naffest genre in 2012

First time I was in Paris the Naf Naf ads made me giggle.

i bet gwen stefani still rocks some operation ivy in the tour bus

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ZBNUau%2B0L._SL500_.jpg

is psytrance still a thing?

skacore is pretty sketchy but let's be real people on this board have invented a few dozen genres that will never produce anything remotely as good as a middling mighty mighty bosstones single

oh man israeli psy-trance is quite dire but nowhere near as dire as a roomful of suburban wites wearing checkered suspenders and porkpie hats

whatever genre it is when a big name producer discovers a band that does a 'stone temple pilots meets the neptunes' thing

Ska? Is anyone still making Skacore to any commercial level any more? (I realise this is an idiot question and like termites, ska-punk will prevail whatever the situation).

2012 does seem to be lacking in hastily cobbled-together buzz-genres so far.

i'm not reading "naff" as synonymous with "terrible" here, i've got a soft spot for even the worst ska. naffness is more about how embarrassing the fan culture is imo

We should have a rolling thread for "termite" genres - things that never really reach ILX (because they're a bit crap) but nevertheless never go away and still retain huge fanbases. Psy-trance is most certainly one of them, and although the emo-craze is a thing of the past, no one seems to have told a plethora of teenagers in our town.

crabcore

emo is made for teenagers

I want to invent a genre called blimeycore

think Pete Doherty beat you to the punch there

ska's fine. not necessarily something people need to be recreating, but like most historical genres, excellent in its time, place and way.

tons of annoying genres out there:

happy hardcore
screamo
surf rock
trip hop
nu metal & rap rock
chiptune
jam band

etc.

realise he's not at the peak of credibility himself now but apparently Tiga was on 6music a few weeks back doing a two-hour psytrance mix

I only know about it cos ppl mentioned it on Facebook so idk what his deal was

hmm the true termite-annoyance has to be cover bands imo

i'm struggling to come around to a populist/popist defense of them but i just can't

happy hardcore - fucking excellent die if you disagree
screamo - don't know what this is really
surf rock - yeah i guess
trip hop - fucking a what wd broadsheet music crits have to sneer at if this didn't exist?
nu metal & rap rock - frequently enjoyable, i was wrong about them in the past
chiptune - kind of harmless nerdster scene, occasionally inspires actual music
jam band - lol weed

i like covers bands because sometimes they are enjoyable to watch in a pub round the corner from yr house in a way that the people they are covering probly wouldn't be

I can't hate surf rock - must be a generational/local thing

i've wanted to do a thread on cover bands for a while! sort of like the 'bar bands of the 70s' thread but more point-and-laugh obv

i was ambiguous, i don't think surf rock is terrible.

i always find myself saying it but it's not genres that give pain, it's people who live for a scene that weird me out

cover bands = classic, when it's a bunch of white-haired dads practicing in the garage and playing shows at bars like a bunch of teenagers

i still like happy hardcore and trip hop, sort of played out but not naff at all

evangelical christian rock / folk / singer-songwriter = very very naff

cosigning though on surf rock, chiptune and jam bands

wrt covers bands: I would rather see a band of mediocre talents and imagination play songs written by talented imaginative musicians than songs they wrote themselves.

nobody mentioned seapunk yet?

even the OG surf rock is only good for about three tunes

and when you compare them to contemporaneous instrumental stuff like link wray ...

come on, seapunk is not a real genre

there's a taxonomy to cover bands; there's party bands (the broadest), genre-centered cover bands, band-centered tribute bands, some strictly musical, others going for the whole look.

then there are more conceptual cover bands who have some kind of angle, like the kiss band that's all little people, or 'lez zeppelin' etc

round here there was a band called metallagher that, yup, played metallica and smashed fruit onstage

xp yes i don't anyone on earth has mentioned seapunk is the thing

or 'kissfits', half dressed like kiss the other like the misfits and they played both bands' songs

it's people who live for a scene that weird me out

Even as a kid all the ppl who doubled down on whatever youth culture genre they were into struck me as, well, immature. Liking the scene I get, even being influenced, okay, but trying to be the punkest of the punk or the ska-ist of the ska is just nagl esp when it gets co-opted and just turns into being a rliable customer of the required brands.

pretty sure a lot of single-band covers bands end up being tighter than the guys they're emulating, cf. that time Phil Collins played along with a Genesis tribute band and found it really hard to play some of his old prog stuff.

ha that's like a heartbreaking short story

Well, a band's songs reflect a moment in their progression. For a cover band there's no progression to anything but competence.

seapunk = kids who got together witch house / chillwave "bands", suddenly realized the triangle trend is dying, desperately trying to figure out some way to stand out from the pack

i once saw a frank zappa cover band that i'm pretty sure blew away the OGs (ok there was one of the OGs fronting the band)

would like to see a mayhem cover band

if evangelical christian folk includes Mumford and Sons then i'm cosigning this one

is there a steampunk genre yet? i know there's two or three bands out there...

what would that even sound like? i'm imagining NIN with music hall on the PA while they tune up

it sounds like bottles being hurled at the stage in my head

welp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abney_Park_%28band%29

Becoming Steampunk

In early 2006, Abney Park transformed themselves from a largely goth industrial band into a steampunk band.

that's one of the bands i was thinking of

Dresden Dolls were steampunk, yes?

Gramophone distortion

Oddly enough I wanted to like Dresden Dolls. I went to see them and they and their audience annoyed me so much I gave my rather good seat to a pretty girl and left.

I heard Unicorn Kid was Seapunk?

I loved his EP from late last year.

There is a Seapunk night in Melbourne, should I go?

Steampunk… band? o.O

Is seapunk where you get a tattoo of a gold earring or eyepatch?

surf rock - yeah i guess

I'm a bit biased since I'm in a band that plays some surf/instro stuff, but I've never had a bad time with anything Los Straitjackets or Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet-related. And Los Twang Marvels rock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7FEfqy1Xg8&feature=relmfu

There is a Seapunk night in Melbourne, should I go?

you should show up and request glowwave traxx

no, not really, though not too much in the diff in some cases

I don't really have anything against 90s ska but I kinda grew up with it, I guess. Always liked it better than grunge which just seemed mopey to me.

Probably a lot of that comes down to first really encountering modern rock around 96 when No Doubt and Sublime were the breakout bands and grunge meant like...Stone Temple Pilots and Bush.

stone temple pilots >>>> no doubt

bush sucks though

n/h

putting the pulp fiction soundtrack on endless repeat as an adolescent has forever softened my heart to surf rock

yeah the answer has to be thirdwave ska

I don't have any problem with surf rock/surf punk stuff. even when you're taking about the bad stuff, you're talking about kids who are some of the last people around making legitimately danceable rockin'-out guitar music. I can't say no to that. I guess that doesn't mean it's not "naff" though. I'll have to study this word more closely.

I guess I have similar feelings towards ska-punk, although I have a few problems with the more mainstream/jokey/jam band-y Reel Big Fish end of things. Actually it's possible that Reel Big Fish is the only ska-punk band that I actively hate. I don't really pay much attention to that scene unless it's some band that tries to sound like 60s ska. For the most part you can do much, much worse than ska-punk.

skanking is not legitimate dancing

anyway if you want legitimately danceable rockin-out guitar music i recommend you get into some brooks & dunn

for more information about #seapunk i recommend this I LOVE CRICKET: THE CHINATOWN OF ILX: THE CHINATOWN OF ILX thread

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=52&threadid=90812&action=showall&bookmarkedmessageid=3336897

The whole seapunk backlash thing is funny to me. I heard the #seapunk Volume 1 comp before that Chicago reader article and Max and Whiney picked it up and it's mostly pretty good! Like awesome remixes of Mary J. Blige and stuff. But except for the occasional water sound, there's really nothing that distinguishes it as a sonic vocabulary from other underground US bass music of the past few years. It's really just some kids who are doing similar stuff musically to what other people are doing, who decided to brand themselves differently and dress up weird.

before Max and Whiney picked it up as a punchline*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH5dBBvsnVM

That said, I won't vouch for Tim's friend that's run with the label.

goofy genre name + outfits is pretty much the classic recipe for "get attention, but not in any kind of good way"

well if branding your underground / amateurish / shoddy music differently by dressing up weird isn't worthy of derision i don't know what is

well see that's kind of how new art movements work though. it's called aesthetics.

But except for the occasional water sound, there's really nothing that distinguishes it as a sonic vocabulary from other underground US bass music of the past few years

well aside from the iconography and band names and shit the samples tilt it equally in the direction of like new age tapes/eccojams/kassette klub weirdo synth stuff

Which differs them from say Nguzunguzu or Fatima al Qadiri how? Not that there aren't differences, but those aren't it. (I'd pin those differences down on richer depths of influences on Nguzu & and FAQ's parts.)

to V: I guess I tend to prefer my dance music a bit rough and amateurish in general? I often get v suspicious of the more polished end of it.

yeah but this stuff doesn't really challenge my notions of beauty so much as it fails my subjective criteria of not being wack, believe that's called aesthetic judgment in technical parlance

fair enough

well i mean as much as the timesup ep cover looks like rejected art for one of dylan ettingers old tapes they arent sampling ecco the dolphin or referencing the startropics theme in their remixes. like all this stuff shares an aesthetic and a palette to some degree but i think its hard to argue that #seapunk isnt musically a little closer to some el tule cassette ca. 2009 than other 'underground bass music'

rev i understand what you're saying esp w/r/t to that ballroom chant / neovogue stuff you like (which i can't get with but i can respect) but this is kinda beyond the pale for me

i guess every generation gets the electroclash it deserves (yes i have skeletons in my closet)

yeah, that really wasn't so much a defense of this stuff so much as just saying "oh no, this sounds amateurish" probably isn't going to get you far against a guy who's currently geeking out over jersey club

xp tbf, you completely lost me with your references there, but i'll roll with it

they arent sampling ecco the dolphin or referencing the startropics theme in their remixes.

i guess i'm just not up on my video game music haha. if i've heard this shit it's gone over my head.

haha fair enough

i guess my point is that the cultural referencing thats going on in #seapunk is functioning similarly to the referencing going on in lots of post-noize/post-anco underground music of the last few years and lends the music a similarly distorting, mediated feel. whereas stuff like nguzunguzu isnt musically referencing sega genesis games or vhs soundtracks or w/e at all

right right

we did have this discussion about playstation aesthetics here tho fatima al qadiri ILM edition, (+ ayshay)

i guess this kind of ties into the ferraro wars too, altho he's not my thing at all

yeah this stuff has been seeping out of the fuck it tapes/not not fun/root strata underground and towards the edges of more mainstream stuff for like the last half decade, i find it super interesting and i think that as it gets absorbed by different genres/kids/scenes the referencing and the references themselves change but its interesting to see how strong the commonalities are too. fwiw tho i dont think al qadiris stuff really 'works' in the same way that like curtis vodkas does although both are much more directly interested in melody and ~dance~ than like 'far side virtual' or w/e

naff fest 2012

lol @ fest

yeah, i was thinking about this on my walk (saddest thing i've typed on ilx all year), and it occurred to me the seapunk kids have a kinship with teengirl fantasy, miracles club, mi ami, 100% silk and the rise of HIPSTER HOUSE: S/D that nguzu/al qadiri/et al don't, and i see you've brought up NNF.

but it's all tiny degrees of separation anyway. le1f had a couple instrumentals on #seapunk volume 1 and nguzunguzu worked on his album.

yeah, it's all coming from that tape/drone/post-noise scene/aesthetic... things are just growing off in slightly different directions: psych/freakout/jam, dreamy/ethereal/media/hypnagogic, pure noise/drones, noise-goes-dance, and then all this post-witchhouse/chillwave/memepop stuff... sea/ice/slime-punk etc

All of this stuff is at least theoretically fashionable and in some ways trading off its naffness in a way that modern ska totally isn't.

^^ OTM

Stay focused, people

Wouldn't say any of this stuff is my thing exactly but don't dislike any of it (or its aesthetic) - def don't see it as naff (on the one hand this means its likely to become naff at any time once the wind changes but on the other hand this just seems a continuation of stuff thats been going on since...idk 2004?)

anyway answer is whatever that music that alkan and justice and those play (played?)

and Luciano isn't a genre but if he was....

All of this stuff is at least theoretically fashionable and in some ways trading off its naffness in a way that modern ska totally isn't.

― Homosexual Satan Wasp (Matt DC), Wednesday, April 25, 2012 2:21 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tru

skanking is not legitimate dancing

I tend to think any physical/kinetic response to music is "legitimate" dancing.

what about the physical response of clapping your hands over your ears when you hear ska