What if we don't stick to a genre?

[Functional]

I started about a year ago a project with a singer and we have a lot of material right now. In fact, we're soon going to release our first single.

Meanwhile, I realized that we in fact do not seem to care much about the genres. Our first single will be sort of indie pop. But we have material from dubstep (in spirit of deep medi) to trip hop (sort of massive attack/portishead style) to witch house to dub techno with shoegaze-vocals to pretty much anything we're interested in. It seems to me that even most generous genre-based categorization schemes will not fit us.

So the question is, what can we exactly do? Is it just my imagination or is it really absurd to release an album where the songs are completely disconnected from each other? The whole single/ep release path on the other hand also feels underwhelming to me because nobody really reviews EP's (as far as I know) and usually when people discuss about artists, we tend to speak in terms of "releases" or "albums", as in, "wow, this is a huge contrast with their previous album".

It seems obvious to me (and I think us) that sticking to any specific genre is not really an option, no matter what. But I wonder how will it affect us? Is there any alternative routes we should consider? One option that we have played around is that we might accumulate enough material to work under different aliases per genre. I know some people do this, but we'd have to have like three at minimum... and that's a lot of work + makes live-stuff & pr-stuff a hassle!

[knowix]

Depends on 2 things.

1: Do you want it to be played be lots of DJs? If your choice of sounds don't fit in with what everyone's playing currently, it might not be selected for play.

2: Do you want to be successful and well known? Don't underestimate the importance of a musical scene or movement. Unless you're amazingly talented, people won't pay as much attention to music that's out of fashion or isn't currently seen as exciting. But if you are amazingly talented, then you might be able to distort all musical reality around you; creating/championing a new genre, or reinvigorating an out of fashion one.

[aMUSEd]

The whole point of creativity is to expand beyond artificial limits and fashions. Genres are best ignored.

[Functional]

Depends on 2 things.

1: Do you want it to be played be lots of DJs? If your choice of sounds don't fit in with what everyone's playing currently, it might not be selected for play.

2: Do you want to be successful and well known? Don't underestimate the importance of a musical scene or movement. Unless you're amazingly talented, people won't pay as much attention to music that's out of fashion or isn't currently seen as exciting. But if you are amazingly talented, then you might be able to distort all musical reality around you; creating/championing a new genre, or reinvigorating an out of fashion one.

As for 1, we aren't doing that kind of music and we don't care much about dance music scenes, especially the mainstream ones, where that sort of thing matters. We can't get closer to pop than indie pop and that's not the sort of stuff that any DJ would play. As a comparison, think of The Knife. They are quite popular in indie scene, but their stuff would very unlikely be found in any DJ playlist.

As for 2, I think the point is bit missed. It's not about "what is currently in fashion" but it's about whenever it's reasonable to release albums where the songs are highly disconnected. To give you a couple of examples, here's two sketches for new songs: http://picosong.com/aJpP/ & http://picosong.com/a7th/

Let's say we do something out of them and nothing changes that dramatically. Other one has that laidback dub techno atmosphere but with rather downtempo-style drums, whereas other is just more traditional witch house, really dirty (though drums are just fillers in that sketch). Wouldn't it be very strange to have these two in the same album?

You can't even argue that there's a whole new genre. These two are simply disconnected from each other. They share very little in common. Even the vocals will be very different.

The whole point of creativity is to expand beyond artificial limits and fashions. Genres are best ignored.

Question remains though: is it reasonable to blend things up in one album release?

[deastman]

Established recording artists will often record as many as thirty songs for a single album. The process of culling that down to ten or so songs for ultimate release on the album is all about finding which songs work best together and presenting a cohesive musical journey.

[Functional]

Established recording artists will often record as many as thirty songs for a single album. The process of culling that down to ten or so songs for ultimate release on the album is all about finding which songs work best together and presenting a cohesive musical journey.

What happens with the rest of the songs? They just circulate in obscure sites or wait for a chance to be found in another release? I mean this sort of thing also feels very uncomfortable, to know that there is material with potentially people loving it and yet they can't get to hear it due to formality which seems just unnecessary...

[mellotronaut]

The whole point of creativity is to expand beyond artificial limits and fashions. Genres are best ignored.

this and:
you have to try harder to get a fanbase, if you go beyond easily recognizable "genres". you need to go the usual facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube, blog etc. way, if you want to have some recognition. a local approach could work too: go live and send your stuff to local radio and regional/national tv stations. promo will need a lot of time anyway, though there are exceptions.
if you just want to have fun, post your music on Bandcamp and live a happy life instead.

[DJ Warmonger]

So far I saw many EDM artists who stick to one genre in their singles, but when they release album - it's free form, from ambient or chillout to some heavier stuff. It all depends on you and your market position

It's up to you whether you can actually create an album that makes some sense despite being quite diverse. A single needs to stand on its own, an album can have tracks of various quality and ideas split among different tracks.

[Functional]

The whole point of creativity is to expand beyond artificial limits and fashions. Genres are best ignored.

this and:
you have to try harder to get a fanbase, if you go beyond easily recognizable "genres". you need to go the usual facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube, blog etc. way, if you want to have some recognition. a local approach could work too: go live and send your stuff to local radio and regional/national tv stations. promo will need a lot of time anyway, though there are exceptions.
if you just want to have fun, post your music on Bandcamp and live a happy life instead.

Well, thanks to the singer, we will be very well connected with local indie scene and we won't have any trouble getting gigs. In fact, we could already have had some, but given that neither of us has done this before, we just recently realized that our live projects will be inherently different from what we do in my bedroom studio, especially due to processing & latency issues. We need a nice pedal setup for her (the singer) and hopefully she gets used to that. And I also need a mac computer, windows isn't just reliable enough for my taste. After that we can and will do live gigs happily.

Getting popular isn't really our concern. What concerns me personally though is the way we will release our music. Not due to popularity but due to how well people will receive an album that feels like a compilation of completely disconnected songs that share very little in common.

[Functional]

So far I saw many EDM artists who stick to one genre in their singles, but when they release album - it's free form, from ambient or chillout to some heavier stuff. It all depends on you and your market position

It's up to you whether you can actually create an album that makes some sense despite being quite diverse. A single needs to stand on its own, an album can have tracks of various quality and ideas split among different tracks.

While you make a good point, I'd still argue that these songs have more common to each other one way or another due to having similar elements from song-to-song basis. Usually it's the atmosphere which sort of connects all the songs, less so their rhythmic texture. It's hard to describe otherwise, but for example "Faith In Strangers" by Andy Stott, is a great example of this. The songs are indeed disconnected in many ways, but the glue is still the way they are messy, humane and distorted.

I just doubt we will have that kind of luxury to connect the songs like that, for now.

But strictly speaking of EDM (the mainstream EDM), I think the albums don't even matter there. It's really rare for anyone to care about an album or talk about "wow how good that album was". The audience seems to focus on singles anyway. This seems to be true for over 20 years now. Think of Pendulum "Hold Your Colour". How many people ever knew about that album despite having heard "Slam" or "Hold Your Colour"?

[Googly Smythe]

I've not read every single word in this thread, so apologies up front if this has been said.
I'm on a nostalgia binge, at the moment, (stay with me!) and I have been listening to a lot of my 60s albums. Now, The Beatles' White Album has tracks like Helter Skelter, an early metal track, followed immediately by Long, Long, Long, a wistful minimalist ballad.
On "In The Court Of The Crimson King", King Crimson followed 21st Century Schizoid Man with I Talk To The Wind.
I rest my case.

[mellotronaut]

Getting popular isn't really our concern. What concerns me personally though is the way we will release our music. Not due to popularity but due to how well people will receive an album that feels like a compilation of completely disconnected songs that share very little in common.

as long as the singer is recognisable and already known locally, you shouldn't worry at all.

[Functional]

I've not read every single word in this thread, so apologies up front if this has been said.
I'm on a nostalgia binge, at the moment, (stay with me!) and I have been listening to a lot of my 60s albums. Now, The Beatles' White Album has tracks like Helter Skelter, an early metal track, followed immediately by Long, Long, Long, a wistful minimalist ballad.
On "In The Court Of The Crimson King", King Crimson followed 21st Century Schizoid Man with I Talk To The Wind.
I rest my case.

Yes, times unfortunately change. We have to be realistic — we're unlikely to become some revolutionaries of music. Beatles could do whatever the hell they wanted to do because, well, they were the Beatles. There's far too much music these days to just have that kind of impact on people.

But maybe you're right. I mean, we don't have much expectations regarding our success (in fact, our artist name will be in cyrillic to not make things too easy for the casual consumer!). So I guess we could do the hell we wanted to. I just hope it won't affect us all that much in any negative way that we do not intend.

[Functional]

Getting popular isn't really our concern. What concerns me personally though is the way we will release our music. Not due to popularity but due to how well people will receive an album that feels like a compilation of completely disconnected songs that share very little in common.

as long as the singer is recognisable and already known locally, you shouldn't worry at all.

Fair enough then. I think we will have some songs where singer is not as recognizable but for the most part, we like to keep it so that it's recognizable. In fact, our first single will demonstrate her voice very well. And we plan to sort of "troll" people with it, because after that we want to do something shocking to break down the expectations. Then maybe something to comfort them. Haha, maybe this is the way we should structure an album.

But I think we have a huge advantage because we live in a country where indie electronic acts are basically rare. Very rare. And at the same time they all look to Sweden and admire them for that (us being in Finland). Not to say that Finland doesn't have any good electronic acts, but they are very marginal. There used to be one, "clouds", that got EP or two released in Deep Medi Musik but somehow then that thing stopped. Now everyone here is into a sort of spinoff of memphis rap which shares the dark atmosphere but twists it with rather childish and comical lyrics filled with tautologies and what not. I think it's awesome but we need more than that.

[mellotronaut]

Fair enough then. I think we will have some songs where singer is not as recognizable but for the most part, we like to keep it so that it's recognizable. In fact, our first single will demonstrate her voice very well. And we plan to sort of "troll" people with it, because after that we want to do something shocking to break down the expectations. Then maybe something to comfort them. Haha, maybe this is the way we should structure an album.

reminds me of Goldfrapp first cinematic, then nudisco, then edm, then psychedelic, then 80's synthpop and finally epic folk songs.