Conceptronica

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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
pattycakes_ said:
It's not about luka. He was just the one who dared speak up. And now I am speaking up because you're being a cunt and all the while playing the fucking victim. Like a kid. It's really irrelevant about luka. You forced me to say it. Look back in the thread I avoided it at first but you wouldn't let it go and the fact is we were all thinking it. He just was the first to tell you to your face. And now you're going to try and twist this into me throwing him under the bus to avoid taking any responsibility for your downright disgusting behaviour in this thread. And yet you're the fucking high moral authority on everything social, political and historical. You're a fucking child.
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except you explicitly threw him under the bus. you can't fight language, unfortunately. you could have said something like I don't know, but it was a common sentiment on the forum, then we could discuss it. but you spoke up with assured certainty, claiming that posters were reluctant to post, without being able to back it up. sufi is going to inform you it wasn't luke.
 
V

version

Well-known member
The chat on Twitter's died down a bit now, but there's still the odd person discussing it.

After seeing a bit of that article about “conceptronica” what really worries me is the author divorces techno from its political history by saying its either escapism or political. As if both conditions hadn’t coexisted for Black and Brown people who lived this music first.

I think some people have a bad tendency to think 90s raves as the birth of techno when really its birth started closer to the home of Motown and Jazz.

It worries me that artists think they are the pinnacle of innovation by inserting politics into their techno and calling it “experimental.” Black people especially pioneered this genre and some forms of it were political!
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T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
version said:
The chat on Twitter's died down a bit now, but there's still the odd person discussing it.
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Who said that? some of that i agree with, some of it i disagree with. on twitter I said that without Ron Hardy, detroit techno would not have really crystalised as a scene, it would be high school electropop. gay hedonistic chicago was the key to pushing the detroit cats to make their own specific take on post-disco music.
 
V

version

Well-known member
thirdform said:
Who said that? some of that i agree with, some of it i disagree with. on twitter I said that without Ron Hardy, detroit techno would not have really crystalised as a scene, it would be high school electropop. gay hedonistic chicago was the key to pushing the detroit cats to make their own specific take on post-disco music.
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T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
version said:
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I have no idea who that is and I don't want to get into a detroit vs chicago pedant chess game with someone after today in Middle east politics but I'll try and find my thread. if you listen to mid 80s ron hardy mixes from music box you can see he's breaking in derrick may tracks especially.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
i feel like i should know the answer to this, but can anyone think of a musical genre that wasn't coined by a man? seriously?
 
other_life

other_life

bioconfused
pattycakes_ said:
all your chillwaves and conceptronicas are kind of the crude hashings of the early stages of what's to come. It will only get slicker.
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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.
 
M

muser

Well-known member
padraig (u.s.) said:
it absolutely doesn't, not any more or less than conceptual art

"naive art" is a loaded, slippery term, but it can be applied to music just as well as any other art form

unskilled music is usually terrible, but occasionally it's great or even transcendent. just the same as unskilled painting, film, whatever.

The Shaggs, The Godz, first Stooges LP, Electric Eels, Desperate Bicycles, first Germs 7", Urinals, Disorder + all the Japanese noisecore they inspired, lo-if black metal demos

there are plenty of other examples. some are knowing, some are truly naive (in other words sometimes badness is all or partially deliberate, sometimes it isn't).

just as any art form. you're privileging music in a way that isn't true. music has an aesthetics of badness (taste or quality) just like anything.
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I think it does. All those examples require skill to some extent. We're not talking virtuosity here, we're talking musicality, or at the very least the ability to be evocative through sound. The stooges didnt just go buy a few guitars and waltz into a recording studio they spent years messing around in basements,playing in different bands listening to music and choosing what to draw from. Japanese noise core / no input all spend countless nights destroying there ear drums messing around with feedback and effects peddles. That is developing skill.

I'm not rallying against conceptual art here. I think it can be great and I agree with you that in that world the skill in execution isn't the point or relevant. However I think it's broad mix media nature makes it incomparable to music which is firmly fixed within the confines of the audio realm by definition so you just can't have that same argument. You could possibly say a more specific field that can fall into conceptual art such as sculpture would be more analogous. To be honest I'm not even particularly trying to defend conceptronica here, although I have quite liked some of it. I just think if you're going to criticize music its conceptualization, or not, is pretty small fry and not particularly helpful.
 
shiels

shiels

_
"It rarely provided that sense of release or abandon that you got with ’90s rave"

This is it really. Overwrought. Takes itself too seriously. I want to be baffled and shocked by weird bangers not educated or explained to. And I want space to project my own interpretation.

Sophie BIPP has it though, it’s where electro-house should’ve gone.

The point about marketing-savvy producers anticipating the writeup is a good one. Also Instagram and something about the triumph of the image or something.

In terms of why this trend now, it makes sense that with the gradual disappearance of physical distribution models and geographically rooted scenes, musicians start to reach for other ways to anchor and fatten up their stuff with layers of meaning.
 
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