OK this is my personal axe to grind at the moment - the way music is divided ever more obsessively into genres and how this leads to the death of creativity and innovation.
For example, a few years ago there was a scene called "garage" and it contained everything from swingy vocal cuts to plasticman to 138 trek etc, there were all kinds of different things going on under one umbrella, everything was thriving musically, Rephlex released a compilation called "Grime" with no proper grime on it and only a few people knew the difference!
Now it seems that dubstep and grime have solidified into genres with quite specific sounds, you can easily identify a grime tune or a breakstep tune or a dubstep tune, and it's easy to say which is which, and correspondingly less groundbreaking or original music is getting made because it's hard to think "outside the box".
The same thing was true 18 or so years ago with house and techno (what's the difference?) which then suddenly spawned breakbeat house, garage, progressive, trance etc, all of which had quite narrow limits and (I think) led to the near-death in innovation in those kinds of music.
Maybe it's just once something gets big you get lots of bandwagon jumpers making rubbish?
Any opinions?
I am ready for an earbashing to the effect that grime/dubstep is bigger than ever... but anyway for the sake of hearing your opinions....
For example, a few years ago there was a scene called "garage" and it contained everything from swingy vocal cuts to plasticman to 138 trek etc, there were all kinds of different things going on under one umbrella, everything was thriving musically, Rephlex released a compilation called "Grime" with no proper grime on it and only a few people knew the difference!
Now it seems that dubstep and grime have solidified into genres with quite specific sounds, you can easily identify a grime tune or a breakstep tune or a dubstep tune, and it's easy to say which is which, and correspondingly less groundbreaking or original music is getting made because it's hard to think "outside the box".
The same thing was true 18 or so years ago with house and techno (what's the difference?) which then suddenly spawned breakbeat house, garage, progressive, trance etc, all of which had quite narrow limits and (I think) led to the near-death in innovation in those kinds of music.
Maybe it's just once something gets big you get lots of bandwagon jumpers making rubbish?
Any opinions?
I am ready for an earbashing to the effect that grime/dubstep is bigger than ever... but anyway for the sake of hearing your opinions....