The Last Flowering of the Future

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
One thing I do really like about newness in music is that the people that invent something generally do it best. The first cuts are the deepest. like the Ramones are the best punk band, minor threat are the best hardcore band. No one has ever really made deep house as good as Larry heard or early Ron Trent. Same with the Belleville three and techno etc etc

I wonder why that is.

And also why east coast hip hop is the exception
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
One thing I do really like about newness in music is that the people that invent something generally do it best
I have a theory about this

people who do something genuinely new are drawing on many different influences and synthesizing them into a new whole

once that new thing becomes codified the people who come along after are only influenced by that - they're riffing on an established formula

it can never be anything but a pale imitation of the original, albeit sometimes the pale imitations are pretty good in their own right
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
it's why the wot do u call it moment is usually the peak of a particular sound or style or scene

fully realized but not yet codified
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
Yeah and also the people who make genuinely new music are also probably the real fucking weirdos. And the weirdos are always gonna make the best art.

A 17 year old kid as weird as Wiley was/is isn't gonna be making grime. They're gonna be into something totally different.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
its about the rate and impact of innovation
I don't think you or I or anyone ever could gauge this

thought experiments are fine but there's no way of actually knowing

it's like comparing athletes across different eras: the best you can do is approximation and guesswork

if all you're claiming is that the Internet has totally shattered previous models of cultural diffusion then yes, of course

beyond that I don't think anyone can really say much
 
A big aspect of this is also, as Simon pointed out, that it has to be accessible—in other words, it has to have some sort of social mass around it.

massively.This is a prioritisation thing isnt it. what padraig's point point about young queer people hints at is a tendency to see certain types of people as innovators, more attuned to the pulse of innovation, because of their attitude or mindset or social conditions, their oppression or openness or need to rebel or create a new space. It's a factor yes but in a milieu of others, its so contextual

In a nuum context, i remember mark radford saying he hone in on booka shade tunes, used them as a blueprint which informed the deep tech thing, but they'd be old news to house heads. or look at kraftwerk influence on detroit techno. identity is a factor in innovation yeah, a conduit, but one amongst many
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I still don't get why hip hop is the exception tho. Like no one would seriously argue that sugarhill gang are better than Biggie or Wu tang. What's going on there?
perhaps it could be argued that rap went through such fundamental shifts that each one represented almost its own thing

disco rap ca. 79-83 is basically a thing unto itself, with Spoonie Gee maybe being the only person then rapping in a recognizably modern style

then there's electro, which is a definitely a thing unto itself

then what you might call modern rap begins with people like Marley Marl, Paul C, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, etc

crystallizing in East Coast (Pete Rock, RZA, etc), West Coast (Dre), and South (Dungeon Family etc) iterations

obviously many of those things overlap and bleed into each other, so it's not a perfect theory, and I don't know how much I buy into it myself
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
Actually people did used to argue forcefully and persuasively for deep tech on this forum didn't they.

Again, probably had to do the right drugs in the right places to get to grips with it really
 

Simon silverdollarcircle

Well-known member
perhaps it could be argued that rap went through such fundamental shifts that each one represented almost its own thing

Yeah I was using sugarhill gang as an exagerated example to try and make the point starkly really. But I get what yr saying. But would people say that Eric b and rakim, or PE, are better than Wu tang for example? I still think that when you start to narrow it down like that the mid to late 90s hip-hop is still a golden age.

At the back of mind there's something about the innate complexity of rap needing many iterations and finessing before it got to its best and could truly express the form in its perfection. Whereas the innate simplicity of house lends itself to the "first cuts are the deepest" pattern.

But I don't really know what I'm talking about here tbh
 

luka

Well-known member
Just keep setting a good example you can never tell when a single seed will start to sprout. Before you knowit, a whole field full pretty little flowers!
 

Bellwoods

Active member
of course there isn't. that's not the kind of qualifier I feel like I'd normally have to make here, but consider it made.

if that relationship exists - and any examination of dance music's history will reveal it does, tho the extent is debatable - it's cultural.

and assimilation, or homogenization is, to put it lightly, an ongoing issue in queer culture, which is itself not monolithic

I can't speak to where you are, but where I am there is distinctively queer culture, of various iterations

what I'm talking about wouldn't be in bars anyway, it would be in warehouse parties, on sound/mixcloud, and to some extent in clubs

as I said it's both a stereotype and in my personal experience largely true

not that young queer people will be the only ones innovating by any means, but wherever innovation is they're likely to be found

for again, cultural reasons

To be clear, I wasn't suggesting that anyone was making that argument—I just wanted to point in the direction of the argument you just made, which I basically agree with—that this stuff is cultural.

As for where I am: it's a cultural wasteland, and only getting worse. There is a "queer scene" here but I'm not seeing much interesting stuff happening, and it's been increasingly pedestalized by educated white people. If the argument is that oppressive cultural elements allow for innovation to take place in isolation from the mainstream, whatever is currently happening with homogenization seems to have undermined that, while leaving many of the problems of the previous system of oppression unresolved or worse. That was my point about the bar scene here.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Like the centuries-old feuds / Being upgraded with high-tech weapons / In the end it's not the future / But the past that'll get us

 
Top