do so on alternative rock's conditions. Whereas a good song used to be the natural foundation, the most up-to-date music often encompasses a concept of sound & vision to a much greater extent. Direct descendants of pioneering 70's German band Can, Bowery Electric's music has a spherical, crackling sound like the soundtrack to a film about the future. Music in the cut and splice era.

Impossible to define

It is impossible to define rock as a genre. Nine Inch Nails and Prodigy produce a violent frontal collision between rock and techno. What is rock? It has become sort of Star Wars question - who has the Force at any given time and uses it for visionary purposes. With the album Pop, U2 has taken centre-stage once again, but the Force is also to be found in a playful French techno duo which has adopted the sneeringly characteristic name of Daft Punk.

On Homework, Daft Punk proves that technological DIY is the discipline of the future. That the technology has become cheaper - and therefore democratised and a matter of common ownership - has revolutionised music, with hip hop pioneers like Beastie Boys and Public Enemy in particular opening rock's eyes to new opportunities.

The network has now become a concrete entity. The sampler and the computer have become as natural as the guitar and drum. Ambient techno is made in the bedroom and the Net provides potential contact with everybody else's visions.

In the early 90s, it looked as if it was rock's fate to be split up definitively into a broad spectrum of mutually independent genres - isolated from each other and each with its own sub-culture. Small, self-sufficient tribal societies, each with their own rituals. But these days, a new era of inquisitive experimentation seems to be smashing rigid barriers. Genres are being mixed merrily. People are cutting and pasting like there is no tomorrow and there is no doubt that the sampler has been a driving force behind this 'musicmental' revolution. Without ideologies and common norms, you have to choose for yourself who you want to be. Nothing is written in stone. You are, as it were, your own dress dummy. Nowhere are signals understood as quickly as in rock music. As a result, the modern individualistic tendency appears to be clearer in the world of music than anywhere else.

Genre breakdown

The most epoch-making names of the present (and the future?) are making music which defies strict categorisation. Tricky who floats over the flow of the metropolitan gutter like a sombre mist, trip hopping and mysterious. Beck who reinvents the show spirit and raises the creative irony of second-hand pop to something more akin to art than kitsch. The young DJ Shadow who, perhaps more than anybody else, is a sign of precisely what the future holds when he 'endtroduces' the DJ as a mixture of sonic film editor and collage artist. The musicians of the future are hunters, operating on an endless plain of accessible sound information.

The democratisation of computer technology has made the genre breakdown the most important characteristic of the late '90s. But another equally important upheaval has taken place which has nothing to do with either genre or technology. Strong-willed women artists have turned rock's male dominated world upside down. Women who do not have a common programme are probably reluctant to be categorised as female musicians but, nevertheless, they have added a much-needed new balance to rock music. Big selling, smart, tough and setting the agenda in words and sounds: Björk, P.J. Harvey, Alanis Morissette, Jewel, Lisa Germano, Tori Amos, Hole, Veruca Salt. The list is long. For the first time in a long while, some serious yin and yang is about to enter rock music's soul. A balance between female and male, acoustic and technological, extrovert and introvert.

Everybody knows how difficult it is to predict the future, but there are signs that the future looks like bad news for square heads. And that ought to be good news for Roskilde Festival, of course.