what if there is no next BIG thing?

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DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
If you think the 90's aren't embrassing now, you haven't really looked back. I started noticing this year that the 90's do look silly in retrospect, their time to be mocked has arrived.

At first it was while watching "Mr. Show", a great comedy show starring David Cross and Bob Odenkirk. Their skits are so naive and about such trifling topics. Even when they did "political" stuff it was about militiamen in Idaho...who even thinks about that these days? It really seems like a carefree time compared to the impending apocalypse of these days.

Then I watched "Human Traffic", a british movie about clubbing and again it just looked so silly and naive. Ok, the movie is a bit over-the-top but I still found myself cringing in a few places.

Don't get me started on rave music videos (go on, go to youtube and search for House Crew, Urban Hype, Altern-8...)

Though, is it just me or is the fashion not that different from 10 years ago (again, excluding the whole rave thing. On the other hand, maybe that's not fair. We associate the 60's with hippies but most of the population had nothing to do with it).
 
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D84

Well-known member
mms said:
i tihnk you're right about reactionary cycles but in every generation there are always many levels of flawed utopianism of different strands.
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Oscar Wilde:

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
There IS a definite anti-90s feel. Drum and Bass sounds terrible right now (old d'n'b that is- of course almost all modern stuff is dreck). Its the 10 yr inverse to the 20 yr rule of re-habilitation and re-appropriation. Can't quite explain the mini-shoegaze revival tho, that stuff (esp slowdive) sounds fucking great right now.
 
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swears

swears

preppy-kei
gek-opel said:
Can't quite explain the mini-shoegaze revival tho, that stuff (esp slowdive) sounds fucking great right now.
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Yeah, stuff like MBV, Slowdive, Cocteau Twins (proto-gaze, really) and the first Lush album are the only guitar records I like at the moment. Maybe it's because they're playing their effects as much as their instruments. Maybe it's because thier dreaminess is the sonic opposite of all those dreadful post-punk copyists like Franz Ferdinand and The Killers.

Loved the Tresspassers William cover of Ride's "Vapour Trail" on Erol Alkan's Bugged In mix and downloaded the original. It was crap: a great dreamy song ruined by nasal voclals and awful Stone Roses style "funky" baggy drumming. Nowhere has a lot of good songs which are ruined by their style.
Ulrich Schnauss should work with some vocalists, on "proper songs", now that would be 21st century shoegaze I could get into.
 
B

boomnoise

♫
to what extent is 'the next big thing' simply a product of a marketing hype machine. surely it comes along when we least expect it. at least if it is to have much significance.

for me i'm still interested in seeing where the h/c 'nuum can lead us. i'm not sure there's much else which can satisfy our (implicated) demands in all of this. not without some kind of major technological break through.
 
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DJ PIMP

Well-known member
I think the new thing is not so much trying new things, but getting back into the state of mind of the old things. Thats what is exciting me in techno and electro house and the renaissance of acid etc.

Throw away the oppressive notion of progress and get stuck into the vibes that made things so great to begin with. Thats not to say you can't do things that are arguably fresh. Again...

The End of Novelty Manifesto

No Guilty Pleasure
No Authenticity
No New Things

--

Its a funny time. We're still enduring the hangover from the party at the start of the millenium - 9/11.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
once again, this is my stateside perspective on anti-90s sentiment, fwiw. the 90s as some sort of epoch has been ridiculous for a while to the hipsters. nirvana and their earnestly angsty ilk are viewed with the kind of ironic detachment fans never thought anyone would have. indie kids are finally shutting up about pavement and yo la tengo.

the new thing is to wear superneon technicolor clothes, somewhat raver-like, but in updated fits, and DEFINITELY all i see on the L and J train into brooklyn lately are vintage pairs of the legendary early-90s kicks, like reebok pumps. ahh i remember when my dad had those. around the time i was watching teenage mutant ninja turtles in cartoon syndication.

P.S. I agree with you completely, bleep--at least, that seems to be the zeitgeist here.
 
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D84

Well-known member
I dunno guys... the teen-age metal-head in me finds this thread a little distasteful as it seems a bit like bad fashion writing: you know, oh d 'n' b is so passe, shoegaze is the new black etc.

So on the one hand this no new novelty thing makes sense: no work is ever truly "original", to know the past is to know the future, etc etc. The metal-heads that I know are scathing about trend-followers and stuff like "fashion-metal".

And it's always a good thing to go back and rediscover the old stuff or listen to old records/CDs that you didn't appreciate properly the first time round, which is what I've been doing a lot the last couple of years.

But on the other hand it does sound a bit like when designers or their boosters run out of fresh ideas... :slanted:

You make a good point re 9/11 though, bleep: partying isn't as much fun when people are being slaughtered in your name... but that's a topic for a different forum!

EDIT: but yeah I think there's still great fresh stuff being made - that it's not obvious now because of bad publicity, or being squeezed out by bigger label publicity etc or people whinging about the crap music coming out of the majors etc. Sometimes that's covered better on the blogs than on dissensus.
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
gek-opel said:
Can't quite explain the mini-shoegaze revival tho, that stuff (esp slowdive) sounds fucking great right now.
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I think showgaze originally was partly about indie guitar music becoming more diffuse, druggier, less macho, more pastoral, less 'rock', less 'real', more dreamy escapist etc. I suppose there's a perceived need for that kind of adjustment again now.

A friend of mine who is in a band that plays very shoey music calls it 'nu-gaze' :)

I recommend Acid Mothers Temple's 'Troubadours From Another Heavenly World' for dreamy textural guitar scapes.
 
Landfill Elektronikz

Landfill Elektronikz

-
Troy said:
prediction:

Trance. Coming back bigger, badder, and better than ever before.
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suggesting that Trance was ever any good in the first place? not to my knowledge.

all about 'jazzy dubstep' in '07!! can't wait to hear those live drum overdubz and fender rhodes licks!! yeah man!!






ps. If this actually happens I will be disowning it completely:D
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Jam N' Spoon's 'Stella' as well.

Of course it is difficult to sea how trance could be redeemed now, but then so often it is the most maligned, unhip or ignored runts of styles that come back with something totally unexpected and fresh.
 
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the undisputed truth

Banned
Nick Gutterbreakz said:
all about 'jazzy dubstep' in '07!! can't wait to hear those live drum overdubz and fender rhodes licks!! yeah man!!

ps. If this actually happens I will be disowning it completely:D
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Its the latin influence that tolls the death knell for a genre. Once they start assimilating that is well nigh over. Even the soca stuff some have been trying is getting dangerously close.
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
That's kind of a Rhodes sound in 'Left Leg Out' isn't it? Also some other current Mystikz dub ('Dun Stinky'?). Some of D1's recent tunes are approaching something like emotive-trance-bag-step.
 
Guybrush

Guybrush

Dittohead
the undisputed truth said:
Its the latin influence that tolls the death knell for a genre. Once they start assimilating that is well nigh over. Even the soca stuff some have been trying is getting dangerously close.
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Word and word, but 150bpm+ soca still sounds very fresh on any dance floor, me thinks (great party-starter -- try it out if you haven't). What's this talk about a trance revival? We are in the middle of one! Just check out a couple of recent Kompakt or Kitsuné releases for evidence of that. The line between detroit techno and bona fide trance is a little blurry to say the least, but even if most recent trance tunes get labelled as "techno" they bear a striking to resemblance to the early trance tunes imo (Stella, mentioned upthread, being a good example).
 
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turtles

in the sea
the undisputed truth said:
Its the latin influence that tolls the death knell for a genre. Once they start assimilating that is well nigh over. Even the soca stuff some have been trying is getting dangerously close.
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Dunno about that, the latin influence in minimal techno right now is really pushing things forward (villalobos, luciano, senor coconut, dandy jack...). Especially Villalbos, check his remix of "behind the mask" or his new one, "fizheuer zieheuer"...very heavy latin influence, and both are great, really quite unique tracks.
 
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