Once the Inevitable 90s Revival occurs which genre will be the most influetial or popular?

front 242 still going strong.

this has just been released :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=dPInPCw4h-o

That's not much different from how Paul Weller was still around releasing albums during the Britpop age, for instance.

Geir, I normally understand your posts, if not necessarily agree with them, but comparing Front242 with Kent is a new level of o_O

incidentally, i'm quite interested in an industrial revival. the 00s have been the most polite and restrained decade since punk broke, and i'd like to see a return to the anti-fashion anti-PC shock and awe of bands like Ministry, Ultraviolence, Napalm Death, Throbbing Gristle et al.

I guess some of those electro/R&B hits are actually borrowing elements both from the 80s and from 90s rave/dance and putting them together.

true. in some cases.
but for instance, I have rihanna's "please don't stop the music" in mind right now and it's clearly 100% 90s, no ?(except the samba makossa part, of course !)

not hearing anything particularly 90s to that. take out the sample and it's too thin/based on flat/surface synth tones, which gives it something in common with some late 90s trance pop but what else?

well you have the filter disco thing too (very 90s french touch).
and 4/4 dance drums that are also very 90s to me.

but for instance, I have rihanna's "please don't stop the music" in mind right now and it's clearly 100% 90s, no ?

Those straight unsyncopated 120BPM 4/4 beats sound very 80s to me. A typical 90s style would be either breakbeats or 135-140 PBM trance, no?

all bands are gonna sound like Polvo

i'm hoping for cathy dennis.

or more shoegaze.

I think to some extent early industrial has already made a comeback with noise.

and i'd like to see a return to the anti-fashion anti-PC shock and awe of bands like Ministry, Ultraviolence, Napalm Death, Throbbing Gristle et al.

I sure don't see much use in more music designed for shock value, nor do I think it's gone away (though hip-hop has probably taken the trophy in this department more than underground white music made by whites). Not sure TG were too anti-fashion in their designer camouflage outfits, either.

all bands are gonna sound like Polvo

― And guess what? I think Pitchfork is going to give it a BM. (M@tt He1ges0n), Monday, March 22, 2010 4:40 PM

GOOD

Drug themes + dance/electronic scene. We currently have Neon Indian, etc. It's got nothing on Jack Dangers' dismembered, floating head:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQt58w0pqE0

Especially living in brooklyn i am starting to really worry about this happening. I guess it already is.

I have seen a LOT of flannel while apartment hunting outside of the predominantly west indian neighborhood I live in..

Even though both indie and electronic were equally important to me during that decade, I can totally deal with an indie 90s revival but would freak out at the increasing hipness of breakbeat hardcoe, jungle or 2-step. I guess it comes down to the fact that since indie gave up on being oppositional I have no problem if it cannibalizes its own past but, perhaps because it was abandoned so quickly, or perhaps because I am not from the UK, the 90s "nuum" stuff still has a certain magic and intimacy that I would hate to see trampled. I get dragged to "cool" parties every so often, and if I were to ever walk into one and hear "Timeless" or "Valley of the Shadows" being played, I would fucking throw up.

Remember, retro always turns something into a mere reference. The revival of jungle or industrial or grunge or whatever else will NOT result in a revival of the rebelliousness or "anti-fashion"-ness of those musics, at least not beyond a superficial level.

I guess it goes without saying that my interest in music is not purely aesthetic...

Shoegaze fetishism has been key in certain pockets of electronic & indie music for most if not all of the 00s, which is totally fine by me, but any "revival" there would probably just mean more of the same.

If there is anything specifically I'd like to see revisited, it is the dancier, more house-centered end of madchester/baggy, but still w/ guitars & vox (like the Mondays or early Inspiral Carpets). Maybe someone is already doing this?

Am I the only one who feels that there was an emphatic musical changeover around the start of the decade? I remember my 19-year-old self around late 2001 noticing that there'd been boybands, Ibiza anthems, nu metal, Moby still being taken seriously, feckin Starsailor, and then suddenly, BANG! we had garage rock, electroclash, dance-punk, post-punk, emo. This is completely subjective, obviously.

Boy/girl bands more or less disappearing was probably the one most significant change around the turn of the decade. It didn't really happen until around 2001 though. (And Westlife are still around)

I envision more boyz II men style r&b elements in mainstream hiphop with added stripper references

Dubstep from the start has also been arguably a revival of certain 90s values - see Dissenus, the 'nuum (sigh) etc.

Sorry, but I don't quite get this sentence, could you maybe explain it a bit more. What are "Dissenus" and "the 'nuum" and how do they relate to 90s values?

http://www.dissensus.com/

Big on dubstep.

the 'nuum refers to the ardkore continuum, a music crit trope invented by simon reynolds (i think) to dexcribe the evolution of roots'n'future dance music, starting with early rave, through jungle, through d'n'b, garage, two-step, grime, dubstep etc...

I'm hopeful that early 90s trainers will see a revival, because my pair of nikes are nearing the end of their lives (they got openly laughed at by some urchins by St Paul's one night back in 2000 - the joke'll be on-u, scumbags)

Is there anything worth reading on this massive thread or is it full of terrible parroting of received wisdom about Britpop, grunge and rave?

i don't know, how about reading and contributing?

It's really long! I want to know if it's worth it.

seems like you've made up your mind already, so read it and scoff or don't bother.

Is that pronounced new-um? num? NOOM?

ñoom

Crusty is maybe the early 90s genre that seems to me most beyond the pale of taste (in varieties running from Spiral Tribe through Levellers to Senser). So much so that I immediately dismiss it as unrevivable (plus it was never that big, plus they're mostly still around). But maybe something like that will come out if politics radicalise a bit? I hope not. I don't really want to live in a world in which it turns out Back To The Planet and Ozric Tentacles were the great neglected bands of the 90s.

will politics affect UK music in the '10s? seems that casual radicalism died when blair got in. if cameron and the tories come back, will we see a return to the crustie scenes? or are they dead and gone forever?

Dunno the answers to that really (I'm not an informed political thinker) - it sprung from reading John Lanchester's argument that ideology & radicalism are going to come back hard when the public sector cuts/freezes start to kick in over the next few years - he suggests that'll move us away from the managerial years of politics.

will politics affect UK music in the '10s? seems that casual radicalism died when blair got in. if cameron and the tories come back, will we see a return to the crustie scenes

I'm honestly not deliberately jumping on you here, but one of the problems I have with your Carmody-style grand unifying theory type posts is that the connections you make between events seem so flimsy. What is casual radicalism?

Are you connecting the rise of New Labour with the decline in the "crustie scene"? I'm not sure they had anything to do with one another. Why would it suddenly become back because we have a Tory government? What is it that would create those conditions that the massive public opposition to the Iraq and Afghan wards failed to do?

Gotta say that is the genre of pop commentary I hate most - every Popular thread for aeons has been stunk up by received wisdom on how Thatcher caused X

it's something i've been kinda concerned over for a few years and have piped up about on ilx a couple of times. subversion and radicalism in pop and youth culture have been quashed since the mid-90s when tony blair invited tate artists and britpoppers to his house for drinks. there's very little rebellion in music any more. protesting doesn't work. it's no longer deemed cool to want to smash the system and the only people getting up on soapboxes are daily mail readers/lunatics (sic). affluence is the prescription of youth. dance culture has moved from the warehouse to the nightclub; indie rockers sign to Sony and go out on the razz with IT girls; hip hop thugs have been promoted to billionaire businessmen; accountants now wear mohawks; punk rock has been absorbed, taken to pieces, sanitised, then sold back to us by marketers and admen etc.

So whither the crusties and anarchists, the mohawks and ravers, the goths and the nihilists and the grungers and the swampies and their dogs on hair-string leads? or did they die out in the 2000s in the same way the hippies died out in the 70s, to grow up and become yuppies?

Other than maybe a few exceptions, I'm struggling to think of much music before 1997 that didn't at least have pretensions towards a subculture. But after that, you'd have a hard time inviting the Levellers or the Ozrics or any of that lot in from the cold.

for "IT girls" read "'It' girls" haha!

"So whither the crusties and anarchists, the mohawks and ravers, the goths and the nihilists and the grungers and the swampies and their dogs on hair-string leads?"

i still see these people.

Damn, you still getting flashbacks?

http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg96/a0n0t/1243594993_cupcakedog-war-flashback.gif

no, there were crusties with a dog hanging out on the street just the other day. passing through town.

and mohawks and goths and all the rest never really go away. and icp people. i see icp people.

Dog Latin, in all honesty I think you're over-romanticising a so-called rebellious past you weren't there to experience.

matt and ishmael, i realise this is all theorising over factors that may or may not exist. i'm not saying this is fact, just a debating point. There are obviously a lot of factors to consider when looking at how music and pop culture have evolved. But I really don't believe that they exist in a vacuum. Music, as with all artforms, is a filter and a mirror of everything that goes on around it. And yes, politics will have an effect, the economy will have an effect, technology affects it, media attitudes etc... all these can be classed as direct or indirect influences on people's muses.

this is why it dumbfounds me, when so many opposed the Bush/Blair agenda - that in the 2000s we barely heard a peep of musical commentary, short of "George Bush Is An Islamic Fundamentalist" by The Rub. It makes me wonder whether if it had happended in the 90s there would have been more of an outcry among music makers. If not, then you're right and I'm definitely barking up the wrong tree.

i love all the little scenes where i live. there is a great underground thrash show coming up down the street. there is hardcore contra dancing at the grange hall. and i'm having a noise matinee at my store next sunday.

dog latin, i wrote a controversial crust punk anthem about the lack of protest in music during the 2000's. it bugged me too.

It makes me wonder whether if it had happended in the 90s there would have been more of an outcry among music makers.

90s stalwarts like 3D, Albarn and Yorke (and perhaps less visibly, FunDaMental) were probably the most vocal against all that. there were actually a whole bunch of records protesting the war (minor hits from bands like Travis, er...some hip-hop both from US and UK...). it does seem that there was less "angry-sounding" music making a commercial impact in the 00s compared to the 90s tho, like it became seen as unfashionable as much as unprofitable.

Dog Latin, in all honesty I think you're over-romanticising a so-called rebellious past you weren't there to experience.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 23 March 2010 12:51 (32 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I've been a music fan since January 1990 and was friends with squatters, ravers and activists etc throughout the decade. So please don't tell me where I was and where I wasn't.

Anyway, I'm simply saying, and this is undeniable, that agitpop had a much bigger presence in the Tory years than any time after. Give me examples of bands in the 2000s who would equate to and have the same appeal as FUN>DA>MENTAL, RATM, Senser, Blaggers ITA, The Levellers, the "Fuck Leah Betts" campaign, Skunk Anansie, even the Happy Mondays had streaks of it with their socially irresponsible pro-drugs rap.

I've been a music fan since January 1990 and was friends with squatters, ravers and activists etc throughout the decade. So please don't tell me where I was and where I wasn't.

are we going to get an ex crustie losing my edge pls

Just a function of music meaning less at that time I think. If you'd had a surplus of young people at the time we might've got 1968 protest songs again, as it is we got a surplus of Guardian opinion pieces.

"I was there at Megadog when Eat Static played a 48 hour set - they said I'd never make it through the whole thing - they were wrong"

I threw lager across the Cambridge Corn Exchange at Senser's first show in 1993...