When electronic music sounded new, like the future... what went wrong!

[cryophonik]

While we’re on the topic, is futurepop still a thing? I was a big VNV Nation fan for a while, but everything after FuturePerfect got sorta stale, almost as though they just wanted to keep recreating that album or something. Still listen to older Covenant, Assemblage 23, Cruxshadows, Apoptygma Berzerk, etc. on occasion, but it seems that genre sorta ran it course, or maybe I just lost touch?

[melomood]

I stand corrected, music that people get pretentious about

[dayjob]

I stand corrected, music that people get pretentious about

Kanye?

[melomood]

Kanye would get pretentious about garbanzo beans if you let him

[lobanov]

I just don't get why people spend so much energy copying something so perfectly and not using their obvious talent to make something new that we haven't heard before rather than a more perfect copy. I can and do get bored of technology and I prefer new, original instruments rather than re-hashing the old stuff to look and sound like the old stuff, that my opinion!

Why? Because making a little of hype and money is easier by ensconcing oneself alongside somebody else's glory. They don't invent. They sell. Not what they made themselves. What could be sold. They are just parasites.

But at the same time the digital modelling of old analog gear is a big invention. Very big.

[SLiC]

Maybe MPE will do it? but I kinda doubt it. The whole approach has to change to make a new genre, which by default sounds like the future™.

Yes, I agree...the innovation I am seeing is with the way things are played and the ability to play with expression (perhaps one of the reasons that so many people pick guitar over keys....)

Midi 2 and MPE are amongst us, but defiantly not mainstream yet. Maybe the hardware has to change before the software does...Midi 2 is perhaps the biggest change and the most interesting thing that has happened for a very long time, but there doesn't seem to be much 'buzz' about it?

https://qz.com/1788828/how-will-midi-2-0-change-music/

Velocity sensitivity indistinguishable from analogue (65536 possible velocity values not 127!), expression methods we haven't even thought of yet with MPE, 2 way communication means software can 'reprogram' your hardware per patch far beyond what we can do with current controllers...the future may still be very bright, I just want it now As an afterthought- Midi2 eliminates the need competing protocols for getting plugin information to keyboard displays/controls (NKS for example) which would be great if all plugs and all MIDI2 controllers just work one day!

[SLiC]

I just don't get why people spend so much energy copying something so perfectly and not using their obvious talent to make something new that we haven't heard before rather than a more perfect copy. I can and do get bored of technology and I prefer new, original instruments rather than re-hashing the old stuff to look and sound like the old stuff, that my opinion!

But at the same time the digital modelling of old analog gear is a big invention. Very big.

I agree, and I like the sound of analogue synths- I own plenty of analogue hardware and VST VAs; I totally get the limitations on hardware, but I just don't get people 'copying the limitations' that were imposed on hardware of the time...bringing out new hyper accurate VA synths with just 1 LFO for example, or just basic ADSR control. Why not 'build on' the past, not just copy it exactly, warts and all!

[BONES]

Just an aside because I do largely agree with your point, but this, completely contradicts your earlier post:

Not in context, it isn't - he started it, I finished it.

You tend to post your personal opinion like it's a fact

No I don't. I am careful to separate the two, you guys are just too dumb to see that. e.g. I made it quite clear that I have hardware because I like to have hardware. That's my personal opinion. I also said that hardware does not in any way sound better than software and that's just a plain, irrefutable fact. If Noumena wanted to say he prefers the sound of his hardware to that of software, then that is his opinion and I'd be fine with that, but when we tries to say that it actually sounds better, that's him presenting his opinion as fact, which is wrong and something I do not do.

in this case laced with ad hominem, there's really no way to get around the obvious contradiction here.

If that were true, but it is not. Find an example of any ad hominen arguments here, if you can. There are plenty on the other side of the argument, not on mine.

BTW I hate that Sixth Comm guys voice. The music isn't bad, but damn that's some stereotypical 80's yodeling, and they sound nothing like Autechre.

To me, they evoke a similar mood, similar emotions, which is surely the purpose of music, isn't it? The instrumentation is irrelevant.

i only used autechre as an example in my post. you went out of your way to be dismissive and condescending and kind of ridiculous.

Not at all. Here's what you said - "there are lot's of things to discover if you've not crossed paths with autechre by 2021.." Do you not see how condescending that is? And then, to prove that condescension was just what you intended, you said "enjoy the box you're trapped in" when someone took exception.

I don't expect people to like the things i like. i feel w/autechre it makes sense to say "start at the beginning" for the uninitiated since they create a new genre w/every other album or so and the music can and does change a lot between releases or eras.

But they still don't write rock songs with lyrics/vocals, verses and choruses so, if that's your thing, you'll never get into them. If, like me, you find instrumental music boring and unfulfilling, you'll never like Autechre.

I guess i do have some expectation of 'serious' people on the internet to acknowledge that bands who've been killing it for 30 years are accomplished even if you don't like them.

So you'd have considerably more respect/admiration for Kylie Minogue, then? After all, she's been killing it a few orders of magnitudes better than Autechre for roughly as long.

i'd argue that a lot of things that we all cherish were at some time were not considered 'proper' songs by plenty of people.

A song has to have lyrics and vocals, otherwise it's just music. In my experience, music is pretty easy, songs are much harder.

also genres are a thing.

Mostly in dance music, much less so elsewhere.

even Killing Joke write 10 minute songs sometimes.

No, they wrote four minute songs for Hosannas From the Basements of Hell and stretched them out to 10 minutes. It was repetitive and awful (from their second-worst period).

[BONES]

It has breathed new life in to arguing over the most pretentious of musical acts whilst referring to pop music as a guilty pleasure that can never just be liked but admitted to liking despite ones otherwise discerning tastes
as if capturing the zeitgiest,so to speak

Interestingly, there was a time when there was plenty of Top 10 music that I didn't just like, but loved. From Devo's Whip It! and Wall of Voodoo's Far Side of Crazy to A Flock of Seagulls' I Ran (So Far Away) and Yello's Oh Yeah!. Those are songs I still enjoy almost 40 years later. Back then there was balance of the real pop, like Rick Astley and Madonna, and stuff out of left field but today it's all what I'd call the bad stuff, none of the good. All of which, of course, has an effect on the viability of anything outside of that very narrow mainstream.

putting out popular songs that become international hits is some lazy,offensive exercise

I think it's that most of that stuff, especially these days, feels more than ever like a product of a series of focus groups, a product rather than a work of art.

While we’re on the topic, is futurepop still a thing? I was a big VNV Nation fan for a while, but everything after FuturePerfect got sorta stale, almost as though they just wanted to keep recreating that album or something. Still listen to older Covenant, Assemblage 23, Cruxshadows, Apoptygma Berzerk, etc. on occasion, but it seems that genre sorta ran it course, or maybe I just lost touch?

I think it got too big to go away completely. FuturePerfect was a bridge too far for me, although I thought Judgement was a bit of a return to form.

I just don't get people 'copying the limitations' that were imposed on hardware of the time...bringing out new hyper accurate VA synths with just 1 LFO for example, or just basic ADSR control. Why not 'build on' the past, not just copy it exactly, warts and all!

Those are the things I like about emulations because they get the job done. I very rarely need more than one LFO or an ADSR envelope, so I tend to prefer synths that don't clutter themselves up with stuff I don't need. Of course, there are times when I do need more, and I'm glad I have a few synths to accommodate that, but most of the time I'd rather use simple tools that get the job done quickly and efficiently.

[excuse me please]

There seems to be some sort of delusion going on. That the future is about something new.

How could that future possibly become something else than a growing pile of polished turds??? By matter of expectation.

[vurt]

you just dont get it and youre not my real dad

eg: i love nurse with wound, like a lot! off the top of my head they have about 30 albums (plus or minus...) go check a couple of bits out, just a couple of mins here and there, it will sound like some random garbage perhaps, but if you listen to even a couple of full length releases a couple of times, while i dont expect you to like or even enjoy slightly, i would expect anyone in our game, to hear that he does know what he is doing!

its possible to dislike a thing, but still hear the skill, or lack thereof imo

Nurse With Wound are a good example. I used Whitehouse because they're universally despised. NWW are a one man project more or less, met him once, nice guy, not pretentious at all which is cool considering he's considered "thinking mans" experimental noise music, and that crowd can be as snobby as elite jazz musicians.

The thing is no one has to "get it", and sometimes there's not a chance in hell people will. Does the music move you? that's the question, and only you can answer that.

i picked them for their (his) eclectic nature, if you took spiral insana, pirate radio station and dissecting table, you could tell someone it was 3 different acts, or they might hear one of those and think "im not really into that" thinking they've heard nww, when they might have adored nww had they chose a different release.

not that im saying everyone should like them
just "it's easy to think you know a bands output from one or two albums, but you might find a surprise if you try a different release"

[vurt]

There seems to be some sort of delusion going on. That the future is about something new.

How could that future possibly become something else than a growing pile of polished turds??? By matter of expectation.

surely by continuing with only the old, we just get diluted versions of the past?
by breaking and rebuilding, we can find new avenues. will they all lead somewhere grand? no, some will be dingy little shit holes where you get stabbed for your shoes.

[melomood]

I think somebody is looking at the 80's through the rose colored glasses of whatever bubble they didn't realise was enveloping their world perspective

[vurt]

nice shoes mate, come here and have a look down this alley...

[melomood]

Ain't that how the Velvet Underground was started?