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

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

xp nice, I just listened to Aztec Mystic Mix like a week ago!

Wonder if Rolando wanted to take that back after hearing those Avicii trance / country music crossovers

xp nice, I just listened to Aztec Mystic Mix like a week ago!

I hadn't heard of or heard Electro-Swing before this poll. It's...not good, but I was really expecting much worse based on the comments. I mean we're competing with Nu Metal here.

There’s at least something relatable in the Beattie as of my-metal that you can sometimes cotton onto, I listened to one electro-swing song and went “this is smirk music” before noping out after 25 seconds

Amazing how both jazz and techno can be so ruined

Jesus Christ what is happening with my phone

That was supposed to stay “the brattyness of nu-metal”

I think I relate to the brattiness of nu-metal as much as the "let's wear fancy dress and have a silly time at the big top tent" vibes of Electro-Swing, which is really not very much at all

But that's just me. I think a big reason genres like these are maligned isn't necessarily to do with the sonics, rather the cultural baggage and especially the fandom. Electro-swing type people tend to be insufferable. Nu-metal people, maybe not so much, in fact in my experience they tend to be lovely.

Psy-Trance suffers from perceived fanbase problems, but enough water has gone under the bridge now maybe for people to come back to it and appreciate it without imagining a bunch of middle-class poy-wielding squat crusties trying to expand their minds on ketamine. Or maybe people do, but they're remembering those types of people in a fond, rose-tinted kind of way because they never had to put up with them?

As far as recent psy trance is concerned, I don't dislike this at all

https://timewarprecords.bandcamp.com/album/xanda-ceres-timewarp178-timewarp

Can't speak for anyone else but my hatred of Electro Swing is 100% an instinctive reaction to the sonics of it. As stated the only time I've heard it in the wild was a wedding and the couple were lovely people, who knows if they asked for it or this was the DJ's decision anyway.

Nu Metal getting a critical rehabilitation was a historical inevitability really, you can't be that critically maligned during your lifespan without it turning around at some later date. It will never not sound like stupid garbage to me, but I was as complicit in deciding Journey and REO Speedwagon were Pretty Good, Actually as the rest of my generation so zoomers doing this to the music of my youth is to be faced philosophically.

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