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

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)