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Originally posted by enydo BRING TWILO BACK TO THE MASSES OCCUPYTWILO

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

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Originally posted by sg_57 Since this is the thread for unpopular opinions, I won't hold back about electronica and club music. As computers and software keep increasing their foothold and further permeate every aspect of music-making, our global music and DJ culture has steadily been regressing to a state which ultimately is leading our collective asses to some form of idiocracy for supporting it unconditionally. From the lack of compositional skills, inability to write memorable melodies to total disregard for the basics of arrangement and any innovative ideas or deeper message on the side of the music makers, the public itself has sunk to ever-lower depths of expectations, having now been trained and conditioned to accept those dumbed-down and inferior productions as the standard. There are now audiences who would not know what to do if someone was going to actually play a song with vocals, a proper melodic buildup and was played with real instruments by human beings. That same public, however reacts extremely well to people going on stage wearing giant masks or other gimmick props (to be fair, Kiss was way ahead of the curve with this one) while presenting simplistic tracks laden with special efx and synchronized to pyrotechnics, cheap thrills that are nonetheless a guarantee to get a rise out of them for a few seconds. Thousands of years of humans patiently crafting the most exquisite music being made irrelevant by terabytes of beat-matched sample libraries and intelligent software agents turning it all into one gigantic highway lined with perfect samey-looking cars forever. And leaving real musicians completely out of work as no one wants to hire them. Now of course, it would be unfair to forget the reality that most of this music I am ranting about is in fact designed to be consumed by people under the influence of chemicals, and that the aim of it is to clearly provide a smooth, predictable and appropriately themed endless backdrop to enhance their drug experience without ever 'rocking the boat' or waking them up from their torpor by causing them to think, other than to occasionally tweet about it (in 140 characters or less) or annoy everyone around them by snapping pictures with their new iPhone 4Gs. Mike Judge arguably was a visionary, and as is the case with most of them had his disruptive movie Idiocracy buried by Fox (who funded it) when it became obvious how incredibly prescient its message was, and that it was hitting a bit too close to home for comfort. This is pretty much what seems to have been happening to the once-lavish, exotic and gorgeously iconoclastic world of dance music. It all became streamlined, commoditized and defanged into a parody of its once-vibrant sexiness and beautiful energy; but with lots more bass, sharper drum sounds and wondrous synthetizer wooshes than ever before. That's where young sonic rebels like Skrillex (who everyone loves to hate) can come in and wake people the f*ck up from that complacent status quo with gut-wrenching ugly-ass beats and demented bass lines. The world might just be getting ready for the next generation of electronic punks without guitars. P.S.: before anyone even points it out, yes there are thousands of very able and extremely talented musicians, composers and practitioners of creative electronic music today, but they aren't very high on the public's radar, and for the most part what they do just doesn't seem to register at all.

I dont know about you guys but I had to use google's "define: " function several times while reading this beast of a post. Awesome.

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Originally posted by cherrybarry Where is the analogue to this in today's scene? It surely isn't the Ableton live set. Also, Kraftwerk is overrated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%B8mkirke
http://www.discogs.com/Sunn-O-D%C3%B8mkirke/release/1516414

http://soundcloud.com/goitia-deitz/sets/r-o-m-a-n-c-e-c-o-m-a
http://www.facebook.com/GoitiaDeitz

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Outpost-13/141251352586052
http://www.myspace.com/outpostnyc

http://www.discogs.com/Kaval-Sky-Of-Mirrors/release/2576782



http://www.das-drehmoment.com/
http://boomkat.com/
http://14tracks.com/
http://othermusic.com/
http://www.roughtraderecords.com/
http://www.honestjons.com/
http://hospitalproductions.net/category/digital/
http://www.brainfeedersite.com/
http://www.kindred-spirits.nl/

let's be clear that tangerine dream has very little do with 'today's scene' except that people from today's scene mostly claim to be influenced by them. in terms of 'scenes' they come from a very different world than clubworld or rooftopbarworld.

look into especially drone, noise, industrial, power electronics, coldwave, minimalwave, etc and also some of the shoegazey stuff and la beat music

Last edited by nefardec on Oct-21-2011 at 22:11

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Originally posted by cherrybarry Also, Kraftwerk is overrated.

Kraftwerk did one thing that nobody else did at the time, and that they were better at than anyone else for more than a decade after their peak: Percussion.

They were supreme percussionists. Every electronic musician in the 70s focused on soundscapes, textures, and quirky noises out of atonal monosynths. Kraftwerk were interested in polyrhythms, groove, and headbobbing goodness. It was funky machine music, the first time it ever sounded playful and fun yet not juvenile.

It's no wonder that Kraftwerk's biggest fans were hip hop and electro artists, predominantly black and addicted to their infectious drum loops.

That is Kraftwerk's legacy. They put the 'D' in EDM.

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Originally posted by Ishkur Kraftwerk did one thing that nobody else did at the time, and that they were better at than anyone else for more than a decade after their peak: Percussion. They were supreme percussionists. Every electronic musician in the 70s focused on soundscapes, textures, and quirky noises out of atonal monosynths. Kraftwerk were interested in polyrhythms, groove, and headbobbing goodness. It was funky machine music, the first time it ever sounded playful and fun yet not juvenile. It's no wonder that Kraftwerk's biggest fans were hip hop and electro artists, predominantly black and addicted to their infectious drum loops. That is Kraftwerk's legacy. They put the 'D' in EDM.

That's a good point, and I don't doubt that they were influential, but from what I can gather, they also marketed themselves very well. All things equal though, I enjoy the 'other' bands (Neu!, Harmonia, etc.) a bit more.

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Originally posted by nefardec let's be clear that tangerine dream has very little do with 'today's scene' except that people from today's scene mostly claim to be influenced by them. in terms of 'scenes' they come from a very different world than clubworld or rooftopbarworld.

Well, what I meant is that no one in electronica (as far as I'm aware) is doing anything bold anymore. It's either Skrillex or regressive disco remixes. And the experimental acts today are mostly copying the Krautrock ethos of the 70's.

And I guess you also touched upon my other complaint about clubworld. There seems to be established notions about what's danceable and what's not. Why can't I go out to a club on the weekends and dance to Berlin school? Why can't we get rid of that annoying 4/4 kick?

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Originally posted by cherrybarry Well, what I meant is that no one in electronica (as far as I'm aware) is doing anything bold anymore. It's either Skrillex or regressive disco remixes. And the experimental acts today are mostly copying the Krautrock ethos of the 70's. And I guess you also touched upon my other complaint about clubworld. There seems to be established notions about what's danceable and what's not. Why can't I go out to a club on the weekends and dance to Berlin school? Why can't we get rid of that annoying 4/4 kick?

I don't know where you go out, but I ditched that notion a while ago, and there's plenty of alternatives.


Saying that people with synths today are copying krautrock acts from the 70s is like saying that people with electric guitars are copying classic rock acts... of course history is history and influence is influence, but is that a bad thing? That's just the way it is. Novelty for the sake of novelty is no good either. I mean the whole idea that Kraftwerk even had to have a 'band' performance is copying someone too. Their uniform appearance is directly related to uniformed oldies boy bands

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Originally posted by cherrybarry Well, what I meant is that no one in electronica (as far as I'm aware) is doing anything bold anymore. It's either Skrillex or regressive disco remixes. And the experimental acts today are mostly copying the Krautrock ethos of the 70's.

You have an extremely limited viewpoint if you think everyone is copying or emulating krautrock ethos of the 70s and not doing anything fresh.

And the time of boldness in electronic music is gone, dance music alone is already more than 25 years old. We can only hope for some new and interesting arrangements, sound combinations and types of atmospheres.

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Originally posted by cherrybarry Well, what I meant is that no one in electronica (as far as I'm aware) is doing anything bold anymore.

Brainfeeder.

___________________
Mixes:
> Maximum Elevation [Progressive House]
> DI.FM 26th Anniversary Guest Mix [Progressive House]
> Live @ Dance:Love:Hub London, 11.10.2025
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24

Like these sets? Come see me play live at Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

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Originally posted by Redd Sorry to single out this one from the other points made, but it made me curious. When you say the publics radar, do you mean the one that has all the mainstream music on it? And where do you see the line between underground/unknown and mainstream go?

Sorry for replying late, but the second question is actually a difficult one to answer, as no matter which way I try and slice it there are no absolutes, only very personal opinions.

From an overall perspective, my opinion is that there has always been a large gap between the obviously immense talent and magnetism certain performers, artists, DJs or creators in general are gifted with (but who stay in quasi-total obscurity, appearing very content to do what they do for a small core of fanatical supporters) and contrasting it to how little of the same qualities a large number of who have managed to successfully make it in the mainstream seem to actually possess makes me wonder. This is certainly due to the fact that talent alone has never been the recipe for success and being able to connect with large audiences, which require a whole team of PR, promotion, marketing and publicity specialists, as well as a willingness for the artists to have their image molded by those handlers rather than following their eccentric and fickle muse, as they very seldom have real, concrete plans for accomplishing what is nowadays most certainly only possible as the result of a huge team effort and a very large expenditure.

Historically this has always been the case, but perhaps recent developments like social networking and the absolute saturation of new releases make it all but impossible for talent to emerge strictly on its own merit. It would appear that most of those who are interested in the experimental and cutting edge side of things seldom possess either the ambitions or the qualities required to fit into such teams that are designed to 'build for success', like focus and relentless drive as well as a willingness to compromise for the sake of exposure. Mainstream as in 'mass market' and being able to gain a large amount of exposure in the media, on TV, in commercials, etc...

Once in a while, a perfect storm of a wealthy and connected visionary such as Chas Chandler when he dug a young nobody named James Marshall Hendrix out of Café Wah in Greenwich Village and took on the job to make the UK take notice, combined with Hendrix's stellar talent make it possible that a true musical genius attains great commercial success. But far more often, it's just not the case. It used to be that record labels had fairly astute and clued-up people like Ahmet Ertegun, John Hammond (Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin) Chris Blackwell, (Bob Marley, Traffic, U2, Grace Jones) or Seymour Stein (Pretenders, Madonna, Talking Heads, etc..) who truly ferreted out that iconoclastic talent and put themselves on the line to find a way for some of these uniquely gifted performers to reach a much bigger audience without compromising too much the artistry that made them so special, and this included affording them the necessary incubation time to transform the rough diamond into a more polished gem. In these days of consolidated media multinationals only obeying the short-term imperatives of their quarterly stockholder dividend reports, am not sure that I know of such people anymore, and although once in a great while someone truly gifted will earn that mainstream recognition, more often than not those with real talent toil in total obscurity.

When it comes to electronic music, technology has obviously had a very disruptive hand in shuffling the deck of cards most were dealt, and leveled the playing field to allow complete newcomers to very quickly get to a stage where they are able to reach 75% or 80% of what any of the professionals can deliver, which is certainly good enough for a large majority of the public out there. Whereas in the early days there were a lot of performers who developed a very unique sound and approach, sampling and the likes have pretty much made a lot of what is out there fairly homogeneous. This includes the unthinkly vast store of distributed knowledge available online at the click of a mouse

Until the next technological quantum jump (the same way House and Techno were arguably only made possible by the advent of inexpensive sequencers, MIDI synths and drum machines), I think that music will become less and less interesting, as listeners grow more jaded and pretty much everything has already been done or tried. Music just doesn't seem to get very far on artistic merit alone. Wearing masks, costumes, using stage props and other add-on visual elements sure do seem to help a great deal.

To me the line between underground and mainstream is probably drawn at that willingness to compromise in order to scale up to mass market numbers, as well as to the relative importance for certain artists or DJs to feel as if they are staying connected to their core audience or not. Underground and popular are not always mutually exclusive. In earlier days, there are well-known examples of some of the most underground clubs in NYC influencing radio and forcing them to play obscure records and turn them into million-selling hits. This -again- no longer seems to be the case, not the least because compared to those days there seems to be so little consensus as to what a hit song consists of, but I digress. And for that matter, there are many who can recall times in certain clubs where people were coming to dance and trip out, looking at each other (not at the DJ) and weren't so distracted by their gadgets and other electronic gizmos that they actually really got fully immersed into it. Most mainstream clubgoers today wouldn't know the meaning of this, because things have changed so much. I'll let others decide whether that's for good or not.

Well, there you have it. Lots more rambling. There probably is a way to distill it into a simple paragraph, but too tired to do this, so you'll be forced to sift through all of it.

It's only an opinion anyway, and since this is the thread for ranting....

___________________
My goal is to be one with the music. I just dedicate my whole life to this art.

Last edited by sg_57 on Oct-22-2011 at 05:25

^I'm guilty for not reading it at the time but now I can say that was very informative.