Music in ten years time.

Kinda sad how accurate the predictions are in swears's early posts. Shouldn't be that easy to predict 10 years into the future

Perhaps music is just no longer the focus (or locus?) of innovation. After all, you could hardly say that nothing has changed in, say, technology since 2006.

A whole load of creative energy is being funnelled into memes, social media, Photoshop, Minecraft, etc. these days.

Best revive ever. Actually made me feel I'm stuck in a bad trip. (am I?)

Someone who called themself 'djpimp' more intelligent and articulate than any of us still posting. Painful. Brutal.

the internet is where people think they can now go to change things. music is no longer that place.

the idea we seemed to have and some still do have that bad times = good music is kinda laughable. that only works when there is more of a secure framework in which it is safer to rebel, which previous generations all had. now, that is prob less so. then again, you can still get JSE, but all the other things factor in too. i.e. music isnt that forum anymore, you cant make that much money from music now in general, people have been scared by their governments too much.

im still waiting for albums to die though.

Gotta admit, I don't know shit about current charts (download/stream/sales whatever), I get bits and pieces from daytime radio when in a store or waiting room. I assume, daytime radio is still somewhat a reflection of what's popular on a mass basis. Which leads me to the notion I hardly ever hear indie rock (the Arctic mokeys kind) any longer. It's mentioned in one of the openeing posts in the thread. I still hear glossy overproduced autotuned pop/rap/house-ish stuff during those daytime radio listening moments. Does that mean indie-rock is finally dead at last?

swears said:

It's weird now though, twenty-odd years ago you could point to electro and say "This is the future" or fifteen years ago you could have done that with rave, five or six years ago, IDM or 2step. And you would have been right in a way, because those things eventually filtered into mainstream pop culture whether as advert soundtracks, or crossover hits, or nicked to lend a bit of cred to a pop production.
The last record that really felt that way for me was Midnight Request Line. Over a year ago. So we're in this strange sort of dead-time now, a feeling that the present state of affairs will continue, business-as-usual style.

Click to expand...

So have there been any "This is the Future" records from 2006-2016? At all?

I suppose Drake was busy starting his career with little to no fanfare in 2006. Seems like he more than anyone has been responsible for fashioning a sound of the 2010s, if such a thing exists.

baboon2004 said:

So have there been any "This is the Future" records from 2006-2016? At all?

Click to expand...

Any of these?

T2- Hearbroken

Coki- Spongebob/ 16Bit- Chainsaw Calligraphy/ Skrillex

Apple- Mr Bean

Bangs and Works

Iyanya- Ur Waist

Vybz Kartel- Pon Di Gaza 2.0

Young Thug

Alkaline

Future

Dominowe- Africa's Cry

Jersey Club

drakes influence is colossal (and i think would include things like the weeknd)

whoever started the young thug/fetty wap autotune sort of rap-singing thing also deserves credit for creating what is def something that never existed

trap beats, no matter how dull now, are def of this era

then there's the influence of edm

so there def are things that are relatively new, and most definitely of this era. its more that these things are in service of values that are the status quo, and def not underground, or anti-mainstream (whether by default or deliberate). while i found the whole retromania discussion interesting, and not without cause, at the same time you had that, which has more or less become part and parcel of modern pop, there was equally as many things which were 'of the moment' happening. i think now the development is both slower, and more incremental. there is a greater need for novelty and new product and market presence, etc etc, but this does not include as high a need for innovation.

i dont pay enough attention to indie stuff to really track whats been happening there. but obv the xx have had a great sweeping influence, that kind of overlaps with burial, but i think more coincides with a wider trend for great seriousness and earnestness, and great, rigid sadness in pop. you can even include future in this, as being another rapper overtly keen to show how fucking sad he is all the time, while not really relinquishing raps bravado.

interesting list Barty, thanks. Mr Bean/footwork/jersey club/young thug all seem to fit the bill to me...the dancehall stuff I just don't get though, to me some of the dancehall c.2000 still sounds more 'future'. Not sure what' preventing me 'getting it' though.

I'd add Main Attrakionz style cloud rap (which was just confusing on first listen) and I thought UOENO was a quintessentially 'wtf' beat for the first few listens. Chief Keef c Back from the Dead 2? At least, some drill (as with YT) provoked a chorus of "that's not really music", which is always a good indicator of future-looking sound. Principe Discos records sound more '2010s' than almost any other music to me, even if the grime influence is glaring.

And yes, the explosion of sadness and self-pity in mainstream music has been a major tonal shift, that I think would be confusing to someone of 10 years ago unless they'd been listening to Burial all year maybe.

some of the PC Music/SOPHIE stuff would sound pretty alien to someone in 2006, really brash, unapologetic 100% hyper-artificial. where kraftwerk was music by robots, SOPHIE is music by artificial intelligence, the ghost in the machine.

This completely floored me when it first came out. Very much the sound of the future.

if nothing else, it seems like rock is indeed dead. i know people always say that and granted i'm an old fart but to my ears, radiohead has been stuck in the same rut for the past half-dozen years, many young bands regarded as "good" are largely a halfway decent homage to a past sound (parquet courts, car seat headrest), and the only people saying things that matter are rappers.

perhaps it's tied to the decline of white male dominance, wonder if trumpism will kickstart a wave of nationalist breitbart rock.

Some Chicago Bop sounded like the future to me.

The final death of Rockmusic has got to do with the fact today's kids (meaning teenage to early 20s) are the first generation growing up dominated by the digital sphere. While myself (born 1979) I grew up with computers and the net and all, but those things had a confined space and time. For roughly a decade now, or rather since the 2010s, smartphones have connected (some say enslaved) many people (especially the young) to a "digital existance" on almost every level of life. So I think this generation is to a big part alienated regarding to something so "analog" as a guitar or a drum kit.

I was born in 94 and there was only a very brief period between maybe 2004-2006 where rock was a cultural presence in my life and it was confined very strictly to middle class, white kids. By the time we were in our teens the kids who had listened to rock were now either listening to reggae/dub revivalism, Grimes-style electronica or to the stuff the other kids were listening to (dancehall, rap, grime, pop, etc.). A little later on, acts like Skrillex filled the sonic and cultural space that before would have been filled by bands like Slipknot and Korn, but also appealed to working class kids which rock acts hadn't done in my experience.