Maligned Genres aka "I like everything except..."

lol one glaring omission:

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/413009/94-7-fresh-fm-promises-todays-best-hits-without-the-rap/

for some reason polka is the one i always think of, and the one that i believe i like the least. it would honestly be awesome to hear some really good polka though

Nu metal because every song is a sadness

showtunes also a glaring omission, rerun it with the missing options imo

xp re: polka, probably some freddy fender tunes that might knock your socks off

tough choice between Nu-metal and landfill indie, went with indie

no "brostep" option :(
though obviously music labelled "brostep" is usually good, not bad.

i don't even know what gabba is, apart from a band that plays abba songs in the style of the ramones.

I can appreciate at least parts of most of these, in fact all of them except electro swing.

Landfill Indie for the inbuilt conservativsm

Oh, good, an excuse to post the greatest music meme ever:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8YleB6WkAA55EW.jpg

i thought 'country' was the default answer for this, but I suppose that's US-centric

a whole lot of different terms for bad EDM

I'm with Captain Haddock on the opera hating

Ditto

If by Country & Western you mean Johnny Cash or Buck Owens, hell yeah count me in. Current bro-country, count me out.

I've seen Brave Combo more times than I can count, and repped for them on many threads. Polka but so much more. Amazing live band.

I've seen Caravan Palace palace several times and they are also amazing live. I don't think I've ever heard another electro-swing band/recording.

I'm too old to tell the difference between any of those dance music genres.

Opera it is. Have never seen a performance, own no recordings.

If by Country & Western you mean Johnny Cash or Buck Owens, hell yeah count me in. Current bro-country, count me out.

― Three Rings for the Elven Bishop (Dan Peterson), Tuesday, May 16, 2023 3:20 PM (forty-two seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

We're still doing this?

I mean, I opened the thread expecting it, but even I was surprised to see "Johnny Cash and Buck Owens" held up as the last great vestige of Country & Western.

it's electro-swing.

to play devil's advocate, conservative landfill indie is something it's sort of okay for a 14 year old clueless kid to enjoy, as they'll likely grow out of it.

there is no growing out of electro-swing - it is exclusively for conservative adult estate agents.

picked electro-swing with zero hesitation

I love swing music and I love electronic dance music, but almost all of the 'electro-swing' I've heard has been terrible for reasons that I can't precisely articulate.

Happy Hardcore & Gabba are two cheeks of the same arse. How does one choose?

Write-in vote for Tamborazo.

electro swing it has all the fake olde timey sound processing that swing doesn't have, plus none of the queer/druggy/hedonistic context of electro

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-swvIGQmNCFQ/Tw0JjG7MVFI/AAAAAAAAAMY/nP52LQOrmwE/s1600/both_kinds.jpg

"We've got both kinds of music here. We've got Happy Hardcore and Gabba."

electro swing sound campy af, I’m picturing the singer taco meets starlight express or something

The idea of it sounds campy, I’ve never actually heard any I don’t think

was talking bout wardrobe not the actual music in any case

"We No Speak Americano" was probably most Americans' point of entry for electro-swing.

(...which I always thought of it like Gotan Project covering "Crazy Frog".)

Electro swing in a walk. I thought it was a myth until a dad I met at a party dm'ed me about his electro swing project.

Electro Swing is campy in a "circus crusties doing ra-ta dancing at the festival tent" kind of way. It probably does have a sort of queer following

I don't think I really even know what polka sounds like? Maybe it's more popular in the States? Is it current?

Gabba and happy hardcore are different imo

voted indie landfill in the absence of "ironic covers" and "whatever the music I have to endure during current tv commercials is called"

I think I'm going to go for the DnB option. I don't mind a bit of jungle but I hear so much generic DnB these days, it drives me nuts

'Indie landfill' seems like a loaded description compared to the others

voted electro swing

"landfill" is actually a corruption of "ladfail"

it's definitely electro-swing, that might just be completely irredeemable

there is no growing out of electro-swing - it is exclusively for conservative adult estate agents.

you forgot 'nerds who otherwise only listen to game soundtracks'

I don't think I really even know what polka sounds like? Maybe it's more popular in the States? Is it current?

Current to early to mid-19th century, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austrian Empire

I think Steve Lamacq tried to reclaim the term "indie Landfill" and make it cool. It didn't work

If polkas are good enough for Planxty they're good enough for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5Blc3k16rE

when I was making mixes for the early 1900s I was still able to listen to every available cylinder or disc for a particular year, there would be around 1000 I could get hold of, around 50% would be what I would call landfill opera. just random selections, indifferently sung, badly recorded. I don't really like opera in any case, but think I found a few good records even from these years, maybe one in a hundred I would rate more than 7/10

Write in vote for "Noise".

Nu Metal is different from the metal that sounds like Cookie Monster in a blender, right?

If so, I'll write in Cookie Monster.

"We've got both kinds of music here. We've got Happy Hardcore and Gabba."

Thanks for the best laugh I've had today.

DTO ftw

While they carry the banner of “American-Slovenian” style polka and waltzes, the Dick Tady Orchestra's musical talents are not limited to polka music. They also play excellent Croatian-Dalmation, German, Serbian and Swiss arrangements, specializing in tremendous sounding four-part vocal harmonies, not to be matched anywhere in the polka industry.

I love a few of these and at the very least like examples of the others (although I dunno what backpacker hop is)

Tech-house is such a random thing to see on here.

Tech-House seems to be a current meme/punchline on techno Facebook groups. I'm not entirely what people mean by Tech-House or why it's so bad and hated though

apparently it's long been prone to being bland/formulaic and there's a backlash against some popular post-edm wave of it over the last few years? i checked out a few tracks and i would not have guessed that it was what tech house meant these days

America is guilty of many sins against taste and humanity, but trying to blame America for polka music is a new low in ilx knee-jerk anti-Americanism.

Like, the word "Polka" literally means "Polish." Itbis right there in the word.

Tech-House seems to be a current meme/punchline on techno Facebook groups

it has been a punchline for a very long time, possibly because the vast majority of what gets called Tech-House is so generic, clichéd and devoid of any substance. that strand of Tech-House is really the new Bro-House and is a universe away from the OG Tech-House sound.

i voted for Electro-Swing which is the most heinous sound known to humankind but i probably hear more Indie Landfill which is high on my heinous rankings too, so could easily have voted for that too. no idea what Undie/Backpacker-Hop is. does anyone dislike Free Jazz? What a crazy world!!

most people seem to

landfill indie is the one of these where I have the most culture war baggage and the only one with worst people I knew in my teens who are now probably nostalgic for this shite baggage. if I'd grown up around gabba bros I might feel differently

take the masculinity out of nu metal and there's a pretty OK genre in there somewhere

its just the tail end of grunge isnt it. plus some rap metal i guess

i have no idea which specific era or acts comprise "landfill" indie

mid-late 00s regional UK crapness

there are bands with names in there but that's not the point

I probably have a pretty liberal definition of tech-house tbf.

Left, seems like nu metal (and metal generally) are notoriously sausagey. Remove masculinity and you have like, uh, one and a half bands?

Unless there is a secretly thriving underground scene of female nu metal that has escaped our collective notice.

oh all the arctic monkeys alikes then? gotcha. not as bad as electro-swing i must say

Agree that the nostalgia around landfill indie is highly lamentable. But then I've never been able to teach myself to separate early Arctic Monkeys (which I cannot stand for all the same reasons) from it.

Probably the closest Polka has been to the mainstream anytime recently is when Weird Al does the polka medleys of hit songs.

Ages ago I was trying to decide what the best-known 'polka' songs in the UK are and I came up with the Birdie Song and Wooden Heart. Which suggests to me that like jugband and zydeco we take it as a bedrock for novelty.

Which, sure, inevitable or whatever, but not all jaunty party musics have it that way.

Fun fact: "Shall We Dance" (from The King and I) is, in essance, a polka.

(Erg, essence.)

Anyway heel, toe, slide, together, etc.

45 years of close contact with dance and the only things I can be trusted with are waltz and polka.

Left, seems like nu metal (and metal generally) are notoriously sausagey. Remove masculinity and you have like, uh, one and a half bands?

Unless there is a secretly thriving underground scene of female nu metal that has escaped our collective notice.

I don't know how many made it big but it seemed like there were a lot of bands following the Evanescence wake, Flyleaf etc. (and, uh, Taylor Momsen?)

If one has to scratch one's head and come up with potentially three or four counterexamples, that kinda makes my point for me, doesn't it?

Like, many people could name a half dozen or potentially a dozen female-fronted metal bands, okay, yay, go you. Cool. Put a pin in that.

Then set it against ten thousand white dudes in cargo shorts screaming into an SM57 while a different ten thousand white dudes play power chords on a distorted Ibanez.

Identifying a few outliers in a sea of sameness doesn't exactly negate said sea. See?

Finding it hard to disagree with that entirely, although there are plenty of women in metal (including nu metal).

Couldn't this argument be leveled at pretty much any genre though? Isn't this one of the big topics in music over the last ten years - that women are under represented in so many genres?

Dog latin, my experience has been that folk and trad music, and children's music, are not nearly as lopsided.

We just had a pretty fun poll thread on women in country and almost everyone found out about an artist they were previously unaware of.

I don't even know much about music, but could probably come up with a decent number of utterly entrancing female artists who do traditional English/Irish/Scottish stuff. Without even brushing the surface of Americana / Ameripolitan / Countrypolitan artists.

But I could not say the same for metal / nu metal / classic rock / punk / hardcore. Sorry, those genres are 90% sausage, and it's okay to say so.

I think I would rather listen to mopey “indie landfill” than icky beery “garage rock” or “budget rock” ick just me personally

N o S D

electro swing is absolutely the worst of these no contest, every track i have heard in that genre is unbearably cringe. everything else is at least somewhat defensible.

i'm not a nu metal guy but it seems to me it's not even in the bottom 3 or 4 here. i think generally the worst of these are the most narrowly defined & gimmicky. the broader the tradition / genre the better.

I think I've so far avoided electro swing, this is the first that I've been aware of its existence, but no one here has convinced me I should go seek it out.

^^ same

"I like REAL country music"

-- guy who discovered Johnny Cash in college via the American Recordings and then branched out into Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, both of which were dead ends

Average people wouldn't say they like everything except polka, they'd choose something commercial and surface level that they're overexposed to and prejudiced against, like reggaeton. I don't really have one like that sticking out like a sore thumb.
Then there's this broad class of genres that escape critical discourse. You'd never see a review of a Schlager record. The music just is, as a tradition, or for immediate consumption, it's not really art, it has zero crossover appeal. It feels like it's cheating to pick them.
And all the genres I don't regularly listen to.
Leading me to choice paralysis over a simple enough question.

Free Jazz is inaccessible to a lot of ppl but if they're aware of it and don't dig it they're more likely to blame it on their own lack of sophistication than the music I think.

Landfill Indie feels a bit cheating because do those bands truly sound very identifiable and not just like the continuation of a dreary Indie tradition?

I think the same thing holds for backpacker Hip-Hop that was the case for early ILM's aversion to rock and indie - it's not that the haters truly thought all of it was shit, they just thought more interesting stuff was being done elsewhere and enjoyed deflating the pomposity.

Glad consensus seems to be Electro Swing, truly the most wretched bullshit.

Then there's this broad class of genres that escape critical discourse. You'd never see a review of a Schlager record. The music just is, as a tradition, or for immediate consumption, it's not really art, it has zero crossover appeal. It feels like it's cheating to pick them.

Haha in the Anglo-American press maybe, but in Germany, Sweden, etc. "I like all kinds of music except schlager" is 100% a thing ppl say. Especially since the demographics for it line up neatly with those for Country in the US.

Polka is fine! Might as well get angry at bel canto or Irish folk music or something.

Ages ago I was trying to decide what the best-known 'polka' songs in the UK are and I came up with the Birdie Song and Wooden Heart. Which suggests to me that like jugband and zydeco we take it as a bedrock for novelty.

I would assume the relative popularity of polka in the US is down to immigration from Central Europe and Germany.

so jealous of the people here who have managed to avoid Electro-Swing, though when i come to think of it I think I have only ever heard it in England, so could it be a peculiarly English abomination?

nah, played at a wedding in France I went to

North American folks might have an easier time avoiding, when I showed a Canadian friend what I was talking about she asked "so was this a steampunk wedding?"

I'm english and I have no clue what this stuff is, is it like mambo no 5?

does anyone dislike Free Jazz? What a crazy world!!

― stirmonster, Tuesday, 16 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Most people -- even ppl with a passing acquaintance with jazz -- aren't going to know of it.

If you like a lot of experimental music and don't like free jazz I'd say you are posturing.

Put me down for I've no idea what electro-swing is too.

left, as mentioned above, no speak americano was the "crossover" hit

enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHEpgsjknCs

the best that can be said about this music is that at times it vaguely resembles a vastly inferior version of the kind of music you get in the casino zones of sonic games

Just looked up the electro swing playlist on Spotify and I am regretting voting for Jump Up DnB

Doop must have been the first electro-swing tune surely

Doop is good, though

yes, the only ever good one

Ok @ electro-swing. I just have never heard this. Sounds like something that could be played in a chain resraurant.

Also don't know what "Jump-Up Drum'n'Bass" is, like, how is it different from normal DnB?

Lol Doop ok - that's good

does anyone have examples of electro-swing that is good (besides Doop)? I like the idea in theory, but every example I've heard is so corny

this stuff doesn't swing at all and it's not electro so what are we doing here

I like disco era stuff that has a swing/jazz age influence, like Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band or Tena's Song by Foxy, and there's new wave/synth stuff that has a similar vibe, and latin/samba stuff like Blue Rondo à la Turk or Matt Bianco is more self-consciously 'old-timey' dance music with a modern twist - it should be possible to do this so it sounds good?

oh i just had a realisation maybe this is the electro-swing equivalent of proto punk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNAYyUJ3tQA

We No Speak Americano also feels less objectionable than most. On Dan P's tip above I checked out Caravan Palace live, but I can't get past the immediate cringe. It feels like it starts from the cosplay and builds up from there.

if it was all like the donna summer track I'd love it

don't know the others mentioned but dr buzzards sound like they're actually bringing a deep love and understanding for the older music to then-modern sounds but (based on skipping around that youtube for a few mins) the old timey stuff there sounds like obnoxious window dressing and the beats are just nothing

Think it's also that Disco comes at Swing via camp, Broadway, a queer nightclub culture continuum that was still within living memory at the time. Electro swing producer's first memories of this stuff are probably the same as my own, i.e. old cartoons, and their music follows suit.

(nb the swing in old cartoons is awesome don't get me wrong)

so jealous of the people here who have managed to avoid Electro-Swing, though when i come to think of it I think I have only ever heard it in England, so could it be a peculiarly English abomination?

I was just in Berlin and passing through Dreiecks-Beete Fernsehturm there was a small charity fair sort of thing going on but with two dancers on a stage showing off gymnastic moves to some electroswing. The dancers were good at least!

Re: disco, there was a lot of 40s revivalism going on in fashion in the 1970s and the music of the time would come with it.

Yeah, "1970's doing 1940's" a whole movie subgenre too.

Electro swing producer's first memories of this stuff are probably the same as my own, i.e. old cartoons, and their music follows suit.

like Betty Boop/Max Fleischer stuff?

this bit on the Betty Boop wiki page was interesting in the distinction it draws between the flapper/jazz era and the swing era, electro-swing probably collapses all this into one thing I guess?

When the flapper/jazz era that Betty represented had been replaced by the big bands of the swing era, Fleischer Studios made an attempt to develop a replacement character in this style in the 1938 Betty Boop cartoon Betty Boop and Sally Swing, but it was not a success.

The last Betty Boop cartoons were released in 1939, and a few made attempts to bring Betty into the swing era. In her last appearance, Rhythm on the Reservation (1939), Betty drives an open convertible, labeled "Betty Boop's Swing Band", through a Native American reservation, where she introduces the people to swing music and creates a "Swinging Sioux Band".

there the 70s jazz age/20s/art deco revival as well with Redford/Farrow Great Gatsby film.

Xanadu feels more specifically 1940s, maybe?

the thing that elevates electro-swing from "dull music" to "abomination" is the way it erases the (obviously amazing and important) swing era and replaces it with this insipid middle class costume party bullshit, trampling over 20s jazz at the same time because they neither know nor care that it's not the same thing. I know that this process isn't by any means confined to this fairly obscure genre, but it's like, that's all there is to it! literally nothing else to see here!

Jump-Up, as I understand it, is the term for DnB that came out around the late 90s when it was more about lumpen kick-snare rhythms (as opposed to breaks or more complex rhythms), enormous builds and drops, pretty much the precursor to brostep.

Just been going through a Spotify Jump Up playlist, and the first track pretty much sums up what I'm thinking. It's kind of exciting for 2 minutes and then I just find it exhausting and annoying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANx0CIhtF6s

I love lots of that stuff, never heard it called "jump-up" before though.

Doop must have been the first electro-swing tune surely

i also loathe Doop which stole it's idea from Cajmere & Dajae -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4kcG-jeTCI

I actively enjoy the way our shared culture just sometimes gets these nigh-inexplicable fascinations that arise, spread, and suddenly vanish.

Feature, not bug imo.

Like tulipomania or that time in the 90s when Gregorian chants were a thing. Or that other time in the 90s when a very specific funhouse mirror vision of swing was briefly popular if - and only if - you had the word "Daddy" in your band name (Big Bad Voodoo Cherry Poppin etc.).

In about 1994 I was working for a magazine and someone wrote me a very earnest letter that began, "The problem with most vegan hardcore bands is..."

Until precisely that moment I hadn't known that vegan hardcore was a sufficiently established genre. So finding out that a human being could identify trends and systemic problems in it was also a surprise. My colleagues and I tried, but failed, to invent and popularize other diet-based music genres. Ovo-lacto disco, carnivorous reggae, macrobiotic punk.

xposts I do remember 'Jump Up' being used in the mid 90s too referring to (iirc) the particularly rushy Amen-heavy stuff

I'm particularly keen on it but Electro Swing is pretty harmless retro-fodder in my book. Same ballpark as Rockabilly revivalist music.

A few of these are holdovers from when a certain style was super popular with adolescents and absolutely inescapable - for example, Nu-metal and Happy Hardcore/Gabber were a punchline, but have been all but dead for nearly two decades now, it's like the "dead as Disco" joke, it was very specific to a certain point in time.

Opera, Death Metal, Free Jazz etc all have some inaccessibility to the sonic/complexity aspect of it. Psy-trance with all the sensory-overload of eastern-scale melodies probably has this problem too.

Hip-hop hatred always seems to work on a generation-specific subset - geriatric soul/disco fans hate all of it, oldschool heads from the 80s don't like anything G-Funk or later (hence, the backpacker stuff), the generation that grew up with Wu-Tang and Jay-Z still shits on autotune rappers, etc.

All from my POV obviously.

Edit: I'm not particularly keen on Electro Swing, etc.

does anyone have examples of electro-swing that is good (besides Doop)?

Mr. Scruff's Get a Move On is another arguable originator and that's very good.

I'm also partial to Dorothy's Blind Date-riffing What's That Tune? which we discussed in the TOTP thread a few months back.

get a move on is just a moondog sample, barely altered, from 1969 (plus a few other samples)

But Scruff recontextualizes it - a bit like how Sliced Tomatoes isn't northern soul in Fatboy's hands its surf rock.

just fyi i don’t think nu-metal is dead anymore

It also seems to have bounced back in popularity and critical evaluation in kind of a big way, as has grunge. I remember, especially the UK press, being extremely critical of a lot of grunge (especially post-grunge) at the time. Probably a saturation thing more than anything else - so many Nirvana and Pearl Jam soundalikes being signed up. As for nu-metal, plenty of people enjoyed the first Korn and Deftones albums, but by the late 90s it felt like everyone from Slayer to the Prodigy to Atari Teenage Riot had been all-but forced to incorporate traits of nu-metal into their sound

First time hearing of electro-swing, agreed that based in my limited exposure it’s lightweight fluff.

Dr. Buzzard’s was an early version of Kid Creole & the Coconuts I think? They’re very good.

Straight polka doesn’t do much for me but the Northern Mexico version of it is dope, and I don’t know if we get zydeco without polka? So it’s fine with me.

I actively hate Nu Metal, so it gets my vote.

has anyone invented a garish rockabilly-edm fusion yet?

Sigue Sigue Sputnik

Nothing wrong with Kid Creole and he has nothing to do with electro-swing. Electro-swing is house that prominently samples 1920s Charlston/big band music. Think "circus tent at the festival" vibes, circus hippie types from places like Brighton and Bristol, twirling canes, moustaches, burlesque, jazz hands. The type of people who think https://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=82861 is still hilarious....

opera

in general everything is long and repetitive -- made in a time where you would only hear a performance once. some of the least pleasant singing styles being considered the best.

there's a few verdi operas that i can stand.

Related is that kind of music that doesn't really have a name but is a kind of rap/ska thing played exclusively by middle-class UK music-school drop-outs and invariably feature a white guy with dreadlocks rapping about Grenfell, a dude in a leopard-print waistcoat playing the fiddle, a bookish lady who looks very out of place on saxophone, some chump on bongo drums, and a guy called Didge who plays (you guessed it) digeridoo. Usually they have someone doing human beatbox as well. And they have an obligatory "sea shanty" they do live too.

There are a surprisingly large amount of bands in the UK who do this and it is literally the worst thing in the world. Someone sent me something by these guys once and I nearly crashed my car while listening to it, I was so annoyed:

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

xp

suddenly feeling a bit wistful for electroclash, witch house and vaporwave reading this thread

what kind of music is this?

I have watched this twice and I simply can't believe it's real and that I haven't just been gassed by the Scarecrow's fear toxin pic.twitter.com/Qgn36xl6WC

— Ewan (@jelly_pack) August 7, 2019

bad music

WikiHow music

meltrock

Electroclash and Vaporwave both genres with plenty of good stuff in them. Witch House I never investigated much.

A capella covers is conspicuously missing here

oh i just had a realisation maybe this is the electro-swing equivalent of proto punk
― Hmmmmm (jamiesummerz), Wednesday, May 17, 2023 5:59 AM (three hours ago)

"I Remember Yesterday" is, no question, among my top 5 favorite Donna Summer records.

Witch House was over in a couple of years but it has had a lot of influence since, there really needs to be a retrospective.

A capella covers is conspicuously missing here

The modern a capella genre def horrible but otoh the Flying Pickets ruled.

landfill indie in a landfill landslide— everything else here has some merit, milquetoast bland rock music the most offensive

Dat, my family includes a bunch of opera fanbois and as a result I have had to go to way more operas than I could ever have wished to.

Generally I am cool with operas in Italian or French or German. When I don't understand the words I can procees it as music.

Opera in English usually hurts my ears because the words are just plain dumb.

One exception is Henry Purcell's "Dido" which for some reason completely slaps.

the thing that elevates electro-swing from "dull music" to "abomination" is the way it erases the (obviously amazing and important) swing era and replaces it with this insipid middle class costume party bullshit, trampling over 20s jazz at the same time because they neither know nor care that it's not the same thing. I know that this process isn't by any means confined to this fairly obscure genre, but it's like, that's all there is to it! literally nothing else to see here!

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

Yeah, it's this. A large part of what makes electro-swing so horrendous is that it's so shallow and so incurious about the possibilities of music. It really is music for estate agents, as someone said upthread. The idea of using old styles in an electronic fashion is fine in itself, the resultant paste is hideously vile.

Honestly astounded that so many people here dislike opera.

this poll is full of a lot of strange presumptions.

I enjoy opera most as background music at home. I have not enjoyed going to operas the times that I've tried, but that's moreso because of having to sit still and pay attention in a stuffy atmosphere for so long.

If polkas are good enough for Planxty they're good enough for me.

― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Tuesday, May 16, 2023 10:21 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

OTM. plenty of good polkas across multiple traditions & styles of music.
"Opera" and "Country Western" as these monolithic blocks is weird cuz they're both pretty big umbreallas. whereas each of the others is pretty specific.

Is the song I'm an Albatraoz by AronChupa & Little Sis Nora electro-swing? Feels like it's at least adjacent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bznxx12Ptl0

This just popped up on my Insta feed

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CrHK9sZAkD-/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Had never heard of electro-swing before but it reminds me of the approach taken by modern wedding DJs, who'll play the usual hits but slap some beat-matched house thumping over everything so the pissed attendees can dance without having to worry about shifting their feet from track to track

Landfill indie more than the others might augur the future of AI music - several generations worth of a tradition listening only to itself, every eccentricity or unusual source fading more and more away into the homogeneous mulch.

john cooper mellencamp (Matt #2) at 4:05 17 May 23

Had never heard of electro-swing before but it reminds me of the approach taken by modern wedding DJs, who'll play the usual hits but slap some beat-matched house thumping over everything so the pissed attendees can dance without having to worry about shifting their feet from track to track

I just noticed Third Wave Ska is not on this list.

That horse was duly beaten here:

POLL: Which left a bigger shit-stain on the '90s? Swing or Ska

Honestly astounded that so many people here dislike opera.

It's simple for me, I cannot stand operatic singing.

all I know is if a film gets described as operatic there's gonna be tons of shooting in it so opera is fine by me

the default construction in parts of the US used to be "I listen to everything, except for rap and country"
there are events I've seen now that are *only* rap and country, with a smattering of classic rock

my limited impression of electro-swing is incredibly internet-based and afaict the uptick in interest is video game nerds who want more music that sounds like that one Donkey Kong song

https://assets.lastdodo.com/image/ld_large/plain/assets/catalog/assets/2016/10/24/b/e/d/pdf_bed04be8-9a00-11e6-8de3-78110ca4fd14.jpg

Snowy knows what's up.

Herge OTM, Bunch of people standing about on a stage bellowing at each other.

A bit funny that the poll option is 'Indie Landfill' not just Indie. Like there are fans of a specific strain due to its Landfillability.

polka is fun, not that i'm out there listening to it a lot but it's just good time music. not even going to justify it via weird al, though his polkas are great.

electro swing sounds pretty bad but i hate to dismiss a genre i don't know a thing about based on the thirty seconds i was able to stand scrolling thru a youtube compilation. might be better than, let's say, roar by katy perry though.

i'd find it hard to believe anyone around here would vote country AND western, it's got a ton of gold even beyond the obvious classic names. there's lots of good stuff out there these days though yeah bro country isn't something i like whatsoever.

i'd like to hear some examples of indie landfill bands, sounds bad but also might be some good stuff in there.

From Athlete to The Zutons, t'were a green, unpleasant landfill.

I just finished reading this. I don't know 99% of the bands listed, so fire away.

https://www.nme.com/features/landfill-indie-snobbery-2741199

Imo Athlete aren't really what gets called landfill. Landfill refers more to Strokes/Libertines/Franz-reared groups like the Fratellis, View, Enemy, Pigeon Detectives, Automatic, as well as unremarkable but more tuneful bands like the Zutons.

Athlete belong more in the category of post-Radiohead/Travis/Coldplay pop. Arguably just as bad. But I'm probably likely to be more charitable to it (Athlete, for instance, quite a nice first album!)

lmao at electro-swing, I am very glad I managed to miss this nonsense when it happened (I do like Mr. Scruff though)

I saw a world premiere opera last week where one of my friends played an Asian-American single woman kicked out of her home by her parents after becoming pregnant who died in childbirth during the first act, gets stuck in purgatory, then meets the spirit of her daughter, who attempted to kill herself to escape the overbearing environment the grandparents/parents were raising the daughter in, it was pretty rad and the cast of four sounded incredible

Looking through the vice landfill indie list, I will rep for The Mystery Jets and The Rakes, don't feel they are that typical of the sound though.

Doop is fucking shite, people.

Operatic singing - particularly soprano singing with a ton of vibrato and melisma - is definitely a taste that one either has or doesn't.

Bluegrass also - the classic high lonesome nasal male Bluegrass vocal is just not something I want in my buds most of the time, but the same song done by e.g. Allison Krauss is great.

De gustibus and all that

Imo Athlete aren't really what gets called landfill. Landfill refers more to Strokes/Libertines/Franz-reared groups like the Fratellis, View, Enemy, Pigeon Detectives, Automatic, as well as unremarkable but more tuneful bands like the Zutons.

Athlete belong more in the category of post-Radiohead/Travis/Coldplay pop.

it's all basically britpop tbh

although it just occurred to me that the post-radiohead stuff is the british equivalent of corporate rock like creed and matchbox 20 in america

God knows I'm no fan of Britpop but landfill was much worse, there was far far more of it for a start.

In Liverpool the cartoon psychedelia of The Coral and The Zutons turned the Mersey neon and in London The Libertines, Bloc Party, The Rakes, Razorlight, The Mystery Jets, The Others and their various ramshackle micro-scene coteries were injecting the veins of the city – its squats, tube carriages and Whitechapel whiskey pits – with untested, effervescent serums. From Cardiff to Dundee, Sunderland to Skegness, Wakefield to Hackney Wick, Britain thrummed.

KInd f always want to get some origianlity i a band I'm listening to . Even if its finding an idiosyncratic way of working through some familiar or semi familiar elements. As long as teh message delivered is original and not gratuitously something it doesn't feel authentic to itself in . Or whatever.
& hearing the early development of things that later become cliches still has some value. AS long as its coherent or has teh energy to hang together in an interesting way.

So landfill indie bleurgh and if it finds itself it probably avoids being landfill doesn't it. Turns into pop or something with a degree of originality. Not so hot on the former unless its especially good.

Country is great up until a certain point and still has some elements taht work when again its not turning into a nominally country flavoured pop pap.

forgetting what teh choices were. Do like the swing bit of Electro Swing but it does get a bit cliched rapidly. Opera depends on teh composer and probably performer.
Free jazz like rocks and i need to read teh book on the loft scene i meant to buy last month.

Not sure what entire genre I'd absolutely count out. THink there is some stuff. I'm not big on metal, do like hard rock from the turn of the 70s and some of the later stuff once hardcore reinjected it with energy etc . Not big on nu-metal but I think there were some interesting influences it grew out of.

Do have pretty broad tastes and can find some good in a lot of areas I'm not overly familiar with. But may run into things i seriously don't like if i do look into them. & don't have all the time in the world so probably ok with what I have though I'm still discovering things even now etc etc

we of course had a classic moment of landfill revival just a few days ago

Lead Singer From The View Attacks His Bassist During Concert Performance pic.twitter.com/gF9J6RwGFw

— Everyone Is Going To Hell (@Every1Goin2Hell) May 13, 2023

"Opera" and "Country Western" as these monolithic blocks is weird cuz they're both pretty big umbreallas. whereas each of the others is pretty specific.

― ian, Wednesday, May 17, 2023 7:47 AM (one hour ago)

otm ...

half of these things are "genres" I'm only vaguely familiar with, and a few others I honestly have no idea what they are? Let alone any idea they were specifically "maligned"

There are no genres or artists only songs

many people are saying there are mixes but this is trickery

What about music that isn't a "song" ... it would be awkward in some cases to refer to them as "tracks" because their existence predates the recording concept of a "track"

kinda think psy-trance isn't so bad maybe but maybe i've not heard enough.

I'd definitely be interested in a primer in 20th-21st century opera. I recall Kyle Gann, I think, saying that the reason there were so many Robert Ashley-soundalike pieces in the late '70s and '80s (of which I probably know only a couple) is that people thought he'd invented a whole new way of doing opera that they then wanted to explore as a genre - I assume other people were inventing whole new ways of doing opera too, though I know only snippets of that history.

I mean, "opera" is less a genre and more a medium? Like, opera is basically theater where everything is "sung" ... and there are a lot of different types of theater.

a song and a track is the same thing flutes and drums can sing just as well as doris day

psy trance is totally fine

Also, Pavarotti rules

“a drum stick and a light fixture” xp

I mean, electro swing of course, but

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGH_16SICL0

...is this the founding document?

Polka skeptics, I direct you here

https://www.mixcloud.com/iannagoski/stanky-and-his-pennsylvania-coalminers-a-mixtape/

Handel's Messiah is a good song

God knows I'm no fan of Britpop but landfill was much worse, there was far far more of it for a start.

― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.),

lol "it's all britpop" was a joke re: 'it's all EDM'.

ALTHOUGH >:)
many britpop bands had more personality, but not all of them and landfill bands like the Feeling show a clear lineage from britpop...

The "opera" question is the difference between "this isn't my thing" and "this is on some level pop and, by all reason, should be everyone's thing, and I absolutely hate it."

just occurred to me... y no nu-rave? These days rym use that on anything dancey+indie from that period, not just the 'core' groups.

(To tie several disparate threads together, Peek-a-Boo certainly led to one thing - Bloc Party's Mercury).

In my view it's wrong to say that opera is a monolith, but it's equally wrong to say that there aren't broadly dominant styles of composition and instrumentation and vocal technique in what most Westen people think of as "opera."

In my view, it is perfectly okay to say that "Carmen" is an opera qua opera and "Hamilton" isn't.

Also perfectly okay to say that the style of singing you hear in most opera houses in America and in Western Europe is probably going to be closer to Maria Callas or Luciano Pavarotti than, say, Jay-Z or Weird Al.

The existence of outliers doesn't negate the existence of useful broad categories.

There’s also opera vs operetta to consider, and how to distinguish operetta from musicals

Also, depending on who you talk to, one could argue Hamilton isn’t a opera specifically because tapping isn’t singing, but all of the Andrew Lloyd Webber shows ARE operas because all of the dialogue is sung

DJP otm

lmao I meant “rapping”, don’t know if that was autocorrect or fat finger

At least it wasn't "fapping."

Interesting that a lot of what later became folk and blues seems to actually be traceable back to music written for the music hall. But popularised in the public milieu, like. So is taht far from operetta. Interesting how music develops but not really into it in its original form for prolonged listyening.
Is that true of pop music now, or is teh fact that it has more closely recorded roots going to mean it never gets thought to be a folk music. Just thinking that what makes a folk music is its continued circulation among folk rather than its actual source creation. Though do hope people aren't still singing Oasis in 50 years time .

more proto-electro-swing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PyqELFQslE

Love that track.

early Yello also pioneered electro-polka, but the world hasn't caught up with that one yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDRnf4_dMB8

A bit funny that the poll option is 'Indie Landfill' not just Indie. Like there are fans of a specific strain due to its Landfillability.

this did actually happen. when i was in high school in the late 00s i knew people who loved the wombats & the kooks etc. but nothing hipper

There’s also opera vs operetta to consider, and how to distinguish operetta from musicals

Also, depending on who you talk to, one could argue Hamilton isn’t a opera specifically because tapping isn’t singing, but all of the Andrew Lloyd Webber shows ARE operas because all of the dialogue is sung

'landfill indie' is an extremely UK term that only people who spend lots of time on ILM understand, IMO

I mentally put a lot of post-Strokes Kings of Leon/Arcade Fire/Vampire Weekend/Killers type of bands in the landfill indie category ('bands who might have gotten a placement on a FIFA soundtrack'). The American version (in my head) is bad enough, scrolling through the band/song names and video thumbnails the UK version looks like it should be a runaway winner here.

It's not an extremely UK term it's an exclusively UK term.

I’ve definitely heard the term Landfill R&B

name names

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indie_rock#Landfill_indie

It's currently the most recent historical period of indie-rock to have its own sub-section on the Wikipedia page

only people who spend lots of time on ILM understand, IMO

i think it's fairly well know in the UK way beyond ILM people.

Someonè I used to know used to call the bands she was going to see Indie schmindie which I assume covers the same type. Continual 2nd on the bill NEVER destined to rise above the morass because non descript. Lacking the vital spark of originality that would lift them to the next level. Playing out of habit. Possibly a good thing to drink to.

But then I'm reminded that Galway used to only let cover bands play in a lot of pubs or that is a lot of pubs in Galway would only let cover bands play.because originality distracted from drinking.

Would hope that one played in a band trying to find something like how to write a good song and express oneself not just to create audio wallpaper and continually rewrite to formula etc.

The old joke used to go:

"There are only two styles of music I don't like, and they are Country AND Western"

And yeah, maybe it's different in the US but over here I often hear people say Country is the worst music ever

Just had a horrible thought, what if Basement Jaxx are the progenitors of electro swing

Not such a horrible thought

Always enjoy some good landfill chat, but I don't see how it's a legit option when it's not a thing the artist was setting out to make.

What were these bands setting out to make I wonder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l_5nW0SUNw

What were these bands setting out to make I wonder

a mix between The Stone Roses and Primal Scream with the swagger of Oasis

kinda think psy-trance isn't so bad maybe but maybe i've not heard enough.

― omar little

I can totally understand why it’s hated - it’s too fast, the tracks are all 7+ minutes, it has no swing at all, it’s maximalist to the point of inducing headaches, and the (over)use of “trippy” effects isn’t helping either.

Plus, the fanbase is a combination of drugged up crusty cyberhippies and Russian software developers.

I’m probably one of the biggest psytrance fans in ILM but I can’t really listen to more than an hour of this stuff before it does my head in.

Always wondered if psytrance and Goa trance (which I vaguely remember reading about in the '90s but can't recall hearing much) were the same thing - according to Wikipedia the former evolved out of the latter.

Yeah, goa as the specific 93-96 sound, psytrance as the umbrella genre.

And yeah, maybe it's different in the US but over here I often hear people say Country is the worst music ever

I would bet good money that it is FAR more common for people to say that in the US, as they are much more likely to be exposed to it without wanting to and plus there's all the socio-political culture war baggage.

Always enjoy some good landfill chat, but I don't see how it's a legit option when it's not a thing the artist was setting out to make.

otm, it's a bit like calling one of the options "shitty funk" or something. Fans of electro-swing or psytrane wouldn't be offended if you refered to the genres by their name.

Psytrance I mean. Psytrane also wouldn't offend tho.

For people who don't like Opera I would point you to Kagel's Staatstheater (1970). It's written up as an anti-opera. It's been along time since I listened to it but iirc it goes out of its way to be different.

Is nu-metal like Linkin Park?

(xp) Does it have operatic singing though?

xp yes altho they are probably the lightest shade of it

For truly execrable music choices you really should check out Country & Irish or whatever you want to call the material made over here to the wrong blueprint. Maudlin cliched shite apparently from the heart that appeals to OAPs etc. There at least used to be what appeared to be a large scene creating it.

I feel like 'landfill indie' is a distinct genre though, even if its practitioners might not use that term themselves, it means something more specific than just 'indie that isn't very good'

this did actually happen. when i was in high school in the late 00s i knew people who loved the wombats & the kooks etc. but nothing hipper

sure but presumably they weren't saying they loved it because of how insipid and disposable it sounded

I can see why people would dislike Gabba / Jump Up D&B / Happy Hardcore / Tech House & Psytrance without experiencing them in the correct (huge rig / party treats) environment.

The peril of niche genres with low digital sales but decent money for club sets is that end up with producers making landfill music to attract DJ bookings. So you find (in D&B as an example) when someone comes up with a truly new sound or take on things and then everyone piles on and rinses that idea (often terribly) into the ground for 12 months.

I remember last time I went digging for D&B there were maybe 800 individual tracks released digitally that month, and maybe 50 stood out, and 10 ended up in my box. A good 500 were basically the same Splice samples and serum bass presets, a creative desert.

But at least the decent tracks sounded truly original and brought fresh noises to my ears. Landfill indie is 10000x worse as not only has it all been done before, and better - there luddite guitars only aspect of it all kills the hope of any new sounds or ideas.

Obvs Electro Swing can also fuck off, mainly for the people not necessarily the music

Tldr; disposable club music gets a bye because at least people experiment with sound

(xp) Does it have operatic singing though?

― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Thursday, 18 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Ha! Kind of...I will re-listen.

shrieked Maoist invective over a single horn drone

Always enjoy some good landfill chat, but I don't see how it's a legit option when it's not a thing the artist was setting out to make.

Artists getting labelled as being X or y when they didn't set out to make X or y happens (far) more often than not. Artists don't tend to invent genre classifications.

There was a british music rag called Stool at one point. Seems like a really shit name.
It was so called i think because it was acoustic singer songwriters playing seated.
I do hope there was some humour in the naming though cos would be bad if they were unaware. Not sure how long it was used.
BUt naming a scene is frequently done from outside and once it happens people get the feeling that the scene has been somehow encapsulated. Can help people find new ways of expression and new influences to avoid being a generic scene name representative I guess.

sorry that was supposed to read there was a scene called Stool invented by the British music press at one point. I skipped a couple of words.

shrieked Maoist invective over a single horn drone

― imago, Thursday, 18 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

That's me shouting at your bad posts.

My actual answer would be Christian Rock or Ska(punk - as opposed to actual Ska)

No reason why Christian Rock can't be good.

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a0465734609_10.jpg

3rd wave ska and electro-swing have this common issue where it seems like they're made exclusively by people who look smirky in press photos

https://arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-bostonglobe.s3.amazonaws.com/public/CWNIEBRNQAI6DOW3GI7EGIENZI.jpg

https://www.music8agency.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Electro-Swing.jpg

how do people feel about electro-swing subgenres such as 'dark electro-swing'?

https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67706c0000da8486c737cc6c2336ea7c490516

o no

please share some dark electro-swing with us

I feel like 'landfill indie' is a distinct genre though, even if its practitioners might not use that term themselves, it means something more specific than just 'indie that isn't very good'

Does it mean more than "indie that isn't very good from these specific years", though?

ok "dark electro-swing" appears to be trip-hop with edm drums? lol

That sounds good to me

it's an improvement over light electro-swing

I like hard trance and a lot of Goa, it is lovely for doing repetitive and boring tasks as well as getting absolutely delirious in the club setting.

Agreed with the reasons behind why many of the electronic genres get a pass from me— there is considerable and constant innovation, whereas four blokes passably playing songs and whinging on is about as boring as one can get.

Also xyzzz otm, love that opera!

I wonder whether people might like David Lang’s The Little Matchgirl Passion, which retells the Hans Christian Andersen story via opera— it is quite accessible and beautiful

Someonè I used to know used to call the bands she was going to see Indie schmindie which I assume covers the same type

Probably not a rigorous critical demarcation, but I think I used to hear indie schmindie refer to quite tame twee noughties indie pop, with glockenspiels and handclaps and ukuleles and such, before it had been fully domesticated into music for adverts - Noah and the Whale and stuff like that. Feels meaningfully distinct from the laddish landfill, but maybe also a maligned genre contender in its own right.

Do I look like I know what a jpeg is? (dog latin) at 1:28 18 May 23

The old joke used to go:

"There are only two styles of music I don't like, and they are Country AND Western"

xp I was thinking it was just another term for continual also rans. So presumably npt 100% down with what the exact dimensions of the genre are. THought it was just that bill filler time passing stuff. But there have presumably been different forms of that dependant on what teh prevailing trends are. Bands filled with 'Sleeper blokes' then?

Has been running through my head that in the introductory talk prior to University starting 20+ years back a lecturer talked about the 20% essential to 80% negligible that one had to work out which bits were actually necessary in any summary. & that what one really needed was to remember the 20%. THough I think the 80% may be somewhat necessary contextualisation that needed to be understood as including some of the whys and wherefores of. But if one was going to think in terms of that 20% needs to be kept bit any form of landfill would be the other 80% and presumably the worst aspects of that.
& in thinking of that too seems to reflect the big pharma idea of the active ingredient which removes the herbalist idea of working out the balance for the individual metabolism. Or the idea of a scene being the creative context as Lenny Kaye talks about in Lightning Strikes. & maybe the also rans also playing a vital part. JUst hoping that people aren't simply going through the motions etc.

I picked up a book called teh Selling Sound a couple of years ago taht I really need to read. Tracing how Country music was shaped by commerical interests. Bought it in a big sale by the imprint in the first year of the pandemic.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2008392.The_Selling_Sound?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=YGdTlVaZwJ&rank=2

THought it looked pretty necessary when i got it but its still in a pile soemwhere

Artists getting labelled as being X or y when they didn't set out to make X or y happens (far) more often than not. Artists don't tend to invent genre classifications.

Yes but they don't normally come with a built-in assessment of quality.

it's a bit like calling one of the options "shitty funk" or something.

Does it mean more than "indie that isn't very good from these specific years", though?

I think this is the argument you'd need to make. And you could. But if we're trying to say,well, it's all the indie after the Strokes that we didn't vote into year end polls, this falls apart pretty fast.

used to call the bands she was going to see Indie schmindie

Oh Cindy!

Does it mean more than "indie that isn't very good from these specific years", though?

That seems to be the tension in articles like this one, where landfill is basically defined by its averageness - like, is averageness a judgment of quality or does it reflect some deep aspect of a certain British generational experience which is indelibly tied to this movement?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8a8w/the-top-50-greatest-landfill-indie-songs-of-all-time

It also wouldn't be the first time that a derogatory description turns into a genre name. On the other hand, I doubt many bands are ever going to embrace the landfill label.

landfill does only have the connotation of worthless refuse doesn't it?
I mean that is the sole automatic response to the phrase, that it's recognisedly worthless and not even great ersatz soil.
It's not even there to be upcycled, it's just disposed of. Like.

They unpaved the MOR, put up a landfill lot

I think there's the idea that "indie music" ended up as this mass produced rubbish that nobody wanted to buy - I mean, nobody much ever wanted to buy indie music but at least it wasn't expensively produced and marketed.

Why is it called indie then, and not alternative or modern rock or whatever?

Because "alternative rock" is Sebadoh and Superchunk etc.

I think there was definitely a point in the UK at least where "indie" basically meant "any prominently guitar-based rock music that isn't obviously heavy metal or some other distinguishing genre. So this could have been Radiohead or the Kooks or Blur or the Paddingtons or Athlete or even Coldplay

lol Sebadoh and Superchunk are Indie Rock.

American indie usually means bands that came out of the hardcore/punk scene that began embracing melody and whatnot, released records on labels like SST, Homestead and later Matador and Merge, and were still a little too raw to get played on 120 Minutes except in the last twenty minutes or so.

Any band from England, including Shoegaze, was called an Alternative or College band.

I honestly don't remember hearing "indie" to describe American music until the '90s. In the '80s it was punk or "college radio" or underground or whatever. (I'm sure someone can contradict me with a citation, but my only familiarity with the word "indie" in the '80s came from reading NME on the rack at a big bookstore.)

I think there was definitely a point in the UK at least where "indie" basically meant "any prominently guitar-based rock music that isn't obviously heavy metal or some other distinguishing genre. So this could have been Radiohead or the Kooks or Blur or the Paddingtons or Athlete or even Coldplay

OTM

Good post upthread Willl, I'm glad I find club music mostly through Bandcamp digging and social media rather than going through dj promos, which sounds like a disheartening experience.

I thought psytrance was having a bit of a resurgence among the youth....

xpost

Started back in '83
Started seeing things differently
And hardcore wasn't doing it for me
No More
Started smoking pot
Thought things sounded better slow
Much slower and heavier
Black magic melody to sink this poser's soul

VU, Stooges, undeniably cool
Took a lesson from that drone rock school
Manipulate musicians, hack righteous drool
Getting loose with the Pussy Galore
Cracking jokes like Thurston Moore
Pedal-hopping like a Dinosaur, J

yup, it me (love that song so much)

y'all i try to be open-minded but i haven't yet heard any power electronics or harsh noise wall i like

there's some good schlager tho, i dig hildegard knef

Xp Jordan: looking back that post was a typing and grammar disaster but looks like the point got through.

Re: Psytrance coming back - In the distant past I put out Trance, Hard House and Dubstep 12”s, all genres which have feature(d) in so many “I like everything but…” conversations with music pals and peers over the years. In the Dubstep says especially, any hint of that kind of past was kept severely quiet as if some kind of shame befell it.

So ever since Lone / Zomby etc repackaged early 90’s breakbeat hardcore for ‘serious’ heads in the early/mid ‘10s (read: ditched the ‘embarrassing’ elements aka the fun or joyous bits) I’ve been waiting for the self proclaimed ‘hip’ end of dance music to claim they were always secretly into hard house / trance / happy hardcore etc.

It has been quite entertaining to watch it finally come about - post S.O.P.H.I.E / Danny L Harle / Hyperpop etc stuff getting plays and shows on Rinse FM, Bjork embracing Gabba adjacent stuff, Business Techno DJ’s dropping trance classics etc. The other day I heard an I Jordan tune on 6music that was just straight up offbeat bass hard house.

It’s all ok now apparently - I think I get how the punks felt when Steely Dan became ok to like (as per the long running ilx thread).

Of course the Hyperpop stuff is smothered in layers of irony and gen z meta web stuff I couldn’t hope to understand as a 40+ year old dad- and new ‘trance’ is now codified as ‘melodic techno’ and everyone is wearing black so it’s more insta-friendly than your uncle gurning with his top off at Gatecrasher.

Either way I guess some of these ‘I like everything but…’ genres can come back around, especially if there were melodic or stylistic stones left unturned / or the unpalatable/uncool scenes that developed around them dissipate and something new can be built by fresh blood (see Disc World / Sneaker Social Club etc’s breakbeat scene and it’s complete lack of links to ‘Nu School Breaks’ / the early ‘00s circuit).

I just can’t see the kids doing this with The Kooks / Zutons / Wombats which were already a 2010s rehash of 1990s bands recycling the 60’s and 70’s.

The lineage of terminology as I recall it went:

"college rock" (80s) which begat
"alternative rock" (90s)
"indie rock" vs "underground rock" (the former being timid and singer-songwritery and the latter being the noisy, heavy-but-not-metal, aggro stuff) (late 90s unto present day)

(re: Barlow lyrix)

When has Thurston Moore ever cracked a joke? Is that something he used to do onstage in the ‘80s?

Indie is short for independent which initially meant small labels run almost as a labour of love by people who were running things out of a love of the music and teh creativity of those that were signed to the label. It was Independent of the major labels that dominated the music scene in the UK. A lot of new small labels formed during the punk explosion as ways of releasing music taht swam against the mainstream. But the mainstream fought back and at one point started setting up small affiliated labels that passed as indies and were included on the indie charts etc.
Somewhere along the way teh focus of why a label was being run changed from being about love to being about making money. Or that may be a rose tinted lens view and there had always been some intention of at least keeping the head above water. But there did seem to be a commodifying process involved including why music was actually being made.

The US had a longer history of smaller regional labels which were independently run which is one reason teh word indie wasn't being used for them. Also not sure if indie is an automatic formulation of american speech in the way that English shortens things, might have wound up with a parallel term for a similar set up.

& also sometime over the last 20 odd years the medium of consumption changed from being a physical medium like a cd, tape or lp to being digital. &now its a lot harder to make money as a band, not like it was ever really easy. BUt I think it was possible to make a living without being absolutely massive.

Some of the worst people imaginable ran independent labels.

Re. "indie," there is a probably anachronistic moment in the movie "24 Hour Party People" where someone says "indie music" and it misinterpreted by the club owner as "Indian music."

In an alternate universe, Factory concentrated solely on ragas and helped develop the electronic tabla

In America someone might think Indie was music about race cars.

So ever since Lone / Zomby etc repackaged early 90’s breakbeat hardcore for ‘serious’ heads in the early/mid ‘10s (read: ditched the ‘embarrassing’ elements aka the fun or joyous bits) I’ve been waiting for the self proclaimed ‘hip’ end of dance music to claim they were always secretly into hard house / trance / happy hardcore etc.

sorry idk which “hip end” you’re talking about but this seems ahistorical to me. “bassline is more interesting
than deep house” has been a thing on ILM for at least 10 years now, and authors like matos and reynolds have been pushing similar arguments w/r/t edm, ukg, speed garage etc since the 90s

if you look at reynolds roundups from the late 90s (forget which one exactly) you can catch him arguing that timo maas is better than autechre and singing the praises of goa trance after experiencing it at a moonlit beach rave … besides isn’t repping for “trashy” breakbeat hardcore how he got up in the first place?

there's a lot of trance sounds out there in current music that i've been digging, i think the irish duo Long Island Sound puts out consistently great material that is pretty trancey.

i always did like those sasha and digweed mixes...

> In America someone might think Indie was music about race cars.

My dad actually asked this question circa 1992, as my brother was into both

For the record I wasn’t really referring to Reynolds and co vouching for scenes critically, it was more what I have noticed from experience here in Bristol :)

I thought everyone had a 90s UK definition of "indie" in their heads until a discussion on this very board a few years ago.

There's been a bunch of psytrance songs that I enjoyed over the past year, but it definitely takes some digging through a lot of samey stuff to find. As far as trance-proper is concerned, I feel like I get more and more confused over time about what people think falls under that header, I'm guessing there may be a lot of tracks I've liked recently that may be considered trance even though I wouldn't call them that.

psytrance, that's the guy who did "Gangnam Style," right?

I often think of what DJ Rolando told me in an interview many years ago— “It’s all just techno to me man, call it dubstep or breakstep or whatever, it all comes back to techno.” I don’t totally agree, but I LOVE techno, and along those lines, I like at least a small part of most related genres.

take the masculinity out of nu metal and there's a pretty OK genre in there somewhere

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Tuesday, May 16, 2023 5:00 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD9xotOWQSk

xp nice, I just listened to Aztec Mystic Mix like a week ago!

Wonder if Rolando wanted to take that back after hearing those Avicii trance / country music crossovers

xp nice, I just listened to Aztec Mystic Mix like a week ago!

I hadn't heard of or heard Electro-Swing before this poll. It's...not good, but I was really expecting much worse based on the comments. I mean we're competing with Nu Metal here.

There’s at least something relatable in the Beattie as of my-metal that you can sometimes cotton onto, I listened to one electro-swing song and went “this is smirk music” before noping out after 25 seconds

Amazing how both jazz and techno can be so ruined

Jesus Christ what is happening with my phone

That was supposed to stay “the brattyness of nu-metal”

I think I relate to the brattiness of nu-metal as much as the "let's wear fancy dress and have a silly time at the big top tent" vibes of Electro-Swing, which is really not very much at all

But that's just me. I think a big reason genres like these are maligned isn't necessarily to do with the sonics, rather the cultural baggage and especially the fandom. Electro-swing type people tend to be insufferable. Nu-metal people, maybe not so much, in fact in my experience they tend to be lovely.

Psy-Trance suffers from perceived fanbase problems, but enough water has gone under the bridge now maybe for people to come back to it and appreciate it without imagining a bunch of middle-class poy-wielding squat crusties trying to expand their minds on ketamine. Or maybe people do, but they're remembering those types of people in a fond, rose-tinted kind of way because they never had to put up with them?

As far as recent psy trance is concerned, I don't dislike this at all

https://timewarprecords.bandcamp.com/album/xanda-ceres-timewarp178-timewarp

Can't speak for anyone else but my hatred of Electro Swing is 100% an instinctive reaction to the sonics of it. As stated the only time I've heard it in the wild was a wedding and the couple were lovely people, who knows if they asked for it or this was the DJ's decision anyway.

Nu Metal getting a critical rehabilitation was a historical inevitability really, you can't be that critically maligned during your lifespan without it turning around at some later date. It will never not sound like stupid garbage to me, but I was as complicit in deciding Journey and REO Speedwagon were Pretty Good, Actually as the rest of my generation so zoomers doing this to the music of my youth is to be faced philosophically.

xp

I appreciate that the titles are 100% from The Expanse

Psytrance is one of those scenes where half the people live in their vans precariously and the other half are constantly off globetrotting on their trust funds. I mean it all started off with a close knit scene of privileged kids who had epiphanies in Goa travelling all round the world for parties etc.

Actually wonder if there is a scene with a wider wealth disparity tbh.

Obvs Fred Again being the grandson of the former owner of the Daily Mail tips the scales for whatever scene he falls in but I’m more referring the the wealth disparity of the fan base ;)

over the last few years I've come to the perhaps regrettable conclusion that Shpongle are a lot of fun and that I would really like to see them live one day

Just wondering if any execrable scene has beeen better in revival form because regurgitation made it cohere better. Processed like coffee through the inside of a civet cat or somethibg.

love that free jazz is included in both this poll and the hip genres poll

Not sure you could call the UK Jazz scene pre Shabaka Hutchings / Moses Boyd / Nubya Garcia execrable, but it was certainly more US swing / fusion etc inspired and stuffy.

The revived scene with its focus on Afrobeat / Dub / even rave etc is so much more vital imo.

Fred Again is great name for the Nu Metal revival. Congrats.

xp hard disagree, imo shabaka’s “spiritual jazz meets third wave ska” shtick pales in comparison to gilles peterson dropping mark murphy bangers at dingwalls, to say nothing of derrick harriot, basil kirchin, etc

hey wait where’s vocalese in this poll

errr i meant JOE harriott obv

Wait, third wave ska?? I don't even hear much first wave in Shabatka.

no? i’m thinking of the “your queen is a reptile” stuff

maybe you need to get up on 90s / 00s intl jazzy ska revival, if you like shabaka you might find yourself pleasantly skanking to tokyo skaparadise orchestra one day

I'll happily concede ignorance on that but if it's a wave wouldn't it be the fourth?

Anyway I can certainly see an insistent uptempo rhytmic thing going on w/ Sons of Kemet in particular but find ska less of a touching point for that than afrobeat or sundry dance music genres.

has anyone mentioned funky house yet?
and how it is rarely funky and barely house?
I think we have a thread made to defend it somewhere.

Jump up drum and bass is not a genre, it’s a contradiction in terms. The term would be jump up jungle, which is basically any jungle track with a big drop, ideally suited to be rewound. Dead Dread by Dred Bass or Babylon Shall Fall by Splash would be prime examples. It’s undergone quite a revival lately and I don’t care for much of it but mid 90s jump up is one of the great musical styles of our age. Anyhow, definitely does not belong on this list.

Tech-House is the one where I don't recall any particular recurring line of criticism over the years, other than way back the amusing mundanity of its most prominent British DJs having names reminiscent of lower tier footballers rather than evoking some futuristic hedonism.

Xp - total bollocks I’m afraid.

Take ‘Mickey Finn & Aphrodite - Badass’ & ‘Adam F - Metropolis’ for example. Both released in 1996, both technically Drum & Bass but you couldn’t really say they were the same exact genre except for the tempo. There is a night and day difference in the level of detail in production, arrangement and sound design.

Hence from this point onwards ‘Badass’ and it’s ilk get tagged as Jump Up drum and bass. Often used by heads as a semi-pejorative term for utilitarian club bangers just designed to kick off from the second the short intro ends.

I always associated "jump-up" with prime Aphrodite and that shit mostly bangs

Agreed, I hate new 2-step drum & bass but love Aphrodite and DJ Zinc jump-up, I think it lives or dies on the bassline.

Really? I can’t get enough of the kind of modern 2-step Buunshin / Imanu / Break put out. Current Value’s ‘Puer’ album on Souped Up a few years back was a great example of how far that stuff has come.

Yeah, I probably haven't heard enough of it to say, but nothing's really sold me. Lots of sound design and not enough propulsive ragga basslines...if the drums are boring and static (ie the focus is not on constantly changing breaks), then the bass has to be really killer, idk.

All I really want to hear from d&b these days is nerdy obsessive drumfunk from Paradox et al or the vibey minimal Samurai Music stuff.

"jump up is not a genre"

https://www.discogs.com/master/24157-Various-JumpUpThrowDown

that is only the second best jump up comp, the best is this one

https://www.discogs.com/release/188616-DJ-Hype-True-Playaz-In-The-Mix-Vol-1

the mickey finn and aphrodite mixmag discs are also really good

i don't consider this stuff a form of jungle, the beats are as linear as alex reece "pulp fiction" or any valve recordings production

but as noodle vague correctly pointed out, shit bangs

Also Jump Up is pretty explicitly designed for MC’s to ride over. Listening to the tracks individually misses the point really.

On that note, pleasant liquid 2-step merchant Calibre’s set with Bassman & Trigga, 2 of the yardie-est MC’s out there is a thing of wonder. Probably musical kryptonite to most of ILX tbf.

https://on.soundcloud.com/kBmt3WbSTeXWWkGU9

linear beats are great, check out shy fx remix of courtney melody vs pd syndicate (rodney p / mj cole) "ruff like we"

hey wait where’s vocalese in this poll

― the late great

does anybody besides miles davis hate bob dorough tho

does anybody besides miles davis hate bob dorough tho

I do. I am the jazz critic who hates almost all jazz vocals (with occasional latitude granted to Jeanne Lee, Linda Sharrock, Abbey Lincoln in full revenant mode, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Jazzmeia Horn). Scat singing is called that for a reason.

so if i understand you correctly what you’re saying is you’re too soft and unmasculine to enjoy lambert hendricks and ross

this performance is what finally made vocalese click for me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhq7fSrXn0c

I do. I am the jazz critic who hates almost all jazz vocals (with occasional latitude granted to Jeanne Lee, Linda Sharrock, Abbey Lincoln in full revenant mode, Cécile McLorin Salvant and Jazzmeia Horn). Scat singing is called that for a reason.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

wait ELLA? you hate ELLA?

and i'm gonna be that super jazz nerd who points out that scat singing and vocalese are two entirely different phenomena, vocalese puts lyrics to songs that were originally instrumental. so oscar brown doing "afro blue" would be vocalese.

does anybody besides miles davis hate bob dorough tho

All I know about Bob Dorough is that Captain Beefheart used to play his records to the (Trout Mask era) Magic Band.

vocalese puts lyrics to songs that were originally instrumental

Grounds for arrest IMO.

otm

i can understand why someone wouldn't like jazz vox, even though i do. even if i lean more towards late night moody jazz vocals over high energy vocals. billie, helen merrill, sad sinatra, johnny hartman etc

i support al jarreau but not the manhattan transfer

Same, gotta say I'm not a big fan of scatting and even less of a fan of vocalese.

xp

All I know about Bob Dorough is that Captain Beefheart used to play his records to the (Trout Mask era) Magic Band.

― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.)

i basically got to know him through schoolhouse rock, like a lot of other people of my generation

vocalese puts lyrics to songs that were originally instrumental

Grounds for arrest IMO.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

nobody likes jazz police.

i'll admit my perspective is weird... i'm the girl who wants to like everything... if i hear something other people like and i don't like it, i need to figure out why. and often i wind up liking it, liking music other people tend to dismiss. fortune's 1985 s/t... i mean these days robert e.o. speedwagon is a watchword for the worst sort of villainy, and you know, i'm not sure that's entirely fair.

i'll admit my perspective is weird... i'm the girl who wants to like everything... if i hear something other people like and i don't like it, i need to figure out why. and often i wind up liking it, liking music other people tend to dismiss.

I know what I like and what I don't, and I'm not very "sellable" — you will almost never convince me to give anything a try, especially if it's in a genre or neighborhood I already think of as Not For Me. That said, I never try to convince anyone else that their taste is wrong. If you like something I think is terrible, that won't stop me from saying "I think that music is terrible," but I won't give you shit for liking it.

I like scatting and vocalese. Betty Carter rules. Dee Dee z rich water rules.

lol Dee Dee Bridgwater

this thread causes brain damage

so oscar brown doing "afro blue" would be vocalese.

abby lincoln does a great version of this, as well all know

I know what I like and what I don't, and I'm not very "sellable" — you will almost never convince me to give anything a try, especially if it's in a genre or neighborhood I already think of as Not For Me. That said, I never try to convince anyone else that their taste is wrong. If you like something I think is terrible, that won't stop me from saying "I think that music is terrible," but I won't give you shit for liking it.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

oh i'm not inclined to sell people on stuff, nobody's paying me for this stuff; i'm just a big nerd who goes off about stuff she likes, sometimes in a socially awkward way. also a lot of the stuff i like is stuff which is... let's say sort of a niche taste. i wouldn't know _how_ to sell a record like shiru8bit's _faulty robots_, a collection of music made for the astonishingly primitive commodore PET sound chip. i mean if that's the sort of thing someone would be interested in, they probably wouldn't need any more selling than that, and if they weren't, no amount of salesmanship would suffice.

it's totally fine to not like ella's singing, it's just unusual and sometimes i get taken aback a little bit. i'm pretty open about liking music i think is terrible - _faulty robots_ sounds terrible and i love it. there are good chiptune records but you just can't make a good chiptune record on that soundchip.

my brother used to give me a lot of shit for liking terrible music. i mean he still would i guess but we stopped talking. i concluded that he didn't actually like me very much.

I realized that I didn’t really know what Goa trance sounded like in the first year of the pandemic, and so just went to youtube and can’t relate at all to people hating this music with any vehemence. Anyway, I like this old school mix a lot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpnT0rt3ZJQ

yeah I can’t hate

Does the music hypnotize goats?

love that free jazz is included in both this poll and the hip genres poll

― c u (crüt), Friday, 19 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Lol love this for free jazz.

be a bit flat if it didn't have polarising response innit

Flat Jazz

like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoP00Dz8uJY

Psy-Trance - there was a brief moment in 94/95 where Goa Trance, still showing it's EBM and New Beat roots, sounded new and exciting. Especially on acid. I still love that stuff. Within a year it had found a formula and for the past three decades psytrance has stuck rigidly, unwaveringly to that formula. Musically and culturally it seeks to emulate that one moment when it blew people's minds. It fails.

Electro-Swing - is shit, but it's not like anyone just happens across it. You'd need to hunt it out if you wanted to hear it. I've not given it a thought in over 15 years, so whatever.

Country & Western - is a massive, multifaceted genre that's been around in numerous forms for a century. You'd have to be doggedly resistant to say you hate all of it.

Opera - as above. It might not be your thing, but saying you hate it all is a big statement that suggests you don't know it very well.

Free Jazz - eww. No. Make them stop.

Happy Hardcore - a few times at multi-room raves I'd wander into a happy hardcore room. Every time it was absolute swivel eyed mayhem. For about three minutes it'd be the best thing ever. Then it became grating and I ran away.

Jump-Up Drum'n'Bass - in 96, when DnB was dominated by either floaty Bukem stuff or moody tech-step, Jump Up was like a breath of fresh air, all hiphop samples and massive basslines. It bought joy back to the DnB dancefloor. Couldn't tell you if it's still around today or what it sounds like if it is.

Indie Landfill - leave it in the landfill please.

Tech-House - 90s tech-house was wonderful. Then, around the stroke of midnight of the millennium, it turned into an inexplicable global phenomenon at the same time as becoming the most dour plodcore. The last few years it seems to have hooked up with the early trance/prog-house revival and has got good again.

Undie/Backpacker-Hop - idk what this is. I think I'll leave it that way.

Gabba - I used to know a straight edge punker who loved gabba. He'd go to gabba nights and vibrate on the dancefloor for hours. Good for him and anyone else who likes it.

Nu Metal - PE and Anthrax did the rap-metal thing so well that everything else even attempting to enter the same ballpark was utterly superfluous.

Goa/psytrance was at the cutting edge of electronic music production for a lot longer than just two years - it ran out of steam in the mid-2000s and it’s mostly a self-referencing genre at this point, but it did have an almost 15 year run of constant innovation.

You could argue that most of the innovation was being done in parallel in other genres (by people like like BT and Tipper for example). It’s not as if the psy guys were the only people to dig deep on Nord Modular / Kyma / Eventide Harmonizers etc.

xpost to spandex/general thought re:opera-
i am very hesitant to write off an entire genre/style (besides grunge, natch) but hoo boy have i struggled with opera. and i've tried a lot. i will continue to try, but yeah: not something i want to seek out.

anyway, voted numetal.

Goa/psytrance was at the cutting edge of electronic music production for a lot longer than just two years - it ran out of steam in the mid-2000s and it’s mostly a self-referencing genre at this point, but it did have an almost 15 year run of constant innovation.

― Siegbran, Saturday, 20 May 2023 20:34 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Your mileage may vary, but I guess the point I'm making is that many derided dance sub-genres were once vibrant scenes that passed their best before date.

xpost to spandex/general thought re:opera-
i am very hesitant to write off an entire genre/style (besides grunge, natch) but hoo boy have i struggled with opera. and i've tried a lot. i will continue to try, but yeah: not something i want to seek out.

― my beard exists more than i do. (Austin), Saturday, 20 May 2023 21:02 (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I wouldn't say I'm an opera fan (except to that scary Italian bloke in Naples - I think I gave the right answer, as his face brightened and looked less murderous when I said "yes").

I'm told that it's a thing to see live, and the only one I have was Pirates of Penzance, which put a big smile on my face.

saw the comment about free jazz, can’t take the rest of Spandex’s post seriously as a result

Pirates of Penzance v much an operetta I think, not opera.

Free jazz is the only genre here I actually seek out;
C&W and opera will never be my focus, but I'll listen to some here and there;
I didn't know any of the songs on the top 50 indie landfill list, and I'm not curious;
I might dislike examples of these electronic genres, but I don't know enough from the names to tell them apart;
That leaves nu-metal as the only one for which I have specific negative feelings.

Enough beer and sausage and you might find yourself pogoing around to some polka. That is true of quite a bit of party music, the right vibe and buzz - it works where you would never listen to it straight.

i think polka suffers from its association with lawrence welk... i find it to be a vibrant and engaging form of dance music. there's a comp i like called _deeper polka: dance music from the midwest_.

i once heard from an acquaintance (who was fairly well versed on all things folky/rootsy) that they preferred mexican norteño bandas because it was "like polka, but with better melodies." can anybody weigh in on that?

(also don't mean to be offensively ignorant, but to my untrained ears there is a lot of musical similarity between polka and norteño music)

https://www.expatinsurance.com/articles/polka-influence-on-mexican-music

i thought everyone knew this? it’s all in the wiki, check the section called “history”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norteño_(music)

well that didn’t work so hot, but from the section on “history”

Emperor Maximilian I brought European music to México. By 1864 he had accumulated marching bands and musicians to entertain him. When Maximilian's empire was defeated, many of his former soldiers and fellow countrymen fled north and dispersed into what is now the southwestern United States. Norteño music developed from a blending of Mexican and Spanish oral and musical traditions, military brass band instrumentation, and Germanic musical styles such as polka and waltz.[citation needed]

European immigrants from Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic to northern Mexico and the southwestern United States also brought dance traditions such as the varsovienne. The focus on the accordion in the music of their home countries was integrated into Mexican music, and the instrument is essential in the genre today. It was called norteño because it was most popular in the northern regions of Mexico.

https://www.expatinsurance.com/articles/polka-influence-on-mexican-music

― Day 1 fan (morrisp), Sunday, May 21, 2023 8:28 AM

i thought everyone knew this? it’s all in the wiki, check the section called “history”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norteño_(music)

― the late great, Sunday, May 21, 2023 8:29 AM

thx!

(and no, not everyone knows this stuff. some of us were raised in extremely racist environments where showing any sort of interest in this kind of thing was grounds for punishment)

you should have just played it off, like “i am researching debased forms in order to prove the inherent superiority of pure germanic polka”

-1000 NO TALKING BACK OR EXPLAINING YOURSELF

but seriously, the correlation/influence is f'kin rad and metaphorically spits in the face of racist assholes everywhere. what's not to love?

i do like Norteño a lot though i haven't heard much, honestly the only album i really know is Volé, Soñé Y La Ame by Norteño 4.5 but it's good!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Winner no surprise
But 10 votes for C&W?

Lots of people hate country and western - this is a thing and always has been.

I assume the people who are surprised about this are the same ones who think free jazz has broad popular appeal outside of places like ILX

it’s not weird ten ppl dislike c&w, it’s weird ten ppl dislike it more than electro swing!

There were at least that many people who weren't familiar with electro swing before this poll.

It’s weird that people on a music nerd board like this dislike a genre as great as Country, yeah

Not sure how the Free Jazz thing follows

It’s weird that people on a music nerd board like this dislike a genre as great as Country, yeah

A lot of people living in the current USA view country music as politically about half a step to the left of black metal.

It seems like the genre that most ppl voting in a poll like this would at least like or two songs from, though.

(even if just Dolly Parton songs or whatever)

Every once in a while I'll hear some country I like, but I still voted for it because it's the only genre on the list that can bring out immediate hatred from me. The rest I'm either fine with or at worst indifferent to.

really? the only one???

i'm just thinking of my numetal vote -- i literally can't think of a single redeeming quality in that shit. i'm far from a country fan (and yes, a lot of current country is very trashy and revolting), but i can still find enjoyable things in the genre without looking very hard.

i suppose everything here has a worst possibility that obscures the potentially redeeming things.

(not to rag on you too much, moodles. i'm just a little salty that numetal didn't walk this)

I mean, I personally would actively choose to listen to stuff like System of a Down or Deftones, I never choose to listen to country.

Somewhat guiltily voted for landfill indie only because I don't think I'll expect anything ever good to come out of it in the future.

Make fun of opera if you dare: out of all of these choices, opera is the only one that actually instigated a revolution and secession La muette de Portici and the Belgian Revolution of 1830)

Nu metal has, like, five absolute jams.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/ce76e3eba3a6029d423969c885ced766/3289d0b932285bae-42/s540x810/738152ba146626912b935f6925ba1502872d6f6a.jpg

that "Fool Britania" song is the worst thing I've ever heard and my boyfriend left the room because it was making him ill when I hit Play on it

I am naturally suspicious of electro-swing fans because the romantic nostalgia for pre-war era culture says to me they're interested in a world where women, POC and LGBT+ had no visibility or rights.

worse a version of the 20s-30s where queer black people weren't central to the cultural movements this music is pretending to draw from

nu-metal in 2002 felt like it had the WORST fans. In Glasgow in the early 00s you could go to the "unders" at clubs and it was either the one for cool kids playing r&b and dance, or it was the one for "outsiders" playing music on the "goffs/moshas" axis of alternative. As I was both gay and an academic geek I was never cool, so by default I hung around with the folk going to the latter. It was always just the most masculine, whiny, entitled douchebags, people who were bitter and angry that they weren't automatically cool and their parents wouldn't give them as much pocket money as they wanted. Just as exclusionary and reactionary as everyone else could be towards me and people like me, but it felt worse because their subculture was based on not being accepted.

These people were all into the same cultural totems - Limp Bizkit nu-metal, the deliberate cruelty of Jackass, quoting Cartman because they thought it was funny rather than realising it was meant to be horrific. I think you could make a tenuous argument for this as the breeding ground of the origins of incel culture.

yeah but some of them turned out gay

"Free Jazz - eww. No. Make them stop"

Sadly you've gone on.

it was a really shitty proto-trump vibe to be sure (throw eminem in there too) but at least some of the preemptively defensive unwarrantedly aggrieved hetero posturing was fake ime - pop-punk and emo were like a bridge out of this for some of them/us (not to defend those gender politics either but you know) xp

and it's not like this stuff wasn't popular with the teenager girls I was hanging around with either

half the kids these days look like half the kids in those days now but I hope they have healthier attitudes towards this stuff

It's just apples and oranges to compare Country with something like Nu Metal, you're talking about a 100+ year old genre versus a 5-7 year movement (being generous in my chronology). Sure if you're a casual music fan you might say you hate it, but amongst a community of music geeks like ILM it's hard to believe enough ppl would claim to hate Jimmie Rodgers AND Bill Monroe AND Bob Wills AND Johnny Cash AND Kris Kristofferson AND Alabama AND Garth Brooks...it's just a vast enough pool of different sounds that claiming to hate it all seems weird to me.

I assume the people who are surprised about this are the same ones who think free jazz has broad popular appeal outside of places like ILX

lol literally no one said this, but you seem to be under the misapprehension that there is broad popular awareness of free jazz outside of places like ILX.

The popular kids in my high school were into Nu Metal.

That's surprising. Maybe it's down to where you grew up. In suburban home counties state schools it was the geeks, reticent weirdos and would-have-been goths who were into nu metal at my school/college/uni. Most nu metallers I knew were just lovely IRL and it was the jocky shiny-shirted towny pricks who would chase them through the town centre looking for a fight after the indie/rock disco closed. That said, there weren't many good dance or RnB clubs in the area really - it was all commercial meatmarkets which attracted assholes only

Were proudly racist nu-metal bands actually a thing? Because it’s certainly a thing you find in country.

That's surprising. Maybe it's down to where you grew up. In suburban home counties state schools it was the geeks, reticent weirdos and would-have-been goths who were into nu metal at my school/college/uni. Most nu metallers I knew were just lovely IRL and it was the jocky shiny-shirted towny pricks who would chase them through the town centre looking for a fight after the indie/rock disco closed. That said, there weren't many good dance or RnB clubs in the area really - it was all commercial meatmarkets which attracted assholes only

Haha yeah I'll admit rural Portugal prob not representative of most areas but in my high school it was like...for popular boys particularly, you weren't going to listen to pop or dance music because that was seen as gay. Hip-Hop was out because racism (an exception made for Eminem, of course). Indie wasn't really something anyone was aware of. So yeah, it was Nu Metal + some other older rock and metal acts (Nirvana, Metallica).

it was either nu-metal/pop-punk, or it was 50 Cent/Blazin' Squad, or it was provincial takes on donk and happy hardcore. Part of the reason me and my best pal at high school for most of it became best pals was because we had the same "uncategorisable" tastes. We were listening to stuff that people would have considered really weird and outsider, which for teenagers in a small town outside Glasgow in the early 00's meant things from the Daria and Buffy soundtracks, and Ministry Of Sound compilations.

I feel like landfill indie is kind of an unfair inclusion in this poll because it is definitionally bad music. It's taking the worst and most worthless parts of a larger genre and then calling those parts a genre unto themselves due to their badness.

Electro swing may well be the worst here, I still haven't listened to it. It didn't make sense to me to seek it out just for the purpose of building up a hatred big enough to vote in this poll.

Jimmie Rodgers AND Bill Monroe AND Bob Wills AND Johnny Cash AND Kris Kristofferson AND Alabama AND Garth Brooks

This is not what people on ILM are talking about when they are talking about country music, though, and you know it. It's like saying to someone who hates indie rock, "Oh, you hate Chuck Berry?" When people are talking about country music on ILM they're either talking about Miranda Lambert (yay!) or Morgan Wallen (boo!). There is prelapsarian country music I like — Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam, Loretta Lynn. But 21st century country music is a poisoned well.

I am naturally suspicious of electro-swing fans because the romantic nostalgia for pre-war era culture says to me they're interested in a world where women, POC and LGBT+ had no visibility or rights.

― boxedjoy

I'm always a bit sceptical of this sort of rendering of people who are into specific eras - I personally love a lot of 1920s avant-garde stuff without being into fascism, the majority of steampunks don't like Victoriana b/c they love imperialism, a lot of art from particular eras is specifically AGAINST the reigning political climate, etc etc - but knowing the sort of demographic who are into electro-swing I actually fully believe that this is a part of the appeal for them.

Also I always associated nu-metal fans with jocks - it wasn't the same alternative crowd who actually were weird outsiders, it was for jocks who wanted to rock out without any of the 'icky' queerness or femininity that other rock acts might have.

THen the category should have been "Bro Country" or "Contemporary Country" or something.

It's like saying to someone who hates indie rock, "Oh, you hate Chuck Berry?"

Oh yes, it's exactly like this.

I'll freely admit that there may well be more good country than there is good stuff in a lot of these other categories. The difference for me is that I'm vastly more likely to encounter shitty country out in the wild than most of these other genres, and the shitty side of it gets my back up in a way that these others just don't.

xp lol er, yeah. I think most non-US posters associate country with Daniel's list.

The Morgan Wallen thread has 250 posts since 2021. Looks like most was posted last week due to recent events.

with electroswing it's not about the social or political elements of the music and the culture that birthed it - it's just taking "old-timey" music and making it into novelty dance music. In my experience people who are into this stuff are not into any "Proper Dance Music" at all and I think that's very revealing

i was in middle school during the nu-metal era and IME it was definitely for the maladjusted outsider kids

see: any photo of Slipknot
see also: Linkin Park's anime music video

nu-metal was basically for failed jocks, in my orbit at least. This perspective is probably shaped by the geography of local tastes as well as my own experience as a gay teenager in a small town. Donk and happy hardcore were seen as music for "wee bams", you'd have called them "chavs" down south, and that was a huge part of the tribalism of taste that shaped the social identities of teenagers here, but obviously these types of dance music were not popular in eg London, the way they were here

Nu Metal was after my school days, so I mostly know it through Woodstock 99 and seeing Fred Durst jocking around.

I would have had infinitely more fun dancing to DJ Cammy and DJ Rankin than I ever did trying not get caught in a moshpit to Korn but I would never have been welcome in the space where that was played. It's just that I was also not ever really welcome in the other space where it felt like I should have belonged, and that to me is almost worse for it's disingenuity - you had to be the right kind of outsider to belong to the outsider tribe

btw I don't think any of the radio stations where you guys are hearing Rascal Flatts or whoever brand themselves as "Country & Western" anymore, as there is very little Western Swing influence in Contemporary Country. So the poll option itself seems to more about the 20th century form of the music.

I am naturally suspicious of electro-swing fans because the romantic nostalgia for pre-war era culture says to me they're interested in a world where women, POC and LGBT+ had no visibility or rights.

Boxedjoy, no offense but I think you're overanalyzing. My gay son was actually the one who brought electro-swing to my attention, knowing that I have a love of old jazz and virtually no knowledge of current EDM. He would certainly have nothing to do with the nostalgia or the scene you're describing. The shows we saw together were filled with young, arty crowds, a good number of whom I would assume were LGBT+.

there was a weird generational thing where my year at uni were all post-britpop or clubbers or w/e and then maybe two years younger everyone had tatoos and piercings and skateboarded and listened to nu metal and ska punk. I remember going to reading festival one year and realising I was absolutely surrounded by them. then I saw them bottle Daphne & Celeste offstage and decided once and for all that these people and their music could all fuck right off.

All your nu-metal perspectives are hilarious to me because they are so clearly the viewpoints of pop-oriented teens. "Ooh, that aggro music for meathead jocks! No, we don't like that at all!" When nu-metal arrived, I was firmly ensconced in the world of Actual Metal (Motörhead, Slayer, Cannibal Corpse etc.) and Korn, Limp Bizkit, et al. were seen as music for p_ssies and f@gs. "Oh, your daddy didn't love you? THAT'S NOT METAL. FUCK OFF." *plays "Hammer Smashed Face" on a loop for an hour*

you had to be the right kind of outsider to belong to the outsider tribe

This has been my experience across the spectrum with every genre of non-popular (and popular!) music I’ve enjoyed.

I have a feeling ILM might be the wrong place to ask for a true opinion on the hopes, dreams and opinions of Electro-Swing audiences are. In this thread, descriptions range from "music for estate agents" to "cabaret burlesque festival types", so which is it to be (maybe there's a Venn crossover between these two but I somehow doubt it)

At my school jocks were not into stuff like Slayer.

it was for jocks who wanted to rock out without any of the 'icky' queerness

well joke’s on them for listening to korn i guess

In my experience growing up, any sort of rock-oriented music up through school/college/uni was seen as a bit outsidery and leftfield and for weirdos. Even indie rock. Cool people definitely didn't listen to metal.

It was the jocks getting in shiny shirts and too much hair gel drinking Red Square and trying to fondle women in the mainstream pop and dance clubs before starting a fight outside.

Nu-Metal music might have had a macho, bratty side to it, and sure there are always going to be arseholes in every scene, but generally speaking nu-metal as a scene was the same as any other alternative rock scene at the time - the latest in the parade after grunge and before emo.

Also, it definitely seemed to attract more women than much of the metal that had come before it.

Can't believe I'm defending nu-metal, but this is just my experience. Geeks in ill-fitting jeans jumping around and letting loose Vs mainstream dunderheads in clothes from Burton menswear acting like twats

"music for estate agents" to "cabaret burlesque festival types", so which is it to be (maybe there's a Venn crossover between these two but I somehow doubt it)

Considering most of my experience with cabaret burlesque festival types is rich kids dicking about on drugs and having a dabble in the 'exotic' world of theatricality, there definitely is overlap. I do know a few queer/outsider burlesquers but honestly the majority are super fucking privileged normies.

seen as music for p_ssies and f@gs

Well, you sound lovely.

yeah unperson, I think it's probably fair to say that modern 21st century country is what ppl on ILM mean when they talk about country on, well, contemporary country threads, but considering this list was posted by a Brit and no one here knows wtf a Miranda Lambert or Morgan Wallen is, I think it's a crazy assumption that this is What We Were All Talking About. To riposte to your Chuck Berry comment, your stance is like assuming that if I say "jazz" I obviously mean Esperanza Spalding.

To be fair to everyone else, I probably sound like I'm massively gatekeeping 'the weirdo kids' right now, which isn't great on my part. But I was right about Grimes. I WAS RIGHT ABOUT GRIMES!

xp to myself

so we were supposed to assume that the country inclusion on here was not meant to cover anything from the last 20+ years?

re: the nu metal discussion, again just personal experience but fwiw the fact that Nu Metal lyrics and videos were very much about the angsty outsider didn't give the popular jocks in my class any cognitive dissonance - teens are moody regardless of social status, and they could easily apply that angst to anger at their parents, teachers, girlfriend, etc.

then again my high school dynamics weren't as cartoonishly hierarchical as the US/UK archetype often seems

Moodles, no, I would assume it includes everything from the last 20 years and everything before that, too. which is why it's a crazy option imo.

^OTM

To riposte to your Chuck Berry comment, your stance is like assuming that if I say "jazz" I obviously mean Esperanza Spalding.

Or that “rock” can’t possibly include Led Zep & AC/DC… it can only mean Avenged Sevenfold, I Prevail, and whatever else is on the Mainstream Rock chart this week.

Well, you sound lovely.

Suburban NJ in the late '80s and early '90s was another world.

Also, it definitely seemed to attract more women than much of the metal that had come before it.

Which was another strike against it among True Metal Brothers, of course.

i think it’s weird that on a board 1) with so much professed anti capitalism 2) where we tie ourselves in knots trying to separate art and artist, so many ppl are invested in making choices re: cultural consumption based on broad assumptions about (the rest of) the audience, and then confuse those consumer choices with actual politics

Many XPS to emil.y

It's two different types of rich kids though non? Trustafarian runaways who spend their whole summer in a van going from small festival to small festival Vs, well, "yuppies".

But anyway, this is splitting hairs.

I agree that a kneejerk "I do not like this thing and therefore it is problematic and the people who like it must luuurve racism and homophobia" isn't always a useful or charitable approach.

Like you say, it's okay to appreciate and take enjoyment from aspects of art from the past without being all-in on problems to do with that era. By that standard, one could just as well say that any 90s rave-influenced dance music is problematic because it elides the Gulf war and the AIDS pandemic (or something).

Still, there is something annoyingly icky about Electro-Swing. Maybe I just don't enjoy cosplay?

fwiw the fact that Nu Metal lyrics and videos were very much about the angsty outsider didn't give the popular jocks in my class any cognitive dissonance - teens are moody regardless of social status, and they could easily apply that angst to anger at their parents, teachers, girlfriend, etc.

correct. and this paragraph could just as easily be about nirvana

I just want to say that as a Black kid in the 70s and 80s growing up in the exurbs of the Twin Cities, the country audience I knew was extremely good ol’ boy Confederate flag-waving racist so there’s a strong negative association with even the good country artists for me

not saying we should uncritically digest michael bay movies, but seems like most ilxors have better reasons for disliking those movies (if they dislike them in the first place) than their feelings about the fanbase!

I think it's weird that people's feeling are hurt because 10 people said they don't like country

I can't think of a single genre that I would be saddened to learn is an ilxor's least favorite. I feel pretty confident that just about everything I listen to is someone's least favorite on here.

Limp Bizkit's Greatest Hitz is a bit of fun until it gets to the Results May Vary material, can't knock em that.

just because people are judging you, it doesn’t mean their feelings are hurt

(Ditto the metal heads, and pretty much anyone who didn’t listen to some form of pop music. Don’t get me wrong, the pop fans also had racists, but the likelihood that someone who also liked pop was a racist was much lower than the people who aggressively didn’t like pop, which shaped a large number of my preconceptions as I wandered into genres more removed from pop music)

lol, got it, I have been judged

not just judged, but found lacking!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi0fq7Zosa0

from a very early korn show where the band are wearing masks and john davis is dressed like every trans girl i know in 2023. regarding the real/false metal dichotomy unperson brings up i assume because it's such a bad and stupid dichotomy (proud pussy and fag here), they were way closer to pantera at this point than you'd think

so we were supposed to assume that the country inclusion on here was not meant to cover anything from the last 20+ years?

― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Tuesday, May 23, 2023 3:45 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The point of the thread was to list genres which, in my time, I commonly hear people say they really don't like. And often this comes from a place of wilful ignorance.

It's likely that people who say they hate country and western, only have a very limited knowledge of the style. Maybe they associate it with linedancing classes their parents used to take, for example, and they just think it's really lousy and uncool.

Listeners from countries outside of the US will have a totally different take on country than those within too. It's not as prevalent or even all that relevant. I think maybe my dad's generation might have encountered it more than mine. In the eighties and nineties it was seen as a form of old-person easy listening music on a par with New Age, and only in recent decades has it become cool again with the Nashville TV show, Taylor Swift, Johnny Cash's American Recordings etc....

it’s ok, i will lower my standards, now that i know you’re a nu metal listener. grading on a curve, so to speak

I'm not a Nirvana "fan" by any stretch, I only really know the hits and enjoy them to varying degrees, but there's definitely a world of difference between Cobain and Durst, even if the same demographic found the same use of their music in establishing their own identity as listeners and as community. I think Cobain would have been horrified by what the grunge continuum evolved into

regarding the real/false metal dichotomy unperson brings up i assume because it's such a bad and stupid dichotomy (proud pussy and fag here), they were way closer to pantera at this point than you'd think

It was extremely stupid. I mean, just a few years later I remember being at a metal festival in Asbury Park the week Rob Halford came out and the conversations around that were uniformly along the lines of, "Well, everybody knew that, and who cares? Rob Halford's awesome."

I'm sure there are people out there who've had terrible experiences at clubs with douchebros soundtracked by tech-house who would consider it as the worst music ever, and no amount of bangers I could post would change their mind because they'll never strip it of personal context. I love that Brad is able to quickly find a video of Korn that suggests an intention different to my experience of them as a listener in a social context, but this music is still always going to sound like being called a [SLUR] by boys who reek of Lynx Africa

I was just out of high school when nu metal hit and a lof the experiences here seem very foreign to me. Like the jocks at my high school were not listening to korn. The jocks when I grew were all pop rap listeners for sure, with some pop/country/cancon mixed in maybe.

I stopped doing the "this is music for this kind of person" thing when I started loving music that I knew for a fact was made for an audience I wouldn't like (lots of 80's AOR boomer rock, for example)*. As I've said before, my hatred of electro swing has literally nothing to do with its perceived audience, and I like plenty of stuff that could be viewed as reactionary/nostalgic in the way it's been cast here. Frankly I'd stopped feeling strongly enough about music genres to truly hate them long ago (individual tracks could still get me going, but not genres), and so in a way I gotta kinda hand it to electro swing - it's the first thing in over a decade that just awakens instant violent revulsion in me.

*obvious caveat that I was also not at the receiving hand of bigotry from these ppl so totally understand why others would continue to dislike certain genres on that basis

I think Durst had a lot to answer for. It was primarily him and his lyrics that indicated nu metal as a bratty, jocky "fuck everything, break stuff" genre.

Like listening to RATM and extrapolating only the "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" part.

There was nothing social, personal or political about most of their music beyond "here is a license to be a big jerk", which I can actually see why it was popular with a lot of teenagers who hadn't evolved a social consciousness yet - just uncontrolled internal and external rage to an extent.

I wonder how Nu Metal would be seen today if Limp Bizkit hadn't existed. I feel as though Korn and Deftones at least had something more to say?

but there's definitely a world of difference between Cobain and Durst

i mean, yes, absolutely, nirvana was a very smart band and limp bizkit is one of the dumbest bands of all time and the only way to truly enjoy them is to admit to yourself that you are as dumb as the dumbest motherfucker on earth and that's ok. but korn started earlier, they defined the sound of the genre years before limp bizkit was a twinkle in durst's floridian eye, and even if every member of korn is straight as fuck (afaik they are!) what they did reads as undeniably queer to me, and they made music about getting bullied and getting horribly abused by your family, no matter how the eventual audience contorted it to suit their overclocked testosterone levels or whatever it doesn't change the text or how much queer ppl like me responded to in the moment

and this is why the argument that nu-metal fandom and incel culture are related is actually incredibly specious to me. about as meaningful as saying the violent femmes inspired incel culture

I have walked down a nearly empty college hall where a steriod-scarred jock hummed "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" to himself under his breath not knowing I was behind him. I have idled at the only stoplight in a small town next to a black man blasting country from his pickup truck. Given the platinum profits of Nu Metal, people from multiple levels of the adolescent hierarchy took succor in it's angst. Who among us doesn't need a self-pitying song now and then (or almost always), best served by whatever pop is available to them in the hour of need!

Brad otm

Brad OTM

I may be in the minority here but Limp Bizkit's best stuff holds up for me, there's so much energy to it and I think it's stupid in a way that is really fun. I don't really like nu-metal but if you're gonna do it I think you gotta do it at that tempo. at the same time its wild that I actually remember a time when this was like the most popular stuff in the country, it feels like an alternate universe now. do the teens of today have some kind of semi-ironic appreciation of "Nookie" and "Rollin" now the same way my generation was with stuff like "Hungry Like the Wolf" ??

judging from my own large adult child's interest in the genre, I'd say the answer is yes

dunno about semi-ironic but I think a lot of the ppl loving Nu Metal in 2023 are Gen Z, not sure about the Bizkit specifically

xpost

With some distance, 'Rollin' is a banger, I must admit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHmgNDo5rqA

i feel like most people have only heard the "faith" cover but the energy captured on the bizkit debut is like... i can't believe the sound they were making didn't destroy the studio

just because people are judging you, it doesn’t mean their feelings are hurt

― the late great, Tuesday, May 23, 2023 7:57 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago)

- Kurt Cobain

xp 'Clunk' and 'Everything' are good'uns iirc.

Limp Bizkit are imo an example of a band with an often irritating centre but fascinating stuff in the peripherals. That's the other members, Wes mostly, but also the way their albums tend to veer off on strange and sometimes compelling tangents. As I said the Greatest Hitz is mostly a lot of fun for the first ten songs but it misses out e.g. the lurid atmospheric jams on the first album or nice ideas courtesy of the hip hop end of the group (both parts of the Outro on Significant Other). All this stuff is sabotaged, which makes it even more interesting.

Bizkit, Korn, Slipknot and Linkin Park are big with zoomers. Those four bands alone are essentially half of what a friend of mine listens to.

Linkin Park are by *far* my favourite of those, but they're also the band whose appeal found it easiest to persevere.

The idea of jocks and cool kids listening to nu-metal, embracing the culture and the fashion, is just so alien to me, yet it clearly was something that happened elsewhere, and so gives this stuff a very different interpretation.

When Brad talks about this stuff speaking to them as a queer teenager, from a place of familiarity with the music itself way deeper than my own social contextual interaction with it, I do believe how important and how powerful it is it to them, and yet I still simultaneously have a kneejerk Not For Me reaction to it based on how it was used against me in the contexts of communities and tribalism.

I think it's very right for everyone to push back on the idea that a genre is bad because of the perceived demographic of its listeners - it's never the artists fault if they become popular or misunderstood in culture. I'm guilty of doing this in this thread. But equally I think it's disingenuous to pretend that we form opinions and tastes based on sonics alone.

I hear a Wes Borland riff and I'm 14 again, unsure if the people at this party are safe to tell I'm gay in the hope they have a pal they'll introduce me to, or I'll be hounded out the house for admitting it. I hear a ragtime piano come in over a 4/4 beat, I'm back in a club stuck with some awful bore who pronounces it "Kahn-yee Wehst." I hear the opening arpeggio of "Mr Brightside" and I'm scrambling for a Richmond menthol cigarette to excuse myself out of this dismal indie disco so I can go to the smoking area for some respite.

I think Cobain would have been horrified by what the grunge continuum evolved into

TBF, it seems like Cobain was already somewhat narrow-minded and judgey about music in life... he said G'N'R was "obviously pathetic and untalented" (and "They're really talentless people, and they write crap music, and they’re the most popular rock band on the earth right now. I can’t believe it"). This was after Axl – a big Nirvana fan – offered them an opening spot on a G'N'R/Metallica tour, which Kurt refused.

Even if Kurt didn't like the band's image, or judged them on their popularity or whatever, declaring them "talentless" was pretty dumb.

(And by the way, to tie into the nu-metal discussion – Axl obv also wrote songs about having a terrible childhood, being misunderstood, etc.; he just channeled that energy differently than Kurt, so to speak.)

xp

Yup, yup. These experiences are all valid and all subjective to a degree.

I have a kneejerk distaste for almost all popular music c1999/2000 because I associate it with very terrible student nightclubs and parties that I sort-of had to attend in order to make friends but also really didn't enjoy. Nu-metal was included in all that, but so was Ibiza trance and pop-garage like Artful Dodger and Moby's Play and the Stereophonics and, well, pretty much anything from that era - it just makes me think of bad times, feeling outside of things, and also my parents splitting up (which didn't help).

"obviously pathetic and untalented" - i like (read: have a really complicated relationship with the music of) gnr but i think everything cobain said about them is the funniest thing that's ever been said lmao

i graduated high school in 1999. all my friends were skaters into korn and wu-tang. i made fun of them for liking limp bizkit. they made fun of me for liking aaliyah. we were all stupid, but we got along. there were of course asshole cliques around and they all liked pretty much the same stuff, i.e. whatever was popular.

i guess my point is that my distaste for things has never been based on that "my enemy's friend is my enemy" philosophy. i've just always thought numetal was awful. (shrug)

+xpost to brad's point re:androgyny/queerness in early numetal- i brought up something semi-relevant on the nirvana topic a while back; to recap-- in college i took a history of rock music class. one of the longstanding themes in the text book was men in rock challenging gender identity. bowie was championed heavily. when we got to nirvana, it mentioned that kc would sometimes wear dresses and of course even covered bowie. in class discussion on "androgynous rockers" (literally the phrase used in the textbook lol) more than one (male) classmate not only had a hard time pronouncing the word "androgynous", choosing instead to simply call it "gay", but also went out of their way to make sure that everyone knew they definitely preferred nirvana's cover over bowie's original. i never took their casual (and misdirected) homophobia as representative of all grunge fans, but i did have to chuckle at just how far all of it flew right over their heads. i'm not sharing this anecdote as "proof" that certain fans are of a certain mind, just kind of a funny aside. maybe it wasn't that common and a lot of nirvana fans did get it; i didn't like the music anyway, so i didn't have much invested. i certainly noticed a lot of the more fringe content when my friends would play the first korn album, but i didn't think much of it because, again, i didn't care for the music. i never questioned them on it because i just figured they liked louder, more aggro music and that was what was popular at the time. whether they were gay/questioning didn't make any difference to me because they were cool friends either way.

I'm sure there are people out there who've had terrible experiences at clubs with douchebros soundtracked by tech-house who would consider it as the worst music ever, and no amount of bangers I could post would change their mind because they'll never strip it of personal context.

this is me!

The idea of listening to a brace of bro country with its relentless references to boots / pickup trucks / guns / farm equipment / good ‘old boys etc is like musical kryptonite, I’d rather go deaf. I can’t relate to it at all as a Brit and don’t care to, the whole thing is so US specific - from the drawling ‘country’ vocals to the pedal steel and all. I feel like I have no reference point for it all.

However listening to a brace of golden era gangsta rap with its relentless references to chains / driveby’s / guns / drug smuggling / gangs is some of my favourite music. I just as equally can’t relate to it at all, again, the whole thing is so US specific. Yet I’ll go back to it again and again. Guess I’m a sucker for a decent sample and an 808.

But equally I think it's disingenuous to pretend that we form opinions and tastes based on sonics alone.

i agree with this, and i think you can even argue that the audience of a scene can change the identity of that scene, especially in terms of how it's viewed historically, it's just that whenever i zoom in the picture gets so much more complicated. ostensibly untroubled and popular teens in my middle school wore slipknot shirts and i guess it feels weird to argue whether the music was "for" them or not when it obviously tapped into a lot of subconscious cultural currents we were all experiencing in the late '90s. maybe it's that i think that focusing on the tribalism that inevitably emerges often obscures the art at the center in favor of reiterating high school social dynamics

xp Yup, in many ways country and gangsta rap are as "exotic" or as removed from my immediate world as, say, amapiano or cumbia

I'd like to see a graph of gun references in Bro Country songs vs. Gangsta rap songs

you can form opinions and tastes on whatever basis you want! you’re a thinking subject, not a helpless vessel into which the world pours phenomena and qualia

more crucially you can choose which opinions you want to reflect on critically and which ones (if any!) you want to build lazy biases around

i mean, if we're judging the quality of certain music based on the fans of that style, i had way more run ins with completely insufferable techno djs/edm fans in the late 90s/early 2000s than any other style. i worked in a dj shop for a while though, that definitely soured me on the local scene.

insufferable techno fans? incredibly hard to believe, are you sure you weren't hallucinating on party drugs

Always fascinated when people don't like certain genres because they can't relate to them. It's totally valid, so this isn't a knock. There are genres I listen to entirely for my ability to relate to them, but I feel like I try and seek out and listen to genres I don't immediately relate to, entirely because I want to experience that with which I don't relate if that makes sense.

xpost tlg-
i'm sure i wasn't without my own snobbery as i was deep into my independent/backpacker hiphop/turntablism phase, but yeah--- some of those folks got tresspassed from the shop where i worked (by the owners no less!) basically for being obnoxious cunts.

maybe if they were more pleasant i wouldn't have considered their music absolute trash?

i think it’s weird that on a board 1) with so much professed anti capitalism

That well known anti-capitalism of pop music...

well, we don't want to pay for it

It's makers do.

also xpost to myself-
they were much more rare, but all the d'n'b heads about town that shopped at the store were cool af. one of them eventually became a coworker and that's where i first started to get an interest in that stuff, based on a killer mixtape he made for me (no tracklist, of course lol).