John Cage represents an extremism. He fights to let sound be sound, thus his fight is also against any sort of artist intervention or created symbolism. It's a bit paradoxical isn't it? Even if he were to set a tape recorder in a forest and then play it back to an audience, it would still represent a conscious artistic choice.

His extreme stance when it comes to music making is perhaps why I've heard people say, "Read and love Cage, but listen to his music only out of curiosity".

It makes me wonder how John Cage would see the modern electronic music I listen to - it's a genre not as restrictive as other genres, indeed, it's the most free. From the organic-electronic fusions of early Amon Tobin to the hyper synthetic glitches of Oval, the genre follows Cage's sound first worship. BUT, the genre is also about highly personal expressions, an extension of the ego Cage might say. Sound first, but manipulated to the creator's desires. It might be instructive to look at how Cage views Varese, a composer who manipulated interesting sounds to his own end. Varese is important as a predecessor, Cage goes on, but he remains distinctly a figure of the past because "rather than dealing with sounds as sounds, he deals with them as Varese." Cage might view the same way someone such as Aphex Twin, who's intensely weird abstractions are an extension of his personality, even while pushing sound to the forefront.