No originality in music?

[Slothrop]

I dunno, I think she's saying what Logan's said really - she says that grime is innovative but that the companies aren't jumping on it. She's essentially saying that the record companies used to back innovative music, and now aren't. The only reason why 'Breakaway' and "Celebrate' aren't top ten now is because of lack of backing, y'know? Roll Deep and Ruff Sqwad are huge pop bands. I suspect it's also racism but don't wanna get into that reallly.

It seems like some Grauniad journalists are rather ahead of the editorial staff on music. You keep finding things like this and (from a review of a Just Jack single the other week):
"Listening to Just Jack is like overhearing the vapid mobile chatter of some manboy stoner in a Ladbroke Grove pub while a jazz-funk track trills offensively in the background, ie: worse than a bladder stone. Grime legend Wiley has already released three albums this year and he was supposed to have retired in January. Go and listen to them all before subjecting yourself to another second of Just Jack's life-sapping drivel."
Yet they never actually cover grime (or other underground electronic stuff) in its own right...

 

[don_quixote]

heh:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,2059291,00.html

 

[Logan Sama]

Wiley must have not turned up for an interview with that guy at some point. He sounded like someone who had been left waiting in Limehouse for 3 hours and didnt appreciate it none too much

 

[gek-opel]

dunno... reflects the general stasis/plateau of western society. the wearing down of a generation born into a very cynical time with an overwhelming lack/glut of options given how thoroughly the concept of freedom has been subsumed by politics and the marketplace.

or perhaps the retro thing is an attempt to cling to the familiar or establish meaning and context in the face of an uncertain future (globalisation, environment).

we have always been at war.

Yes, inevitably viewing this as merely a problem to do with music or youth culture as apart from the more general situation is a massive error.

What's interesting is the idea of influence. How in previous eras an act's influences would be just as slavishly adored as today, but the end result (perhaps obviously not in all cases, but in a crucial few) somehow served to extend or alter the nature of the situation in which they were created... and how this now appears to be less so. Now partly this can be brought back to changes in technology occurring, but I don't think in its entirety it can be reduced to just this. Perhaps you could analyse all of his via Alain Badiou's truth procedure (he would certainly agree with Gabba Flamenco on the whole "innovation existing at the margins" point, the things which don't properly belong to the situation as such).

Another facet of this issue (cf the Fisher/Reynolds encounter in FACT magazine recently) is that of the dialogue between black/white musics breaking down, the crucial dialectic being abandoned (which is partially accurate, perhaps, but not entirely so- or at least only on the white feeding-->into black front). But any breakdown here is best explained as a byproduct of the niche effect, the multi-band era allowing increasing ghettoisation. But against this comes the much commented upon "hipster" mentality of pan-generic hyper-consumption...

 

[gek-opel]

Or rather, perhaps- be as your idols were to their situation, rather than merely copy the sounds that they made...

 

[Chris]

Momus made some good points on this subject recently in his blog...

The thing about the truly new is that it initially sounds ugly and wrong, and only later begins to make sense to us -- not because it gets less radical, but because it changes our criteria of what "right" is by the fact of its energy and charm.

Less and less music sounds charmingly ugly and wrong in this sense (the Guardian rightly mentions Grime), and even the idea that it could be important to sound ugly and wrong doesn't seem to occur to musicians. They're more interested in copying the already-legitimated sounds of the past, and taking shortcuts to pre-established forms of "rightness".

I strongly agree, and in a way I think this relates to Gabba's point about innovation and conflict. In a way "wrongness" can be seen as an aesthetic/symbolic statement against the status quo. While the idea of rebellion has become just another trope in some pop music, true rebellion/innovation doesn't necessarilly entail the stereotypical qualities that have come to signify it (quite the contrary at this point).

Part of the blame for this current cultural stasis is of course the industry, but also a generally complacent market happy enough in the way things are. I suppose the upside to all of this homogeny, is that the more things stay the same, the clearer the alternative will become over time, as even the mainstream starts to get dissatisfied and bored (which could finally provide the answer for those lamenting the absence of a vital but large scale movement and meaningful theme for our time). Considering capitalism's unfailing ability to co-opt and ruin everything it get's it's hands on though, personally I'm fine with the more innovative music staying underground for now...

 

[nomadologist]

since when has any music not been formally beholden to (an)other tradition/s of music? what's actually changed is how fast you the audience as consumer EXPECTs music to accelerate. you all seem to want novelty, not something "new" aesthetically--some of the most interesting aesthetic innovations in musical history have been very subtle shifts in formal or theoretical approach/method/tonality/rhythm/narrative structure/linearity.

unless you want to invent a new tonal system, this one's been pretty well trod. schoenberg understood this. many people did long ago. music always happens in reference to music that already happened. it always has.

i defy anyone here to come up with an example of music that sounded NOTHING like anything before it that was written before 1900.

 

[nomadologist]

actually, there's a hell of a lot MORE music that sounds vastly different out there simultaneously post-1950 (as Guybrush points out, that's a good date to tack onto "pop"--i agree with his definition) than there ever was. at the same time, i can see why it's often easily lumped together, as its overall simplicity can be easily read as a fairly narrow set of formal limitations.

either way, when people complain about there being no "originality" in music, i have to wonder when they thought there was any such thing as wholly "original" music, and why "originality" is important in the first place. it could easily be argued that what's interesting and culturally valuable about music, like literature and the products of oral traditions, is the patina that forms over the surface as that same piece, same idea, same genre, same melody, gets passed down--the ways something aesthetic morphs over time even when it retains certain elements.

i'm more interested in "good" music than i am "original" music. i don't really know what "original" means, but i certainly wouldn't look to any major global industry for help making and distributing "original" works.

 

[noel emits]

i defy anyone here to come up with an example of music that sounded NOTHING like anything before it that was written before 1900.

Hello nomadologist. You know, I'm not sure I understand this question.

 

[Eric]

Even if we are not there yet, I think we all have to face that there will come a time in our lifetime when pop music as we know it will be equally as stiff-legged and superannuated as jazz and classical music is today. Because, let’s face it, despite vain attempts at regeneration, they are both inconsolably burdened by their glorious salad days; it’s simply inconceivable that they will succeed in miraculously rejuvenating themselves—it’s just not going to happen.

They serve as instructive examples as they both were tremendously dynamic in the past, and yet, somehow, staled somewhere along the way. I cannot think of any reason why the same would not happen to pop musíc. Indeed, everything suggests that it will.

The lists of `25 best hip hop albums' appearing now over on that thread would suggest that it has already happened to hiphop too, at least for some here.

 

[Man with Feathers]

The idea of the new, of progress, may be tied into narratives that have lost their totality in these days of sampling culture and limewire. I've said a similar thing in the hauntology thread, because I think the two link up, some sort of 'end of history', but I haven't clarified it at all yet...

 

[Guybrush]

The idea of the new, of progress, may be tied into narratives that have lost their totality in these days of sampling culture and limewire. I've said a similar thing in the hauntology thread, because I think the two link up, some sort of 'end of history', but I haven't clarified it at all yet...

Do you mean than something can only be called ‘new’ or ‘progressive’ from the point of view of a specific narrative? As even Fukuyama has distanced himself from the ‘end of history’ cackle, I think we safely can stop worrying about such an event.

 

[Gabba Flamenco Crossover]

As even Fukuyama has distanced himself from the ‘end of history’ cackle, I think we safely can stop worrying about such an event.

'The end of history' is history, bucko!

 

[JP Nut]

everybody here is talking about shifts in music they encountered during their lifetime that they don't encounter anymore (rave, postpunk, jungle, hiphop) the question here is whether that is subjective (the first shift you experienced made probably a bigger impression than any after that) or that there really aint any shifts anymore.

is it possible that the shifts happening now are relevant to an audience that you* may not be part of.

the last big shift was dance music and all its forms. i can vouch for that as i was dancing in fields while grinning like an idiot at the time. but not everyone was part of it, the majority of people were doing what most people do now. ie drink a lot and possibly fight.




*by you i mean anyone reading this (including myself) and not in a traveller vs tourist sense

 

[sodiumnightlife]

I think this post has relevance to this topic.

As a young person i don't feel like there has been a major musical shift in my lifetime. But if we look at when these shifts took place I can imagine that actually alot of people fell through the gaps: if you were 18 in 1973, i'm not sure you would feel close to psych or to punk. Maybe people are expecting too much.

Or maybe people are looking in the wrong places: maybe technology has replaced art as our darling in this decade. Stupid as it is and as much as i hate it, myspace has had a huuuuuuge effect on my life. And technology may be accountable for the fact that people aren't putting too many albums in their greatest lps of all time list: because the album's importance has been greatly depreciated. Everyone knows albums sell less nowadays etc, but this also could be because that many more albums are now released on smaller labels, the majors are suffering and albums have become things that cater for specialist scenes. To take fairly obvious examples, the kode 9 and burial albums were released to great critical acclaim yet i'm fairly certain that they're not outselling the beatles. People who are into music are buying albums; those who want a "choon" download it.

 

[JP Nut]

I think this post has relevance to this topic.

As a young person i don't feel like there has been a major musical shift in my lifetime. But if we look at when these shifts took place I can imagine that actually alot of people fell through the gaps: if you were 18 in 1973, i'm not sure you would feel close to psych or to punk. Maybe people are expecting too much.

Or maybe people are looking in the wrong places: maybe technology has replaced art as our darling in this decade. Stupid as it is and as much as i hate it, myspace has had a huuuuuuge effect on my life. And technology may be accountable for the fact that people aren't putting too many albums in their greatest lps of all time list: because the album's importance has been greatly depreciated. Everyone knows albums sell less nowadays etc, but this also could be because that many more albums are now released on smaller labels, the majors are suffering and albums have become things that cater for specialist scenes. To take fairly obvious examples, the kode 9 and burial albums were released to great critical acclaim yet i'm fairly certain that they're not outselling the beatles. People who are into music are buying albums; those who want a "choon" download it.

totally on point.

 

[Freakaholic]

I think this post has relevance to this topic.

this could be the motto for Dissensus...

...discourse about records is almost bigger than the records themselves.

 

[DJ PIMP]

Yeah, the way we listen to music is changing. In the same way the cellphone changes the sense of locality or social time, the ipod/net pushes music way past the point of commodity and the myspace effect takes music as social signifier to the nth degree.

Dunno... its like the old model of the cyclical drift to center from the margins has telescoped to a point where the center is the margin. Everything is on Myspace.

If something abruptly new pops up would we even recognise it as such? We're so accustomed to constant pleasure via recombinant novelty... theres simply more of everything and it's all different, so it feels the same.