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

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