naffest genre in 2012

Oh okay, they're the same, but with more synths:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2KSFCyWo9U

I... cannot endorse this. Sorry Keith!

lol

i would probably go to a seapunk nite tho it could be fun

College Acapella

xpost I would be happy if it does indeed sound more like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47qEeWLZhwQ

this is Unicorn Kid the little Scottish fella? cos I reviewed a gig of his a few years ago and it was like chiptune trance and everyone else in the room was under 20, i didn't even hate it but it was fkn weird

conceptwave

re: all this stuff that has mutated sideways out of hypnagogia/whatever on the Internet - seapunk/witchhouse/chillwave... I can see a gimmicky, faddish side to some of it (especially as a lot of Net kids adopt the witchhouse end and bring a more fickle mindset), but I think that comes with the terrain and medium (online culture, memecraft). and the more online the aesthetic and process gets, the more the sub-genres and memes within that scene take on an imagistic, one-dimensional, disposable quality - like Net 2.0/4chan memes - and the tone around them gets sillier

that said, I tend to find stuff like this interesting. arguably one of the few new/now-ish exercises in genre/scene right now, so I feel more inclined to be supportive (def not going to wave it off as not being 'real' art or a 'real genre' or whatever). and while I personally prefer the deeper end of drone/ethereal/noise/psych to most of this more disposable memewave stuff, I'm kind of fascintated to see what all these kids are going to do with the idea of Net music/meme music...

finally a genre as culturally relevant as 4chan memes

here here

Read this as "ruffest genre of 2012" and am now disappointed!

can't believe nobody said dubstep

you like post-80s ska better than dubstep?

no, not really, though not too much in the diff in some cases

I don't really have anything against 90s ska but I kinda grew up with it, I guess. Always liked it better than grunge which just seemed mopey to me.

Probably a lot of that comes down to first really encountering modern rock around 96 when No Doubt and Sublime were the breakout bands and grunge meant like...Stone Temple Pilots and Bush.

stone temple pilots >>>> no doubt

bush sucks though

n/h

putting the pulp fiction soundtrack on endless repeat as an adolescent has forever softened my heart to surf rock

yeah the answer has to be thirdwave ska

I don't have any problem with surf rock/surf punk stuff. even when you're taking about the bad stuff, you're talking about kids who are some of the last people around making legitimately danceable rockin'-out guitar music. I can't say no to that. I guess that doesn't mean it's not "naff" though. I'll have to study this word more closely.

I guess I have similar feelings towards ska-punk, although I have a few problems with the more mainstream/jokey/jam band-y Reel Big Fish end of things. Actually it's possible that Reel Big Fish is the only ska-punk band that I actively hate. I don't really pay much attention to that scene unless it's some band that tries to sound like 60s ska. For the most part you can do much, much worse than ska-punk.

skanking is not legitimate dancing

anyway if you want legitimately danceable rockin-out guitar music i recommend you get into some brooks & dunn

for more information about #seapunk i recommend this I LOVE CRICKET: THE CHINATOWN OF ILX: THE CHINATOWN OF ILX thread

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=52&threadid=90812&action=showall&bookmarkedmessageid=3336897

The whole seapunk backlash thing is funny to me. I heard the #seapunk Volume 1 comp before that Chicago reader article and Max and Whiney picked it up and it's mostly pretty good! Like awesome remixes of Mary J. Blige and stuff. But except for the occasional water sound, there's really nothing that distinguishes it as a sonic vocabulary from other underground US bass music of the past few years. It's really just some kids who are doing similar stuff musically to what other people are doing, who decided to brand themselves differently and dress up weird.

before Max and Whiney picked it up as a punchline*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH5dBBvsnVM

That said, I won't vouch for Tim's friend that's run with the label.

goofy genre name + outfits is pretty much the classic recipe for "get attention, but not in any kind of good way"

well if branding your underground / amateurish / shoddy music differently by dressing up weird isn't worthy of derision i don't know what is

well see that's kind of how new art movements work though. it's called aesthetics.

But except for the occasional water sound, there's really nothing that distinguishes it as a sonic vocabulary from other underground US bass music of the past few years

well aside from the iconography and band names and shit the samples tilt it equally in the direction of like new age tapes/eccojams/kassette klub weirdo synth stuff

Which differs them from say Nguzunguzu or Fatima al Qadiri how? Not that there aren't differences, but those aren't it. (I'd pin those differences down on richer depths of influences on Nguzu & and FAQ's parts.)

to V: I guess I tend to prefer my dance music a bit rough and amateurish in general? I often get v suspicious of the more polished end of it.

yeah but this stuff doesn't really challenge my notions of beauty so much as it fails my subjective criteria of not being wack, believe that's called aesthetic judgment in technical parlance

fair enough

well i mean as much as the timesup ep cover looks like rejected art for one of dylan ettingers old tapes they arent sampling ecco the dolphin or referencing the startropics theme in their remixes. like all this stuff shares an aesthetic and a palette to some degree but i think its hard to argue that #seapunk isnt musically a little closer to some el tule cassette ca. 2009 than other 'underground bass music'

rev i understand what you're saying esp w/r/t to that ballroom chant / neovogue stuff you like (which i can't get with but i can respect) but this is kinda beyond the pale for me

i guess every generation gets the electroclash it deserves (yes i have skeletons in my closet)

yeah, that really wasn't so much a defense of this stuff so much as just saying "oh no, this sounds amateurish" probably isn't going to get you far against a guy who's currently geeking out over jersey club

xp tbf, you completely lost me with your references there, but i'll roll with it

they arent sampling ecco the dolphin or referencing the startropics theme in their remixes.

i guess i'm just not up on my video game music haha. if i've heard this shit it's gone over my head.

haha fair enough

i guess my point is that the cultural referencing thats going on in #seapunk is functioning similarly to the referencing going on in lots of post-noize/post-anco underground music of the last few years and lends the music a similarly distorting, mediated feel. whereas stuff like nguzunguzu isnt musically referencing sega genesis games or vhs soundtracks or w/e at all

right right

we did have this discussion about playstation aesthetics here tho fatima al qadiri ILM edition, (+ ayshay)

i guess this kind of ties into the ferraro wars too, altho he's not my thing at all

yeah this stuff has been seeping out of the fuck it tapes/not not fun/root strata underground and towards the edges of more mainstream stuff for like the last half decade, i find it super interesting and i think that as it gets absorbed by different genres/kids/scenes the referencing and the references themselves change but its interesting to see how strong the commonalities are too. fwiw tho i dont think al qadiris stuff really 'works' in the same way that like curtis vodkas does although both are much more directly interested in melody and ~dance~ than like 'far side virtual' or w/e

naff fest 2012

lol @ fest

yeah, i was thinking about this on my walk (saddest thing i've typed on ilx all year), and it occurred to me the seapunk kids have a kinship with teengirl fantasy, miracles club, mi ami, 100% silk and the rise of HIPSTER HOUSE: S/D that nguzu/al qadiri/et al don't, and i see you've brought up NNF.

but it's all tiny degrees of separation anyway. le1f had a couple instrumentals on #seapunk volume 1 and nguzunguzu worked on his album.

yeah, it's all coming from that tape/drone/post-noise scene/aesthetic... things are just growing off in slightly different directions: psych/freakout/jam, dreamy/ethereal/media/hypnagogic, pure noise/drones, noise-goes-dance, and then all this post-witchhouse/chillwave/memepop stuff... sea/ice/slime-punk etc

All of this stuff is at least theoretically fashionable and in some ways trading off its naffness in a way that modern ska totally isn't.