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

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)

y'all i try to be open-minded but i haven't yet heard any power electronics or harsh noise wall i like

there's some good schlager tho, i dig hildegard knef

Xp Jordan: looking back that post was a typing and grammar disaster but looks like the point got through.

Re: Psytrance coming back - In the distant past I put out Trance, Hard House and Dubstep 12”s, all genres which have feature(d) in so many “I like everything but…” conversations with music pals and peers over the years. In the Dubstep says especially, any hint of that kind of past was kept severely quiet as if some kind of shame befell it.

So ever since Lone / Zomby etc repackaged early 90’s breakbeat hardcore for ‘serious’ heads in the early/mid ‘10s (read: ditched the ‘embarrassing’ elements aka the fun or joyous bits) I’ve been waiting for the self proclaimed ‘hip’ end of dance music to claim they were always secretly into hard house / trance / happy hardcore etc.

It has been quite entertaining to watch it finally come about - post S.O.P.H.I.E / Danny L Harle / Hyperpop etc stuff getting plays and shows on Rinse FM, Bjork embracing Gabba adjacent stuff, Business Techno DJ’s dropping trance classics etc. The other day I heard an I Jordan tune on 6music that was just straight up offbeat bass hard house.

It’s all ok now apparently - I think I get how the punks felt when Steely Dan became ok to like (as per the long running ilx thread).

Of course the Hyperpop stuff is smothered in layers of irony and gen z meta web stuff I couldn’t hope to understand as a 40+ year old dad- and new ‘trance’ is now codified as ‘melodic techno’ and everyone is wearing black so it’s more insta-friendly than your uncle gurning with his top off at Gatecrasher.

Either way I guess some of these ‘I like everything but…’ genres can come back around, especially if there were melodic or stylistic stones left unturned / or the unpalatable/uncool scenes that developed around them dissipate and something new can be built by fresh blood (see Disc World / Sneaker Social Club etc’s breakbeat scene and it’s complete lack of links to ‘Nu School Breaks’ / the early ‘00s circuit).

I just can’t see the kids doing this with The Kooks / Zutons / Wombats which were already a 2010s rehash of 1990s bands recycling the 60’s and 70’s.

The lineage of terminology as I recall it went:

"college rock" (80s) which begat
"alternative rock" (90s)
"indie rock" vs "underground rock" (the former being timid and singer-songwritery and the latter being the noisy, heavy-but-not-metal, aggro stuff) (late 90s unto present day)

(re: Barlow lyrix)

When has Thurston Moore ever cracked a joke? Is that something he used to do onstage in the ‘80s?

Indie is short for independent which initially meant small labels run almost as a labour of love by people who were running things out of a love of the music and teh creativity of those that were signed to the label. It was Independent of the major labels that dominated the music scene in the UK. A lot of new small labels formed during the punk explosion as ways of releasing music taht swam against the mainstream. But the mainstream fought back and at one point started setting up small affiliated labels that passed as indies and were included on the indie charts etc.
Somewhere along the way teh focus of why a label was being run changed from being about love to being about making money. Or that may be a rose tinted lens view and there had always been some intention of at least keeping the head above water. But there did seem to be a commodifying process involved including why music was actually being made.

The US had a longer history of smaller regional labels which were independently run which is one reason teh word indie wasn't being used for them. Also not sure if indie is an automatic formulation of american speech in the way that English shortens things, might have wound up with a parallel term for a similar set up.

& also sometime over the last 20 odd years the medium of consumption changed from being a physical medium like a cd, tape or lp to being digital. &now its a lot harder to make money as a band, not like it was ever really easy. BUt I think it was possible to make a living without being absolutely massive.

Some of the worst people imaginable ran independent labels.

Re. "indie," there is a probably anachronistic moment in the movie "24 Hour Party People" where someone says "indie music" and it misinterpreted by the club owner as "Indian music."

In an alternate universe, Factory concentrated solely on ragas and helped develop the electronic tabla

In America someone might think Indie was music about race cars.

So ever since Lone / Zomby etc repackaged early 90’s breakbeat hardcore for ‘serious’ heads in the early/mid ‘10s (read: ditched the ‘embarrassing’ elements aka the fun or joyous bits) I’ve been waiting for the self proclaimed ‘hip’ end of dance music to claim they were always secretly into hard house / trance / happy hardcore etc.

sorry idk which “hip end” you’re talking about but this seems ahistorical to me. “bassline is more interesting
than deep house” has been a thing on ILM for at least 10 years now, and authors like matos and reynolds have been pushing similar arguments w/r/t edm, ukg, speed garage etc since the 90s

if you look at reynolds roundups from the late 90s (forget which one exactly) you can catch him arguing that timo maas is better than autechre and singing the praises of goa trance after experiencing it at a moonlit beach rave … besides isn’t repping for “trashy” breakbeat hardcore how he got up in the first place?

there's a lot of trance sounds out there in current music that i've been digging, i think the irish duo Long Island Sound puts out consistently great material that is pretty trancey.

i always did like those sasha and digweed mixes...

> In America someone might think Indie was music about race cars.

My dad actually asked this question circa 1992, as my brother was into both

For the record I wasn’t really referring to Reynolds and co vouching for scenes critically, it was more what I have noticed from experience here in Bristol :)

I thought everyone had a 90s UK definition of "indie" in their heads until a discussion on this very board a few years ago.

There's been a bunch of psytrance songs that I enjoyed over the past year, but it definitely takes some digging through a lot of samey stuff to find. As far as trance-proper is concerned, I feel like I get more and more confused over time about what people think falls under that header, I'm guessing there may be a lot of tracks I've liked recently that may be considered trance even though I wouldn't call them that.

psytrance, that's the guy who did "Gangnam Style," right?

I often think of what DJ Rolando told me in an interview many years ago— “It’s all just techno to me man, call it dubstep or breakstep or whatever, it all comes back to techno.” I don’t totally agree, but I LOVE techno, and along those lines, I like at least a small part of most related genres.

take the masculinity out of nu metal and there's a pretty OK genre in there somewhere

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Tuesday, May 16, 2023 5:00 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD9xotOWQSk