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

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

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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.