Music in ten years time.

Or how to rephrase the same question Part VII...

Even in a slow-down situation, there will still be some evolution, but it will undoubtedly be glacially paced and possibly far from the mainstream. Alternatively geopolitical/economic chaos could create the necessary psycho-political schism required to get the imagination flowing once more... The problems in music are a symptom of a bigger problem, possibly late capitalism itself, or post modernity or whatever.

Don't be daft.

Of course art, society, and fashion are cyclical in nature, but as media density increases and technology proliferates, change continues to accelerate to the point we can't see it any more.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I've been saying for years... its the end of novelty. Or more to the point, the omnipresence of novelty of a lesser degree, as culture becomes normalised to a flux of unbroken stimuli.

edit - for the last time (I semi-promise):

The End of Novelty Manifesto

No Guilty Pleasure
No Authenticity
No New Things

maybe after 2012 we'll hear things differently anyway...

...otherwise hopefully by 2016, a cultural revolution will have seen all or most electric guitars burnt in massive pyres along with every concievable fx pedal and in every major city there wil be mass graves full to the brim with guitarists while the gat police hunt down and cripple any wimpy indie kids looking to start a 4 piece band

wishful thinking but music to my ears...

swears said:

That 2016's music "scene" will be identical to today's, perhaps with the emphasis on slightly different retro signifiers. (Maybe a 90s revival?)

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On the plus side: There won't be any generational music gaps left, everyone listening to about the same sounds (this has manifested in an awing degree already, I think).

bleep said:

Of course art, society, and fashion are cyclical in nature, but as media density increases and technology proliferates, change continues to accelerate to the point we can't see it any more.

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An interesting point Bleep, but I think its almost the opposite, there is a paradox effect that as bandwidth of entertainment-culture-art-leisure-distraction increases, the actual intensity of innovation decreases. There are many reasons for this, but one of them might be the disconnection between different aesthetic branches (or genres in music) created as a byproduct of the scale of the whole edifice, (niches) and also the fact that the previous model was to squeeze almost everything vaguely "populist" through a tiny media aperture, creating interesting tensions, which as the aperture widens to accommodate any taste or predeliction is lost...

Thats kind of what I mean by 'novelty of a lesser degree' or normalization to the flux.

Its the same levelling effect at work.

Ah yes! The bare minimum of "novelty" rather than capital "I" "Innovation", just enough to get a response from a near-burnt out synapse...

gek-opel said:

An interesting point Bleep, but I think its almost the opposite, there is a paradox effect that as bandwidth of entertainment-culture-art-leisure-distraction increases, the actual intensity of innovation decreases. There are many reasons for this, but one of them might be the disconnection between different aesthetic branches (or genres in music) created as a byproduct of the scale of the whole edifice, (niches) and also the fact that the previous model was to squeeze almost everything vaguely "populist" through a tiny media aperture, creating interesting tensions, which as the aperture widens to accommodate any taste or prediction is lost...

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Quite, its the lack of tension in this broadband/niche/long-tail world that is precisely the problem. And its a problem that iterates upon itself. This 'something new' (and big) will always attempt a rupture with current forces, and will explicitly set its stall out against them. A lack of any dominant sound, and the mood that all is accepted and has its place, means that that there's nothing to oppose. Which means that something new (and big) is impossible. The mainstream will remain stuck (or at best, move at gek's glacial pace, or recycle on a 10/15/20 year loop, which people are mainly indifferent to anyway).

Of course, this doesn't mean interesting stuff won't happen in the fringes, in those niches, but they'll never get beyond that.

I'd like to think that there is some way out of this, that we can adapt to this broadband era. It may just be a question of coming to terms with it, and being happy with the crop from the niches. That does almost certainly mean that music has lost some of its relevance, and no doubt, excitement.

I'd like to think that the democratisation of music that is occuring, as more and more people have the means of production and distribution of music, would mean more musicians in the world discovering the joys of creation (rather than merely representation), and with it, greater innovation, and perhaps even an opposition to consumerism, as the excitement of music vastly outweighs hollow pleasures of conspicuous consumption. Unfortunately, 10 minutes on MySpace, and I'm thoroughly disabused.

I think attacking the wrong part will not result in the correct acceleration of intensification we desire. The roots are elsewhere, (ie-the global intellectual/financial/political endgame). These can be attacked, but not by musicians!

gek-opel said:

I think attacking the wrong part will not result in the correct acceleration of intensification we desire. The roots are elsewhere, (ie-the global intellectual/financial/political endgame). These can be attacked, but not by musicians!

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Within techno I view the trend away from glitch and contrived and fiddly minimalism toward a new and refined maximalism, as being comparable to the social trend of down-shifting. i.e. part of a growing yearning for reality - one which we have lost touch with and cannot inhabit until we reclaim the mythical. And perhaps the only way to do this is to invoke history, so as to illuminate the present mythologies we're sold and unconsciously consume.

Thats what I see in fashion and art of the past x many years, but also in the track names and themes that are floating around right now. 'Discopolis' (Acropolis, Apocalypse, Necropolis) is a classic in this regard... but the work of Romboy and Bodzin (who perhaps best express the musical movement I describe above) are littered with it, e.g. Elektrochemie, The Alchemist, Luna, Phobos, Valentine, Tron, Gemini, Atlas, Telesto, Hyperion. In a sense it reaches a peak of reality/unreality with The Club, if you take that as making the reality mythical and vice versa.

'The End of History'.

I'm not sure how things have progressed since 1996, to be honest!

Ahhh the pomo end of history - nothing new, everything is recombinant. We have limited choices based on a palette of existing colours. We have become consumed by the history/mythology we have rejected to the point where reality, expressed as the new/present (reliant on free will), is no longer even an option. Its like Jung said; the less we understand of the purpose of myth, the further we stray from its intent.

I think things have changed radically since then. 9/11 was the rift that tore open the collective unconscious and made the world start to wake up. I doubt we'll see a greater work of art in our lifetimes.

I'm with you on 09/11 as ART symbolic statement, (along with lots of other things)... but its not the foundation myth of a new century that many believe it to be (that's classic American sentimentalism). Terrorism is a pure sideshow, whereas the rise of China, the soon to come collapse of the American economy, the increasing abstraction of financial systems into wormholes of hyper-real economic alienation, and climate change and resource crisis gnawing at the back of everybody's minds, these are the narratives of the soon-to-be. The rupture will be in the reality of capital, for it is the centre of our world. All of these factors could shatter the present global mental-block. And liberate us from the culture-crash, perhaps?

swears said:

It's like a Mao II kinda thing then? The terrorist has replaced the author.

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Yeah. Reality has been so thoroughly undermined by mispurposed fantasy that it took an event of that magnitude and conception to confront people with the real world.

Though its always a fine line between megolomania and purpose if the artist is channeling unconscious archetypes.

gek-opel said:

but its not the foundation myth of a new century that many believe it to be (that's classic American sentimentalism).

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Thats what i mean... it appears we're facing an entirely unAmerican century. But its astonishing the way the US remythologised 9/11 so quickly through the movies - in the space of a few years. Although in effect it happened practically simultaneously when the firemen were branded as Heroes - rather than victims of tragedy and the incompetence of a civil service simply unprepared for such an event. Thats not to say they weren't brave, of course.

A paranoid/chilling idea I came across a while back was that the US admin was acting with total brazen disregard for humanity because as far as they are concerned there simply is No Future.

Douglas Adams had the right idea: Don't Panic.

swears said:

The idea that switching on the radio in 2016 and not being able to discern any difference from now...wow, that's pretty depressing.

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But aren't we already in a situation that's much worse than that? i.e. imagine someone time traveling from 82 and it's hard to believe that they wouldn't be shocked by how old-fashioned so much of what is played on the radio sounds. Sure there was REO Speedwagon etc back then, but they didn't have the level of dominance that Indie has now achieved.

Compare 67-87 to 88-06, it's frightening. Perhaps a better question than 'what will be the next big thing?' is 'what was the LAST big thing?'