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-- Artists who changed their sound and produced good music

Artists who changed their sound and produced good music

There's often a stigma that artists who completely changed their sound are no longer as good as they once were, but is that true? I don't know of any artists who continued to produce good music despite the change, but of course I'd like to be proven wrong.

I guess we aren't talking about artists who create alternate aliases to explore different sounds?

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Originally posted by Sykonee I guess we aren't talking about artists who create alternate aliases to explore different sounds?

I should've considered that as well, but I was just referring to artists who change their sound overall and never looked back.

Does someone like Petar Dundov count?

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Originally posted by SPANIARD Does someone like Petar Dundov count?

Petar Dundov is excellent, very talented and enjoyable, but genuinely asking - when did he change his sound? I mean, he has his hypnotic loopy melody driven sound pretty much dialed in and I could tell a tune is his blindfolded.

In my opinion there are almost no examples of artists who have found fame, then made (significant) changes to their sound and still stayed relevant and/or made good music.

James Holden perhaps is an exception to the rule? I love his early twinkling prog house tracks, that ironically he himself hates for reasons that escape me. After he moved on from that sound, he has become pretty much too experimental to my taste, but there are still some real gems in his post ProgHouse albums.

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Originally posted by djthunderbird Petar Dundov is excellent, very talented and enjoyable, but genuinely asking - when did he change his sound? I mean, he has his hypnotic loopy melody driven sound pretty much dialed in and I could tell a tune is his blindfolded.

Fair point. I think I was more getting at his early techno stuff was really hit or miss and definitely on the harder side (I'm talking mid 90's btw). He was known in Techno circles but rarely outside of it. Then around 2010 or so he seemed to go into the sound you're referring to and his popularity shot up.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I even agree that he's better. His 90's stuff wasn't that bad lol.

Martin Roth

from a guy who was doing hard trance when he first started....he has been making some excellent deep house and melodic tunes over the last few years

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Originally posted by djthunderbird Petar Dundov is excellent, very talented and enjoyable, but genuinely asking - when did he change his sound? I mean, he has his hypnotic loopy melody driven sound pretty much dialed in and I could tell a tune is his blindfolded. In my opinion there are almost no examples of artists who have found fame, then made (significant) changes to their sound and still stayed relevant and/or made good music. James Holden perhaps is an exception to the rule? I love his early twinkling prog house tracks, that ironically he himself hates for reasons that escape me. After he moved on from that sound, he has become pretty much too experimental to my taste, but there are still some real gems in his post ProgHouse albums.

It seems like AI on google agrees with both you and SPANIARD. It said Petar Dundov made a 'natural evolution' but didn't make a 'sharp departure.'

This may be a weirdly specific example, but the duo of Brian Dougans and Garry Cobain were making decent scratch knocking out standard acid house and UK rave jams for a number of years before switching to a more sampledelic, psychedelic 'anything goes' approach to music making, which surprisingly brought them even greater success for a while.

But that happened after they adopted the Future Sound Of London moniker, working under multiple alias prior.

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Originally posted by Sykonee This may be a weirdly specific example, but the duo of Brian Dougans and Garry Cobain were making decent scratch knocking out standard acid house and UK rave jams for a number of years before switching to a more sampledelic, psychedelic 'anything goes' approach to music making, which surprisingly brought them even greater success for a while. But that happened after they adopted the Future Sound Of London moniker, working under multiple alias prior.

Interesting fact right here. They made stone cold classics before they became FSOL. Wow.

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Originally posted by Scoops Martin Roth from a guy who was doing hard trance when he first started....he has been making some excellent deep house and melodic tunes over the last few years

I remember him. I didn't realize he was signed to Anjunadeep for awhile.

Come on, Matt. This is a silly question. There are countless examples. Underworld started as an '80s synth pop band. The Prodigy made toytown rave on their first album. Sven Vath originally made his name with the craptastic Euro-trash synth pop of Electrica Salsa as Off, then he became the doyen of Frankfurt trance in the early '90s before switching to lamping techno. Carl Cox was a hardcore rave DJ before he went techno in the mid '90s. Paul Oakenfold was producing Balearic remixes of British indie-dance bands a few years before he made the Goa Mix. BT made deep house with Deep Dish before signing to Perfecto and tripping the light fantastic with Ima.

Need I go on?

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Come on, Matt. This is a silly question. There are countless examples. Underworld started as an '80s synth pop band. The Prodigy made toytown rave on their first album. Sven Vath originally made his name with the craptastic Euro-trash synth pop of Electrica Salsa as Off, then he became the doyen of Frankfurt trance in the early '90s before switching to lamping techno. Carl Cox was a hardcore rave DJ before he went techno in the mid '90s. Paul Oakenfold was producing Balearic remixes of British indie-dance bands a few years before he made the Goa Mix. BT made deep house with Deep Dish before signing to Perfecto and tripping the light fantastic with Ima. Need I go on?

Yeah, also Tiesto, Ferry, Armin etc etc.

It's too late to change the criteria now, but some of those were nice examples of artists before they blew up. I was thinking of artists who were well established already.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Come on, Matt. This is a silly question. There are countless examples. Underworld started as an '80s synth pop band. The Prodigy made toytown rave on their first album. Sven Vath originally made his name with the craptastic Euro-trash synth pop of Electrica Salsa as Off, then he became the doyen of Frankfurt trance in the early '90s before switching to lamping techno. Carl Cox was a hardcore rave DJ before he went techno in the mid '90s. Paul Oakenfold was producing Balearic remixes of British indie-dance bands a few years before he made the Goa Mix. BT made deep house with Deep Dish before signing to Perfecto and tripping the light fantastic with Ima. Need I go on?

Prodigy and BT are good examples, but I'm not sure about the others.

Was Underworld any good or known or successful in their '80s synth pop band venture?

Sven Vath, Carl Cox and Oakenfold are up for debate. I agree, that they have changed their sound over the years, many times being in the forefront of the change of sound in the music scene, but they have done it as DJ's. None of them are really known for their groundbreaking productions. Also I think that all of them have always relied on somebody other to produce the music for them.

Other than electronic music, a good example of this would be David Bowie. Innovating until the end.

Sven Vath's first two albums were seminal moments of the early trance scene. Some of it has aged badly but they were definitive records in the early days of the genre. And L'Esperanza was, is, and will always be a stone cold classic. Vath went on to release other club classics in the techno scene such as Mind Games.

As for Oakenfold, he produced the Happy Mondays, one of the most iconic British indie bands of the early '90s. Step On is one of the biggest indie anthems of all time. It reached #5 on the UK singles chart and #57 on the Billboard Hot 100. It has a cool 65 million plays on Spotify at the time of writing. And his Perfecto Remix of U2's Even Better Than The Real Thing famously charted higher in the UK than the original version.

So,respectfully, the idea that these two weren't known for their early production work is complete tosh.

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Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Sven Vath's first two albums were seminal moments of the early trance svene. Some of it has aged badly but they were definitive records in the early days of the genre. And L'Esperanza was, is, and will always be a stone cold classic. Vath went on to release other club classics in the techno scene such as Mind Games. As for Oakenfold, he produced the Happy Mondays, one of the most iconic British indie bands of the early '90s. Step On is one of the biggest indie anthems of all time. It reached #5 on the UK singles chart and #57 on the Billboard Hot 100. It has a cool 65 million plays on Spotify at the time of writing. And his Perfecto Remix of U2's Even Better Than The Real Thing famously charted higher in the UK than the original version. So,respectfully, the idea that these two weren't known for their early production work is complete tosh.

Yeah, come to think about it, I think youre right, its just that for me, both of their qualities as DJs outshadow their productions and thats why I didnt really consider them in the theme of this thread. Ive now revised my opinion.

I still think that its rather rare to become famous for one sound and later find new (or continued) success with a new sound.

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