Conceptronica

other_life

other_life

bioconfused
the metaphor of the production of this stuff being an 'arms race' also really, really rings true. the obsession with the 'glass and metal in every direction' thing. and that's what's exhausting about it in a lot of ways, personally. see also: 'zone of fruitless intensification'
i guess im more interested in talking about how what is, ultimately, the lo-effort, got sidelined in favor of the overwrought, sonically speaking, then i am the Grant Vulture class/poli.-econ. angle?
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
but that's only bc i'm not solid on my learning in that area... of course they're somehow linked though, like what material changes precipitated that broader shift? why doesn't chill sell anymore? 2011 feels like a breakpoint moment
 
Slothrop

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
other_life said:
the metaphor of the production of this stuff being an 'arms race' also really, really rings true. the obsession with the 'glass and metal in every direction' thing. and that's what's exhausting about it in a lot of ways, personally. see also: 'zone of fruitless intensification'
i guess im more interested in talking about how what is, ultimately, the lo-effort, got sidelined in favor of the overwrought, sonically speaking, then i am the Grant Vulture class/poli.-econ. angle?
Click to expand...

This has been a cross-cutting thing among a lot more than 2010s auteur-dance, though, hasn't it? Loads of hip hop, techstep, darkcore, "serious" 90s techno was all pushing towards high-gloss, high-tech sounds. I'd have thought that it's just at its most obvious now because it's more achievable now due to cheap / free / pirated kit and readily available tutorials on how to get any given sound.
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
finally reading the thing after parsing this 30+ page thread
the main thing is im bored with this music and somehow even more bored with the article!

"Meanwhile, on the experimental festival circuit, the visuals are more abstract and abject—mutational grotesquerie, dissolving forms."
everyone trying to out-ugly each other at once. how experimental...

"Lee Gamble felt that everything changed in 2016. “Brexit was happening, Trump was happening, and I was like, ‘Am I now supposed to make an ambient record for everyone to just zone out?’” he says. “In these times, making music about escapism would be a cop out.”

"she can come across a bit like the Elizabeth Warren of electronica, brimming with can-do confidence and problem-solving pluck."
oyyyhhh

"the age of drone strikes and tweetstorms"
"the age of"
"age of"

"woke music"
and again: everyone trying to out-alert each other, also. it's intentionally ugly and intentionally alerting music that doesn't even have much for groove, feels like it comes from the head and not the wrists or the hips.

obligatory boilerplate post-punk comparisons
 
version

version

Well-known member
I think Simon should have gone further and referred to everyone who makes this music as 'Concepticons'.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
other_life said:
appreciate this link/continuity being made explicit.

conceptronica -> chillwave continuum
chino amobi -> diamond black hearted boy
elysia crampton -> e+e
yves tumor -> teams
babyfather -> hype williams
hi fi hi concept james -> lo fi b-movie soundtrack james
'glass and metal in every direction' -> 'burning loud in a smoky room'

like people really did just transition from one to the other. and they emphasised very different sonics, cultural reference points and marketed themselves in pretty different ways. it's something i've spent lots of time thinking about re:trying to engage with music from the 2010's, from the time i've come up in, rather than just retreating into an inaccessible past.
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genuine q. what actually defines chillwave? I think we've defined conceptronica as a value set fairly accurately. what was the chillwave value set these producers (i'm going to use this term instead of artists because they'd hate that transitioned out of? and what is witch house and glow wave?

these genres don't really exist in London, woke amerophiles shoved them down our throats. so we have literally no referents or sense of continuum.

That's actually the funny thing. for all the deterritorialisation of the internet and blogosphere, a lot of this stuff actually reterritorialised the internet, tribalised it, created a divide between the unwashed and the curators.
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
the best thing that could come out of this piece is 'conceptronica' eclipsing 'deconstructed club' as a dismissive tag and everything that would follow that.
people not buying these festival tickets.
this sort of set of production values being widely seen as gauche.
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
thirdform said:
what actually defines chillwave?
Click to expand...
effortless gestures. seductive vacuousness. entirely from the wrist, no deliberation, composition or even thought involved. the aesthetics or social connections are not really the common denominator. it's the lack of effort required to spin something bigger out of stupid-simple gestures.
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
the people who made the transition away from that were probably scared of that disillusionment, moving away from it rather than leaning into it.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
other_life said:
effortless gestures. seductive vacuousness. entirely from the wrist, no deliberation, composition or even thought involved. the aesthetics or social connections are not really the common denominator. it's the lack of effort required to spin something bigger out of stupid-simple gestures.
Click to expand...

jam city on valium. would that be accurate?
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I sometimes do get the feeling that these peoples non-crunk introduction to electronic music was (don't laugh) post-2010 brostep.
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
thirdform said:
jam city on valium. would that be accurate?
Click to expand...

iirc all these people were huge on night slugs and felt like they/we? were out in front of something CONTEMPORARY and SLEEK (perhaps this is where the shift happened: classical curves envy: "why am i fucking around doing looper jams when i could OVERTHINK SOUND DESIGN?", in thousands of anonymous cases without any real referent to dance music which isn't a tokenism, or some shallow desire to be eclectic (which is not to put that on the artists corralled into si's piece)
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Beagle said:
33 pages and no Craner?

Waste thread.
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In just four posts beagle has carved out a very distinct and unique niche for himself. A brand identity. Attack Barty (2 posts) adore Craner (2 posts) It's taken other people years to build an online personna with that degree of clarity and impact.
 
version

version

Well-known member
luka said:
In just four posts beagle has carved out a very distinct and unique niche for himself. A brand identity. Attack Barty (2 posts) adore Craner (2 posts) It's taken other people years to build an online personna with that degree of clarity and impact.
Click to expand...

I think it's a joint account operated by you and Craner.
 
M

mvuent

Void Dweller
other_life said:
the metaphor of the production of this stuff being an 'arms race' also really, really rings true. the obsession with the 'glass and metal in every direction' thing. and that's what's exhausting about it in a lot of ways, personally. see also: 'zone of fruitless intensification'
i guess im more interested in talking about how what is, ultimately, the lo-effort, got sidelined in favor of the overwrought, sonically speaking, then i am the Grant Vulture class/poli.-econ. angle?
Click to expand...

the stumbling block for me with a lot of this stuff / deconstructed club is that all the production virtuosity doesn't seem to be channeled in a very interesting direction. to me it often sounds more like audio from some sci fi action movie trailer than anything else: it's very hi fi and attention grabbing (a lot of LOUD DRAMATIC IMPACT sounds), but sort of lacks the can't-believe-what-i'm-hearing, "impossible" manipulations of sound you get in electroacoustic. which supports blissblogger's point about its dependence on EDM aesthetics. thinking of stuff like arca and jam city I guess.

would be happy to concede that I'm missing something. that's just often been my initial (discouraging) impression.
 
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