The Current State of Music

There is so much experimental music out these days, you have just got to 'look outside the box'. I find the whole breakcore movement very forward thinking. Artists like Aaron Spectre (Drumcorps) really push the boundaries and put on great shows. I've seen [ame=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=vS0r9xVGzfk]Monster Zoku Onsomb[/ame] twice recently here in Brisbane, very different. From Argentina you've got [ame=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=WBL4_C598d8]Reynols[/ame] who basically just take inspiration and jam to whatever the frontman does (who has down syndrome). Even within a mainstream genre such as D&B you've got young artists like Limewax structuring an already established way of making music completely differently.

Then of course (for me) there is the whole experimental French scene, with record labels such as Hangars Liquides who are now based exclusively on Second Life and performing concerts on there.

Literally all sorts of stuff out there, but these days you have to sift through it yourself as its not like the old days when someone would give you a spliff and say "Have a listen to this man"as they put a Gong vinyl or Uncle Meat by Frank Zappa to try to freak you out.

I agree but I think MoS was talking about a musical 'movement' which crossed over into the mainstream with a philosophy and fashion and art bound up with it which would galvanise a whole generation and define them as different from what went before and which the old folks didn't get or were shocked by.
I guess acid house was the last to do that.

all these movements have usually been associated with a drug.
Alcohol with early Jazz, Cannabis with cool Jazz and Reggae, Acid with psychedelia, and so on.
but also with huge social changes. Kids after the war getting spending power and the collapse of respect for the old boy network, the Thatcher revolution, prosperity in the past 20 years.

If this recession is as bad as it looks like it might be and mass unemployment comes back then I expect the upheaval will produce a new set of music and art which will reflect that.
If you are over 25 don't expect to like it though. Or what would be the point

I know what you mean, but with today's society becoming more and more fractioned (is there such a word?) because of the shrinking of the world through mass media and technology, I think new 'movements' are going to be less and less frequent. You don't need to be a musician or musically inclined to make music these days. I can go on a laptop, speed/slow down some breakbeats, and hey presto, music. Its going to take something pretty unique for a huge mass of youngsters to identify with as there isn't that mysticism with music and culture anymore. You can just go on the net, and you'll have all the answers you need.

No doubt there is but its just not as good. I was talking about groundbreaking music, music that changed the world and shook up the whole business, peoples perceptions, recording techniques, open peoples minds to the possibilites of how effective music can be to society, by creating a movement that people of all ages, races, and gender can associate with. Somehow I can't see breakcore having that kind of effect to be fair.

Fair enough, and to be fair, that is just your opinion

MOS , your getting old and nothing excites you in the same as it did when your in your late teens and early 20's..

I tried to convince myself for years that I could find something that would give me the buzz of hearing my first electro tune in a club in the mid 80's.. only early 90's house and techno got anywhere near it...

Once I got into my late 20's I was more concerned about having a good time with the right people rather than buzzing about the next new thing..

and maybe what some people are experiencing now in various clubs, is maybe their "moment" they will look back on..

so we might never see the musical movements we've seen in the past? that would be a shame.

the internet has killed everything that was fun. boo to the internet.


Still, nice to see some musical discussion going on!

There will be a new musical movement, scene, whatever.. of course..

But you will be too old to get your head round it.. haha..

Like those damn goths...

to be honest, i've realised i'm past it - too old to get into anything like that but i also see that maybe there's nothing like that around at the moment and hasn't been for a while that really shakes everything up - takes the power of music and fashion away from the big companies and puts it back into the hands of the youth and the underground













i would like to point out - i've not had a break down or taken any 'wacky baccy' from some hoodies on a street corner - it just really made me think. for a short while. then i went back to my pipe, slippers and my copy of 'fly fishing' by J.R. Hartley.

stop calling me old Lee - i'm getting a complex

haha sorry..

It's just there are more important questions to be asked..

Like.. whatever happened to wispas and texans..?

The way I look at this is I remember sometime in the last couple of years I heard mary anne hobbs talking about dubstep (a genre I've got no intrest in or idea about and does nothing for me) she was liking it to when metalheadz and drum and bass came on the scene in the mid nineties, then it made perfect sense, dubstep is to kids now what drum and bass was to me as a teenager, a new excting genre with it's own rules, dress sense and cultural identity, taking elements of what has come before and putting a new unique twist on them, like I said earlier the majority of over 25s aren't gonna have a clue about new music scenes, in fact if old buggers like the guy in the original documentary and us did understand them they'd probably not be very cool

why are wagon wheels so small?

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cheers

i agree with all your comments about DnB, dubstep AND people being over 25 - however they didn't really TAKE HOLD and cause the changes that others did - once the high street start copying the fahsion instead of dictating it - thats why u know the balance has changed

I think what's different nowadays to maybe 20-30 years ago is that mainstream music/fashion and 24hr media latch on and exploit small cultural movements very early on in their inception and thus dillute them so they're never allowed to generate the same kind of underground momentum that scenes like punk did, we're aware of these new genres much sooner than people who werent into the punk scene would have been in the 80s

also the strict class and cultural boundaries that existed in the days of punk music for example simply don't exist to anywhere near the same level as they did then, look at the diversity of crowds you get at gigs/clubs these days there's not necessarily that same cultural shock/clash that was created back in the days of the punk movement, so these small scenes don't appear to have the same impact or do have an impact but in a different way, bacisally the whole process of mainstreaming new cultural fashions is much finer honed and quicker these days

The internet makes things to serious...people say things they would`nt say face to face.....breakdown in communication !!



"All about Expression"





cheers