What sounds 'cutting edge' in 2015?

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xxp ... my point, which I guess wasn't entirely clear, being: sometimes a critical mass is reached where a particular 'sound' (recording aesthetic, whatever) becomes significantly easier to achieve than it ever had been in the past, & that increased accessibility leads to a temporary influx of creativity (subgenres, or microgenres -- we're talking short pop-culture cycles, here, like producers using trance synths in chart rap)

Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Thursday, 28 May 2015 12:54 (eight years ago) link

to answer this question, which isn't so much a question as an invitation to inhabit the noosphere of dog latin and the psychic space of doglatinnery in general, some recent things that sound vaguely distinctive

shxchshcsh
the sd laika album
gabor lazar
sensate focus/mark fell
demdike stare testpressings
kouhei matsunaga
lorenzo senni
james hoff
lee gamble

lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, 28 May 2015 12:54 (eight years ago) link

dog latin it isn't so much wyschnegradsky, perhaps the eighth or ninth most interesting russian piano music composer of the early 20th c, but a whole school of marginal wackiness following that before its ideological currency was debased to the extent that prog rock and even prog metal people take it up

lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, 28 May 2015 12:56 (eight years ago) link

If anyone is painting pop on a canvas anything like Dawn Richard's then hit me up

ty for the list nakhers, u forgot gaz kingsnorth obv

an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 12:57 (eight years ago) link

Bob Dylan -Shadows in the Night

curmudgeon, Thursday, 28 May 2015 12:58 (eight years ago) link

or like, what about all those Attack! Attack!-style post-metalcore myspace bands we used to have so much fun mocking -- bands doing nothing that hasn't been done before, but doing it in such a spectacularly ill-advised way that the result takes on this fascinating outsider art quality

Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Thursday, 28 May 2015 12:58 (eight years ago) link

turn of the century microhouse sounded distinctive because most electronic music did from 98-01 or so due to the proliferation of software of greater complexity
probably something like farben/textstar still sounds quite good although vocalcity while being slightly estranged towers all over the more exoteric clicks and cuts stuff

none of those i just listed sound 'cutting edge' exactly, in that way, though they might have the advantage of being better

lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:01 (eight years ago) link

x-post to myself--re-contextualizing Sinatra covers in 2015 is as cutting edge as much electronic programmed music is in 2015

curmudgeon, Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:03 (eight years ago) link

microtonal metal music is groundbreaking in the least interesting way possible to anyone vaguely familiar with the prewar heterodox avantgarde

What a gobsmacking sentence.

the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:03 (eight years ago) link

this is the thread that could bring back challops in 2015, repackaged in unprecedented forms

an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:05 (eight years ago) link

but first the very idea of "music" needs to be rethought

Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:07 (eight years ago) link

for teens 100 years from now "music" will refer to the process of turning something that happened in real life ("a sample") into a sharable meme thru ordered repetition ("looping")

Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:13 (eight years ago) link

the value of music as rendered / recorded "finished" pieces manifested in consumable formats does need to be reconsidered.
is the future imperfect music played socially without the safety blanket brand identity of recognisably monikered "Band/artist"
even "let me wtf you" gets tiresome pretty quickly

massaman gai, Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:14 (eight years ago) link

you could kick a violin in the street

an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:14 (eight years ago) link

so long as you don't put a recording up on bandcamp

massaman gai, Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:16 (eight years ago) link

yes I like the idea of "imperfect music played socially" in some respects I think the current scene has already begun to resemble that

Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:17 (eight years ago) link

+ then we have a narrative that reflects how&why live looping is such a BIG DEAL

Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:19 (eight years ago) link

i hate looping. it's so lazy. webern all the way

massaman gai, Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:20 (eight years ago) link

xp however we must also acknowledge that on a certain theoretical level "music" is synonymous with "perfection"

actually this reminds me of something I meant to post earlier in the thread, about a sound that really IS new and unprecedented: software keyboard instruments capable of computing on-the-fly pitch adjustments, to make the intervals of a chord sound as harmoniously as possible -- put that in your well-tempered clavier & smoke it!

Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:25 (eight years ago) link

most novel thing about Jute Gyte is the strength of the songwriting and the integration of the quartertones as not gimmick but melody

― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:52 (8 minutes ago)

this is just an invocation of classical virtues and the sort of thing you bring up when your ideological white knighting veers from 'pure pop' to worthless progressive rock music

lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:28 (eight years ago) link

the future imperfect music will have been looping and autopitching

an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:29 (eight years ago) link

Well when I think of artists who are currently making music that doesn't quite sound like anyone else, I think of Colin Stetson, but I don't think he quite counts cutting edge.

MarkoP, Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:29 (eight years ago) link

I hate questions like this because:
- there is no limit to the number of candidates you could come up with. "Cutting edge", objectively, is meaningless, and in practice only defines what sounds new to whoever you're asking
- thus, there really isn't ANY answer.
- And who cares what's cutting edge? It's not a contest. If there WAS a contest, it would be based on whoever is most popular, which kind of defeats the idea of "cutting edge"
- it makes cynical music journalists posit that there is no avant-garde, no progress left to be made, and other nonsense claims that say more about how hard it is to write about music -- in an age when opinions matter less than the minuscule space on the twitter server where they're placed -- than insight into music or people or anything else

That said, for me, footwork and teklife stuff seems like a pivot point in the development of electronic dance music, in a similar way as Aphex Twin, and early IDM did in the 90s. IMO it is meaningful when I can play it in a hipster DJ situation, or for my girlfriend while we're cooking dinner, and have each "audience" enjoy it (and still have it written about as "avant garde" dance music)

Dominique, Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:30 (eight years ago) link

less white knighting, more attempts to express aesthetic preferences in the terms of value, maybe i shouldn't bother, except 'worthless' does the same thing so it's the only countermanoeuvre available

thought about mentioning colin stetson upthread but it's a novelty of recording technique more than anything else

an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:31 (eight years ago) link

The Scott Walker/Sunn O))) collab sounds pretty cutting edge to me, can't really identify any antecedents for that drone doom w/crooner from hell sound

anthony braxton diamond geezer (anagram), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:36 (eight years ago) link

this qn is beyond stupid in strong ie teleological terms but in more modest terms ie 'what seems vaguely different' its fine

lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:37 (eight years ago) link

the qn is 'what sounds' not 'what is' so i don't feel foolish answering it

an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:38 (eight years ago) link

what sounds cutting edge at 2015

nashwan, Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:39 (eight years ago) link

less white knighting, more attempts to express aesthetic preferences in the terms of value, maybe i shouldn't bother, except 'worthless' does the same thing so it's the only countermanoeuvre available

― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:31 (8 minutes ago)

the claim was that it was new/different/etc not aesthetic preference and your retreat into thatisjusthowifeel solipsism is the end of a failure to argue on those terms, which ought to apply even it is worthless since it perfectly possible for terra nova to be covered in turd

lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:43 (eight years ago) link

This is quite similar to that awful poptimism thread that's still rumbling on it that both of them are full of people folornly straining for some kind of pseudo-objectivity to justify their tastes.

Matt DC, Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:44 (eight years ago) link

i <3 footwork, but a lot of it sounds like the tracker gabber my friends and i were making in the 90s /Wyschnegradskyguy

p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:47 (eight years ago) link

some of it reminds me of kate bush

nashwan, Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:49 (eight years ago) link

what i mean is, it's very exciting music and it sounds unlike much other stuff, but it's not inconceivable that it could have been made at any point in the last 25 years, apart from some exceptions (JLin)

p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:50 (eight years ago) link

the claim was that it was new/different/etc not aesthetic preference

moving the goalposts eh, you were talking about my 'white knighting' for pop & prog

i can well justify the subjective novelty of all the acts i mentioned in a way that most people on this site would identify with - only a few would yawn and say 'it's been done' with any weight of justification

an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:54 (eight years ago) link

From 2013, but still out in front, for me anyway - http://www.discogs.com/Rashad-Becker-Traditional-Music-Of-Notional-Species-Vol-I/master/583248, but I'd also considered mentioning Mark Fell/Sensate Focus and the Demdike Stare testpressings as above, and many of the things I've heard on PAN, specifically, Afrikan Sciences, Beneath, Hecker Leckey, NHK'Koyxeи.

neilasimpson, Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:54 (eight years ago) link

massaman gai might though, he's definitely the most avant-garde poster on ilx

oh nice, more recommendations. that is what this thread should mostly be imo

an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:55 (eight years ago) link

From 2013, but still out in front, for me anyway - http://www.discogs.com/Rashad-Becker-Traditional-Music-Of-Notional-Species-Vol-I/master/583248, but I'd also considered mentioning Mark Fell/Sensate Focus and the Demdike Stare testpressings as above, and many of the things I've heard on PAN, specifically, Afrikan Sciences, Beneath, Hecker Leckey, NHK'Koyxeи.

― neilasimpson, Thursday, May 28, 2015 2:54 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, that Rashad Becker is the best and closest suggestion that I recognise so far ITT, in that the sounds themselves aren't ostensibly man-made or synth-made but something quite alien to anything else I've heard in music. i've had some very strange visceral reactions to moments on that record while listening on headphones; emotions that I'm not even sure how to pin down, but they're there.

p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:02 (eight years ago) link

what's also great about it, is it doesn't appear to be seated in any previous style of music - it's not a breaks record like Autechre do. rather than trying to fuck with any occidental (or oriental, for that matter) tradition, it doesn't even acknowledge them. still, it's recognisable as music rather than just sounds. they are compositions.

p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:05 (eight years ago) link

moving the goalposts eh, you were talking about my 'white knighting' for pop & prog

i can well justify the subjective novelty of all the acts i mentioned in a way that most people on this site would identify with - only a few would yawn and say 'it's been done' with any weight of justification

― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:54 (8 minutes ago)

the claim to novelty was just aesthetic white knighting, as demonstrated, in this instance with an appeal to novelty

the cutting edge being invoked is of course the appeal of sharp and serrated surfaces that david kelly would be familiar with from that fated day in 2003 when he read the words 'objective' and 'subjective' being used one too many times on a music message board

lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:12 (eight years ago) link

what i mean is, it's very exciting music and it sounds unlike much other stuff, but it's not inconceivable that it could have been made at any point in the last 25 years, apart from some exceptions (JLin)

well yeah, it's pretty much just MPC+808! it's a really simple idea, as far as what you need to make it, and it's funny how something so spare and ironically hard-to-dance-to fascinates me so much as dance music. Musically, it's also not far removed from patterns you hear in dubstep, trap and hip-hop, and house and techno. It's like a hybrid lifeform, and I think that's why it strikes me as "cutting edge".

Dominique, Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:19 (eight years ago) link

Also the question isn't whether it could have been made at any point in the last 25 years. If that's the case why wasn't it? There are social and cultural reasons why it emerged when and where they did, and whether or not some isolated IDM nerd made something that sounded much the same in 1995 is neither here nor there.

Likewise with deep tech, the issue is less about what the music sounds like as who is dancing to it this time round.

Matt DC, Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:26 (eight years ago) link

exactly. that's why when someone leaps in and starts talking about how 'Stockhausen did it first' in relation to, say Aphex Twin or whoever, it's not a big deal.

p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:33 (eight years ago) link

the type of novelty being described here is the sort of process music where its sound is immediately apparent from a bare descriptor, 'mictrotonal bedroom black metal' or 'it is 2004 and someone has just ysid an epic bossanova cover of love will tear us apart'

rashad becker album is formless and meandering but timbrally quite unlike anything else around

lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:38 (eight years ago) link

If I'm to answer this semi seriously, which feels like an embarrassing move somewhat, I feel like what I'm really doing is offering a prediction over what will most visibly shape the sound of music in the future. In the u.s. I feel like the goon cru follows stuff that tends to be the vanguard of what's new and shaping hip-hop's future already. though the young thug thread may make it seem like there's a bit of an imbalance as the corny fuxx praise as distorted his contributions relative to a swath of other rappers.

Internationally, big picture though, I still think Nigerian afropop feels like the most obvious direction for the shape of music to come, a populist genre that is also popular, which provides an aesthetic "out" for genres currently spiraling in boring directions cf UK deep house, edm, most rap, r&b, etc

Keith Mozart (D-40), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:41 (eight years ago) link

it's a big deal for me. originality is a big part of how I respond to music. plus, credit should be given where it is due

xxp

anthony braxton diamond geezer (anagram), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:43 (eight years ago) link

it is static and bloops evoking the Seoul cityscape being overrun with cockroaches

tbf it is always interesting to hear a 'new musical language' outside of known form, katie gately is of that stripe as well imo

an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:45 (eight years ago) link

anagram, but context is everything here. Jute Gyte's not the first person to experiment with microtones, but in the realm of extreme metal, he is.

p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:54 (eight years ago) link

kanye west

nose, Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:58 (eight years ago) link

agree with deej that afropop feels like a vanguard for pop music. the fact it's so accessible and at the same time diverse and different enough from established UK/US dance music is a plus. Spent the other night with my g/f just watching vid after vid from the afrobeats thread and we were transfixed, which i doubt would have happened if with any other dance genre.

p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, 28 May 2015 15:09 (eight years ago) link

Jute Gyte's not the first person to experiment with microtones, but in the realm of extreme metal, he is.

Is this true though? How do we even know? (serious question, not trying to be a smartass)

moans and feedback (Dinsdale), Thursday, 28 May 2015 15:11 (eight years ago) link


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