Worst "genre" created by a journalist part 4534547668686 : 'Hypnagogic Pop' by David Keenan.

Oi Keenan, leave the making of silly genre names in order to create hype to the NME. New Weird America was bad enough, but Hypnagogic Pop? Really? Fuck off!
You can shove that one up your arse along with your overpriced CDRs that you sell.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/images/artists/madlib/cover306.jpg
Now I'm going to go listen to Pocahaunted while cursing you some more.

Marcello to thread to slag off 18 Wheeler.

I was wondering why this term had suddenly appeared on Twitter.

Can you explain this term to me?

Does that bother you more than the fact that the tag for the Madlib article is 'Patrolling yesterday's universe with the Beat Konducta'? Seriously?

I like how the hierarchy of the text implies Peter Christopherson is his own genre

sorry, Sleazy Peter Christopherson

hurting 2 i haven't more than skimmed the start of the article but it seems to be an extension of that 'hauntology' idea no one really did anything with to the "post-noise underground" (sorry, "post-Noise underground", fucking hate the wire's typography)

i would like a scan of that madlib article, please

vahid I would but i dont have a scanner, sorry.

there is a bit of it here http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/browse/435/493/5474/1/1

The last time i got this annoyed by the wire was when they used Vladislav Delay instead of Luomo which I figured is because Luomo is a more famous handle. Also, genre that starts by trying to shoehorn Emeralds into the same tag as Pocahaunted is starting out pretty shakily. Like this stuff has a pretty small yet inconsistent remit, it's not specific nor is it a wide umbrella term.

the photo of madlibs records made me hella jealous btw

oh ffs http://www.last.fm/tag/hypnagogic%20pop

At least hypnagogic pop as a genre name is not as bad Pocahaunted is as a name for a band.

who the fuck are these bands anyway?

well see that's why he's written an article to bring them to your attention, i dunno that you can really fault that bit

yeah but i'd like someone to explain it to me in english so i don't have to scan 5 unreadable wire intro paragraphs next time i'm at the record store.

you will have to make do with

Hypnagogic pop

How James Ferraro, Spencer Clark, Pocahaunted, Emeralds, et al are floating beyond Noise to a dreampop hallucination of the 1980s. By David Keenan

Since I cant scan the article.

I like Pocahaunted and Emeralds but this making up of a genre name is just stupid.
Of course it will help Keenan sell this stuff in his shop/online mailorder.

i bought this because i knew i had some hours waiting around in train stations to deal with and had been through the paper and it was just - dear the wire, i really, really think you could be a very good magazine if you fixed your two or three really horrible pre-conceptions that you filter the entire world of recorded music through, and i am spending four pounds on you in the faith that someday you will, but there is not a single thing on that cover that doesn't make it hard to like you

the article makes it sound like 'hypnagogic pop' has a mean of ariel pink and a standard deviation of about two thirds of an ariel pink. the only ones i've actually heard are emeralds, who are droney synths + guitar, and pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEE8LzzLPDo

^ makes them sound a bit noisier than they are on the record

the wire in playing fast and loose with the definition of "pop" shocker

that song sounded like someone playing back one of those generic chinese restaurant flute songs at half speed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40-q81UmJ28

i got yer hypnogogic pop right here

well see that's why he's written an article to bring them to your attention, i dunno that you can really fault that bit

am content to no longer subscribe to this magazine, for a number of reasons

i do thumb through my back issues on occasion tho

Emeralds are awesome, Pocahaunted suck. There are way more bands both of these bands sound like other than each other.

solar bridge = top drawer lo-fi psych-drone

i just signed a deal to write a 33 1/3 book about hypnagogic pop....it's gonna basically be a first person account of me surfing the internet today....some ILXORS will be making cameo appearances! : )

i'm trying to think of something snappy and contrarian

sorry to derail, but ilx poster: "i know, right?": did you used to post under a different name? i think i'm guilty of having you mixed up with someone else for a very, very long time

no i've pretty much always been me iirc ; )

The last time i got this annoyed by the wire was when they used Vladislav Delay instead of Luomo which I figured is because Luomo is a more famous handle.

he uses difft handles for difft releases tho, i assume the wire just used whatever he was using at the time

I can't help thinking that the phrase 'hypnagogic pop' would be a better description of MBV etc than it is of Pocahaunted et al. And if it fits to any act these days, I reckon it'd be Grouper.

(oh okay thanks) (xposts)

this thread is now #3 on google for Hypnagogic Pop
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=hypnagogic+pop&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

the wire in playing fast and loose with the definition of "pop" shocker

indeed it may be a few dozen Skaters and Pocahaunted albums since I heard anything by them, but I really have no idea what they have to do with 'pop'.

"The last time i got this annoyed by the wire was when they used Vladislav Delay instead of Luomo which I figured is because Luomo is a more famous handle.

he uses difft handles for difft releases tho, i assume the wire just used whatever he was using at the time"

Also I'm not sure this would necessarily be true for readers of the Wire anyway.

i found the pdf of the hypnagogic pop on another board
hxxp://www.mediafire.com/?i0kyoexginm

reminds me of when the wire were really into Cocorosie

so you can read it all to your hearts content
xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjrQjt-d9o0

^ Kitchens of Distinction claiming the h-word the term for shoegaze

didnt the cure do it first?

i don't get why they don't just throw it in some hauntology bracket

giving it it's own thread where people start discussing it essentially legitimizes it, so good work herms

i just signed a deal to write a 33 1/3 book about hypnagogic pop....it's gonna basically be a first person account of me surfing the internet today....some ILXORS will be making cameo appearances! : )

― I'm a Matt...I'm a DC (M@tt He1ges0n), Monday, July 20, 2009 4:02 PM (1 hour ago)

i'll be cool, sounds like a bit of fun

^^^will be cool

i found the pdf of the hypnagogic pop on another board

Until I read the full article I won't know for sure, but there may be a connection of some kind with the Hypnagogue EP by former Keenan faves Current 93.

i think originally the term for bands like the skaters and pocohaunted was 'moan-wave'. srsly.

yep.

i would not call emeralds 'moan-wave,' they're of the 'new age wave.' ;) and theyre a relatively new band, compared to the skaters anyways..

ahh sorry, it said on that message board it was a PDF. I didnt d/l it as i have the magazine.

1) The day I give even half a toss about anything D Keenan says about music is ... well, the day someone invents a time machine and punts me back to 1996.

1.5) An erstwhile ILXor who might not care to be named here once amused the shit out of me with a hastily improvised and astonishingly vitriolic Keenan flipbook.

2) That Emeralds album remains one of the best things I've heard this year, though.

so weird, Emeralds used to suck so much upon inception, now i'm kind of into it.

also, Skaters as 'moan-wave' is fucking ridiculous. Skaters are fucking DMT caveman music.

the wire - 12 mags in a row where i like about 5% of the writing. i won't be re-subscribing (after 10 years).

I kind of think that 'to wind people up' is a pretty good reason to come up with spurious genre names at this point in time

Also a quick skim of this article made it seem pretty interesting and made me want to hear more Skaters stuff especially... I have a number of problems with David Keenan but I don't blanket hate everything he does or says

^^^otm

skaters rule and deserved the whole six pages to themselves, really

I do have one of James Ferraro's tapes he did as Lamborghini Crystal and I guess the whole aesthetic of that project is like taking old corny 80s synth-rock and straight-to-VHS movie soundtracks as the basis, then makng them all twisted and confusing and sounding like it's been passed down to an nth-generation cassette... I mean the validity of this (and what Ariel Pink does which is sort of similar) is up for debate perhaps but the more I think about it 'hypnagogic pop' is actually a pretty cool way of describing it IMO

so er how about that british visionary jazz article eh?

James Ferraro deserves the whole six pages. Spencer just isn't as good. Lamborghini Crystal, 90210, ED FLEX are SO MUCH BETTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE.

Obvi this is a valid form. It's the transmogrification of the stuff of life. The roadside temple is MEMORY THEATER. If you take your fetish past all limits you're left with the CRYSTAL BALL. It's therapy as neuromancy.

i would not call emeralds 'moan-wave,' they're of the 'new age wave.'

yeah, the processed pan flute is taking the place of the vocals through delay pedal, which is one of the defining characteristics of moan-wave.

I had vaguely considered hypnagogia wrt, say, Stars of the Lid, Windy and Carl, maybe Landing or Grouper (though yep, Emeralds works too), and had some never-to-be-realised delusions of a tape label called something hypnagogic, so I don't know whether to be pleased or disappointed if this is now a Thing. Though D. Keenan irritates me, so the latter beckons, but I haven't read the article yet, here goes...

Had a quick skim of this one: sounded like Merzbowing 80s hits. DK seemed to spend quite a lot of time talking about 80s pop as this bloated thing while evade the reason this seemed to be picked up in the first place: that it was GOOD MUSIC FULL STOP.

(xpostish) Is "moanwave" the name for every drone/noise act that shoves the microphone up close and cups it and goes "wauhhhheerrrrrrrrr-rrrr-rrr" into it over some polite bowing and clattering of Tibetan bowls and little tinkly bells? I am all for that having a genre of its own so I can avoid it more easily

(PS I dig some of this stuff but there's a lot of it about and it gets tired pretty quickly - OK, I like drone/psych/noise/whatever better when harmonically rich and not just sparse creepy noises, trouble is telling which is which before paying for yr limited edition $15 C20 or 3" CD-R in packaging hand-made from bracken and 1970s toilet paper)

haha has anyone in this thread managed to actually read & not skim the whole article yet?

Is "moanwave" the name for every drone/noise act that shoves the microphone up close and cups it and goes "wauhhhheerrrrrrrrr-rrrr-rrr" into it over some polite bowing and clattering of Tibetan bowls and little tinkly bells?

microphone technique is correct. Could be tinkly bells, bowls and bowing action ... could be guitar drone ... could be pretty much anything that is a) repetitive and b) demonstrative of minimal technical aptitude on an instrument

xp thomp - not me ... my "power-skim" left me with the impression that it is new age hippy drone mixed with melodic 80s fluff.

Yeah the gamelany stuff is pretty much just not as good (except Pacific Rat Temple maybe?). Most of James Ferraro's work is not like that though.

remember "subterranean metal"?

no

protip: use the contextual clues of this thread to figure out what it was!

Sunn 0))

if u google it savage pencil seems to implicitly accept "yes, that was just a made-up label for the sake of getting wire readers to pay attention". which it is nice, that he admits it.

i've read the keenan article, tho' i don't have it to hand right now - he is gd, as you might imagine, on the relationship between dreaming states and memory and music, less good on how this 'hypnagogic pop' somehow manages to escape the dread 'monoculture of conformity' blahblah that we're apparently mired in by referencing, say, the ST ELMO'S FIRE s/t

that article is reaaaaalllly thin, i'm actually amazed The Wire didn't tell Keenan to bugger off with this

but yeah...telling

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Yeah but the problem is he is basically shoehorning them all into some made-up genre in order to give them a coherence that they don't actually have.

― anagram, Monday, July 20, 2009 3:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

im not sure that's really a problem? like isnt that something all music writer should do... connect non-obvious dots?

there's a difference between seeing what others don't see and seeing what isn't there

otm some dude. The dots are not actually connectable, so he just looks silly when he tries to do it.

i agree—i've never heard of any of these bands, though, so i have no idea if there's no there there. and maybe he DOES find something interesting that you know, is conveyed by the actual article and not the cover line.

REMAKING THE PAST is a big theme with the wire tho

Just retagged Emeralds - What happened as Hypnagogic Pop.

fyi

somebody say "moan-wave?"

i think all of the people who care enough about this to be pissed off should pick something to tag as hypnagogic pop that slavish wire-followers will wind up listening to

meanwhile i guess er i will be listening to keith tippett

hm

All Pussyfooting

Tagging Electric Red Hypnagogic right now.

Music to fall asleep to? Damning with faint praise, innit?

lol moan wave

moan wave made me remember "new weird america" ...

new weird america was keenan too no?

pls to help find MADLIB scans

xp. New weird america was keenan and also not half as obnoxious as hypnagogic pop.

largely because he was riffing on something already described and it made some sort of sense rather than just making up a term and lumping some folk in with it.

I bet some of the folk felt pretty lumped in, if only by the law of averages... some ppl are guaranted to be butthurt at any attempt to describe their music

but like I said upthread, I feel like it does make a sort of sense FWIW

I'm not saying there wasn't lumping in done with New Weird America, just that it was a less arbitrary lumping in than hypnagogic pop.

Aren't all genres created by journalists, after a fashion?

I still think "gay fascist muscle disco" should take off

assumed this was already a thing

I put "hypnagogic pop" into a band's one sheet today for the hell of it.

But really, I don't get the claim that Skaters music has the same effect on the listener as Emeralds. I like em both for what they are but I don't see the similarity. Emeralds have that vast, tranquil Schulze-ish thing going on and Skaters produce the same feeling as when you realize your toast is burning and decide, fuck it, I'm eating it anyway.

Weren't Skaters the ones who were ripping people off with their mail order stuff? Or was that just one of the two guys, or am I misremembering something?

I think dude was just late on shipping something once, they both seem like stand up dudes.

I'm glad someone is finally taking a stand against people making up categories in music on an internet message board where almost no one has actually read the piece in question but intend to just as soon as someone else gets off their ass and uploads it for them.

where else would someone take this stand?

exactly!

this piece is not so long that you couldn't adequately skim it at the newsstand fwiw

haha or you could just buy the damn mag

and since I bought the magazine, I had read it before starting this thread..

David Keenan is Wire's Julie Burchill, he's the guy employed as much to wind up the subscribers as for any other reason.

He described Wolves In The Throne Room as emo and fuzzpop about four issues ago. If it's not Derek Bailey or something that he totally respects, he just pulls it out of his arse.

But really, I don't get the claim that Skaters music has the same effect on the listener as Emeralds. I like em both for what they are but I don't see the similarity. Emeralds have that vast, tranquil Schulze-ish thing going on and Skaters produce the same feeling as when you realize your toast is burning and decide, fuck it, I'm eating it anyway.

― Neotropical pygmy squirrel, Wednesday, July 22, 2009 1:14 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Their fans are pretty much the same 200 people though.

If it's not Derek Bailey or something that he totally respects, he just pulls it out of his arse.

Whiney OTM

why are we surprised that music critics are total and complete wastes of time?

"we"

"you"

I'm not. I'm a very good cook, cocktail maker and expert direction giver and map reader.

He described Wolves In The Throne Room as emo and fuzzpop about four issues ago.

Haha I can kind of get with this too!

Nah, seriously, "critics are awful" has been a favourite meme since I first read Henry Fielding rocking it from some point c. 1745.

Haha I can kind of get with this too!

Same here!

and you've been contrary since 1745 too?
xpost

Down this road lies the madness of C. Eddy and a lifetime toiling in the fields describing the influence of Die Kreuzen on Ashlee Simpson* but for all that it is sometimes a fun way of thinking

*paraphrasing from some old ILM post that stuck w/ me

xpost

It's nothing to do with contrariness and something to do with recognising a symbiotic relationship when I see one.

i heard they invented jokes in ice cr?ms college

Reynolds weighs in

so i've been reading blissblog lately and simon reynolds is kindof an idiot

that's kinda a dumb name for a blog.

Ironically enough.

I still never figured out what "hauntology" was about. I just figured anyone using it at the time was a hackademic I could delete from my RSS reader back when I used an RSS reader lol.

hauntology = the study of making moanwave?

I don't mind the stuff they mean when they talk about hauntology, but they make it such HARD WORK. I remember actually thinking Tender Buttons was kindof a fun record. TURNS OUT I WAS WRONG U GUYZ

http://www.xlr8r.com/mp3/2009/07/a1

Reynolds' post was a little, erm, academic, but I thought it was pretty interesting. Especially for looking at the new age element.

Basically just weighing in so I can make a promise to the world: I will never be one of those music critics who goes around making up genre names. (Oh god I hope I haven't already done this at some point.)

marchism

I'd think that making up genre names would be one of the fun things about being a music critic ... it's just that the ones Keenan's come up with are kinda lame.

Who coined "moan wave" anyway?

Yeah, what good are critics if not for coining new genres? Aren't those like clowns who don't make anyone laugh?

"who've realized that noise is a bit of a dead end (better late than never eh?)"

"The New Age thing (one of the main imprints, run by the Skaters, is actually called New Age Tapes) cracked me up initially, in a "hipsters! whatever will they think of next!" sort of way."

Really guys? Coining genre names sounds right about near "answering cell phone calls from publicists you don't remember giving your number" on my list of favorite things related to being a semi-pro music critic. But maybe I'm alone here.

Seems more like, I dunno, being a marketer or something. Which, fair play, but I mean, as a JOURNALIST, if people who listen to the music actually talk about it a certain way, debate whether it's moanwave or hauntology or punk or metal, then great, inform readers "hey there's this hypnagogic thing now." But I'd rather leave starting the next micro-trend to people who do that professionally. I'm just a dude who reviews those micro-trends. (I realize there's some give-and-take, I just don't want to come up with names that don't already have some meaning. There are too many awful genre names for the average music fan as it is.)

Who coined "moan wave" anyway?

― actually a decent question y'all fucked up with ironic bullshit answer (sarahel), Wednesday, July 22, 2009 5:37 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pretty sure it started on sp0ckm0rgue, which is an SF/Oakland noiz3 dude email list

Why isnt Fuck Buttons included in Hypopnogaglic pop?

I think it would be more fun to make up genre names for music you think is crap, than stuff you respect.

xp Whiney - I'm on that list, and someone mentioned someone else coming up with it.

Why isnt Fuck Buttons included in Hypopnogaglic pop?

I would bet every last thing I own on David Keenan having nothing nice at all to say about Fuck Buttons

he doesnt have uk distribution for them?

A publicist or band coming up with the genre name themselves is like someone tapping themselves on the shoulder with a pvc pipe and giving themselves a knighthood.

i'm going to come out and say it - i started the term moan wave, or at least had a hand in it.

Is your name Luk3?

y

you were the one given credit on the morgue ...

you know the two of you should post on the rolling noise thread since nobody else does

I don't buy/listen to much in the way of noise records though ... just see a bunch of shows.

i post on brutalsfx for my noise needs. this list is just to read what the limey's are saying....

but :sigh: ok fine.

we could post highlights of b-sfx threads on the noise thread.

fine with me

At least this thread, and therefore this daft article and silly term, has got me listening to Emeralds. I'd dismissed them after hearing some of their older stuff - "Bullshit boring drone band" wasn't just a clever name - but really enjoying What Happened & Solar Bridge now.

not enough noise on ILM imo

i saw emeralds play with TG here in brooklyn. tuff crowd no doubt, and the sound man was giving them problems but i thought they were good. unfortunately, the new age/noise cliche of starting out *soft* and ending *loud* was there. i aint no fans of build ups. get up and get out, thats my motto! :)

Do they actually end loud though? On record I kinda think they build up to something that's more expansive than actually loud. They're not really noisy enough to be a noise band but I did like Solar Bridge a lot and I haven't really given What Happened a proper go.

This guy's a real turd. He's what, a decade late to the party? Noise + post-rock + hippie dippy crap = 2002-2006. Late to the party, man, so stop trying to make up for it by inventing funny soundin names

Bullshit Boring Drone Band is still good, i prefer their older stuff anyway. Allegory of Allergies still being the uh...masterpiece

Emeralds don't belong in that article really, he's trying too hard to lump in a bunch of stuff so it doesn;t seem as thin as it really is. Those guys aren't that dreamer/outer space surrealist type like The Skaters are

and James Ferraro makes up titles in his 'catalog' which people order to find out eventually they don't exist in real life, which Ferarro isn't about though....

Spectrum, what bands from 2002-2006 are you thinking of by the way?

This guy's a real turd. He's what, a decade late to the party? Noise + post-rock + hippie dippy crap = 2002-2006. Late to the party, man, so stop trying to make up for it by inventing funny soundin names

― Spectrum, Wednesday, July 22, 2009 11:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Jesus I fucking hate posts like this

lol @ b-sfx... i was a heavy poster there back in teh daze.

379 40th RIP

saw some great shows there. I remember how no one was supposed to stand outside and were supposed to walk around the block instead.

Reynolds: "These American acts I've never heard whose music has been described by one journalist as 'woozy, nostalgic for 80s childhood' are not nearly as good as these completely sonically and culturally unrelated UK acts whose music has been described by me as 'wonky, nostalgic for 80s childhood'"

Still, points for "hipstergogic", I guess

woozy over wonky any day

what a disaster for woozy! (being lumped in with wonky like that)

I think I must've got the wrong Ferraro stuff (there is, after all, a great deal of it, most of which disappears long before I know about it) because I haven't been reminded of 80s pop by what I've heard at all. Don't recall too many "bombastic 1980s power vocals" from Pocahaunted either but then I haven't listened in a while. I'm just going to imagine that everything else sounds like John Maus for the article to make sense to me.

i agree, i can see a band like Pocahaunted being inspired by that sorta stuff but they really don't sound like that at all

so er how about that british visionary jazz article eh?

That was interesting but the Wire just couldn't resist giving it a stupid tag like "Visionary Jazz". Only reason I bought this was because I was on my way up to Glasgow and needed something to read. Stopped buying it when it became a Goth metal rag for people who don't actually like rock music.

when was that?

Who gives a fuck?

But, basically, when Chris Bohn took over

Stopped buying it when it became a Goth metal rag for people who don't actually like rock music

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with a tag like "visionary jazz" either. "Hypnagogic pop" strikes me as rather silly, but in this case Rob Young is bang on target.

Stopped buying it when it became a Goth metal rag for people who don't actually like rock music

― Nuts, whole hazelnuts, HEEUUUUUUUURGGHHH! (Tom D.),

That is not actually anything like what the Wire is about at all.

― anagram,

well he wouldn't know, remember he stopped buying it!

just saw "hypnagogic pop" used on Pitchfork (alongside "glo-fi"). he treated it condescendingly, but i think the better approach is SEAL IT IN A BOX SO THAT IT CAN NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with a tag like "visionary jazz" either. "Hypnagogic pop" strikes me as rather silly, but in this case Rob Young is bang on target.

Not really sure what makes it visionary, but interesting article undoubtedly

Is it "Visionary Jazz" or "British Visionary Jazz"?

Latter, I do get the "British" bit, I admit

The former seems so strongly to refer to Americans in the 60s and 70s (Sun Ra, Ornette, Ayler, etc.) - and a certain spirituality entwined with the music - that it just seems weird to me.

I suppose that was the point

Jason_Wynn
psych pop iz a poze, hypnagogic pop iz a leifschteil, 29, Male, Germany

^feeling this

on some Bruno shit

I think the Blues Control and Nite Jewel albums are the best hypnogog albums of the year and he totally missed em

maybe he doesnt have exclusive uk distribution for overpriced ltd cdrs/tapes?

Tips for successful drone/noise distribution:

1) Coin phrase in magazine.

2) Start sprinkling coined phrase into your own distro descriptions.

From Volcanic Tongue:

Julian Lynch
Orange You Glad
Olde English Spelling Bee OESB-41
LP
£15.99
You might have spotted Julian Lynch’s name as a member of Ducktails and Predator Vision, but behind the scenes he has been amassing a fairly formidable catalogue of solo CD-Rs that are near perfect articulations of Hypnagogic pop...

The word "hypnagogic" or some derivation of is used four more times in the latest VT update. They're really running with this!

a bit obnoxious yeah

wankers

lol

any overpriced ltd cdrs of these bands that they held back when they got them to cash in on now theyre OOP?

i still haven't read the wire article, but this thread lead me to check out the skaters and all this other beautiful noise that i didn't know existed. i guess oneohtrix point never is part of this thing*, i gotta recommend "a pact between strangers" and "ruined lives"... warm n rich analogue drones... this "genre" name itself is offensively stupid, though

He's reacted to some of the backlash on his blog: http://thehiddenreverse.blogspot.com/2009/08/into-wild.html

Scroll down to the heading "Hypnagogic Pop", after the Jandek talk.

i'm not convinced on the 'since chris bohn got in the wire's gone all goth-metal' line

ha i just read the wire was bought out by its staff in 2001: that's kinda cool, actually

Although that might create its own set of problems: are new POVs that might be radically different to what's there to be welcomed/argued with?

The real moan wave!!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ynpXE4BgpGE/SRs4XZxeOUI/AAAAAAAAGoI/eChej6sgKls/s400/Dirty+Music+Back+Cover.jpg

The Wire has gotten nearly as silly as the NME.

Highly Recommended.

tbh the wire's been infuriating for as long as i've been aware of it, which is since like '01. but it's still the magazine i'll look for in train stations. which admittedly means it falls somewhere on an interest scale like

50-100 pages of book > today's paper > another 50-100 pages of book > the wire > the economist

i mean — how long ago was 'new weird america'? that one was WAY more annoying, bcz it stood some chance of gaining real traction amongst ppl whose opinions i wouldn't immediately disregard — whereas if anyone tells me they're into 'hypnagogic pop' i am pretty sure i can ignore them

I used hypnagogic pop in a review last week. Granted it was with scarequotes you could see from space but it still felt gooooooooood

So could things be retroactively tagged as "hypnagogic pop"? What would or would not make something like Spiritualized's "Electric Mainline" hypnagogic pop?

Or, for that matter, "Soon"?

I guess I'm threatening to become this thread's spokesperson for the term by answering this, but the fact that those are from albums with high production budgets - famously so in one case - and don't seem to try and be evoking nostalgia as an *ethos*, would say to me that they don't have a lot to do with the idea. At a guess tho MBV have had a trickle-down influence on bands from this sphere, maybe filtered through Flying Saucer Attack and that lot

wouldn't DEFINITION hypnagogic pop be those catchy lines from pop songs that loop over and over again in your brain when you are lying in bed sick or hungover?

that's part of why this term annoys me ... that there are plenty of other things that more obviously fit the definition as the words are commonly understood.

Also, wondering what the ratio was of "new weird america" being used sincerely vs. ironically.

are dead machine's hp?

HPs tend to last longer than Epsons, imo.

make you install all this shitty software for the scanner if you use macs tho

^^ yeah, paper handling is kinda crappy, too.

I'm the kind of guy who needs an artisan cheesemonger, an antiquarian book store and a speciality off-license at the bottom of my street before I can even start to feel comfortable

^ this bit in his blog made me mentally thwunk him in the nads w/ a rolling pin when I read it

Eh IDK, he might be a douchebag but that reads like jokey self-deprecation

I allowed for that by only doing it gently in a jokey way.

Is The Field's "The More That I Do" hp?

i think a big part of hp is sounding like its recorded on a dictaphone/all-in-one printing and scanning capabilities

so it's essentially "lo-fi fuzzy/shoegaze pop music"? Would Spectrum's "How You Satisfy Me" be hypnagogic if GBV covered it?

uh examples of HP are Emeralds, Pocahaunted, Ariel Pink, Skaters, Lamborghini Crystal

really can't believe i just posted that btw

would you say those bands form the HP Canon?

According to the article, it's Skaters first and foremost, as well as the works of the individual works of Ferraro and Clark (Lamborghini Crystal, Edward Flex, Black Joker, Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Vodka Soap). Also, along with Ariel Pink, Pocohaunted, and Emeralds, there's Zola Jesus, Gary War, Sore Eros, The Super Vacations, Infinity Window, Oneohtrix Point Never, Orphan Fairytale, Dolphins Into The Future, Ducktails.....did I leave any out?

tbf it is a pretty definite aesthetic that makes sense straight away when you start listing

I was only asking to make another computer brand joke, tbh.

yeah, but I was too ashamed after my last post I just couldn't

that's okay, keep it ep, son.

I think the citations of individual works that had influence on the sound of these artists are interesting: Tom Tom Club, Marc Hunter's "Big City Talk", Don Henley's "Boys Of Summer", "Running Up That Hill", The Ghostbuster Soundtrack, new age music.

I also love the non-musical ingluences that James Ferraro and Spencer Clark list: Ghostbusters, surf movies, Beverly Hills 90210, Russian Theosophist PD Ouspensky, And the cultural totems and roadside temples: Atlantis, dolphins, KFC, Hard Rock Cafes, TV dinners, strip clubs, gyms, and celebrities.

The Wire are falling asleep with all this hypnagogic pop; they should wake up and get into some hypnopompic pop.

it's Skaters first and foremost, as well as the works of the individual works of Ferraro and Clark (Lamborghini Crystal, Edward Flex, Black Joker, Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Vodka Soap). Also, along with Ariel Pink, Pocohaunted, and Emeralds, there's Zola Jesus, Gary War, Sore Eros, The Super Vacations, Infinity Window, Oneohtrix Point Never, Orphan Fairytale, Dolphins Into The Future, Ducktails.....did I leave any out?

Really though, only Ferraro's solo work, Dolphins and Ducktails I can see fitting the Hypnastoopid Pop glove, the rest is vastly different from eachother...

I still cannot believe The Wire didn't tell Keenan to fuck off with this

"The Wire has gotten nearly as silly as the NME."
Well the Wire has been staffed by former NME writers since the mid- to late 80s so making up genres to slot music they wnat to tell you about is nothing that is too surprising.

Unfortunately there is a lack of ideas/argument at the mo. Still look at it in train stations but it often stays at the station.

Look for it in train stations, have a rapid scan through Invisible Jukebox, put it back on the shelf... knowhorrimean?

no I don't, I'm an American ... you either get it by subscription or find it in fancier bookstores or record stores.

Look for it in fancy bookstores, have a rapid scan through Invisible Jukebox, put it back on the shelf... knowhorrimean?

William Basinski in the new one, btw. Interested to read it. Going to buy the book shortly too. I believe it has Haino in it?

xp actually, look for it at fancy bookstore, look to see if any questionable genres have been coined, look to see if anyone I know has anything reviewed in it, put it back on shelf.

Every genre is 'questionable'.

Have to say that I do quite enjoy the Hello-ish full page photos of mopey-looking musicians in their scuzzy domiciles.

Hello?

Not enough avant-gardists glowering at manky old teapots.

The Wire would be vastly improved if they printed more letters to the editor.

That's a good point I think.

They should def print Tom D's letters :-)

I don't write any anymore!

Because I don't buy it often enough to get annoyed enough to write a letter!

um so can someone pls point me towards the poppier end of this stuff?

Ariel Pink I spose?

I saw them play about a week ago and they had a song that sounded like Def Leppard, I could get with it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2foFbDYkBY

dude who uploaded this needs to play the tape through maybe 20 more times then stick it back up, and Ariel Pink never needs to write a song again

I think there is something in this. I've been listening to a lot of Gary War, Emeralds, Rangers, Oneohtrix recently and I can see some relation, although no justification for a "scene" to be created - a lot of the stuff on the Olde English Spelling Bee label sounds similar. As an Englishman of a certain age it is evocative of ET era Spielberg films, of an America I'm not sure ever existed but created by a weird juxtaposition of watching Happy Days in northern England in the 1980s. A lot of these bands also seem to be trying to recreate Loveless as cheaply as possible.

Liking Forest Swords too - this guy seems to be from near where I grew up, near Liverpool, and is adding Burial to the mix. Good stuff.

Creating a such-and-such that seemed to exist but never did is always a good plan to me. I applaud unmusics, &c.

I am fighting off an infection and hope I don't get gangrene or something equally amputate-able.

I love the comments btw
http://crystalvibrations.blogspot.com/2011/02/hypnogogic-sound-vibration-tape.html

RIP Volcanic Tongue

Picked up David Keenan's novel 'This Is Memorial Device' in a charity shop the other day and was surprised to find what I am convinced is myself mentioned in it very very briefly in passing early on in the book. My fleeting appearance is rather negative, but it's not an unfair description and has amused me greatly. Other than that, the book seems pretty promising from the first few chapters.

haha wow, that's amazing (as in the superlative, not as in surprising, obviously, given how often you and keenan will have rubbed shoulders). subject matter is v much up my street despite my reservations on mr keenan as a writer

I got super confused when I saw this yesterday:

https://images.roughtrade.com/product/images/files/000/185/505/hero/open-uri20191205-9868-1gwqcsx?1575557819

Amazed that I never posted on this thread

I've never felt any ire toward neologisms like "hypnagogic pop" because widely-regarded genre tags seem to take forever to stick, and sticking them to a particular scene has always been folly unless you're a purist. Grouping a bunch of contemporary sounds under a tag, regardless of some variation, is more of a shorthand way of saying "if you like this band, you may also like these others" and retroactively throwing prior work in there seems like an extension of the same.

Now we have data science analyzing listening habits and the likes of Spotify giving us monikers like "Escape Room" that qualify groups of artists that listeners seem to seek in parallel

"Escape Room"?!?

https://festivalpeak.com/what-is-escape-room-and-why-is-it-one-of-my-top-genres-on-spotify-a886372f003f

shit's getting weird

'Hypnagogic pop' doesn't strike me as sillier than 'impressionism' or 'cubism'.

never forget
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microhouse

'Microhouse' is fine. 'Buftech', on the other hand…

buftech probably makes a lot more sense in its origin language

Isn't that what they call beefsteak in New Zealand?

"conceptronica"

"Escape Room"?!?

https://festivalpeak.com/what-is-escape-room-and-why-is-it-one-of-my-top-genres-on-spotify-a886372f003f

shit's getting weird

― The Squalls Of Hate (sleeve), Friday, January 10, 2020 6:46 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hm, not bad stuff. Would I be able to hear this on night out at the escape club?

every bar becomes an escape room scenario at some point in the night

"UK Funky" is one of those genre names that riles me up just looking at it. (I have no idea what it sounds like, I'm sure I would totally like it.)

should have called it BritFunk

Level 42 and others already did that in the late 70s/early 80s

Now we have data science analyzing listening habits and the likes of Spotify giving us monikers like "Escape Room" that qualify groups of artists that listeners seem to seek in parallel

Blame Glenn McDonald.

wank sock

had a hypnogogic moment where i got confused by the fact he has the name same as someone i know

This is striving hard to reach Bobby Gillespie levels of bullshit

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/david-keenan-i-ve-been-quite-close-to-madness-writing-these-books-1.4401052

it's not a good combo when the writer of the piece is just as full of shit as their interviewee!

I could envisage David becoming a character in the ongoing Chronicles of Boaby on ILX, I'm not sure how to depict an Airdrie accent though because I don't believe such a thing exists. Possibilities are there for a Four Yorkshiremen type sketch, could do with maybe one more West of Scotland windbag though.

(xp) Not exactly uncommon though!

"shroomadelica" c2000 had to be the most barrel-scrapey of the lot

For Keenan, logic is secondary to logos. He uses language as an instrument of spell-casting, of grammar as grimoire, distrusting the literary algorithms of plot mechanics, objective realism.

Fuck off with your plotless grimoire you talentless fuck. I saw his free jazz trio once, he's not exactly Albert Ayler put it that way.

I don't really have a problem with the guy, he's a bit of a hustler and a bullshitter, always was, but he's done well for himself. Plus he had to grow up in Airdrie, so he has my sympathy

I've not read any of his books so shouldn't laugh too much either I suppose. Anyone else?

I read his first novel and it was just OK. I actually wanted a more 'realistic' treatment - I live quite near to Airdrie now, and would like to have learnt more about its history, and more about the Scottish alternative music scene prior to the 1990s. But that might be more appropriate for non-fiction rather than fiction.

England's Hidden Reverse is p essential, and Volcanic Tongue was a great source of out sounds. In person have always found DK to be pretty genial and certainly not averse to having a chat, or an argument, with anyone. He's an enthusiast as much as he is a bullshitter and a hustler, and I can forgive him a lot for that. The Subcurrent Festivals he put on in Glasgow were fantastic.

Yes, I think he's been involved in some good things. Some not so good, mind you.

Wikipedia article on Keenan:

In an August 2009 piece for The Wire, Keenan coined "hypnagogic pop" to describe a group of musicians whose work resembled "pop music refracted through the memory of a memory". His article incited a slew of hate mail that derided hypnagogic pop as the "worst genre created by a journalist".[2]

Citation:

The article in The Wire magazine that defined the term "hypnagogic pop" garnered a slew of semi-hate mail, describing it as the "worst genre created by a journalist".

England's Hidden Reverse is peculiar and obsessive and unsettling. Even if you're not into the music he uses as a framing device (Coil, Current 93 etc) it's well worth a read.

he never answers my calls - tough guy to get a hold of

I got England's Hidden Reverse out of the library thinking I would just read the few pages about Psychic TV. Despite not having heard any records by Current 93, Coil or NWW, I found the whole book gripping and read it all. It has a lot of interview input from the artists, and insightful observations of the role of the occult in music and culture.

i like david keenan!

there, i said it.

Did anyone listen to the new album track on his website? Aside from the singing, it's like an outtake from The Unforgettable Fire, I didn't expect that, guess I was expecting angles and Pere Ubu.

I like him too, but there are more than one

I really like Keenan (irl and on the page - both are something of a construct you have to get yr head around) and have long felt vaguely guilty about slagging him off on this particular thread 11 years ago. He's clearly one of the good folk when you look across the entire field of play (not that he's even a music writer any more).

hypnagogic pop is a good term.