Good tunes, bad influence

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Thought it would be interesting to talk about some acts who were good in themselves but inadvertantly launched an avalanche of drivel. Maybe to the extent that you end up hating the original or maybe not.

A few starters:
Boards of Canada - they're always described as the progenitors of that melancholic melodic style of late 90s electronica. But most of the imitators miss the point that the progression - particularly in the really influential early stuff - is in the drum patterns. The melodies loop and drift endlessly and never properly resolve, and it's the shifts in the rhythms and textures of the percussion that carries the tune. Consequently, you end up with a load of people writing stuff with looping unresolved melodies and tedious percussion.

Basic Channel - utterly unimpeachable tunes, but unfortunately introduced a whole generation to being really boring about vintage equipment and the idea that it doesn't matter if you don't write anything interesting provided you've got a real Space Echo.

Autechre - repeatedly. Likewise the original Mille Plateaux clicks and cuts crew. It was experimental when they did it because they did it first and explored new ideas with it, it is not experimental if you just copy it as a way of sounding up to date.

Massive Attack - how did we get from the skunked up and stripped bare Blue Lines to Morcheeba? Uck.

Pretty much every decent guitar band for the last thirty years - it's still good if you do it really well, but unfortunately one band doing it really well inspire about a hundred doing it abysmally... I'd count The Libertines as about the last example of this.

Any more?
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Let me see...

Aphex Twin
Radiohead
Jazz Fusion (First wave of bands or so gets it fine... Then next thing you know, it all turns into elevator music!)
DJ Premier (Though I do like his stuff, the minute he discovered his "Moment Of Truth" style, the sound of the generic NYC beat was born.)
 

tyranny

Well-known member
Optical - instantly spawned an army of clones, all of whom promptly launched a production arms race and utterly failed to cop on to what made Optical interesting enough to warrant copying.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Massive Attack - how did we get from the skunked up and stripped bare Blue Lines to Morcheeba? Uck.

Yeah I think Portishead moreso than Massive Attack kicked off waves of nasty imitators. I think it's partly a breadth of influence thing - the Portishead bods seem to be into old film scores, British folk, Premier type hip-hop beats, but by the time you get to bands like Morcheeba or fucking Sneaker Pimps or whatever it just sounds like people who are into right now. There's no synthesis of elements, just regurgitation and dillution of one sound.
 

Papercut

cut to the bone
Yeah I think Portishead moreso than Massive Attack kicked off waves of nasty imitators. I think it's partly a breadth of influence thing - the Portishead bods seem to be into old film scores, British folk, Premier type hip-hop beats, but by the time you get to bands like Morcheeba or fucking Sneaker Pimps or whatever it just sounds like people who are into right now. There's no synthesis of elements, just regurgitation and dillution of one sound.

yeah thats it exactly.

re: autechre/aphex/squarepusher etc.

there is probably nothing more cringy than hearing a track with stutter/dblue glitch/beat repeat slapped over the master randomly and being passed off as someones "work" or "art". an unfathomable level of self deception.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
This reminds me of a great quote from Sonic Youth, specifically Kim Gordon. Something like "Led Zeppelin is the worst band in the world, because they inspired so many shitty bands."

Replace that with... Queen, and you've got it. Queen made good songs, but goddamn it if there's so much shit that can be traced back to them.
 

STN

sou'wester
J Dilla.

A stoppy-starty beat, a kind of vrrrrrrooooooooooooooooom noise and if you're lucky a crackly soul sample. Begone!
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I think we'd have more luck trying to identify the few acts who have inspired (almost) solely good imitators. None come to mind immediately...

I guess I usually like bands influenced by Neu!, even if it can be a bit blandly used sometimes.
 

routes

we can delay.ay.ay...
Basic Channel - utterly unimpeachable tunes, but unfortunately introduced a whole generation to being really boring about vintage equipment and the idea that it doesn't matter if you don't write anything interesting provided you've got a real Space Echo.

YES.

Flying Lotus - couple of good tunes, but unfortunately introduced a whole generation the idea that it doesn't matter if you don't write anything interesting provided you've got fuckloads of sidechained compression going on.
 

Krasner

Well-known member
I second Basic Channel. As great as their music is they've inspired an entire fucking genre of boring crap.
 

bob effect

somnambulist
Oasis - begat bands like "friends of Chris Evans" Reef or "no no, we're not influenced by Oasis at all" Embrace and many many other lad rock fuckwits of the late 90s who should have been taken out back and shot repeatedly in the head.

Unfortunately this example is invalidated by the fact that Oasis are without doubt one of the worst bands in the history of human civilisation. So not so much like an example of a good band inspiring loads of bad imitations, but more like a big long skid mark with Oasis at one end and Ocean Colour Scene at the other.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
as well as flylo (which someone mentioned above), burial. love that first album, hate pretty much all his washy washy/not nearly as emotive/going nowhere downtempo imitators/influencees. those two have a lot to answer for.
 
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