What I got out of the article more than anything was that how little has actually changed in terms of electronic music development and progression in the last ten years.
Take a block of time 10 years long. From 87 to 97. Look at all the changes. In 87, there was house, techno, rap and electro, and ebm for the rivetheads. Sampling was still a primitive technique, as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu were about to demonstrate. People were just starting to twist the knobs on the 303. Rave hadn't even entered the lexicon yet. NO ONE heard of ecstasy.
In 10 years, the scene explodes. It divides--trance, jungle, happy hardcore, IDM, NRG, Goa/Psy, and all their subgenres develop sub-cultural identities, scenes, and parties all to themselves, each one bursting with its own eclectic creative energies, vibe, and social customs. Music goes digital, then it goes to the internet. Everyone tries to sample everything.
Now, take a look between 1997 and now. Has their been that many changes? Not really. What new genres have come about? ....Mcprog? Almost everything is either a rehash of what has been done before, or is a constant retro re-imagining of a past style or trend, often for kitsch value. The 2000s is most definitely characterized as the decade of sampling--not just in music, but in clothes, language, culture, everything, stealing bits and parts of the look and feel from every other decade to build a sort of collage culture.
It reminds me of a video game article I read about three years ago how games haven't really progressed much this decade years beyond superficial graphics and improved processor power. You take, say, the years 84 to 94, and you can say that video games went from almost text-based Dungeons & Dragons and Ultima games to Final Fantasy VI, from Dig Dug to Doom. That is an incredible leap. You take 94 to 2004, and you get from Doom to Doom III. Advancements of the same ideas; no new ideas. Real-time Strategy, The MMORPG, First Person Shooter, Button Tap Timing (ie: DDR or Stepmania) were all genres of games created in the 90s. What new genres have been created this decade?
Going back to electronic music, maybe it's just me. After all, as one gets older, time seems to speed up and things change less often. When you're a child, each year is jam-packed with stuff happening, and seems to take an eternity. I remember a half hour being an excruciatingly long detention after class. Today, I can waste a half hour just staring off into space thinking about nothing. So much changes in your life between age 9 and 10. But almost nothing changes in your life between the ages 80 and 90, if you live that long.
Have things changed, and I just not noticed it? Someone younger help me out here.
Project-K
quote:
Originally posted by Ishkur
It reminds me of a video game article I read about three years ago how games haven't really progressed much this decade years beyond superficial graphics and improved processor power. You take, say, the years 84 to 94, and you can say that video games went from almost text-based Dungeons & Dragons and Ultima games to Final Fantasy VI, from Dig Dug to Doom. That is an incredible leap. You take 94 to 2004, and you get from Doom to Doom III. Advancements of the same ideas; no new ideas. Real-time Strategy, The MMORPG, First Person Shooter, Button Tap Timing (ie: DDR or Stepmania) were all genres of games created in the 90s. What new genres have been created this decade?
That's very true. Games stopped being innovative somewhere around the end of the 90s. Suddenly it became all about technology - who could fit the most polygons in one frame, who could fit the most shaders and filters, and we ended up with a bunch of pretty looking graphics that played like . Nowadays a game won't even sell if it doesn't have all of that shallow polishing. Before that happened, technology was limited, and the common household system was very limited as well, so devellopers had to take that into consideration. With all the technological constraints, they were forced to focus their games on just one thing; making them fun. You could say something very similar happened to electronic music.
ToxicGreenWaste
pwnt.
Cobalt
quote:
Originally posted by Ishkur
Going back to electronic music, maybe it's just me. After all, as one gets older, time seems to speed up and things change less often. When you're a child, each year is jam-packed with stuff happening, and seems to take an eternity. I remember a half hour being an excruciatingly long detention after class. Today, I can waste a half hour just staring off into space thinking about nothing. So much changes in your life between age 9 and 10. But almost nothing changes in your life between the ages 80 and 90, if you live that long.
Have things changed, and I just not noticed it? Someone younger help me out here.
Of all the things that resonate with me in your post (I'm glad you reposted it), this does especially. I always brushed off the warnings of those older who complained that as you enter your 20s, the years begin to fly by. Then, as I entered my 20s, the years did seem to tangibly pass faster. In my childhood and teens, each year felt like it would never end, and when it did, it seemed a lifetime had passed since the last. These days, I'm actually beginning to get the order of my holiday memories confused. It's chilling more than anything else; I'm young, but that bony, black-cloaked hand seems less unreal.
I've thought a bit on whether this skews our perception of dance music in the 90s versus the current decade -- indeed a collage of trends without any to really call its own. Perhaps it plays a part -- I'm often reminded of that mock motivational poster you made for "Nostalgia" -- but I think it's also objectively true that dance music learned most of its tricks in the 90s. Technology ceased to be a limiting factor by the late years of that decade. Instead, it seems dance music has lost its bearings creatively.
One possibility is that technology catalyzed the diverge of genres as people experimented with new production tools, and that those conditions will never happen again. Like the fanning of primordial body plans in the Cambrian Explosion, doomed to pruning as some gained predatory advantage over others, dance music may be locked into dominant tropes. That's a gross analogy -- we're talking about art, not biology -- but perhaps it helps to organize what's happened.
Abhay
quote:
Originally posted by Ishkur
Now, take a look between 1997 and now. Has their been that many changes? Not really. What new genres have come about? ....Mcprog? Almost everything is either a rehash of what has been done before, or is a constant retro re-imagining of a past style or trend, often for kitsch value. The 2000s is most definitely characterized as the decade of sampling--not just in music, but in clothes, language, culture, everything, stealing bits and parts of the look and feel from every other decade to build a sort of collage culture.
+1
that said, I think you could say there are new "genres" bobbing up all the time, but a lot of ppl are simply very dissmissive of them as somethign "that's already been done, with a new name". But isnt' that what a genre is? Somethign that's already been done, but with a name attatched? Electro for example...
As for my personal opinion, I"m neutral on this one...
nefardec
re: 'collage culture'
i think as observers of our own time it's hard to really judge this.
What we see as discernibly different things making some sort of collage culture will in 300 years seem like one indiscernable movement.
for instance
Even the ancient romans were a collage culture. The forum romanum for example in rome was built over a period of 1000 years by many different governments and people. It's full of allusions and reusage of ideas and even physical material. Yet tourists look at today it without knowing any of this, because they can't discern the differences. Even Roman art was an intense combination of practical traditions and fashion from cultures they admired or assimilated through conquest. The majority of greek pottery that exists still was not found in greece but rather in etruscan burials - and rome stole much of the most important greek statuary and moved it into their facilities alongside their own greek revival pieces, etc
This is obviously stretching the discussion far, but I just want to make the point that 'collage culture' isn't really that new, though of course it's accelerated by global communications and the widespread availability of information.
I think cobalt's idea of the 'dominant' trope seems to be an important part of it. As electronics become embedded in our lives, the supersaw will become as commonplace as the air guitar or the saxophone. Breakbeats will be on file in libraries like waltzes. Provided it doesn't die, I think we have passed the formative years of this dance music and entered into a canonical phase. Of course you will have occasional oddities, but as far as futurism, I think it might not be applicable here anymore.
Abhay
quote:
Originally posted by nefardec
re: 'collage culture'
I think cobalt's idea of the 'dominant' trope seems to be an important part of it. As electronics become embedded in our lives, the supersaw will become as commonplace as the air guitar or the saxophone. Breakbeats will be on file in libraries like waltzes. Provided it doesn't die, I think we have passed the formative years of this dance music and entered into a canonical phase. Of course you will have occasional oddities, but as far as futurism, I think it might not be applicable here anymore.
i completely agree
ToxicGreenWaste
I would say that because of the genre of electronic music that is defined by its obsession with the future, that futurisim isn't dead in electronic music.
bryanflint
Consider for a moment the style of music I've been experimenting with...
The thing is, the techniques are no longer magical to most people, but the truth is that there is still room to grow in electronic music. Electronic, dance in particular, is notoriously narrow-minded in the sense I suggest in the post above. Think about it.
SO is futurism dead? Perhaps... but there will always be new horizons in music regardless of whatever happens to the world of technology, THAT I can guarantee.
-Bryan
nefardec
quote:
Originally posted by bryanflint
The thing is, the techniques are no longer magical to most people, but the truth is that there is still room to grow in electronic music. Electronic, dance in particular, is notoriously narrow-minded in the sense I suggest in the post above. Think about it.
SO is futurism dead? Perhaps... but there will always be new horizons in music regardless of whatever happens to the world of technology, THAT I can guarantee.
-Bryan
I guess I feel that leads to the "style-du-jour" scene, because of the lack of a substantive cultural movement looking at the "new horizon". You know, just a bunch of people looking for the 'next hot thing' and trying to profit off of it.
regarding your '6/8 break':
it's cool and all, but i worry that you're trying to hard to be different, looking at time signatures as 'untapped markets'.
I mean, I've wanted to dj a set entirely in 6/8 or triplet feel, and I started collecting for it, but I stopped because it would only come across as a one liner, IMO. You can't really start a movement if you just come out and try to do it artificially - movements happen because they need to happen.
You'll just get a small group of people that are going nuts because it makes them feel special and explaining to their friends, It's a TOTALLY DIFFERENT TIME SIGNATURE. which you might be able to call a 'movement', but it's not going to inspire like a 6/8 break pants or a drug culture that revolves around the triplet or something.
not that i don't think it's cool and important but let's just be honest
edit:
also you shouldn't use a standard canned breaks rhythm because it just comes across as a standard breakbeat track with little fills.
a lot of people would just call it breaks. the only difference is that if you were mixing it it would fall in and out of sync every 2 measures. think about how people dance - they don't dance in sets of four beats - they either respond to each beat or to half beats. So in either case they will dance exactly the same to a 6/8 time signature.
Ishkur
One must also be aware that futurism for futurism's sake is also a dead-end. Futurism isn't an end. It is a means. We shouldn't let the technology determine what kind of music we make, we should use the technology to make our music. For an example of this, read my recent review of BT, by far the most clear-cut example of an artist who's completely ditched creativity in musicianship for relentless studio perfection and technological innovation.
ToxicGreenWaste
Though I must admit that it does get a little ridiculous sometimes.
