SeaPunk / Chillwave / Nu gaze / Glo-Fi / Molly Pop / Witch Trap / Special Characters

zhao

there are no accidents
been encountering lots of these type sounds... some of it can be described as abstract r'n'b blog-bass euphoric twerk-trance moody digital EDM bounce-trap with a bit of wobble, loads of drunk synths and micro-programming.

some of it can be interesting or even good. in theory. Fatima Al Qadiri for instance, at least somewhat related to these sounds. Have not really come to grips with these sub sub sub sub "genres", aesthetic and conceptual variations between them, what their politics are (if any. but some is very queer-identified), and not sure if it's worth my time really.

and these typography trends, special characters and letters that look like hieroglyphics... loosely associated with some of this but also adopted by N. American Global bass and Cumbia net labels, etc. I have not seen design magazines or anyone really talk about it: have you?

what you reckon? kids these days, eh?
 
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
"So, anyway, my friend - who's reaaally cool, you should meet him - he told me about this youth lifestyle brand called Ibiza Rocks, and, anyway, we booked this amaaazing suite at the hotel in San Antonio - of course, I'd never normally go there, and aaanyway, we got reaaaally pilled up and I had this revelation about Cafe Del Mar, yeah?, and when we got back I downloaded - illegally, of course - this bitching synth called Massive and just did some tracks, you know? Just a really chilled out, positive vibe, and after I'd uploaded them, tagging them my own genre that I'd made up, you know, creating my own brand, it was reaaaally amazing, right? This guy from - I know, right, insane - from Grand Theft Auto just emailed me - out of the blue - and licensed them. Life's so maaad sometimes."
 
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Secundus

Active member
I can't really tell but I think its a bunch of 4chan/tumblr kids taking the piss out of everyone elses' microgenres by making their own, like what hipster runoff used to do, with a few earnest concept albums thrown in. The stuff that's actually good inspires a bunch of imitators until everyone gets bored and moves on.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
the 2 comments so far make these tags seem entirely ironic, flippant and disposable. I am not sure if all or even most of it can be so easily dismissed. If you look on bandcamp and soundcloud, there really is a TON of new music which loosely fit the lump of descriptors i used -- kind of post-everything self-conscious nerd-bass that is content to solipsistically space out on its own plug-ins and too "over it" to rock or dance.

music which uses the shine and sheen of over-produced pop and Bored of Canada introversion; inner city templates dressed with the glossy ennui and dread of the 'burbs; escapist while knowing that it is impossible to escape.
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
These things are too disparate to lump. A lot of it is shit. Fatima's like 30, no? You can't say she's the same as most of these people, she comes from an educated art background; most of the kids who become famous in this zone are internet casualties.

Vaporwave is pretty self-sufficient in Japan from what I hear.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
These things are too disparate to lump.

Fatima's like 30, no? You can't say she's the same as most of these people

read again what i said please: "(Fatima is) at least somewhat related to these sounds"

But can you give us a bit of a primer for a few of these "disparate" sounds/scenes, or at least tell us their main differences?
 
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Slothrop

Tight but Polite
music which uses the shine and sheen of over-produced pop and Bored of Canada introversion; inner city templates dressed with the glossy ennui and dread of the 'burbs; escapist while knowing that it is impossible to escape.
Ballard-earic?
 

Leo

Well-known member
Fatima Al Qadiri for instance, at least somewhat related to these sounds.

she's got an album coming out soon on hyperdub, so it's starting to branch into the "mainstream" of the underground at least.

i own and like some of her singles, but they are rather superficial and hollow. like eating cake for dinner: initially interesting and attractive but not really substantial or nourishing (which is maybe the "disposable" element she's striving for, not sure).
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
read again what i said please: "(Fatima is) at least somewhat related to these sounds"

She isn't though. Fatima's connected directly to the whole Fade To Mind/Lit City crew of Americans doing UK sounds through their boring filter of generic NYC Dance Music Mush. She's never had any relation to these younger kids who are kind of disparate and not found in centralized dance music culture.

To be blunt, I typically divide 'internet music' into three categories:

A) Strange Oddities that are made by unique individuals who are coming out of pre-existing underground genres that existed outside of the internet who are slowly making their way to a newer sound (Both Lil' B and Oneohtrix are kind of similarly in this sort of framework)

B) Cliques of kids who have fascinations with older music who like to put it through weird druggy filters and just sort of have fun. They're not part of a centralized scene of pre-established music, and they tend to fall into this weird DIY loft/punk venue/rave culture. Seapunk are the most obvious examples of this, though I honestly think Salem were in that zone.

C) "Hipster" "art" figures who see social trends and costume them into their work to suit the current climate. This ranges to Fade To Mind's UK Obsessive costuming for their generic house, Lil' Ugly Mane (former noise artist who discovers internet rap and subsequently becomes an awful minstrel-like parody of Memphis Rap, with 'cloud rap' filters), and the list goes on.

I personally enjoy Fatima's work as Ayshay a lot more than her 'solo' work, because it's a bit more varied than her solo work. To me anyway. I'll probably get the album though.

But whenever it comes to these scenes, I have a ton of anxiety because of a lack of... restraint when group three start to curate or pass themselves off as the other two. Because so often these figures are plugged in so that they can override the hype generated by acts from the first two camps, because they have friends in 'journalistic' (Fader/Noisey) spots, or they have access to 'hip' 'big on the internet' producers who aren't actually part of the climate of the genre they're invading... But 'big enough' in their weird urban middle-class culture that they supercede value in the actual genres they are trying to make their way into.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I just wrote (the above) as a reponse, Zhao!

I like alot of the druggy hiphop but the rest from what I've heard is (see reply earlier)

Which seapunk should I listen to woops?
 
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JWoulf

Well-known member
The last year or so every "hip" person Iv'e met seem only interested in listening to and making 70's progressive rock music. As far as I can tell it has no value at all beyond the nostalgic, a young movement no longer interested in creating culture, now only replicating, and replicating the very culture their own parents once found revolutionary.

And this is not what we was promised. We was promised a culture increasing exponentially, where everyone turned from consumer to producer to product, where everyone has their five minutes, five seconds, where genres lasts a week, a day, disappear simultaneously with their creation. A multicultural chaos where the cultural circle is reduced to a point, where popularity and cultural value become meaningless concepts. Where the very idea of a cultural history and a cultural future would become meaningless, everything becoming part of a transmuting now.

But that cultural paradigm shift never came, or it has not yet. But if the SeaPunk / Chillwave / Nu gaze / Glo-Fi / Molly Pop / Witch Trap / Special Characters is not part of that promised future, at least I hope they could be interpreted as trying to reach or emulate it. As producers willfully taking part in a change in how we view the creation of musical trends and how we give them value.

That said I am still looking forward to the future Burgess prophesized in 1962, where the annoying pop music of the moment is in shape of musique concret.
 

woops

is not like other people
witch trap


some one else will be more able than me to recommend some good seapunk
 

zhao

there are no accidents
^ good stuff.

i think the sounds / aesthetics we're addressing here indeed have more weight and will prove to have longer lasting signficance than meets the eye.

for one thing "it" has already infected much in both pop as well as underground dance music circles.

There is a ton of new post-everything bass music that is for sure influenced by "it".

for instance this dude from NYC lotic who been doing a series of parties in Berlin called Janus, loosely associated with Venus X, Fatima too i think. (apparently it's coming to an end as the last party i just saw posts about on fb)

https://soundcloud.com/lotic/fractures

Like i said, there is a ton of electronic and bass music in sorta this vein being produced and coming out...

at first i couldn't be more averse to the heavily treated R'n'B vocals and bright pop keys... but i don't know. maybe some of it already doesn't sound as bad as it did at first.
 
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