The next new thing.....

[MATT MAson]

The point missing here, that is also happening in the funky house thread, is that new 'things' are not just defined by the music. It's about scenes that could only exist now, and sometimes its hard to get a clear picture of a scene just by looking at the music.

Maybe the most relevant, vibrant scene right now in the whole world is a load of kids dressing in medival costumes in disused barns in rural Belgium, drinking meths and listening to old American big band swing records. Whow knows. But you wouldn't be able to understand this scene just by listening to old big band swing records, capeesh?

Take the northern soul scene for example, or rare groove. To someone outside of those scenes, they are just a bunch of records from somewhere else. It's about how music is interpreted or consumed too, rather than just how it is produced.

Right, I'm off to Belgium...

 

[gek-opel]

There's just as many new things true, but its just that many in this discussion would view them as only nominally new (new scenes- yes, but musically? Merely tweakings or updatings of previous and now long gone innovations).

 

[seahorsegenius]

I dunno, I hear a lot of stuff like say, Lightning Bolt, who everybody raves about, but that could easily have come out in the 90s.

I don't think it would have been possible. Lighting Bolt wouldn't be the way they are today if it wern't for their Fort Thunder/RI upbringing. And Fort Thunder was completely dependant on 90's pop culture nostalgia. Taking that, and running with it through noise rock, krautrock, and even jazz. Yeah, all of those (besides noise rock) are old genre's, but without growing up in the RI scene, and adding the "zany-ness", they would just sound like Ruins.

What are you thinking of?

Psych folk, psych rock, doom, and almost any variation of this. When I say psych folk, I'm not talking about Devendra Banhart. But, Six Organs Of Admittance, Wooden Wand, and countless other bands that follow them. You all know this, but for some reason it's being overlooked in this thread?

 

[swears]

There was loads of the thrashier end of post-rock that sounded like Lightning Bolt, and all those "freak folk" records are designed to sound like they came out in 1970.
Part of the problem is nobody's strict enough now, it's just a free for all.

 

[gek-opel]

Its the lack of narrative which is key: Outside of sub-sub-genres there is no storyline to music anymore...
I'm not a big enough fan to comment on freak-folk/new weird America stuff and whether or not it is indeed innovative, but as far as certain post-metal stuff goes (eg- Sunn0))), Isis, Neurosis, Jesu etc) it all seems like pretty new moves to me, (albeit within the context of metal- but then again even something like postpunk was only "new" in the context of rock...)

 

[seahorsegenius]

Who is designed to sound old? Devendra? Joanna? Maybe. But, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Wooden Wand, etc? No way. If noise and drone haven't had matured over these last few years as it has, who knows what they would sound like?

 

[tate]

The point missing here, that is also happening in the funky house thread, is that new 'things' are not just defined by the music. It's about scenes that could only exist now, and sometimes its hard to get a clear picture of a scene just by looking at the music.

Take the northern soul scene for example, or rare groove. To someone outside of those scenes, they are just a bunch of records from somewhere else. It's about how music is interpreted or consumed too, rather than just how it is produced.

Right, I'm off to Belgium...

This, to me, is one of the most interesting things to have been said on the thread thus far. It also begins to touch on the point made by Woebot earlier, i.e., that Woebot's conception of "the new thing" was not merely musical but would include a shift in the media landscape and perhaps a radicalization of the middle classes as well (his words, not mine).

It seems that the existence of a genuine "scene" can divide opinion in different ways: if there is innovative music AND a scene developing around it, then the music critics begin to believe that they are dealing with a genuinely "new thing" and will champion it (e.g., in the UK: jungle, grime, dubstep, etc etc). But if the opposite is true, that there is indeed a "scene" but no interesting musical innovation accompanying it (e.g., funky house, according to its critics), then the music critics will slag off the emergent scene as just one more example of tired musical cliches recycled for the champagne-toasting horde-mentality club jerkoffs or whatever. Just musing here, but it seems to that there are more nuances to the "new thing" discussion than one may care at first blush to entertain.

 

[swears]

Take the northern soul scene for example, or rare groove. To someone outside of those scenes, they are just a bunch of records from somewhere else. It's about how music is interpreted or consumed too, rather than just how it is produced.

Right, I'm off to Belgium...

But weren't northern soul and rare groove scenes where a lot of the crowd hadn't heard hadn't heard the ten year old records being played? (From what I understand reading about them) And didn't they place those records in new contexts? Revolving around all night speed fueled dancing or the cult of the hipster DJ with his stash of obscure vinyl respectively. Surely most people are more than familiar with funky house, it's been mainstream for almost a decade.

 

[gek-opel]

@tate/Matt Mason: You are correct of course, but does Dubstep, which I would be prepared to accept as a "new thing" really twist the interaction between producers and consumers, or alter the live situation (ie dj plays records in a club)? Not really. I mean you could make claims to its increasing reliance on Web 2.0 type applications and communities to proselytise and function as a media for it (in a way which seems to follow on from Grime but in a more extensive, and seemingly successful way)... but that's happening in many other genres. I agree that a radical shakedown/up of the interconnections between the various interested parties within the "scene" of the "new thing" would be desirable, but at present it appears that this is not occurring. For example, a problem me and my friends have often thought of is how to create something innovative in the live arena, ie- where the consumer meets fellow consumer, meets producer, and their music is performed/played... beyond either a club or a gig, how could the balances of power be shaken up without de-volving into some dire collective improv type London Musicians Collective sort of thing?

 

[Guybrush]

@Tate/Matt Mason: You are correct of course, but does Dubstep, which I would be prepared to accept as a "new thing" really twist the interaction between producers and consumers, or alter the live situation (ie dj plays records in a club)? Not really. I mean you could make claims to its increasing reliance on Web 2.0 type applications and communities to proselytise and function as a media for it (in a way which seems to follow on from Grime but in a more extensive, and seemingly successful way)... but that's happening in many other genres. I agree that a radical shakedown/up of the interconnections between the various interested parties within the "scene" of the "new thing" would be desirable, but at present it appears that this is not occurring. For example, a problem me and my friends have often thought of is how to create something innovative in the live arena, ie- where the consumer meets fellow consumer, meets producer, and their music is performed/played... beyond either a club or a gig, how could the balances of power be shaken up without de-volving into some dire collective improv type London Musicians Collective sort of thing?

You could allow each of the visitors to upload one song from their mp3-player/I-pod/whatever to a central server upon entering the club, and then have the dj to only be allowed to select songs from this pool of songs. Remember where you read it first .

 

[swears]

Yes, I know Vice are a bit offensive and childish for the sake of it, and they take the piss out out those less fortunate, etc...
But every now and they hit the nail on the head:

http://www.viceland.com/int/dd.php?id=385&country=us

"Do you get the feeling we’re on the cusp of something great? Rap and punk and metal haven’t done shit for us lately and electronica’s offshoots all died in the water, but everyone seems to be at that exact zenith of not giving a shit where greatness has no choice but to explode."

Does anyone get this feeling where they are? Or is the fella that wrote this just off his tits on coke or something?

 

[gek-opel]

He's talking bollocks tho... metal and electronic music (at their most subterranean levels, admittedly) are still producing legitimately modernist work. Its on the level of a mass-scale phenomenon that nothing is going on, and I think, will continue to fail to occur for some time. I think the insufflation of schnoz-candy may well have been involved...

 

[mistersloane]

where the consumer meets fellow consumer, meets producer, and their music is performed/played... beyond either a club or a gig, how could the balances of power be shaken up without de-volving into some dire collective improv type London Musicians Collective sort of thing?

What we've been doing on the radio show is to allow anyone who wants to contribute to contribute - playing live, MCing, singing, doing laptop work, whatever - over a pre-recorded mix which again anyone can submit to ( it's random/artistic choice as to what goes into that final mix ) and we then mix people up and down - frequently up all at the same time but that's an aesthetic choice.
When we played live we had about 20 people on stage, and I was faced with the interesting question ( being 'director' or whatever of the process ) of asking people whether they were going to be on stage that night, as even I didn;t know, and I'd organised the fucking thing.
I hasten to add this is over a mix of contemporary beats n stuff, so it's not just the collective improv thing which I hate as much as anyone else.
I don't see this as too hard a process to follow, and people seem to enjoy it, and I don't see it being done anywhere else.

 

[gek-opel]

Yer, I've heard about this. Sounds intriguing, especially the radio shows.... But I'm unsure as to exactly how it breaks the tyranny of the live format- its still effectively a group and an audience. Its a first step to breaking that down, but it still leaves you with that hierarchy of producer/consumer. Jacques Attali has written about this ("Noise" I think the book was called) his "third stage" of negotiating with violence is apparently transforming everyone into producers... Now if my friend Tatarsky would LEND ME THIS BOOK I could tell you more [hint]

Another part of me (as a musician) makes me think that control of every parameter (auterism) is not something that should be ignored... its getting some sense of direction out of group improv thats the difficulty... in propah improv its a political thing, a negotiation of sorts. Kind of dry unless you are particuarly into that kind of music...

 

[mistersloane]

Yer, I've heard about this. Sounds intriguing, especially the radio shows.... But I'm unsure as to exactly how it breaks the tyranny of the live format- its still effectively a group and an audience. Its a first step to breaking that down, but it still leaves you with that hierarchy of producer/consumer. Jacques Attali has written about this ("Noise" I think the book was called) his "third stage" of negotiating with violence is apparently transforming everyone into producers... Now if my friend Tatarsky would LEND ME THIS BOOK I could tell you more [hint]

Another part of me (as a musician) makes me think that control of every parameter (auterism) is not something that should be ignored... its getting some sense of direction out of group improv thats the difficulty... in propah improv its a political thing, a negotiation of sorts. Kind of dry unless you are particuarly into that kind of music...

I'm not sure that there is an audience / performer divide, I'm kinda with intersubjectivity on that, but I know what you mean, i think. Do I? How can not knowing who the audience and the performers are be anything other than breaking that supposed tyranny? What could be more egalitarian than that possibilty?

I'm also saying that we do control every parameter through the mixing desk, each person is ( usually ) playing along all the time, and it's the person on the desk at that point who decides on the direction the work goes in. That's usually me, but more often than not even that supposed 'auteurism' is lost wihin the...within what happens. I often get utterly lost. Or found, depending on how you look at it.

I know the book but never finished it lol. Maybe I should have done.

 

[swears]

He's talking bollocks tho... metal and electronic music (at their most subterranean levels, admittedly) are still producing legitimately modernist work. Its on the level of a mass-scale phenomenon that nothing is going on, and I think, will continue to fail to occur for some time. I think the insufflation of schnoz-candy may well have been involved...

I was just thinking that maybe most people wouldn't even worry about the next big thing, but if two sets of people as different as Vice and Dissensus are entertaining the idea, then it could be a sign that something is about to change.

 

[woops]

You could allow each of the visitors to upload one song from their mp3-player/I-pod/whatever to a central server upon entering the club, and then have the dj to only be allowed to select songs from this pool of songs.

Wyatting 2.0 anyone?

 

[mistersloane]

Wyatting 2.0 anyone?

All You Can Eat did that idea already I think

 

[Kate Mossad]

@swears "...two sets of people as different as Vice and Dissensus..." Is there really that much difference? Can you be more specific? Do you mean to readers or writers?

 

[swears]

@Swears "...two sets of people as different as Vice and Dissensus..." Is there really that much difference? Can you be more specific? Do you mean to readers or writers?

Dissensus is kinda leftist (I would hope!) wasn't Kpunk a founding member? He's a self confessed "dogmatic" Marxist. Vice is either nihilistically apolitical or conservative, depending on who you believe. Vice doesn't really seem to give a shit about artistic or political progress, they just wanna party and get wasted. I like Piers Martin's Electric Independence column, though.