I don't really like the kind of unrealistically hegemonised description of the "state of affairs" that allow people to make pronouncements like "the next new thing will be really simple and not over-produced, unlike all the over-produced music at the moment." It just seems to me to rely on consciously ignoring exactly half of what's going on at any particular time.
What are crunk, reggaeton, baile funk, the nu "French touch", nu wave indie etc etc ad nauseum if not examples of pretty simple, stripped down, "funktional" musics? There's hardly been a dearth of it of late.
But it seems to me that the idea of progress seems to be tied up with things being more referentially ornate. Also it behoves me to point out that when i'm talking about (fist punches sky, lol) the revolution i'm definitely talking about change in the scenery of US/UK music musical-mediascape. I'm also probably talking about the white middle-classes, about their radicalisation. Seems like nobody else (you list Reggaeton/BaileFunk/Crunk) really dont need or care about sudeen upeheavals- i'd even argue they're at root radical forms.
Obviously that lays the whole charge open to the accusation: "who the fuck cares either way?" But I do! Reserve the right to be subjective innit. Also seeing as how this middle-class demographic feeds the state's central structural ideas about itself, i like to see that shook up. Perhaps it has more of an impact that the low-level detonations of Crunk et al? Again reserving right to be subjective
People make the mistake of looking at one particular strand of music which, yes, might temporarily be characterised by either simplicity or sophistication, and then erroneously assuming that the development of this strand stands in metonymically for popular music as a whole.
As per above. I suppose we've seen increasingly a less hermetically rockist (in the old sense) worldview grow up among the media-hungry. I suspect in the 1960s The Stones/The Beatles were thee whole world to white middle-class people (perhaps all people in the UK) It was only tiny pockets of people that hijacked other musics for themselves, like the skinheads and ska. Certainly looking (as I have been) at US West-Coast LA rock, that seemed like the whole world to those people even when there was great jazz under their nose in LA and Mexico was just across the border. And the music certainly didn't suffer, even seeped into black music....
Actually it's one of the things about Globalism that (paradoxically) I regret. That the central core focus has shifted away from (ok this is risible) poor whitey's own middle-class culture. Always being syncretic and lacking focus on your own issues doesnt create strong musics. Funny things like The Beatles epic micro-drama "She's Leaving Home" spring to mind. So yeah I'd argue in favour of a slightly more enclosed world-view, argue in favour of ditching the legacy of other musics on the mainstream. Sounds kinda like apartheid *and* the NME, lol. But it shouldn't stop other scenes doing their things.
Maybe Folk is the way forward?????
And, really, simplicity vs sophistication is not the kind of aesthetic choice I think I <i>want</i> to make... it goes without saying that most really good music is a mediation b/w the two - but I guess we've had this argument before (I accept that my refusal to adopt an either/or position on this is a sign of weakness or komplicity with kapital etc.)
As per Simon SilverDollar's remarks. Again not sure it's the kind of choice I want to make, or one in which I'd be happy to see my "prediction" come true. To be explicit, it's "Never Mind The Bollocks" that stripped-down trad rock that is the touchstone for this idea.
By the way, my favourite example of a potential "next new thing" this year has been the Gypsy Beats & Balkan Bangers comp put out on Atlantic Jaxx - at once simple and sophisticated!
Gypsy. Hmm Gogol Bordello and all that. My friend Flashos involved in all this. Can't quite get with it myself.
