yes, blast beats should be compulsory.
No more guitars.
- Thread starter swears
- Start date
yes, blast beats should be compulsory.
I understand where you're coming from Swears on this, (and support yr universe of pristine syncopated drums and glam facades) but really, guitars are tools, instruments, little more. There are plenty of bands using guitars in innovative ways, but increasingly it is difficult to attain innovation without extremely complex post processing (Fennessz), abandoning song form (Sunn0))) or, alternatively using them merely as another instrument in a more interesting mix of sounds (Plenty of guitars in dance music nowadays no? Or on the new JBs record, and Hot Chip too...)
I would actually posit metal (or perhaps post metal or extreme metal) as one of the last remaining areas of genuine experimentation with guitars, the last area where rock music still has some pretenses to innovation, so I think you aimed at the wrong target there really... extreme metal is incredibly interesting, filled with disgusting new (mis)uses of the humble guitar....
Yr gripe surely is really rock as a culture, one which has largely divested itself of even the merest hints of the new, ie- it is the most full on post-modernist genre (in the manner of a deadening sequence of simulacra, rather than jump-cut hyperkinetic information overload, of course)... The problem with your analysis as others have stated is that in essence it is because rock=mainstream at present (in this country- not in the US) and you have failed to dig any further than the scum on the surface... if you knew as much about guitar music as dance music you would surely find more to delight-- or at least something of merit!
I would actually posit metal (or perhaps post metal or extreme metal) as one of the last remaining areas of genuine experimentation with guitars, the last area where rock music still has some pretenses to innovation, so I think you aimed at the wrong target there really... extreme metal is incredibly interesting, filled with disgusting new (mis)uses of the humble guitar....
Yr gripe surely is really rock as a culture, one which has largely divested itself of even the merest hints of the new, ie- it is the most full on post-modernist genre (in the manner of a deadening sequence of simulacra, rather than jump-cut hyperkinetic information overload, of course)... The problem with your analysis as others have stated is that in essence it is because rock=mainstream at present (in this country- not in the US) and you have failed to dig any further than the scum on the surface... if you knew as much about guitar music as dance music you would surely find more to delight-- or at least something of merit!
swears
preppy-kei
Well, I do like some rock....I thought Andrew WK was an interesting and perverse proposition, and the first Queens of the Stone Age album was a nice exercise in stiff motorik beats and coolly unaffected vocals...but this was five years ago at least. There's not much balls out RAWK that I like, most of the guitar stuff I listen to is MBV, Slowdive, the first Lush album, Cocteau Twins: dreamy, effects saturated things like that.
I just proposed this as a thought experiment more than anything. What things would emerge to replace rock and indie? Would it be another situation like early 80s new pop or would cheeseball mainstream 1999 trance take over again? It's an interesting question.
I just proposed this as a thought experiment more than anything. What things would emerge to replace rock and indie? Would it be another situation like early 80s new pop or would cheeseball mainstream 1999 trance take over again? It's an interesting question.
bruno
est malade
you wish! it would degenerate into something like the love parade very quickly. or a dystopia of enigma and robert miles clones with tight t-shirts, imagine that.
swears
preppy-kei
Well...you can listen to these.
Just a few tracks I did on Reason and Soundforge...not that great.
My whole life is lobbing loose ones from the sideline!
swears is british, though, so i am not talking about america.
Guitars aren't the problem. Isn't the problem too much lazy leaning on tradition/ancestry? How about a more radical solution - guitars are OK (all instruments are OK), but all records older than, say, 12 months, are banned. Force all musicians to think for themselves.
I'm a fan of traditions though - I think they're not to be sniffed at, even if they should be constantly questioned and renewed - so this isn't an approach I'd campaign for, but isn't this really what you're getting at Swears? Some sort of radical, permanently renewed break with history?
I'm a fan of traditions though - I think they're not to be sniffed at, even if they should be constantly questioned and renewed - so this isn't an approach I'd campaign for, but isn't this really what you're getting at Swears? Some sort of radical, permanently renewed break with history?
swears
preppy-kei
To be honest, I don't think there's ever been a total break with history. Even postpunk and no-wave had their precedents in earlier forms of art-rock. I also remember reading house was described by "computer disco" by Marshall Jefferson or one of it's other early American producers. What pisses me off is the constant sense of running on the spot, looking back is okay if you're using the past as springboard to something new. We are hearing records now that could have come out in 1979 or 1991 or whenever, but with the hard edges sanded and pro-tooled to get on MTV2.
(This has all been said before.....but I think it's worth stressing anyway.)
I think I'd like to hear more thoughts on what would happen in a guitar-free scenario, rather than trying to give people the impression that I think all guitar music ever is worthless, but I think we can all agree that the current brand of Topshop-rock being passed off as fresh and worthy of attention is deplorable.
Guitars have a lot going for them - versatile, portable, relatively easy to learn. The closest I can think of is laptops, but then you lose the physical performance aspect, or keyboards, although pianos aren't terribly portable. But I reckon that's where music would turn to. Ben Folds Five would be the new Beatles...
borderpolice
Well-known member
guitars are very easy to play harmonies with (hence "three chords"). also: transposition is a breeze. both need more skillz with laptops/keyboards (well, transposition is automatisable with laptops). of course it is very difficult to play harmonies and melodies at the same time with guitars, unlike keyboards, let alone laptop, but in the music we are discussing the melody is carried by the voice only (if at all, in HH or RnB, vocal melody is deemphasised in favour or vocal microrhythms (this in my opinion is one of the overlooked new stylistic innovations of current pop music: lots of singing is now done by singers who are neither screaming nor trained in a classical way. thanks to cheap high quality microphones, hard-disk recording and re-cycle, we can now easily capture the amazing vocals of "normal people" and milk them for musical jewels, see cassie's "me & u" as an example)), hence guitars are used mostly as a harmonic device. i think this is the key reason for their reemergence: all other pop music these days isnt really doing much harmonically. this contrast (harmonies vs rhythmic minimalism) is what makes guitar music so appealing.
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I still blame the drummers. It's reasonably easy to do something different with a guitar, but drummers have to hold the beat down, and not many of them seem to get past doing that and start doing anything interesting as well - they seem to get taught "bom tak bom bom tak tikka" in the first drum lesson and then just go on making that basic pattern more frilly with fills and the like. The Blissblogger commented a few months back (part of the infamous Arctic Monkeys confession) that most modern indie bands seem to have got drummers because they know that that's something bands are supposed to have but they're not really sure why or what they're supposed to do. This is also why the first Libertines album is actually bloody interesting.
I PROPOSE:
A ban on drum kits unless they're demonstrably being used to do something good ie metal. Prior to this, we'd hold an amnesty, where drum kits can be traded in for other forms of percussion - tablas, 808s, timpani, congas, laptops running reaktor, Moe Tucker style horizontal drum kits, maracas and so on. Projected results - the negative side effect of this would probably be a lot of hippy 'jam' bands. Although they might throw up a few things like early Mercury Rev, Animal Collective etc. However, we'd (hopefully) also get a lot of bands whose percussionists actually had to think about what they were doing and why. And where percussion leads, rhythmically at least, the rest of the band follows. Blinding.
I PROPOSE:
A ban on drum kits unless they're demonstrably being used to do something good ie metal. Prior to this, we'd hold an amnesty, where drum kits can be traded in for other forms of percussion - tablas, 808s, timpani, congas, laptops running reaktor, Moe Tucker style horizontal drum kits, maracas and so on. Projected results - the negative side effect of this would probably be a lot of hippy 'jam' bands. Although they might throw up a few things like early Mercury Rev, Animal Collective etc. However, we'd (hopefully) also get a lot of bands whose percussionists actually had to think about what they were doing and why. And where percussion leads, rhythmically at least, the rest of the band follows. Blinding.
borderpolice
Well-known member
matt b
Indexing all opinion
and bass ... they only ever play low notes! how dull is that?
and singing. its just so fucking obvious.
this post is on some bulls***
there's still so much more to be explored with a guitar its just that...those area's aren't! look on my ppl's blog below - nii-o's latest post sorta addresses this issue and see someone still tryna take things further -Matt Bellamy from Muse - I couldn't believe when he showed me that the boy put a Kaoss Pad in his f****** guitar??!?!!?
since when was picking up a guitar a default way of thinking when coming towards music?
there's still so much more to be explored with a guitar its just that...those area's aren't! look on my ppl's blog below - nii-o's latest post sorta addresses this issue and see someone still tryna take things further -Matt Bellamy from Muse - I couldn't believe when he showed me that the boy put a Kaoss Pad in his f****** guitar??!?!!?
since when was picking up a guitar a default way of thinking when coming towards music?
ford.anglia
Member
An eminently sensible idea I should think.
And it's easy to forget that around 1988-92 we thought we were well on the way to consigning electric guitars to the museuems where they belong.
A real hostility towards them ran through vast swathes of the "dance" scene back then (and still does to be honest) sometimes becoming tangible eg Altern-8's famous ceremonial burning of guitars at raves and tracks such as West Bam's "No more fuckin rock n roll".
It was never really going to happen though was it not when the corporate (rock) music machine was so set against something which undermined its very existence.Not to use a too romantic analogy but rather like the people trying to take on capitalism itself.
And sure enough in 1992 when the undeground started to dominate the British charts without any help from the music biz/Radio 1 etc it turned its full strength on the scene.
How else do you explain the rule suddenly introduced on Top of the Pops that you could no longer mime...an idea inimical to a music form where the studio was so important.
Incidentally it shows just how massive the support for "dance" music was when you think that a large proportion of dance tracks were sold in specialist shops which in those days never registered in chart sales or were listened to on mix tapes.
Shitey rock singles could sell 10,000 copies to a tiny fanbase and get in the Top 20 while shedloads of dance tracks sold 40,000 or more and in many cases barely registered.And as for mainstream radio play forget it.
The record business could always take the pretend rebellion of punk which after all was really just a continuation of good old rock n roll but anything really radical and "from the streets" forget it ...
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Guybrush
Dittohead
The combined "Official UK Top 40" and "Hit 40 UK" Chart as of Sunday 27th August
01 - Beyonce featuring Jay-Z - 'Deja Vu'
02 - Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean - 'Hips Don't Lie'
03 - Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone - 'Ridin'
04 - Cascada - 'Everytime We Touch'
05 - David Guetta versus The Egg - 'Love Don't Let Me Go
06 - Cassie - 'Me & U'
07 - Snow Patrol - 'Chasing Cars'
08 - Arctic Monkeys - 'Leave Before The Lights Come On'
09 - Rogue Traders - 'Voodoo Child'
10 - James Morrison - 'You Give Me Something'
11 - Matt Willis - 'Hey Kid'
12 - Christina Aguilera - 'Ain't No Other Man'
13 - Justin Timberlake - 'Sexyback'
14 - Rihanna - 'Unfaithful'
15 - Kasabian - 'Empire'
16 - Micky Modelle versus Jessy - 'Dancing In The Dark'
17 - Morrissey - 'In The Future When All's Well'
18 - Lily Allen - 'Smile'
19 - Paris - 'Stars Are Blind'
20 - Keane - 'Crystal Ball'
21 - Paolo Nutini - 'Last Request'
22 - Stacie Orrico - 'I'm Not Missing You'
23 - Thom Yorke - 'Harrowdown Hill'
24 - The Feeling - 'Never Be Lonely'
25 - Kooks - 'She Moves In Her Own Way'
26 - Ronan Keating - 'Iris'
27 - Sandi Thom - 'I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)'
28 - Pink - 'U & Ur Hand'
29 - Alesha - 'Lipstick'
30 - Lazy-B - 'Underwear Goes Inside The Pants'
31 - Pharrell featuring Kanye West - 'Number One'
32 - Razorlight - 'In The Morning'
33 - Gnarls Barkley - 'Smiley Faces'
34 - Maria Lawson - 'Sleepwalking'
35 - Fratellis - 'Chelsea Dagger'
36 - Supermode - 'Tell Me Why'
37 - Bob Sinclair featuring Steve Edwards - 'World Hold On (Children Of The Sky)'
38 - Missy Elliott - 'We Run This'
39 - Michael Gray featuring Shelly Poole - 'Borderline'
40 - View - 'Wasted Little DJs'
There are a lot of wanky guitar bands in there for sure, but dance tracks make up about a fifth of the chart (discounting the Hip Hop/R&B tracks, of course). Encouragingly, the top six also is clinically void of any dist-guitar clatter - and it's suprisingly half-decent to boot.
P.S. I looove disco and dance music so don't even start D.S.
01 - Beyonce featuring Jay-Z - 'Deja Vu'
02 - Shakira featuring Wyclef Jean - 'Hips Don't Lie'
03 - Chamillionaire featuring Krayzie Bone - 'Ridin'
04 - Cascada - 'Everytime We Touch'
05 - David Guetta versus The Egg - 'Love Don't Let Me Go
06 - Cassie - 'Me & U'
07 - Snow Patrol - 'Chasing Cars'
08 - Arctic Monkeys - 'Leave Before The Lights Come On'
09 - Rogue Traders - 'Voodoo Child'
10 - James Morrison - 'You Give Me Something'
11 - Matt Willis - 'Hey Kid'
12 - Christina Aguilera - 'Ain't No Other Man'
13 - Justin Timberlake - 'Sexyback'
14 - Rihanna - 'Unfaithful'
15 - Kasabian - 'Empire'
16 - Micky Modelle versus Jessy - 'Dancing In The Dark'
17 - Morrissey - 'In The Future When All's Well'
18 - Lily Allen - 'Smile'
19 - Paris - 'Stars Are Blind'
20 - Keane - 'Crystal Ball'
21 - Paolo Nutini - 'Last Request'
22 - Stacie Orrico - 'I'm Not Missing You'
23 - Thom Yorke - 'Harrowdown Hill'
24 - The Feeling - 'Never Be Lonely'
25 - Kooks - 'She Moves In Her Own Way'
26 - Ronan Keating - 'Iris'
27 - Sandi Thom - 'I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)'
28 - Pink - 'U & Ur Hand'
29 - Alesha - 'Lipstick'
30 - Lazy-B - 'Underwear Goes Inside The Pants'
31 - Pharrell featuring Kanye West - 'Number One'
32 - Razorlight - 'In The Morning'
33 - Gnarls Barkley - 'Smiley Faces'
34 - Maria Lawson - 'Sleepwalking'
35 - Fratellis - 'Chelsea Dagger'
36 - Supermode - 'Tell Me Why'
37 - Bob Sinclair featuring Steve Edwards - 'World Hold On (Children Of The Sky)'
38 - Missy Elliott - 'We Run This'
39 - Michael Gray featuring Shelly Poole - 'Borderline'
40 - View - 'Wasted Little DJs'
There are a lot of wanky guitar bands in there for sure, but dance tracks make up about a fifth of the chart (discounting the Hip Hop/R&B tracks, of course). Encouragingly, the top six also is clinically void of any dist-guitar clatter - and it's suprisingly half-decent to boot.
Has this alleged "decision" ever been investigated in any depth though? It's not that I don't think it holds any merits, it might well be accurate, it's just that I think it sounds overly simplistic. I have a similar problem with people describing the disco backlash as solely about homophobia, reactionary rockism, machoism, corporate inability to profit on it etc. Could it just not be that it was all getting a bit shit and people were looking elsewhere (yes, to their first love - R.O.C.K.) for the soundtrack of their lives.
P.S. I looove disco and dance music so don't even start
D.S.Tangentially, I read in Julian Copes article about metal (I think in the Guardian?) that SUNN0)) ditched the guitars for their most recent headline gig and just used moogs instead...
here it is:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1852426,00.html