things that seem like they should be good but aren't

[padraig (u.s.)]

on paper/conceptually/etc seems cool/interesting but in practice is mostly or completely not

here are some possible examples. plz agree, dispute, discuss, suggest your own, etc. feel like there's a ton I'm not thinking of.

-trip hop
-virtually every kind of trance
-the large majority of dance-rock crossover
-IDM
-post-hardcore, post-metal, etc

and, more importantly, how and why do these things go wrong?

 

[john eden]

Psychobilly. I love the Cramps (obviously). The genre inspired by them is artless and weedy.

 

[john eden]

With Trip Hop the barrier to entry is very very low.

I have no musical talent and I reckon I could loop a slow breakbeat and put some woozy sounds on top of it.

 

[catalog]

Thing is, some trip hop is really good. I was gonna say this in the tricky thread but forgot/got distracted, with trip hop, all the people who probably don't think of themselves as trip hop are fine. Massive attack, tricky, portishead to some extent. It's all the other people who are self consciously making it. That's why labels or genre names can be suffocating and problematic. Cos it's licence for the bottom feeders. I respect Dean blunt for not allowing David Keenan to sell hype Williams as hypnagogic pop

 

[Mr. Tea]

Steampunk.

In theory: an interesting aesthetic blending futurism with historicism.

In practice: twits in goggles who listen to electroswing, which is a strong contender for worst genre of all time.

 

[thirdform]

the beatles. I don't even hate them, i even have a fondness for that late 60s psychedelic aesthetic. but they are just so fucking bland.

 

[john eden]

Thing is, some trip hop is really good. I was gonna say this in the tricky thread but forgot/got distracted, with trip hop, all the people who probably don't think of themselves as trip hop are fine. Massive attack, tricky, portishead to some extent. It's all the other people who are self consciously making it. That's why labels or genre names can be suffocating and problematic. Cos it's licence for the bottom feeders. I respect Dean blunt for not allowing David Keenan to sell hype Williams as hypnagogic pop

The wheat to chaff ratio is very high I think. There is not a lot of absolutely terrible jungle or 1970s JA roots reggae? Maybe that is rose tinted spectacles but there are some genres where you can just pick up stuff on spec and it might be pretty great. Trip Hop is the opposite.

 

[DannyL]

Should be good but somehow fails:

Reggae made outside of JA and the UK - uniformly terrible
Turntablism

 

[DannyL]

Re. trip hop.

If you see it as a mutation of rap, taking out the MCs led to a massive subtraction of what made the music interesting. Instrumental only music has much more heavy lifting to do and trip hop fails to live up to it, mostly. Portishead, Massive Attack and Tricky - all have a compelling "front end".

Further, this loss also goes alongside a reduction in tempo. Aggression and drive are something important in music - "anger is an energy".
In reggae when the tempo reduction happened this was a springboard for turning the psychedelic component up, musical parallelism with the alternation of consciousness. Most trip hop- that I've heard doesn't do this, but instead opts for to "chill out" which basically means it becomes inoffensive middle aged gardening music.

 

[catalog]

The wheat to chaff ratio is very high I think. There is not a lot of absolutely terrible jungle or 1970s JA roots reggae? Maybe that is rose tinted spectacles but there are some genres where you can just pick up stuff on spec and it might be pretty great. Trip Hop is the opposite.

But trip hop is like a micro genre compared to jungle

 

[catalog]

Also what even is IDM. is warp music IDM?

 

[Leo]

acid jazz.

no, wait a minute, that doesn't even seem like it should be good.

 

[DannyL]

acid jazz.

no, wait a minute, that doesn't even seem like it should be good.

I'd argue that as a *scene* it was good. The term first was first applied to clubs that played danceable uptempo jazz to a clubbing audience in London, in the late 80s (against the background of early raves, thus the name ). As a genre of music unto itself, I'm not so sure but this was v much secondary to the clubbing scene, which consisted of lots of frenetic dancing to mostly US jazz records.

 

[DannyL]

Stuff like this:

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Steampunk

yeah that's a good one

doesn't even seem that great in theory, but the reality is still so much more terrible than you'd ever imagine

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Reggae made outside of JA and the UK - uniformly terrible
Turntablism

turntablism 100%, at least as something to be listened to. competitive turntablism is really a thing unto itself.

non-JA/UK reggae makes sense, tho I think it might be restated to say all reggae made without Jamaican involvement of some kind

i.e. Wackie's was all made in New York, but by a Jamaican producer

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

more importantly, how and why do these things go wrong?

this is what I'm more interested in, I think

where/how/why does the concept fail in execution, and are there similarities between different cases?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

conversely, what are some things that seem like they shouldn't work, but do?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

no wave - angular postpunk with all elements of joy and groove ruthlessly stripped away, the truest expression of 77 punk nihilism, pure abrasion

and yet, pretty great

 

[DannyL]

this is what I'm more interested in, I think

where/how/why does the concept fail in execution, and are there similarities between different cases?

Tried to have a go at this with trip hop above.

I have a vague idea about distance from a social context here? IDM, trance etc. Aren't these attempts to recreate a music a distance from an original (and much better) scene? And without this supporting context, it dies on the vine a little. I think this about the UK's take on house music and raving - to me, what interesting was not so much the music but the social context around it. The repurposing of disused urban space, the mobilisation of people aided by early mobile phone tech, mass uptake of MDMA usage, pirate radio. This would hold with the non-JA reggae example. There's a thread on another board I go on called "white reggae" where white people's takes on reggae kinda become the music's antithesis.