KVR Audio

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 6:39 pm

Which artists do you guys find difficult to classify or describe to somebody? Maybe because they don't fit cleanly into a nice little genre, or their styles are so unique, or all over the place crossing over multiple genres, etc.?

Delerium comes to mind for me. They've been one of my favorites for many years and highly influential to my own music, but any time I try to describe them to somebody, I just go...uhhhh....sorta ambient, ethereal, pop, alt-rock, uhhhh....vocals now, but not before, and...

Others? I'd be interested to hear if people have some good ways of describing some of these artists, too.

Tricky-Loops · Post by **Tricky-Loops** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 6:58 pm

Delerium is great, and incredible that it's founded by a hardcore trash metal guy...

Another great project is Enigma by Michael Cretu!

I wouldn't call it New Age music, it's a mixture of everything...

tehlord · Post by **tehlord** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 7:02 pm

Yello

I mean.......

Numanoid · Post by **Numanoid** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 7:28 pm

cryophonik wrote:Which artists do you guys find difficult to classify or describe to somebody? Maybe because they don't fit cleanly into a nice little genre, or their styles are so unique, or all over the place crossing over multiple genres, etc.?

Emerson, Lake and Palmer, they can do some great prog rock, and then the next track is like some honky tonk piano thing, followed by a soppy ballad

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 9:30 pm

tehlord wrote:Yello

I mean.......

I thought they were just straight-up ambient death polka?

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 9:43 pm

I live in a world without these genres. They're cyanide to me. They can be useful for tracking down and talking about music, but I never finish listening to something or writing and then say "that made a pretty good minimal glitch techno tune" or any other thought involving anything but the broadest genres.

The best artists make music that's so personal that nobody would be able to copy it or steal ideas from it, because of the way the ideas fit together to form a whole. Catering to a genre is just marketing, I don't want to be marketing while my creativity is taking flight. Screw that.

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 9:50 pm

I totally agree with you, Sendy, and that's sorta what I'm looking for - the artists who don't cater to or fit into any specific genres. For most artists, you can throw out an artist name and throw out a genre (e.g., prog rock, new country, death metal, trance, techno, indie folk rock) and people will have a good idea of what you're talking about. But, the question isn't about whether that's good or bad, it's just simply, which artists defy classification in a genre(s)?

TLDR: names. I want names. Give me Sendy's list.

RunBeerRun · Post by **RunBeerRun** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 9:57 pm

Devo- are they men, or are they devo? Actually I couldn't listen to their newest album, it was really good, but too modern-compressed, not just loud, but sterotypically ugly.

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 9:59 pm

I'll add Late Night Alumni to my list, but with a caveat. I don't think that they can be pigeon-holed as artists into a single category, but each one of their songs can be relatively easily categorized into a genre/style. But, they cover a LOT of different genres/styles very well. Their most popular stuff is their house-ish/dance music, particularly the various remixes of their songs. But, it you listen to their entire body or work, it ranges from ambient to piano ballads to latin influenced pop to house to trance to DnB and more.

robogone · Post by **robogone** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 11:04 pm

No one really. The genre nazis will take care of that.

debra1rlo · Post by **debra1rlo** » Fri Jun 20, 2014 11:10 pm

robojam wrote:No one really. The genre nazis will take care of that.

Surely you jest, but my grandparents died in the tarnce ovens during the rave wars

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sat Jun 21, 2014 12:25 am

robojam wrote:No one really. The genre nazis will take care of that.

The truth is, most of the stuff that you guys are posting isn't hard to categorize, you think it is because you want it to be so. Whatever bin you find it in at iTunes/Walmart/your favorite record store is the category, whether you like it or not.

If you'd like your own special category to feel special, I'd call stuff like deleirum and enigma "pussy poptronica" and I would expect to find them next to Bjork albums along with sample CDs of cats being strangled. The thing is, quite a few artists are not "categorizable", but their tracks most certainly are. Miley Cyrus singing Jolene couldn't be called pop by any standard today, it's clearly country even if the original was a crossover hit.

A lot of electronic artists cross genres as well. So it's very likely that an artist that might sometimes find themselves in "pussy poptronica" can also be found in "new age", while other of their tracks might be classified as "elevator breakbeat."

There all attached somewhere to the chillout branch of the EDM tree and could be called different things depending on the context in which they're played. Saying that they're interesting because they're varied is really just identifying that chillout music often has less structure, and, perhaps thats simply because they're not played in a setting where anyone really cares about the structure.

http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/music.swf

Devo was new wave but moves around between various styles.

Genres are useful for music study at some level, but I don't find these conversations to generally be anything more than another "my favorite band" list.

And that, is the trick to categorizing the uncategorizable, ask someone who doesn't like it as much as you do.

Hink · Post by **Hink** » Sat Jun 21, 2014 1:01 am

robojam wrote:No one really. The genre nazis will take care of that.

Tricky-Loops · Post by **Tricky-Loops** » Sat Jun 21, 2014 1:05 am

debra1rlo wrote:
robojam wrote:No one really. The genre nazis will take care of that.
Surely you jest, but my grandparents died in the tarnce ovens during the rave wars

If you had said this in Germany, your career would have been gone forever...

cryophonik · Post by **cryophonik** » Sat Jun 21, 2014 1:42 am

Tricky-Loops wrote:Delerium is great, and incredible that it's founded by a hardcore trash metal guy...

Despite their popular crossover "hits" like Silence, etc., the majority of their work (esp. everything up to Semantic Spaces) would not be remotely considered "poptronica". It's more like a mixture of ambient and industrial, 100% instrumental, etc.

Artists that are difficult to categorize