Worst "genre" created by a journalist part 4534547668686 : 'Hypnagogic Pop' by David Keenan.

Oi Keenan, leave the making of silly genre names in order to create hype to the NME. New Weird America was bad enough, but Hypnagogic Pop? Really? Fuck off!
You can shove that one up your arse along with your overpriced CDRs that you sell.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/images/artists/madlib/cover306.jpg
Now I'm going to go listen to Pocahaunted while cursing you some more.

Marcello to thread to slag off 18 Wheeler.

I was wondering why this term had suddenly appeared on Twitter.

Can you explain this term to me?

Does that bother you more than the fact that the tag for the Madlib article is 'Patrolling yesterday's universe with the Beat Konducta'? Seriously?

I like how the hierarchy of the text implies Peter Christopherson is his own genre

sorry, Sleazy Peter Christopherson

hurting 2 i haven't more than skimmed the start of the article but it seems to be an extension of that 'hauntology' idea no one really did anything with to the "post-noise underground" (sorry, "post-Noise underground", fucking hate the wire's typography)

i would like a scan of that madlib article, please

vahid I would but i dont have a scanner, sorry.

there is a bit of it here http://www.exacteditions.com/exact/browse/435/493/5474/1/1

The last time i got this annoyed by the wire was when they used Vladislav Delay instead of Luomo which I figured is because Luomo is a more famous handle. Also, genre that starts by trying to shoehorn Emeralds into the same tag as Pocahaunted is starting out pretty shakily. Like this stuff has a pretty small yet inconsistent remit, it's not specific nor is it a wide umbrella term.

the photo of madlibs records made me hella jealous btw

oh ffs http://www.last.fm/tag/hypnagogic%20pop

At least hypnagogic pop as a genre name is not as bad Pocahaunted is as a name for a band.

who the fuck are these bands anyway?

well see that's why he's written an article to bring them to your attention, i dunno that you can really fault that bit

yeah but i'd like someone to explain it to me in english so i don't have to scan 5 unreadable wire intro paragraphs next time i'm at the record store.

you will have to make do with

Hypnagogic pop

How James Ferraro, Spencer Clark, Pocahaunted, Emeralds, et al are floating beyond Noise to a dreampop hallucination of the 1980s. By David Keenan

Since I cant scan the article.

I like Pocahaunted and Emeralds but this making up of a genre name is just stupid.
Of course it will help Keenan sell this stuff in his shop/online mailorder.

i bought this because i knew i had some hours waiting around in train stations to deal with and had been through the paper and it was just - dear the wire, i really, really think you could be a very good magazine if you fixed your two or three really horrible pre-conceptions that you filter the entire world of recorded music through, and i am spending four pounds on you in the faith that someday you will, but there is not a single thing on that cover that doesn't make it hard to like you

the article makes it sound like 'hypnagogic pop' has a mean of ariel pink and a standard deviation of about two thirds of an ariel pink. the only ones i've actually heard are emeralds, who are droney synths + guitar, and pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEE8LzzLPDo

^ makes them sound a bit noisier than they are on the record

the wire in playing fast and loose with the definition of "pop" shocker

that song sounded like someone playing back one of those generic chinese restaurant flute songs at half speed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40-q81UmJ28

i got yer hypnogogic pop right here

well see that's why he's written an article to bring them to your attention, i dunno that you can really fault that bit

am content to no longer subscribe to this magazine, for a number of reasons

i do thumb through my back issues on occasion tho

Emeralds are awesome, Pocahaunted suck. There are way more bands both of these bands sound like other than each other.

solar bridge = top drawer lo-fi psych-drone

i just signed a deal to write a 33 1/3 book about hypnagogic pop....it's gonna basically be a first person account of me surfing the internet today....some ILXORS will be making cameo appearances! : )

i'm trying to think of something snappy and contrarian

sorry to derail, but ilx poster: "i know, right?": did you used to post under a different name? i think i'm guilty of having you mixed up with someone else for a very, very long time

no i've pretty much always been me iirc ; )

The last time i got this annoyed by the wire was when they used Vladislav Delay instead of Luomo which I figured is because Luomo is a more famous handle.

he uses difft handles for difft releases tho, i assume the wire just used whatever he was using at the time

I can't help thinking that the phrase 'hypnagogic pop' would be a better description of MBV etc than it is of Pocahaunted et al. And if it fits to any act these days, I reckon it'd be Grouper.

(oh okay thanks) (xposts)

this thread is now #3 on google for Hypnagogic Pop
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=hypnagogic+pop&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

the wire in playing fast and loose with the definition of "pop" shocker

indeed it may be a few dozen Skaters and Pocahaunted albums since I heard anything by them, but I really have no idea what they have to do with 'pop'.

"The last time i got this annoyed by the wire was when they used Vladislav Delay instead of Luomo which I figured is because Luomo is a more famous handle.

he uses difft handles for difft releases tho, i assume the wire just used whatever he was using at the time"

Also I'm not sure this would necessarily be true for readers of the Wire anyway.

i found the pdf of the hypnagogic pop on another board
hxxp://www.mediafire.com/?i0kyoexginm

reminds me of when the wire were really into Cocorosie

so you can read it all to your hearts content
xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjrQjt-d9o0

^ Kitchens of Distinction claiming the h-word the term for shoegaze

didnt the cure do it first?

i don't get why they don't just throw it in some hauntology bracket

giving it it's own thread where people start discussing it essentially legitimizes it, so good work herms

i just signed a deal to write a 33 1/3 book about hypnagogic pop....it's gonna basically be a first person account of me surfing the internet today....some ILXORS will be making cameo appearances! : )

― I'm a Matt...I'm a DC (M@tt He1ges0n), Monday, July 20, 2009 4:02 PM (1 hour ago)

i'll be cool, sounds like a bit of fun

^^^will be cool

i found the pdf of the hypnagogic pop on another board

Until I read the full article I won't know for sure, but there may be a connection of some kind with the Hypnagogue EP by former Keenan faves Current 93.

i think originally the term for bands like the skaters and pocohaunted was 'moan-wave'. srsly.

They should def print Tom D's letters :-)

I don't write any anymore!

Because I don't buy it often enough to get annoyed enough to write a letter!

um so can someone pls point me towards the poppier end of this stuff?

Ariel Pink I spose?

I saw them play about a week ago and they had a song that sounded like Def Leppard, I could get with it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2foFbDYkBY

dude who uploaded this needs to play the tape through maybe 20 more times then stick it back up, and Ariel Pink never needs to write a song again

I think there is something in this. I've been listening to a lot of Gary War, Emeralds, Rangers, Oneohtrix recently and I can see some relation, although no justification for a "scene" to be created - a lot of the stuff on the Olde English Spelling Bee label sounds similar. As an Englishman of a certain age it is evocative of ET era Spielberg films, of an America I'm not sure ever existed but created by a weird juxtaposition of watching Happy Days in northern England in the 1980s. A lot of these bands also seem to be trying to recreate Loveless as cheaply as possible.

Liking Forest Swords too - this guy seems to be from near where I grew up, near Liverpool, and is adding Burial to the mix. Good stuff.

Creating a such-and-such that seemed to exist but never did is always a good plan to me. I applaud unmusics, &c.

I am fighting off an infection and hope I don't get gangrene or something equally amputate-able.

I love the comments btw
http://crystalvibrations.blogspot.com/2011/02/hypnogogic-sound-vibration-tape.html

RIP Volcanic Tongue

Picked up David Keenan's novel 'This Is Memorial Device' in a charity shop the other day and was surprised to find what I am convinced is myself mentioned in it very very briefly in passing early on in the book. My fleeting appearance is rather negative, but it's not an unfair description and has amused me greatly. Other than that, the book seems pretty promising from the first few chapters.

haha wow, that's amazing (as in the superlative, not as in surprising, obviously, given how often you and keenan will have rubbed shoulders). subject matter is v much up my street despite my reservations on mr keenan as a writer

I got super confused when I saw this yesterday:

https://images.roughtrade.com/product/images/files/000/185/505/hero/open-uri20191205-9868-1gwqcsx?1575557819

Amazed that I never posted on this thread

I've never felt any ire toward neologisms like "hypnagogic pop" because widely-regarded genre tags seem to take forever to stick, and sticking them to a particular scene has always been folly unless you're a purist. Grouping a bunch of contemporary sounds under a tag, regardless of some variation, is more of a shorthand way of saying "if you like this band, you may also like these others" and retroactively throwing prior work in there seems like an extension of the same.

Now we have data science analyzing listening habits and the likes of Spotify giving us monikers like "Escape Room" that qualify groups of artists that listeners seem to seek in parallel

"Escape Room"?!?

https://festivalpeak.com/what-is-escape-room-and-why-is-it-one-of-my-top-genres-on-spotify-a886372f003f

shit's getting weird

'Hypnagogic pop' doesn't strike me as sillier than 'impressionism' or 'cubism'.

never forget
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microhouse

'Microhouse' is fine. 'Buftech', on the other hand…

buftech probably makes a lot more sense in its origin language

Isn't that what they call beefsteak in New Zealand?

"conceptronica"

"Escape Room"?!?

https://festivalpeak.com/what-is-escape-room-and-why-is-it-one-of-my-top-genres-on-spotify-a886372f003f

shit's getting weird

― The Squalls Of Hate (sleeve), Friday, January 10, 2020 6:46 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hm, not bad stuff. Would I be able to hear this on night out at the escape club?

every bar becomes an escape room scenario at some point in the night

"UK Funky" is one of those genre names that riles me up just looking at it. (I have no idea what it sounds like, I'm sure I would totally like it.)

should have called it BritFunk

Level 42 and others already did that in the late 70s/early 80s

Now we have data science analyzing listening habits and the likes of Spotify giving us monikers like "Escape Room" that qualify groups of artists that listeners seem to seek in parallel

Blame Glenn McDonald.

wank sock

had a hypnogogic moment where i got confused by the fact he has the name same as someone i know

This is striving hard to reach Bobby Gillespie levels of bullshit

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/david-keenan-i-ve-been-quite-close-to-madness-writing-these-books-1.4401052

it's not a good combo when the writer of the piece is just as full of shit as their interviewee!

I could envisage David becoming a character in the ongoing Chronicles of Boaby on ILX, I'm not sure how to depict an Airdrie accent though because I don't believe such a thing exists. Possibilities are there for a Four Yorkshiremen type sketch, could do with maybe one more West of Scotland windbag though.

(xp) Not exactly uncommon though!

"shroomadelica" c2000 had to be the most barrel-scrapey of the lot

For Keenan, logic is secondary to logos. He uses language as an instrument of spell-casting, of grammar as grimoire, distrusting the literary algorithms of plot mechanics, objective realism.

Fuck off with your plotless grimoire you talentless fuck. I saw his free jazz trio once, he's not exactly Albert Ayler put it that way.

I don't really have a problem with the guy, he's a bit of a hustler and a bullshitter, always was, but he's done well for himself. Plus he had to grow up in Airdrie, so he has my sympathy

I've not read any of his books so shouldn't laugh too much either I suppose. Anyone else?

I read his first novel and it was just OK. I actually wanted a more 'realistic' treatment - I live quite near to Airdrie now, and would like to have learnt more about its history, and more about the Scottish alternative music scene prior to the 1990s. But that might be more appropriate for non-fiction rather than fiction.

England's Hidden Reverse is p essential, and Volcanic Tongue was a great source of out sounds. In person have always found DK to be pretty genial and certainly not averse to having a chat, or an argument, with anyone. He's an enthusiast as much as he is a bullshitter and a hustler, and I can forgive him a lot for that. The Subcurrent Festivals he put on in Glasgow were fantastic.

Yes, I think he's been involved in some good things. Some not so good, mind you.

Wikipedia article on Keenan:

In an August 2009 piece for The Wire, Keenan coined "hypnagogic pop" to describe a group of musicians whose work resembled "pop music refracted through the memory of a memory". His article incited a slew of hate mail that derided hypnagogic pop as the "worst genre created by a journalist".[2]

Citation:

The article in The Wire magazine that defined the term "hypnagogic pop" garnered a slew of semi-hate mail, describing it as the "worst genre created by a journalist".

England's Hidden Reverse is peculiar and obsessive and unsettling. Even if you're not into the music he uses as a framing device (Coil, Current 93 etc) it's well worth a read.

he never answers my calls - tough guy to get a hold of

I got England's Hidden Reverse out of the library thinking I would just read the few pages about Psychic TV. Despite not having heard any records by Current 93, Coil or NWW, I found the whole book gripping and read it all. It has a lot of interview input from the artists, and insightful observations of the role of the occult in music and culture.

i like david keenan!

there, i said it.

Did anyone listen to the new album track on his website? Aside from the singing, it's like an outtake from The Unforgettable Fire, I didn't expect that, guess I was expecting angles and Pere Ubu.

I like him too, but there are more than one

I really like Keenan (irl and on the page - both are something of a construct you have to get yr head around) and have long felt vaguely guilty about slagging him off on this particular thread 11 years ago. He's clearly one of the good folk when you look across the entire field of play (not that he's even a music writer any more).

hypnagogic pop is a good term.