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a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
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Kid Calamity
9042 posts

Re: a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
Aug 28, 2008, 17:12
starcar wrote:
I have a sneaking suspicion that all in music has been said and done.


Bugger. I was just about to reform my band after our Summer holidays, an'all. Won't bother now.
Eduardo
Eduardo
375 posts

Re: a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
Aug 28, 2008, 17:14
Pretty much agree, except the "born late" bit. I was most receptive between 79 & 85 & I don't think there has been a better time. I mostly (re)plough the same furrow now to be honest.
Popel Vooje
5373 posts

Edited Aug 28, 2008, 17:21
Re: a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
Aug 28, 2008, 17:19
That's not what I gleaned from his post myself, but it was a facetious comment anyway, so what the heck. Personally I've more or less given up looking for the shock of the new - I can't point to any one genre of music right now that I could define as being on the cutting edge, but there are still plenty of disparate delights emanating from all over the genrescape.

Some of my favourite LPs of recent months have actually been highly derivative (like the Black Angels and Spectrum Vs Captain Memphis - the latter earns originality points merely for sounding like two entirely seperate albums crowbarred into one, but I still love it), whilst others - like the Fuck Buttons' "Street Horrrsing" - can't immediately be traced back to specific sources but still feel like part of an avant-electronic lineage nonetheless.

The other question I'd have to ask is whether music actually has to be innnovative in order to justify its existence. If that were so, then I'd agree that there hasn't been much music of note released recently, but I also feel that in terms of music's subjective appeal to the listener, originality is only part of the picture.
Moon Cat
9577 posts

Edited Aug 28, 2008, 17:55
Re: a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
Aug 28, 2008, 17:47
It might well be that bands playing rigidly within certain genre confines - be it punk, hip-hop, metal et al - may well be just regurgitating the past.
But it seems to me that we are in the age of the mash-up - mixing stuff up. I don't even think this is a conscious thing on behalf of artists to 'move music forward' as such - indeed, I think the results of such a thing would in all likeliness be truly horrible. However, so many forms of music have gradually been assimilated into some kind of musical consciousness that it's almost inevitable that artists have absorbed a wide range of stuff, and by instinct, might be open to the idea of mixing things up a bit. Hence you get stuff like drum n bass mixed with metal.

Also, I think the idea of 'no new music' is perhaps a slightly jaded view of what might constitute Western, and probably, British or American popular music. I've certainly been exposed to more music of late that's taking in more European and "World" (sorry but couldn't think of another term as patronising as it is) influences as well as folk and jazz than I've ever been and I'm not even trying hard to seek 'new' music. And this is a two-way street.

I think 'new' might not be as helpful a term as 'different' anyway. x
Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Edited Aug 28, 2008, 18:44
Rock careers and the end of music!
Aug 28, 2008, 18:38
Very well put! Rock has entered a sort of "careerist" phase, the "art rebels" are long since passe.

Absolutely like what happened to jazz "after Miles retired" in 1976 (that was the turning point, or at least symbolic thereof!)

For rock I think the turning point happened around the time Cobain offed himself and Snoop Doggy Dogg had the biggest selling record since "Thriller" (though I don't think it was any one person who did it, the more likely culprit would be "the music & media biz" conglomerating and merging and all but eliminating truly "independent" outlets. "Grunge" was a marketing label that spelled the death of "Indie"!)

I kinda feel like hip-hop was going to be "the next thing", but it got strangled in the cradle after a good run of barely 15 years. The "thug/bling" stuff that's popular today is just the worst commercial drivel. (Remember when hiphop was sonicly adventurous and had meaningful lyrics, and couldn't be easily stereotyped as "some gold-toothed guy grunting about how rich he is over a lowest-common-denominator dance beat"? Again, I think this is driven by media & business imperatives, though if you have to point a finger I nominate Dr. Dre for inventing the slick but ultimately empty "gangsta" style.)

In the bigger historical perspective, I wonder if the "age of music" isn't waning -- replaced by "the age of televison screens" of course!

Our society is getting a lot more "visual" and less "audio."

Remember when having a big cool fancy "stereo system" was all the rage? Reel to reel quadrophonic sound!! Nowadays you only get fancy audio gear for your "entertainment system" which always has a big TV screen at the center . . .

While these days music is often listened to on iPods and similar devices, which have the audiophile quality of a transistor radio! That says a lot about the priority of music in our culture . . .
Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Shock of the new . . .
Aug 28, 2008, 18:56
I still experience the "shock of the new" all the time . . . usually listening to old music that I haven't heard before.

"It's new to me."

I'm a fan of both of those new ones you mentioned -- lately I have just discovered the new MATMOS album "Supreme Balloon" which is the best analog electro avant pop record I've heard since the 70's heyday of Kraftwerk & Cluster! (Never heard anything else by Matmos before -- I probably need to.)

"But is it new?"

Maybe not, but he does have "an original approach to an old sound" . . . likewise I love the stuff Steve Malkmus & His Jicks are up to these days -- "Pavement meets The Groundhogs as produced by Lindsay Buckingham", except that it sounds like nobody but Malkmus. It's not new, but it's original (or is it the other way around?)

As for shock-of-the-new records from this decade (that really don't sound particularly like anything from the past) I would nominate LIARS ("Drowned" and "Drum" in particular) and SCOTT WALKER's "THE DRIFT" (which is very artsy and has very little to do with "rock" -- but it sure is "new and different.")
zphage
zphage
3378 posts

Edited Aug 28, 2008, 19:50
Re: a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
Aug 28, 2008, 19:50
Moon Cat wrote:
It might well be that bands playing rigidly within certain genre confines - be it punk, hip-hop, metal et al - may well be just regurgitating the past.
But it seems to me that we are in the age of the mash-up - mixing stuff up. I don't even think this is a conscious thing on behalf of artists to 'move music forward' as such - indeed, I think the results of such a thing would in all likeliness be truly horrible. However, so many forms of music have gradually been assimilated into some kind of musical consciousness that it's almost inevitable that artists have absorbed a wide range of stuff, and by instinct, might be open to the idea of mixing things up a bit. Hence you get stuff like drum n bass mixed with metal.

Also, I think the idea of 'no new music' is perhaps a slightly jaded view of what might constitute Western, and probably, British or American popular music. I've certainly been exposed to more music of late that's taking in more European and "World" (sorry but couldn't think of another term as patronising as it is) influences as well as folk and jazz than I've ever been and I'm not even trying hard to seek 'new' music. And this is a two-way street.

I think 'new' might not be as helpful a term as 'different' anyway. x


I agree.

I think the average person's ear is quite sophisticated harmonically, melodically, and rhythmically.

I think the next step will be the greater fusing of genres with skill.

Jazz and classical have backed themselves into corners with orthodoxy.
zphage
zphage
3378 posts

Re: Shock of the new . . .
Aug 28, 2008, 19:56
I also think it is where/how one gets their fix.

In the beginning, your teens, all this great muisc is fresh/exciting.


As you get older, your dance card gets filled with your favorites who do for you, what other bands/singers/musics do for another.

so you keep searching for your next harmonic/melodic/rhythmic fix you tend to get more arcane with what was satisfied simply.
Kid Calamity
9042 posts

Re: a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
Aug 28, 2008, 20:23
I agree, too.

But your bit about Jazz and Classical having backed themselves into a corner, or whatever is IMO, a little wide of the mark for me. Maybe it's just me. Perhaps I'd previously missed so much and am now only just discovering and catching up with otherwise unheard aspects of those genres. However, what I am hearing in what I'd call classical/elecronica or avant garde classical... or whatever is to me very new and fresh to me. And in the Jazz arena bands like Polar Bear are giving it a new twist.
Lawrence
9547 posts

Re: Shock of the new . . .
Aug 28, 2008, 20:51
I dunno. I'm definitely seeing that nothing I hear today is as good as what I listened to when I was younger. But I keep getting sneery about how obnoxious today's music is -- it's not so much it's bad music, but that it's such obvious pantomime really...
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