What sounds 'cutting edge' in 2015?

I bet this has been asked in a different way, so forgive me. I was just listening to some IDM stuff from 2001 and it occured to me that it's been a long time since I heard something really different. I remember thinking clicky, blippy microhouse stuff sounded very contemporary and cutting edge, 10 or 15 years ago, and I've heard a lot of music since, but I haven't heard anything where I thought, OK, this is a brand-new, cutting-edge sound that didn't exist a decade ago.

I'm also getting older, so it's pretty possible I'm just missing it. Or, has technology progressed to the point where there aren't a lot of new sounds to explore? I'd be curious to hear your examples.

farts

Ball J

the new is in the hearing not in the record

anyone heard any hip hop taken to new levels lately

More and more, Mount Kimbie and King Krule just sound like no one else.

But maybe I listen in a bubble.

https://youtu.be/orh_3Z8vjnY

Matthew Revert 'The Heartbeat's Heartbeat' (2014)

anvil otm

altho as far as recording technology goes there is no "cutting edge" anymore, progress has stopped

except that digital has gotten so much cheaper & better-sounding? and there is still progress to be made in new digital instruments, for sure.

except that digital has gotten so much cheaper & better-sounding?

this isn't really progress in terms of technology or available methods, it's just a refinement of existing tools and approaches.

No one's going to invent a new way to make sounds a la the invention of sampling or the amplified guitar or synthesizers or analog studio trickery or whatever. Everything is just software now, endless iterations of software enabling an infinite palette. I feel like the capacity for surprise has been overtaken by digital providing the answer to everything. Every "how did they make that sound!?" question now receives the same answer.

and I'm not saying this is a bad thing - it's the logical endpoint of recorded sound! But it does feel like an endpoint.

and since there's no real "cutting edge" anymore in terms of recording techniques or technology, the "cutting edge" is defined purely on aesthetic terms - which are fairly arbitrary and dictated entirely by the listener and the listener's pre-existing frame of reference (ie plenty of things can sound cutting edge when you're hearing them for the first time, even if they are 50 years old)

Well, to counter that, I thought there was potential in that layered loop-pedal way of making music. Owen Pallett, Tune-yards. I remember seeing Tune-yards live in 2012, that sounded pretty cutting edge to me. But then she changed her set-up, and nobody really copied it anyway. Too much work, I think.

looking for a Disrupter to come along and Disrupt current music

those techniques weren't new, the technology had been around since at least the 60s, and had been taken to extremes in hip-hop by the 80s. the degree to which Tune-yards took it live - and evidently in the studio as well, although it would've arguably been easier to achieve the same ends with digital editing - was unusual but I don't consider it innovative, she was not creating sounds that were previously not possible.

xp

you suck. btw nothing was ever really new, c.f. john cage.

everybody copied the solo looper setup (not from her though, i mean loads of people were doing it)!

one imogen heap youtube changed everything

Every "how did they make that sound!?" question now receives the same answer.

this is reductive though, "with a computer" isn't really an answer. it's true that most software emulates analog hardware & techniques, but something like Izotope Iris really seems to present some new possibilities for warping audio (it does spectral synthesis using audio samples).

I don't think that's true, you can point to a bunch of things that happened in the 20th century and credibly argue that the resulting sounds were not previously possible and did not exist in previous eras. This is not a qualitative judgment as to whether the resulting music was good (or bad, or better than music being made now), it's just a fact.

xxp

looking for a Disrupter to come along and Disrupt current music

― Keith Mozart (D-40), Wednesday, May 27, 2015 6:51 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

every day i wake up and think, will this be the day i hear it

but i agree with the thrust of the thread that, in our world of the future, context & aesthetics are more important than truly new sounds.

xp to Οὖτις i have no interest in arguing with you but you're wrong

mark fell sounds cutting edge to me rn, which just means i listen to too much dance music and his stuff makes me feel like i'm getting high while inside a computer.

it's true that most software emulates analog hardware & techniques

I think this is the key thing - software tends to take existing principles or approaches or techniques and the recombine them and or expand them to the nth degree. which gives the musician a shit-ton of flexibility, but no one's going to be surprised by any musician's capacity to make the software do what it's designed to do.

bu tbf I haven't heard of this spectral synthesis thing maybe it will become all the rage and sound totally unprecedented (I am a little skeptical though)

I feel like we're in an age where, for some reason, people still want to think that the future sounds like a computer malfunctioning, that the sound of making technology fuck up is somehow "where we're headed". Like taking perfect, precise, digitally smooth sounds and then messing them up in some way (and thereby implying some meaningful juxtaposition of humanity and machine?) is still considered a valid contemporary aesthetic. Whereas I already feel like we've been there for at least 20 years and I just don't give a fuck about that anymore.

xxp

kind of a tb

So (very)far, Algiers' s/t sounds pretty out there:
http://www.npr.org/2015/05/24/408296125/first-listen-algiers-algiers

the plainness of Laurence Crane's double cd on Another Timbre (last year, chamber music) sounded pretty fresh/unusual to me, on first listen. It seems nowadays that type of music is usually swathed in reverb/field recordings/overt, stylized aesthetics.

There are 12 tones in the Western scale, but we're not in danger of running out of ways to present them, even if they've all been used before. technology might not bring us another microphone or electric guitar or Fairlight sampler, but to think you now have pitch correcting software that can pick out individual notes in a piece of music and alter those frequencies is mindblowing. whole new approaches to sampling would be possible with that sort of thing. Is that cutting edge? I think more than ever, it's the ways in which ideas are packaged and presented that has to be cutting edge. you could argue that IDM wasn't too different to the kind of early electronic and tape music from the 60s, but the connection is only tenuous because they work in different realms.

researchers at MIT used video and image processing to recover the conversation in a room from the fluctuations the conversation caused in a house plant's leaf position and the position of the surface of a potato chip bag. someone could record an album with a potato chip bag camera microphone.

the cutting edge
http://costumedesignersguild.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/gene-hackman-247.jpg

Miami Nightclub Apologizes to DJ Shadow
Promoters had cut his set short for being "too future"

Tinashe

picturing some cave critic 10,000 years ago telling everybody that all possible permutations of sound producable from tortoise shells and sinew and wood and rocks had now been explored

you invent something then

smarty pants

NV OTM. Shakey Mo all you are doing is revealing the paucity of your own imagination here.

There was a review in RA a while back that suggested that perhaps, given a "limited number of danceable rhythms" there might never be another Year Zero moment "like jungle or dubstep" and I just wanted to track this guy down and shout "idiot" in his face repeatedly.

Matt DC, I think it depends on what is meant by 'cutting edge' though? No one here is saying that music isn't changing or evolving. There'll always be room for different rhythms in dance music (although from moombahton to nosebleed, p much every BPM has now been covered by a dance genre). There are new ideas, permutations of those ideas, and old ideas being recycled into brand new ideas every day.
OTOH, you could say that sonically, production values have been moving in outward, incremental steps over the last 15 or so years than they might once have done, and it's been a while since there's been a tidal shift in the way music is being created and presented - not in quite the same way as amplification or synthesis or sampling did in the 20th century.

The purpose of a thread like this isn't to bemoan the state of music or to talk about 'progress', but to look at which things are genuinely new and exciting, and also to speculate about where developments may lie.

I have a feeling the next 'new thing' might not be a new dance rhythm or necessarily a new sound, but it will be a technological change that will transform how music is heard. What if sound waves could be turned into haptic sensations, for example? You go to a club and literally feel the vibrations moving you. Or what if a whole genre were to be created from slicing, dicing and pitch shifting the individual elements of old songs - extreme mashups? Or if there were a way to easily fuse sounds together so that they become fluid - you get a guitar, a synth and a drum sound, and those sounds interact with each other like coloured oil in water? There's so much I guess.

I was responding directly to Shakey's comment here:

No one's going to invent a new way to make sounds a la the invention of sampling or the amplified guitar or synthesizers or analog studio trickery or whatever. Everything is just software now, endless iterations of software enabling an infinite palette.

Which seems to take software as the end-point beyond which everything will be just... more ways of manipulating sound via software. Which seems very short-sighted IMO. The RA thing was just me rolling my eyes in exasperation at this sort of attitude.

Cool, but is Shakey necessarily wrong in that respect? I'm not saying new and great things can't be done with software, because after-all software is only limited by its own processing power and people's imaginations. But how likely is it that a revolutionary new sound will happen to music (in the same way as amplification, synthesis, sampling etc) that won't ultimately boil down to 'someone wrote a cool program'?

how likely did each of those inventions seem to the generations before they were invented?

i'm gonna ignore all the problems of this kind of thread that seeks to place the individual's experience and some kind of Whig music history on the same trajectory at the same point of time and just focus on the unknowability of future tech

xp if this hypothetical invention were to come along, how soon would that be?

i have noticed that as i get older "whither novelty?" has become a question i've no inclination to ask myself

Well we're different. I like novelty. It's one of the key reasons I enjoy finding out about new and different types of music.

Going back to it, unless everyone takes up the yaybahar and it gets crazy popular, it is software that's going to make the biggest differences in music, right?

I don't think we're even anywhere near the point of exhausting the possibilities of the human voice let alone instrumentation or arrangement or technology.

I like how anvil put it. It's the idea of (new) things sounding cutting edge that's 'short-sighted' if anything - something to get over as you get older. It's laughable to hold up something like Jungle as an innovative pinnacle in that respect too, rather than a vital link in a chain as dependent on its antecedents as the evolution of digital. I'll still spend the rest of my life being blown away by sounds irrespective of when they happened, however the means to achieve them develop.

People who hold up jungle as an idealised moment in musical history always seem to want to think of music and genres in terms of constantly progressing lines and I don't know any genres that actually work like that. Genres tend to stick around rather than disappear and be replaced every two years and they build more and more layers on top of themselves. If you really can't find something out there, from whatever point in history, that sounds like nothing you've ever heard before then I'm impressed, you've listened to a lot of music.

Put the word progressing in scare quotes there.

Katie Gately, Jute Gyte, much of the footwork scene, Blanche Blanche Blanche, Dawn Richard, Ueno Maasaki along with most of Editions Mego and Autechre, still

And a reminder to myself to revisit the Jlin album

Was Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man the first rock artefact to float the idea that the older we get, the more difficult it is for us to recognise crucial shifts and sea changes in popular ('youth') culture, even when they're happening right under our noses? I remember Tony Wilson saying much the same thing, once upon a time.

Jute Gyte

Is perhaps the most startling artist I've heard in the last few months. But I can't bare to listen to him (them?) for too long.

I'm interested in, for example, how before the proliferation of recorded sound, vibrato was considered bad form for opera singers. but because of limited tech in the early 20th century, vibrato was found to be more audible on playback than straight singing, and so it became a norm and shaped the sound of what we now think of as 'opera'.

I noticed a parallel the other day when a friend remarked on the amount of autotune on a song we were listening to, but to me it just sounded like that was the way the singer had chosen to sing.

'U

Jute Gyte is interesting because he's not the first to use microtonal/atonal tunings, but he is one of the first to use it in the context of extreme metal. But yeah, I can stand to listen to one track and that's enough at a time for me. Same as Jlin - she's def part of the footwork family, but there's something about the approach and attitude in there that sounds just a tiny bit removed from the Chi-Town producers that makes it sound fresh. They're not pivotal or transcendental in their delivery, but they are carving out their own niches. Whether those niches will develop or have any further impact on the muso-sphere as a whole is anyone's guess. Flick to any page in this month's Wire and there'll be 'cutting edge' music featured there - but it's doubtful as to whether even 1% of it will have influence beyond its own limited reach.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1490000/images/_1492964_mcnulty_300.jpg

there are loads of other BM bands who sound a lot like Jute Gyte.

name them

here are three: Aluk Todolo, Krallice, Botanist

Botanist doesn't really do the same thing as Jute Gyte IIRC? The whole point (or gimmick) behind JG is he uses bizarre tunings to create uncanny atmospheres. Botanist's gimmick is that the guitars are replaced by an amplified dulcimer. They're working in the same place but they don't sound the same really.

well all those bands mentioned are engaged in "experimental black metal" I think, and we'd really be getting into the narcissism of small differences if we were to say that JG are sui generis as compared to those other bands.

lol no

botanist is unusual in a different way but not exactly mould-shattering, albeit excellent

the other two I don't know so well but they are surely doing very different things with less neoclassical theory & tonal exploration

Jute Gyte released an album earlier this year which sounds a bit like Autechre's weirder material, that mindset informing BM is nothing like anything else I can think of

I've listened to several 'experimental black metal' bands, including a few mentioned, and JG is definitely the most weird and striking to me.

But it's a genre I dip my toe in now and then rather than immerse myself in, so I'm hardly an expert.

fair enough.

xxp which JG record was that? I will check it out. Lots of them, hard to keep up!

xxxp okay. i guess it's pointless arguing over that. avant-metal has a lot of strange stuff going on by definition.

that's avant garde music for you I guess - it's only as groundbreaking as its influence, otherwise it's just shouting into a vacuum. I love it when people slather over a perceived novelty in music and someone always has to chip in with "you obviously haven't heard Cornelius Cardew/Wyschnegradsky/White Noise - those guys were doing this waaaay before your new favourite act", because often they're not taking into account the cultural context. Non--standard time signatures are par for the course in genres like metal, classical music and jazz, but when the beat flexes out of time on Hey Ya or Ignition (Remix), that could be seen as perhaps an even bolder move in its own right.

ctrl-f 'chief keef' --> 0 results

ilm you fail me

Oh, and Micachu

Jute Gyte avant-electronic album is Dialectics, check it

Paradigm shifts in pop culture are equally worthy of note and the Dawn Richard album feels like a leap of expression rather than musicality

I love it when people slather over a perceived novelty in music and someone always has to chip in with "you obviously haven't heard Cornelius Cardew/Wyschnegradsky/White Noise

...

the new is in the hearing not in the record

^ yeah, totes.

as i said on a couple of other threads, but recent trap-style hip hop feels VERY *ahem* 'future' to me, and not just with the production but also the whole approach to vocal delivery exhibited by guys like Young Thug - it's unlike anything I could describe from even five years ago.

that jute gyte was completely unremarkable within the context of marginal experimental electronic music though in terms of marginal electronic music made by metal dorks it is slightly more advanced than the burzum stuff

mark my words, the next breakthrough in music will come from biotech. get ready to love mutant centipede freaks with 5-10 differently-tuned kick drums in their setup, I guess

It sounds like emoticons, the rest is aesthetic preference I guess (re: nu-trap), gimme Lil B every time tho

Jute Gyte electronic album is not particularly groundbreaking but his metal stuff assuredly is and I was using the electronic stuff to illustrate his range and palette of influence

, you divock

Don't think of Dawn Richard as cutting edge in any way (given numerous other artists out there trading similarly, disregarding tiresome genre context) just generally cogent, pleasant, disciplined, well made etc.

microtonal metal music is groundbreaking in the least interesting way possible to anyone vaguely familiar with the prewar heterodox avantgarde

i bought the jute gyte electronic album when it came out and it just sounded like early 00s IDM that I used to listen to

microtonal metal music is groundbreaking in the least interesting way possible to anyone vaguely familiar with the prewar heterodox avantgarde

― lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, May 28, 2015 1:40 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

someone always has to chip in with "you obviously haven't heard Cornelius Cardew/Wyschnegradsky/White Noise - those guys were doing this waaaay before your new favourite act"

to my diletanttish ears, Jute Gyte has strong sonic affinities with a lot of what has come to be called "cavernous death" -- stuff like Portal & Aevangelist with heavy atmospheric effects that are probably being done with 'cutting edge' software plugins -- Jute Gyte being entirely home-recorded IIRC it makes sense that his sound would be "c.2010 digital studio reverb" rather than "c.1970 Black Sabbath" or whatever, if that makes sense? so the novelty comes not just from the microtonal stuff, but from the convergence of an individual artististic project (microtonal guitar explorations) & a stable aesthetic or subgenre that hasn't yet exhausted its appeal

when ILM in general is looking for 'cutting edge' music i very much doubt 'it' wants metal. I dont see people scurrying off to buy it somehow.

The most novel thing about Jute Gyte is the strength of the songwriting and the integration of the quartertones as not gimmick but melody

xxp ... my point, which I guess wasn't entirely clear, being: sometimes a critical mass is reached where a particular 'sound' (recording aesthetic, whatever) becomes significantly easier to achieve than it ever had been in the past, & that increased accessibility leads to a temporary influx of creativity (subgenres, or microgenres -- we're talking short pop-culture cycles, here, like producers using trance synths in chart rap)

to answer this question, which isn't so much a question as an invitation to inhabit the noosphere of dog latin and the psychic space of doglatinnery in general, some recent things that sound vaguely distinctive

shxchshcsh
the sd laika album
gabor lazar
sensate focus/mark fell
demdike stare testpressings
kouhei matsunaga
lorenzo senni
james hoff
lee gamble

dog latin it isn't so much wyschnegradsky, perhaps the eighth or ninth most interesting russian piano music composer of the early 20th c, but a whole school of marginal wackiness following that before its ideological currency was debased to the extent that prog rock and even prog metal people take it up

If anyone is painting pop on a canvas anything like Dawn Richard's then hit me up

ty for the list nakhers, u forgot gaz kingsnorth obv

Bob Dylan -Shadows in the Night

or like, what about all those Attack! Attack!-style post-metalcore myspace bands we used to have so much fun mocking -- bands doing nothing that hasn't been done before, but doing it in such a spectacularly ill-advised way that the result takes on this fascinating outsider art quality

turn of the century microhouse sounded distinctive because most electronic music did from 98-01 or so due to the proliferation of software of greater complexity
probably something like farben/textstar still sounds quite good although vocalcity while being slightly estranged towers all over the more exoteric clicks and cuts stuff

none of those i just listed sound 'cutting edge' exactly, in that way, though they might have the advantage of being better

x-post to myself--re-contextualizing Sinatra covers in 2015 is as cutting edge as much electronic programmed music is in 2015

microtonal metal music is groundbreaking in the least interesting way possible to anyone vaguely familiar with the prewar heterodox avantgarde

What a gobsmacking sentence.

this is the thread that could bring back challops in 2015, repackaged in unprecedented forms

but first the very idea of "music" needs to be rethought

for teens 100 years from now "music" will refer to the process of turning something that happened in real life ("a sample") into a sharable meme thru ordered repetition ("looping")

the value of music as rendered / recorded "finished" pieces manifested in consumable formats does need to be reconsidered.
is the future imperfect music played socially without the safety blanket brand identity of recognisably monikered "Band/artist"
even "let me wtf you" gets tiresome pretty quickly

you could kick a violin in the street

so long as you don't put a recording up on bandcamp

yes I like the idea of "imperfect music played socially" in some respects I think the current scene has already begun to resemble that

+ then we have a narrative that reflects how&why live looping is such a BIG DEAL

i hate looping. it's so lazy. webern all the way

xp however we must also acknowledge that on a certain theoretical level "music" is synonymous with "perfection"

actually this reminds me of something I meant to post earlier in the thread, about a sound that really IS new and unprecedented: software keyboard instruments capable of computing on-the-fly pitch adjustments, to make the intervals of a chord sound as harmoniously as possible -- put that in your well-tempered clavier & smoke it!

most novel thing about Jute Gyte is the strength of the songwriting and the integration of the quartertones as not gimmick but melody

― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 13:52 (8 minutes ago)

this is just an invocation of classical virtues and the sort of thing you bring up when your ideological white knighting veers from 'pure pop' to worthless progressive rock music

the future imperfect music will have been looping and autopitching

Well when I think of artists who are currently making music that doesn't quite sound like anyone else, I think of Colin Stetson, but I don't think he quite counts cutting edge.

I hate questions like this because:
- there is no limit to the number of candidates you could come up with. "Cutting edge", objectively, is meaningless, and in practice only defines what sounds new to whoever you're asking
- thus, there really isn't ANY answer.
- And who cares what's cutting edge? It's not a contest. If there WAS a contest, it would be based on whoever is most popular, which kind of defeats the idea of "cutting edge"
- it makes cynical music journalists posit that there is no avant-garde, no progress left to be made, and other nonsense claims that say more about how hard it is to write about music -- in an age when opinions matter less than the minuscule space on the twitter server where they're placed -- than insight into music or people or anything else

That said, for me, footwork and teklife stuff seems like a pivot point in the development of electronic dance music, in a similar way as Aphex Twin, and early IDM did in the 90s. IMO it is meaningful when I can play it in a hipster DJ situation, or for my girlfriend while we're cooking dinner, and have each "audience" enjoy it (and still have it written about as "avant garde" dance music)

less white knighting, more attempts to express aesthetic preferences in the terms of value, maybe i shouldn't bother, except 'worthless' does the same thing so it's the only countermanoeuvre available

thought about mentioning colin stetson upthread but it's a novelty of recording technique more than anything else

The Scott Walker/Sunn O))) collab sounds pretty cutting edge to me, can't really identify any antecedents for that drone doom w/crooner from hell sound

this qn is beyond stupid in strong ie teleological terms but in more modest terms ie 'what seems vaguely different' its fine

the qn is 'what sounds' not 'what is' so i don't feel foolish answering it

what sounds cutting edge at 2015

less white knighting, more attempts to express aesthetic preferences in the terms of value, maybe i shouldn't bother, except 'worthless' does the same thing so it's the only countermanoeuvre available

― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:31 (8 minutes ago)

the claim was that it was new/different/etc not aesthetic preference and your retreat into thatisjusthowifeel solipsism is the end of a failure to argue on those terms, which ought to apply even it is worthless since it perfectly possible for terra nova to be covered in turd

This is quite similar to that awful poptimism thread that's still rumbling on it that both of them are full of people folornly straining for some kind of pseudo-objectivity to justify their tastes.

i <3 footwork, but a lot of it sounds like the tracker gabber my friends and i were making in the 90s /Wyschnegradskyguy

some of it reminds me of kate bush

what i mean is, it's very exciting music and it sounds unlike much other stuff, but it's not inconceivable that it could have been made at any point in the last 25 years, apart from some exceptions (JLin)

the claim was that it was new/different/etc not aesthetic preference

moving the goalposts eh, you were talking about my 'white knighting' for pop & prog

i can well justify the subjective novelty of all the acts i mentioned in a way that most people on this site would identify with - only a few would yawn and say 'it's been done' with any weight of justification

From 2013, but still out in front, for me anyway - http://www.discogs.com/Rashad-Becker-Traditional-Music-Of-Notional-Species-Vol-I/master/583248, but I'd also considered mentioning Mark Fell/Sensate Focus and the Demdike Stare testpressings as above, and many of the things I've heard on PAN, specifically, Afrikan Sciences, Beneath, Hecker Leckey, NHK'Koyxeи.

massaman gai might though, he's definitely the most avant-garde poster on ilx

oh nice, more recommendations. that is what this thread should mostly be imo

From 2013, but still out in front, for me anyway - http://www.discogs.com/Rashad-Becker-Traditional-Music-Of-Notional-Species-Vol-I/master/583248, but I'd also considered mentioning Mark Fell/Sensate Focus and the Demdike Stare testpressings as above, and many of the things I've heard on PAN, specifically, Afrikan Sciences, Beneath, Hecker Leckey, NHK'Koyxeи.

― neilasimpson, Thursday, May 28, 2015 2:54 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, that Rashad Becker is the best and closest suggestion that I recognise so far ITT, in that the sounds themselves aren't ostensibly man-made or synth-made but something quite alien to anything else I've heard in music. i've had some very strange visceral reactions to moments on that record while listening on headphones; emotions that I'm not even sure how to pin down, but they're there.

what's also great about it, is it doesn't appear to be seated in any previous style of music - it's not a breaks record like Autechre do. rather than trying to fuck with any occidental (or oriental, for that matter) tradition, it doesn't even acknowledge them. still, it's recognisable as music rather than just sounds. they are compositions.

moving the goalposts eh, you were talking about my 'white knighting' for pop & prog

i can well justify the subjective novelty of all the acts i mentioned in a way that most people on this site would identify with - only a few would yawn and say 'it's been done' with any weight of justification

― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Thursday, 28 May 2015 14:54 (8 minutes ago)

the claim to novelty was just aesthetic white knighting, as demonstrated, in this instance with an appeal to novelty

the cutting edge being invoked is of course the appeal of sharp and serrated surfaces that david kelly would be familiar with from that fated day in 2003 when he read the words 'objective' and 'subjective' being used one too many times on a music message board

what i mean is, it's very exciting music and it sounds unlike much other stuff, but it's not inconceivable that it could have been made at any point in the last 25 years, apart from some exceptions (JLin)

well yeah, it's pretty much just MPC+808! it's a really simple idea, as far as what you need to make it, and it's funny how something so spare and ironically hard-to-dance-to fascinates me so much as dance music. Musically, it's also not far removed from patterns you hear in dubstep, trap and hip-hop, and house and techno. It's like a hybrid lifeform, and I think that's why it strikes me as "cutting edge".

Also the question isn't whether it could have been made at any point in the last 25 years. If that's the case why wasn't it? There are social and cultural reasons why it emerged when and where they did, and whether or not some isolated IDM nerd made something that sounded much the same in 1995 is neither here nor there.

Likewise with deep tech, the issue is less about what the music sounds like as who is dancing to it this time round.

exactly. that's why when someone leaps in and starts talking about how 'Stockhausen did it first' in relation to, say Aphex Twin or whoever, it's not a big deal.

the type of novelty being described here is the sort of process music where its sound is immediately apparent from a bare descriptor, 'mictrotonal bedroom black metal' or 'it is 2004 and someone has just ysid an epic bossanova cover of love will tear us apart'

rashad becker album is formless and meandering but timbrally quite unlike anything else around

If I'm to answer this semi seriously, which feels like an embarrassing move somewhat, I feel like what I'm really doing is offering a prediction over what will most visibly shape the sound of music in the future. In the u.s. I feel like the goon cru follows stuff that tends to be the vanguard of what's new and shaping hip-hop's future already. though the young thug thread may make it seem like there's a bit of an imbalance as the corny fuxx praise as distorted his contributions relative to a swath of other rappers.

Internationally, big picture though, I still think Nigerian afropop feels like the most obvious direction for the shape of music to come, a populist genre that is also popular, which provides an aesthetic "out" for genres currently spiraling in boring directions cf UK deep house, edm, most rap, r&b, etc

it's a big deal for me. originality is a big part of how I respond to music. plus, credit should be given where it is due

xxp

it is static and bloops evoking the Seoul cityscape being overrun with cockroaches

tbf it is always interesting to hear a 'new musical language' outside of known form, katie gately is of that stripe as well imo

anagram, but context is everything here. Jute Gyte's not the first person to experiment with microtones, but in the realm of extreme metal, he is.

kanye west

agree with deej that afropop feels like a vanguard for pop music. the fact it's so accessible and at the same time diverse and different enough from established UK/US dance music is a plus. Spent the other night with my g/f just watching vid after vid from the afrobeats thread and we were transfixed, which i doubt would have happened if with any other dance genre.

Jute Gyte's not the first person to experiment with microtones, but in the realm of extreme metal, he is.

Is this true though? How do we even know? (serious question, not trying to be a smartass)

well it's AFAIK of course.

http://www.heavyblogisheavy.com/2012/12/07/agm-week-microtonal-metal/

Couldn't care less if he's the first. He might be the first to do it well, though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rBhv-Wg-Kw

Thanks for the AGM week link, NickB!

agree with deej that afropop feels like a vanguard for pop music. the fact it's so accessible and at the same time diverse and different enough from established UK/US dance music is a plus. Spent the other night with my g/f just watching vid after vid from the afrobeats thread and we were transfixed, which i doubt would have happened if with any other dance genre.

― p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, May 28, 2015 10:09 AM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

word. i think part of this is the logic of hip-hop making other genres seem like they were merely feeder-genres for its innovations...i feel like afropop does the same thing with dancehall,hip-hop,R&B, EDM, etc...makes them all feel like individual ingredients rather than genres unto themselves, the same way hip-hop made jazz, funk, disco, breaks etc seem like mere tools

originality is a big part of how I respond to music.

thing with this is, a lot of stuff i've responded to because it sounded so original and wildly innovative to my ears at the time, i've later heard precursors that make me think "ohhhh that's where they got that idea from". not that there's anything wrong with this but imo what's important isn't just originality - though innovation is a great thing of course! - but a) the other musical and emotional components of a song, the stuff that keeps me coming back to it even after i've realised it wasn't so original, and b) the personal/social context, how it fits into either/both my world or the world at large, ie is this person saying this or making that music radical at this point in time?

and on a similar note, even if something is wildly original, of what use is this if i never want to listen to it?

yup context is everything.

I think confusing what is literally technologically cutting edge in terms of how music is produced (which is what I was referring to upthread in terms of how we've reached this plateau where progress has reached a logical endpoint) for what is aesthetically or culturally cutting edge is a mistake - those two have been separate for quite some time now.

Xxp to deej yeah that's a good analogy. also, the early rave scene in the UK before genre specialism really came into play, and you tended to get a grab bag of dance styles being played next to each other through the night because it was 'all dance music'

Οὖτις yeah these are two completely different things And shouldn't be confused.

I think they were confused in the past when you would have serious cultural arguments/splits over, say, the use of amplified instruments, or whether or not sample-based music was "music", or whether drum machines were evil etc. but those days are gone.

did you guys hear the acid house album that the red hot chili pepper dude made?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpUv4tVBISA

It is good to have a strange little cabin in the woods now and then, something that you hadnt seen before and you think well who put that there. But if there were only cabins then the magic is gone and you are in a timber housing estate.

microtonal metal music is groundbreaking in the least interesting way possible to anyone vaguely familiar with the prewar heterodox avantgarde

― lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, May 28, 2015 8:40 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pvmic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPC9erC5WqU

My roommate showed me this video last night love those purple monsters.

I expect to hear the cutting edge sounds of Sheb Wooley when I click this link

I'm digging the Trickfinger record.

these threads always devolve into ppl recommending music i will never listen to

you just aren't cutting edge enough grampa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmRCCy7Bta8

microtonal metal music is groundbreaking in the least interesting way possible to anyone vaguely familiar with the prewar heterodox avantgarde

― lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, May 28, 2015 8:40 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pvmic

― flopson, Thursday, May 28, 2015 7:34 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

See, I thought it was the actual lex posting that and I was like, whuh?

well tbf i dont think it would be of any interest to the lex

or anyone outside the rolling metal thread (or indeed half of the rolling metal thread, it is an acquired taste)

i'm usually happy with the whole everything old is new cuz it's new approach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q86y5xrADtc

i enjoy a good digital age fuck you too. again, nothing groundbreaking but it sounds like now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZfT6LCY9Fk

they were playing this in Bed, Bath & Beyond the other day when i was looking for 1500 thread count sheets...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIntRXLpiUc

accepted xp tho if there is a reason to be haughty and obnoxious then lj posting about dork metal and pc music on ilm is probably it

coh, haswell continuing to produce good content year on year

It is good to have a strange little cabin in the woods now and then, something that you hadnt seen before and you think well who put that there. But if there were only cabins then the magic is gone and you are in a timber housing estate.

The thing that I find fascinating about some digital musical instruments and software isn't that it is new, more that the technology has become so very refined, miniaturized and ubiquitous. I don't really think some of these technologies have really been peaked in what they can do in some ways. That a cell phone could capture music so remote and local like Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band then it gets spread across the globe is pretty inspiring. That is some serious long distance musical connection.

so what is "cutting edge"? if it's john peel's "i just want to hear something i haven't heard before" then we can expect less and less of it as time goes by, simply because that criterion doesn't necessitate "newness"; it's a personal standard, not a societal one. julian carrillo is going to be as new to most people as anything put out in 2015. in fact if anything he's got an advantage in terms of newness on anybody working today, because the past is a foreign country; whatever his zeitgeist was it's not something that happens today.

on the other hand if one thinks of "cutting edge" as the stuff that people are going to be listening to two or three or five years from now, that's a very different question, and i think it's one we've stopped asking. and it's not one i can answer because i don't know about the music of today, i'm busy listening to julian carrillo or whatever. when i listen to modern music it's not generally "vanguard" music, something that portends a future, it's just weird, something like meta meta, and i think there's a meaningful differentiation to be made between those two.

micachu - nevers

your mom

"for those who want to dance they can also incorporate more modern Irish sounds from Van Morrison, Daniel O'Donnell and Ronan Keating to name but a few"
http://www.completeentertainment.co.uk/Irish.aspx

matt otm this thread is garbage

It introduced me to Asteroidi Esadecafonici and persuaded me to finally pay for 777: Cosmosophy = it is a classic thread.

All the good threads have been done already

I def have the Asteroidi Esadecafonici bandcamp page bookmarked. Expect the url to show up in future posts

matt otm this thread is garbage

Probably but I still found nakh's demolition job on lj highly entertaining. Sorry lj.

you famously also hate progge, of course

Not as much as nakh! But then I'm not sure I hate anything as much as nakh hates things, tbh.

If I were to answer this question in seriousness, I would say a few things. I would say first that cutting edge is a personal thing. i would also say that Beyonce's "Flawless" and "Partition" are cutting edge. I would say the same for Mariah's "Dedicated" and the most recent Boards of Canada album, and, of course, Ciara's "Jackie," in its way. Cutting edge is that which makes you feel something, and something that you haven't felt before.

@ dog latin "Or what if a whole genre were to be created from slicing, dicing and pitch shifting the individual elements of old songs - extreme mashups?"
by and large, collage is played out, except for a few exceptions, this one highly notable:
https://toliveandshaveinla.bandcamp.com/album/die-fehde-des-gemischs

Nakh's eagerness to dismiss Jute Gyte on the basis of the wildly unrepresentative Dialectics reminds me of that Internet thing where an expert troll will wait until precisely the right time to engage with something to have his/her skepticism confirmed, so as to paint its enthusiasts as bain-deprived dupes

*brain-deprived

tbf he also came out with that terribly insightful comment about microtonal black metal lounging in the abysmal wake of the prewar heterodox avantgarde, an argument that completely ignores what it is actually like to listen to jute gyte

he would argue that he is simply talking about its cutting-edgeness, not its psychosomatic effect upon impulsive progge fans, but he conspicuously failed to post a youtube that justified his claim

an argument that completely ignores what it is actually like to listen to jute gyte without being familiar with stuff ive been familiar with for years before this shit existed, which is necessarily unknowable

drugs i have heard the metal shit too as you will gather if u reread those posts
not even saying its crap as such so much as trying to get lj to stop trying to pretend the marginal rockist music he loves is remotely befitting the risible vanguard cachet he grants upon it

Like many auto-didacts, he is prone to misconceptions about his subject, but since there is no-one at the University to oversee him, his position is relatively secure

the plainness of Laurence Crane's double cd on Another Timbre (last year, chamber music) sounded pretty fresh/unusual to me, on first listen. It seems nowadays that type of music is usually swathed in reverb/field recordings/overt, stylized aesthetics.

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Wednesday, May 27, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, um, not really - there is the American post-minimalist Kyle Gann types who engage with the rock and the pop and use reverb/guitars and the like - since what mid-80s and Crane - although I've only heard a piece here or there on a recital - is possibly an English equivalent to this kind of thing. At the intersection of Feldman (in the lack of reverb etc) but with a Polite (not necessarily in a pejorative sense) texturing of the kind found in Obscure-label era records (?!)

#nothingnewunderthesunshiiiiine

he just sounds like quakers

Love that the ans 'cutting edge in 2015?' became microtonal metal guitar music.

microtonal metal music is groundbreaking in the least interesting way possible to anyone vaguely familiar with the prewar heterodox avantgarde

What a gobsmacking sentence.

― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Thursday, May 28, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's not even the half (or quarter) of it. #pardonthepun

Whenever microtones have come up in my listening life I never thought of it as this massive deal (Listening to this and there are no melodies lacking). Its not so much 'this is groundbreaking' but the arguments as conceived by Partch (and this was all half-read and a quarter-understood by me at the time, a long time ago even) was how this is THE ONLY WAY FORWARD (lol avant-garde) otherwise YOUR EARS WILL BE DESTROYED by all this other music which is POLLUTION, whereas in this thread its operating as this part of a balanced music diet to be of course slotted in some fucking list.

(Partch was this radical I never quite intuitively. otoh his music has never been adequately presented over here.)

Microtonal music then is to be fully immersed in over these long periods - almost a version of a music retreat where you're listening day and night to these things that sound 'off' at first and then all of sudden maybe a third ear opens up. I doubt some cunt who does metal is going to solve this one.

he might though. solve it. you never know.

i think the jute gyte stuff is interesting. i really like the synth album he did.

i think some PC Music and Orange Milk stuff sound "new" to me, as well as afrobeat and non-US rap/hip-hop.

stuff like Jute Gyte remind me more of late 90s/early 2000s IDM offshoots. Whoever made that comparison upthread was otm. It was hilarious to me that LJ was totally ignorant of Krallice, members of which include Mick Barr and Colin Marston, whose Behold...the Arctopus is kinda the acme of "extreme prog metal" ... oh and that AGM link brought up Blut Aus Nord, yeah ... all three of those sound more like metal, maybe because they are bands and play instruments, and the music is created and produced in a more typical "metal" way, rather than Jute Gyte which is one dude and a computer which probably lead to more IDM-y techniques and thus sound?

his last album was an IDM album:

https://jutegyte.bandcamp.com/album/dialectics

But for clarity Adam Kalmbach mostly trades in microtonal black metal, but releases IDM/ambient albums under the same name as his "regular" stuff for some reason. He's not just 'some cunt who does metal' for fuck's sake.

http://f1.bcbits.com/img/a2408538633_10.jpg

http://s21.postimg.org/84oy9l1ef/5_F49jy_We_D9b_E.jpg

fixed

Man this thread is a gift that keeps on giving:

microtonal metal music is groundbreaking in the least interesting way possible to anyone vaguely familiar with the prewar heterodox avantgarde

― lex merk a tory ya? (nakhchivan), Thursday, May 28, 2015 1:40 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

someone always has to chip in with "you obviously haven't heard Cornelius Cardew/Wyschnegradsky/White Noise - those guys were doing this waaaay before your new favourite act"

― p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, 28 May 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes isn't it awful to know you might actually need to take more time listening to stuff to look at your initial judgments again?

But you don't need to. If your mind gets blown by a contemporary deep house set, it's not important that you know about DJ Pierre and the history of the 303.

you're wrong there. in my view all individual experiences are worthless.

This thread isn't about having your 'mind blown' by something, it seems to be asking (although I see the thread starter has fucked off, no blame there) 'what is new' and so you do need to know the past -- which doesn't sound as dry as you are making it out but if you don't want to make the effort that will be a way of playing it.

Otherwise, beyong initial enthusiasm, it all comes off as a bunch of vacuous sounding statements. xp

Sure, know your history if it helps, but you don't have to know EVERYTHING about the history of music to appreciate something for being new and exciting. In the case of Jute Gyte (who I'm bored of talking about now, but it's a good example), the fact that microtonal music existed before him, or that working outside the 12 tones was already a thing is a bit beside the point. No one is applauding Jute Gyte for 'inventing' microtonality, but for bringing it to the metal-sphere and creating a wild new sound through it which doesn't sound like anything else in metal. Therefore it's at the cutting edge of metal, but not the entirety of music history.

I am not arguing that you have to know something as grandiose as the history of music but yes you have to know more to start saying 'this is new' and conveying that feeling for others on a thread calling for that.

For people who know and can skool: I listened to a couple of tracks from JG last night and erm, doesn't the noise and reverb cut off the purity of those microtones, can you hear the so-called notes between the notes? Anyone want to demonstrate how this is enriching metal or is it all going to be your own experience/this track stopped me in my tracks while I was walking on the tube type pabulum?

It just sounded like other metal but I know those differences only come across when you spend enough time with a partic genre -- again, bad sign if you have to work to hear 'new' when someone else is saying it is.

Therefore it's at the cutting edge of metal

Not really selling it there tbh.

http://www.cemetalfab.com

first track on jute gyte's vast chains is the easiest example of the whole thing:

https://jutegyte.bandcamp.com/album/vast-chains

easiest to hear what he's doing differently. then most metal. even most black metal.

Therefore it's at the cutting edge of metal

Not really selling it there tbh.

― Willibald Pirckheimers Briefwechsel (Tom D.), Monday, June 1, 2015 12:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

?

I am not arguing that you have to know something as grandiose as the history of music but yes you have to know more to start saying 'this is new' and conveying that feeling for others on a thread calling for that.

― xyzzzz__, Monday, June 1, 2015 11:49 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

??

But it is new. A metal fan doesn't have to know jot about Stravinsky to realise that Jute Gyte sounds unlike other metal that's gone before. In the same way a lot of seismic movements in jazz (alternate time sigs, modal progressions) had long been in classical music, this is very similar. It's not just about technique/theory, it's about the context it's presented in.

Putting 'is' in Italics before 'new' doesn't make it so.

Experience and context is coming off empty right now.

Scott - will listen later.

Actually, the new Jute Gyte album - one he's said will be his most developed yet - went up on Bandcamp ten minutes ago. Everyone into the pool!

Microtonal experimental black metal, psychedelic doom, dense polyphony and polyrhythms, vertically rotating microtone clusters, extensive sound processing, (double) canons, insects devouring one another on an atom of mud.

i feel like music was only capable of sounding 'cutting edge' for a rough twenty year period between somewhere in the early 80s and somewhere in the early 00s

this jute gyte guy's pretty cool based on the two minutes i just gave him

not everything at the margins is cutting edge, a lot of it is precluded from having any impact by being disconnected from any wider discourse. appreciating some of the efforts of ppl who self-consciously attempt to set out into terra incognita doesn't necessitate privileging that gesture as the fountainhead of all novelty, or pretending that their scratchy marks will loom large over future generations. as john fahey used to complain, the avant garde are often just the troops who die first

every third busker in bangkok sounds like khun narin

basically d40 otm as per usual

trying to work out if nakh's claim is 'microtonality has been done before in other contexts' (blah) or the mildly more interesting 'the history of the way microtonality has happened in other contexts reveals it can only ever be a boring dead end, so why would one get excited about microtonal metal'

khun narin was maybe the least cutting-edge music I heard last year & imo subject of a total exoticisation job

interested at where ogmor draws the wider discourse line, where is that arbitrary point at which you're no longer a lone warrior but a cultural pioneer

the latter's a valid argument and ties into what ogmor is saying - it's avantgarde, but not a vanguard unless it leads somewhere. unless a significant number of other metal bands follow suit in using microtonal scales, then Jute Gyte occupies only a tiny part of the 'edge'.

But then again, I mean, like the original poster, I remember being amazed by things like Bouncing Bucephalus Ball at the time, like my mind was being caved open by inconceivable sounds, but only about 5 years later those sounds and techniques were being used in Backtreet Boys' songs and going top ten. So even the most extreme breaches of familiarity can sometimes lead to something much more familiar and commercially viable.

xp that was to thomp

the 'least cutting edge music' is the more obviously absurd unspoken counterpart to this thread. just pleased no one has ill-used the term normcore so far

i wasn't amazed by khun narin. i think much of the attraction was that it sounded close to psychedelic rock music, but it was being played by a street ensemble. the music wasn't terribly exciting though, once the novelty had worn off.

yeah so exoticisation

You don't actually care whether it 'leads somewhere', do you? Jesus, this thread is painful.

the marketing of Khun Narin was definitely gross but the album is still very good!

a big part of what impresses me most these days with new music is how modern production can actually envisage the past, or recycle an old idea, but just make it sound fuller and more satisfying. it's the idea that a standard rock combo is actually producing a crude sketch of the imagination's photo-realistic capabilities. So if Uptown Funk is a straight-rip of 80s boogie, but using a modern set-up to pump up the beat and give it more impact, it still sounds fresh and listenable on the whole. I recall someone on that song's dedicated thread saying they'd compiled a mix of that song's influences, which was great, but somehow when the actual Uptown Funk came on, it felt surprisingly like a release or a relief. The same could be said for old disco tunes and more modern beardo stuff - it's an attempt to render the past, take its ideas but make them more '3D'.

can someone point me in the direction of this Backstreet Boys top 10 single that sounds like Bucephalus Bouncing Ball

interested at where ogmor draws the wider discourse line, where is that arbitrary point at which you're no longer a lone warrior but a cultural pioneer

can't see how anyone is in a position to formalise some abstract rule for all cases about import, especially given it's always subject to change. ties in to my more general gripe that focus tends to be placed on how music is made at the expense of how it is heard

can someone point me in the direction of this Backstreet Boys top 10 single that sounds like Bucephalus Bouncing Ball

― example (crüt), Monday, June 1, 2015 4:03 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can definitely recall a BB's video that had a strongly glitch-flavoured coda circa 2000/2001. Couldn't tell you which song it was though.

*NSYNC - "Pop"?

ah it could v well be that - it was AGES ago.

"The same could be said for old disco tunes and more modern beardo stuff - it's an attempt to render the past, take its ideas but make them more '3D'."

nah, old disco could be plenty 3D. and even more amazing soundwise - to me - than latter-day pastiche. i do think techno did this with the 70's though. took dance music and electronic music and made something new and very very 3D out of it.

yeah, techno/house is a better example of disco filtered through a completely different production viewpoint, although not all beardo is 'pastiche' necessarily.

the marketing of Khun Narin was definitely gross but the album is still very good!

what marketing?

(after the 70's, dance music people and rap people kinda the only cutting edge artists i can even think of. in america. as much as i love other musicks, everyone else here just kinda stuck to the plan for the most part. a steady continuation of past academic classical sounds or noise sounds or punk sounds or electro-acoustic sounds, etc...which i don't think was true elsewhere. much more exciting NEW new music elsewhere post-70's.)

here, this is cutting edge guys, yw: https://sahelsounds.bandcamp.com/album/isswat

it's that whole thing too (i read about this somewhere), of when thomas dolby was asked about how his ultimate synthesiser would work and he said: 'i think of the sound, and the synth plays exactly how i imagine it' - which would be fantastic, of course, because the limit would be your imagination. at the same time, your imagination is limited in its own way. no one could have imagined acid house, for example, as the classic squelch was only discovered through experimenting with a redundant synth that had originally been designed as a bass-guitar analogue to the drum machine.

btw, lj, just bc you hear something and think 'wow this sounds exotic to me' doesn't mean everyone who heard it is only attracted to it sounding exotic. it just means that you're a hobbit.

(after the 70's, dance music people and rap people kinda the only cutting edge artists i can even think of. in america. as much as i love other musicks, everyone else here just kinda stuck to the plan for the most part. a steady continuation of past academic classical sounds or noise sounds or punk sounds or electro-acoustic sounds, etc...which i don't think was true elsewhere. much more exciting NEW new music elsewhere post-70's.)

― scott seward, Monday, June 1, 2015 4:23 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can't really see how the continuation of rap and dance music through the 80s onwards is more or less cutting edge than other genres? if hip hop ultimately came out of jazz and funk and then continued to evolve over the decades, I don't see how that's much different to, say, noise-rock which was definitely came about in the late 70s, but encompasses stuff like Black Dice and Boredoms which only holds a passing resemblance to stuff like Metal Machine Music or Jack Ruby or whatever.

LJ is totally samwise.

i dunno, american house, techno, and rap in the 80's kinda changed the world a bit! sound-wise, in a big way. and, for me, that music continued to evolve in interesting ways. i hear 2015 rap that blows me away via sound and production and that is a long way from its roots. jack ruby to black dice is just less....something.

It didn't sound very exotic to me but my god some of the stuff written about it (not by you)

I'm not even saying it's bad! Just sounds really trad-psych

scott otm

these guys get my vote as far as raved about on the internet stuff goes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFXEZeVgmCg

xps to scott, yeah i see that. maybe everyone has their year zero when they think the biggest movements took place though.

For some it's Trans Europe Express, others it's Sgt Peppers, others it's It Takes A Million to Hold Us Back. I don't really see the late 80s as being a particularly dear time to me like a lot of other people do, but the early 80s/late 70s feels like such a hotspot for exciting new sounds - from post-punk to synthwave to early hip hop, the end of disco and the start of electro, the transition from dub to dancehall, the start of goth and new romantic pop, Two Tone, Ze Records - that era all feels overwhelmingly rich in new things bubbling up.

Where that year zero appears, where 'progress' peaked and planed, is entirely subjective I suppose.

well, my arbitrary cut-off for a lot of genres i like is 1984. new tech made a lot of records made after that in the 80's and beyond sound terrible to me.

in the UK especially, the early '90s or evne the early '00s could both count as year zeros that eventually led to grime in its current form, which is one of the most prominent genres for younger British kids/

1994 is the year i came of age to music, and that always feels a bit like a 'when music started sounding like it does now' moment for me.

about 90% of the music i listen to from the U.K. is 1964 to 1984. but very few places can beat that 20 year span as far as music and sound goes! in my internet opinion. (and that 10% is actually a lot of music. i listen to a lot of music.) (i do feel like 1980 to 1989 was the high point of american machine-based dance music. after that, the rest of the world took over in a big way. but rap continues to astound me on a regular basis. and certainly rap-influenced R&B-based pop does too in a similar way.)

american dance music of the 80's reminds me of the adventurous jazz and soul and rock music made here in the 70's. the sky was the limit! they took the baton from weary freedom fighters who had been fighting the good fight since the 60's or even earlier. and the sad fact that a large amount of the 80's music i love was made in and around the bleak crushing horrors of that time is even more astounding to me.

this thread is super depressing

Honestly, and without wanting to discount the last X years of fantastic hip hop, but I feel a bit like US rap is at a major high-point rn. That's most likely cos I'm paying more attention than I ever did, but for a 35-year old genre it's incredible that so much of it sounds fresh, new ideas, interesting sounds and stuff that's unlike what i've heard coming from the genre even 5 years ago.

Yeah but microtonal metal, man.

Don't knock till you tried it, innit?

Hey, I listened to a some of it, even though I have zero interest in this sort of Wire-endorsed avant metal, and I can see why it might excite some people - nonetheless this from dl fills me with dread:

unless a significant number of other metal bands follow suit in using microtonal scales, then Jute Gyte occupies only a tiny part of the 'edge'.

what are the chances of this thread dying before we get to the microtonal hip hop bit?

dl, what is the most cutting edge piece of hip-hop from the last year in ur opinion? or a representative piece?

hip hop has definitely continued to morph into new and different forms over the years, at this point it's pretty unrecognizable from a lot of previous incarnations, but it's gone in directions I don't particularly find fun to listen to

Fetty Wap produced by Jute Gyte, we can shut down ILM

This is cutting edge in that I have no idea how it's been produced

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_iCP5S8Dnk

(Prurient - Frozen Niagara Falls (Portion Two))

all you need is a laptop to make that!

heheh

laptop + audacity would be about all you needed.

i was trying to find some microtonal chiptune experiments on youtube so we could end this thread with a bang, but i couldn't find any. someone get on that. could be the future...

maybe i don't have the expertise to understand what makes "trap queen" 'cutting edge,' but isn't that ultimately the problem w/ the op question? if you're really immersed in a particular genre you'll notice all the little things that are moving the genre forward. but generally speaking these won't be seismic changes - they aren't inventing totally new genres.

as of today, i can say with assurance that if you want cutting edge design, you have to go to 1963 Vienna.

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/11206066_10153975651402137_7584659364462462645_n.jpg?oh=ddac5662b18f7a69032f1c382fbdfd18&oe=55EC7469

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/1912363_10153975651917137_3427790488598600414_n.jpg?oh=6260ff32fec9e35ba8f91271a17448cf&oe=560B02F8

Mordy the two examples that spring to mind are 'Treasure' and 'No Flex Zone', as in, when I first heard these I think my head had trouble processing them at first. Obviously they're rap songs but something about them (and I don't know what) really caught me up.

That said I'm a dilettante at best when it comes to hip hop so maybe to others they're just standard fare.

i really liked 'no flex zone' but i didn't have any trouble processing it when i first heard it. it's very listenable imo.

i'm scared to ask, by "treasure" do u mean the bruno mars song?

No by young thug and zuse. For me, with both those songs it's as much about the vocal delivery as the production, but both are important? No Flex Zone sounded really messy and jarring when I first heard it. Now it soubds like a pop song.

But it is new. A metal fan doesn't have to know jot about Stravinsky to realise that Jute Gyte sounds unlike other metal that's gone before. In the same way a lot of seismic movements in jazz (alternate time sigs, modal progressions) had long been in classical music, this is very similar. It's not just about technique/theory, it's about the context it's presented in.

― p:s nerds know (dog latin), Monday, June 1, 2015 5:31 AM (6 hours ago)

and other people in this thread are pointing out that it actually doesn't sound unlike other metal. Now i don't have a problem with someone posting here saying "this sounds new to me" when, in fact, they just haven't been exposed to contemporaries or predecessors who sound similar. But when they continue to attest, that "no, this is totally different than those other things" when faced with opposition, then they fall into self-clowning oven territory.

, in fact,

like I realized yesterday that Jute Gyte reminded me quite a bit of the two Flying Luttenbachers albums that were just solo efforts (rather than a full band), Systems Emerge ... and Incarceration of Abstraction ... except Jute Gyte is like the "dark ambient" version where the atmosphere results in a lack of clarity and force of the notes, like the poster said upthread, the excess reverb diminishes the aesthetic effect of microtones, it just sounds like muddy effects

first track on jute gyte's vast chains is the easiest example of the whole thing:

https://jutegyte.bandcamp.com/album/vast-chains

― scott seward, Monday, June 1, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is it the stuff around ~ 5:50 - 7:10 that is meant to be so noteworthy and interesting?

except Jute Gyte is like the "dark ambient" version where the atmosphere results in a lack of clarity and force of the notes, like the poster said upthread, the excess reverb diminishes the aesthetic effect of microtones, it just sounds like muddy effects

#stillgotit

lol the bit at 5:50 kinda reminds me of those clapton/whoever shreds youtube videos

hehehe

i always wonder if the jute gyte stuff sounds better on cd. sounds so terrible on the bandcamp page.

but i still dig it.

what was the name of that 70s(?) metal band you posted about like 3 years ago that was kinda like symphonic disco metal

It sounds exactly like the guy in the band who doesn't have a tuning pedal that cuts the signal to the amp so they have to tune audibly on stage while the audience waits.

lol

if you play that against the Lou Harrison I posted it isn't a million miles away. Good on him for copying it and added screams and stuff like that. xps

xyzzzz_ have you even seen a performance with some of Harrison's special percussion array? I also wonder about the history/prevalence of classical symphonic/orchestral works with alternate tunings and/or invented and non-traditional instruments?

I haven't unfortunately ever seen any of Harrison's music performed in London. Its a shocking neglect in the programme over here. (unlike Partch, which I suspect would be a more difficult project to pull off)

The hyper-modernist stuff that uses microtones or non-traditional instruments that I quite like are from the likes of Richard Barrett, Michael Finnissy, but at times I neglect some of that detail and focus on the overall shape. If you haven't heard it I'd recommend Finnissy's music such as Red Earth, his stuff from the mid-to-late 80s which borrows from Aboriginal music, done with a cultural sensitivity and total awareness of what he is doing (he was encouraged to study it after encountering racism among academics when he moved there in the 80s).

Extra painful when the attempts at 'integration' don't work, like Takemitsu's scores with orchestra and Japanese instruments aren't v successful. The less said about the few attempts I've heard incorporating Gamelan from the 20s the better.

Then again there is always Le Marteau, which is of course great.

Which is all a round about way of saying that I see the integration of these aspects if I'm not immediately hearing it as 'Gamelan' or 'Japanese'. Its there but not at the forefront or comes off as celebration (when the people and cultures who have made this stuff have been destroyed in most cases), so Reich's Drumming is fucking shit compared to a lot of African drumming he stole it from for that piece.

this is the cutting edge:
http://open.spotify.com/album/4ThGgfBYaRgEVvL4xrJOkf

Jute Gyte does sound a lot better in ALAC than in Bandcamp streaming imo.

I can see how someone might critique him for sounding like Lou Harrison or for sounding too muddy for the microtonal intonation to really come across but not for both at the same time fwiw.

I can't find xyzzzz_'s Lou Harrison link. Was it "Serenade"? Because that's doing something pretty different: just intonation vs 24-tone equal temperament (although I'm not sure Kalmbach's intonation is actually as precise as 24tet could be).

I haven't unfortunately ever seen any of Harrison's music performed in London. Its a shocking neglect in the programme over here. (unlike Partch, which I suspect would be a more difficult project to pull off)

I saw Delusion of the Fury in Edinburgh last year and what a splendid evening it was, allowing for some silly elements in the libretto and plot(!) (but intentionally so I imagine), and was especially taken with the microtonal organ/harmoniums.

(btw I imagine the Residents had seen a production of two of Delusion of the Fury in their time)

Sund4r - yeah that's the link, my ears won't precisely and technically pick what its doing for the comparison, was just using it to talk about my struggles with microtonality yesterday.

Today that remark was more of a throw off: that Jute Gyte is amusing how it totally tones down the usual metal-and-scream-mum-likes-now business to then go off somewhere else for a couple of mins.

Ultimately its fine, but its doing what a lot of people just do: all the techniques are there and we are all grabbing it, cross-pollinating. Nothing wrong with it. But as Dominique said earlier the notion of 'cutting edge' is totally off base in the first place.

You guys wanna hear some cutting-edge microtonal music? Check out
http://images.gibson.com/Lifestyle/English/aaFeaturesImages2011/johnny-winter_livin-in-the-blues.jpg

That's great Tom - might be spending sometime in Edinburgh this year so I'm a year late. xp

or whoever this guy is

http://www.uaudio.com/media/blog/2010/04/basics_bass.jpg

NA otm

i like that electronic Jute Gyte album though

yeah it's great. & if nothing else this thread is introducing jute gyte to new listeners

"what was the name of that 70s(?) metal band you posted about like 3 years ago that was kinda like symphonic disco metal"

this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedLgoZospo

i'm pretty sure it was this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMM3MgS4yxc

Microtonality is absolutely an important aspect of the whole blues tradition. These guys actually measured each pitch in a Robert Johnson vocal line in cents: http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:756608/FULLTEXT01.pdf . I don't think anyone is claiming that Adam Kalmbach invented microtonality, just that he is doing something different by playing black metal on a guitar tuned in quarter-tones, different even from just bending strings on a 12tet guitar or using a whammy bar.

"fretted in quarter-tones", I should say

it sounds unique! definitely. and even people who aren't feeling it are bringing up lou harrison, so, you know, he's got something going on that's a bit different than the usual stuff. i don't even know how popular jute gyte is or if metal people even listen to him. probably not like they listened to new wave sensations deathspell omega anyway. who also bent their strings in unusual ways way back when. they do come to mind anyway.

and it does make sense that he's the poster child for that branca metal thread. i hear it all over his music. that no wave/branca/sonic youth/new york thing. but not in a self-conscious way. if that makes sense. he's definitely metal first and no new york second.

still going? I assume someone pointed out the new album has been released?

More spectacular stuff on PAN, from M.E.S.H this time

M.E.S.H - epithet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3xpyAfdxDI

http://www.allkpop.com

Interesting article by Philip Sherburne

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/music33/

Yeah, but I'm not sure any of those things in that article count as music subcultures.

Mnml alt. R&B: Beldina - Ocean, Alina Baraz & Galimatias - Fantasy
Brosteppy art pop: Emilie Nicolas - Fail, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXW_rcap1kc

oops. Wasn't supposed to be inline.

the M.E.S.H. album is fantastic.

glad to know that a respected music writer agrees w/me that PC Music sounds cutting edge

more clusterfucking and suggestions pls

freedom from oppression and exploitation

I didn't want to get into a discussion of whether or not it is cutting edge but you might like Sevish, dog latin.

Laurel Halo sounds cutting edge to me

Eprom

Laurel Halo sounds cutting edge to me

Indeed.

Odwalla88

Kate Tempest, Everybody Down: her phrasing, as a performer and writer, is immediately distinctive and compelling, with the density and clarity of short desciptive x expository bursts, illumination rounds in the dank atmosphere (like 1960s black & white/shades 'o' grey movies set in low-life London an 'at). Most impressive debut album of its kind since Horses, and I guess Patti Smith might be an inspiration, but this is a rap-rock all its own, far as I know. Ending goes soft, but most of the songs stand on their own.
Courtney Barnett packs so much into her verses (on the double-EP even more than the album) that even or maybe especially the more spare, oblique stroke impressions can seemingly add up to compressed dilemmas, in between partial relief of guitar rave-ups; nobody else does it quite like this (she mentions influence of Television re the guitar, but the songs seem more or differently personal).
Young Fathers make personal-social statements via organized noise, incl. that of distress-tested pop bits, even some Fine Young Cannibals rattling around the dumpster (yum).
Ditto Algiers, with Motown workin' on the ghost train chain gang flourish.
Tal Nationa's Zoy Zoy is almost-over-the-top Afroprog, in the sense of compulsive complication, setting up problems for themselves (analogous to others, perhaps) and kicking out the jams: "moving parts," as xgau puts it.
Ecstatic Vision's Sonic Praise is disciplined boldness, 37 minutes and change that reminds me of the title of that ESP-DISK I've never heard, The Coach With The Six Insides. Come along if you can!

Gabor Lazar

ahaha kate tempest ahahahahahahaaaa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Gry91znr8

pink floyd

:D

(coach with the six insides is great! maya deren's last husband was the composer/musical director for it if i remember right)

https://soundcloud.com/search?q=Gabor%20Lazar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MGWVgsbUfw

I didn't want to get into a discussion of whether or not it is cutting edge but you might like Sevish, dog latin.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Monday, November 9, 2015 7:40 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is dope

shit, it was really cruel and uncharitable of me to mock london laureate-elect kate tempest like that. as an act of atonement i hereby present the ilx public with her cutting-edge work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM09uPsvWIM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEiBdU0tFB0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV6_uGQ00YA

You would perhaps figure in a time where music technology is so ubiquitous that there would be more crazy composer types doing huge orchestral 70-100+ part arrangements all on their lonesome. Maybe there is in film music, underground or academic worlds where this is happening, but even with the electronic music I have heard since the late 90s, I haven't come across that type of maximal-ism.

You mean arrangements that are then played through 70-100 electronic/midi instruments? I think it's probably challenging to make that work, sonically, like it's probably harder to mix in a way that doesn't sound overcrowded than the sound of 70-100 instruments playing in a room or series of rooms and blending naturally.

I mean I assume mixing 70-100 individual acoustic instrument tracks would be challenging too, it's just that recordings of 70-100 instruments are rarely done that way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11o2LP2eyaQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR4LZgCBjyU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqrblgFsqEc

"I mean I assume mixing 70-100 individual acoustic instrument tracks would be challenging too, it's just that recordings of 70-100 instruments are rarely done that way."

That's it though, you could theoretically do some arrangement, record say the woodwind section a part at a time and then submix. I'd think if you were going to work that symphonically in a box you would probably have to break it into sections and then do a sum mix of the sections. A film soundtrack is usually mixed that way with a mix of the music and the other elements, so I would think in this maximum style arrangement you would have to mix in terms like such.

There are groups doing extended ensembles as indie and experimental rock has quite a that try that type of arrangement in a live group, but you might think there would be some type of jazz lunatic arranger out there would maybe try to emulate the big band in a box. You got to think dudes like Duke Ellington, Gil Evans and the whole art jazz arrangement movement would like this type of technological possibilities. Some classic jazz artists have tried this type of arrangement a bit, but I don't really know of any modern artists that picked it up as an option to getting their music out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDQpZT3GhDg

xelab i sent u an ilxmail

You would perhaps figure in a time where music technology is so ubiquitous that there would be more crazy composer types doing huge orchestral 70-100+ part arrangements all on their lonesome

the closest thing that comes to mind is Anna Meredith (pretty sure i read it was all done with virtual instruments, probably those real expensive sample-based orchestral ones):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vajhs2wBeCU

seems 2 me we are settling into an equilibrium b/w cutting edge & non-cutting edge music

cutting edge music in 2015 is worse than ever and also less cutting edge than ever

non-cutting edge music in 2015 is better than ever and also more cutting edge than ever

when cutting edge music is really good and really cutting edge non-cutting edge music moves on arbitrage opportunities and incorporate cutting edge elements

when non-cutting edge music is really good but not really cutting edge cutting edge music moves on arbitrage opportunities and incorporates non-cutting edge elements

a decade where we were in the former scenario: 1960's
a decade where we were in the latter scenario: 2000's

70-100 parts is a hell of a lot, you would have to be one of the most skilled composers in history to be able to pull that off. Even a big orchestra has maybe 25 parts in it, assuming you're not counting every violin or cello separately. The only thing I can think of even approaching that level of complexity is Stockhausen's Gruppen and that has three orchestras in it, and I'm not sure even that approaches 60 parts.

I was figuring more total musicians.

"very ​modern and with all the ​newest ​features"

as defined:
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/cutting-edge

this spotify playlist:

Vaporwave finds
https://open.spotify.com/user/playlistfarm/playlist/0SoHZdZx3CNt6KjOagKnTj

this is a semi hidden playlist created by someone in the spotify data team, (I recognise some of their user names, including the Principal Music Scientist at spotify) from the playlistfarm profile follow list. i.e the playlist isn't displayed on the profile but i found the playlist while exploring the about function on an artist profile. What's annoying is the playlist controller is deleting tracks quickly from the playlist including some of the better tracks !. So you need to check daily, sorted by most recent and transfer the tracks to your own lists. I am guessing this list is used to research tracks for Spotify Fresh Finds.

none of the tracks are vaporwave IMHO, however the music featured is a sort of hybrid interzone between between UK/ Future Bass and Johnny Fever's shambhala Synth Pop and uptempo future funky electronic pop, some electronic trap and some tracks with a bass-y grave wave sound. So there is a wide range of music on this playlist, not everything is going to resonate but i have discovered some good gems over the past week. I hope this playlist continues to update. Most of the added tracks are new releases within the last 2 weeks.

The umbrella term for this music last.fm calls new breed

http://www.last.fm/tag/newbreed/wiki.

The new genres of the 2010s have something in common, something abstract, different in tactic and skewed in their own anamorphic way, let's call it "newbreed". Perhaps short for this "newbreed of electronic music". That wavey, trappy, experimental newbreed of electronica. Newbreed is a broad, meta-genre gehstalt made from the explosion of new electronic genres that started to emerge from the Internet in the late 2000s and early 2010s. It is a broad category of music, including (or influenced by) chillwave, vaporwave, seapunk, witch house, trillwave, future garage, psychedelic, gothic, ambient, neoclassical, dream pop, lo-fi, new wave, chopped and screwed, drone, juke, footwork, grave rave, cyberpunk, outrun, coldwave, nu gaze, slutwave, broken-clash, avant-garde, sissy bounce, zombie rave, aquacrunk, warlock, oceangrunge, icepunk, post-punk, post-chillwave, post-futurepop, post-dubstep, eccojams, etheral, industrial, electro, shoegaze, laptopgaze, cloud rap, trap and many others.

If Sven had the balls to play slutwave he might still be managing today.

you asked for slutwave, you have just scored

The Real Heat - Make me Cum
https://open.spotify.com/track/0JoqET4iDksgG7paw4EHnG
via the vaporwave playlist

that is the single most distressing post in ilx history

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/albums/22477/homepage_large.2647dba4.jpg

Someone will need to explain the difference between grave rave and zombie rave here.

You mean arrangements that are then played through 70-100 electronic/midi instruments?

Paul Dolden was doing this back in the mid-80s.

70-100 parts is a hell of a lot, you would have to be one of the most skilled composers in history to be able to pull that off. Even a big orchestra has maybe 25 parts in it, assuming you're not counting every violin or cello separately. The only thing I can think of even approaching that level of complexity is Stockhausen's Gruppen and that has three orchestras in it, and I'm not sure even that approaches 60 parts.

In Ligeti's Atmosphères, every one of the 88 instruments has a separate part. The ensemble in Xenakis's Pithoprakta isn't quite as big but it features 46 separate string parts.

Paul Dolden was doing this back in the mid-80s.

Dolden actually recorded real instruments and then assembled them on tape, right? If there is anything I don't want to hear, it is a 100-part orchestral piece played on MIDI versions of acoustic instruments. I think earlnash was looking for the former, though.

Other reasons why this doesn't happen more often with acoustic/orchestral music: levels of funding for contemporary composers and contemporary orchestras, most orchestras' level of interest in new music. I imagine that many composers would not want to write something for acoustic instruments that could only exist in recorded form.

The Sound of Grave Wave - The Sounds of Spotify
https://open.spotify.com/user/thesoundsofspotify/playlist/2Ndvcc1Qz9mNbQemnforB5

Grave Wave would be a more poppy / ravey electronic take on witch house, the synths would have a stronger emphasis rather than more harsh chopped up distorted sound of witch house.

Zombie Rave
http://www.last.fm/tag/zombie%20rave
"Zombie rave", just another invented term for the post-industrial music with slowed down hip-hop techniques more known as witch house.

Grave Rave really involved packing the middle of the track with combative synths in a kind of double pivot, taking the tempo down and squeezing the life out of the listener, a lot of these tracks can be tepid affairs with a flourish in the last few moments, Greece's 2004 release 'Euros' shows this kind of approach

Greece
https://www.google.pl/search?q=greece&es_th=1&rct=j
https://www.google.gr/maps

Zombie Rave is similar to Grave Rave but the synths are usually playing at either side, stretching the play, and then cutting in to devastating effect. While both genres employ a witch just off the lead singer, in zombie rave the witch has much more of a free role, isnt restricted to the house, but can also cover much of the surrounding area, frequently appearing in other tracks. This tends to be looked down on in grave rave, where tracks show a greater degree of tactical discipline and solid industrial structure

Johann Cruyff
https://twitter.com/JohanCruyff/status/643710764520468480

Cruyff suggests here, that both are just newly invented terms for Total Witching which he pioneered back in 1969

Discogs
http://www.discogs.com/Johan-Cruyff-Oei-Oei-Oei-Dat-Was-Me-Weer-Een-Loei/master/341299

Side A is an early version of Zombie Rave but many argue that Cruyff is just boosting his own legend, and this release is QuiteCold Rave at best

an example of a "bass-y grave wave sound" track added to the playlist today from Denmark's Soho Rezanejad

Soho Rezanejad - everyday's another holiday
https://open.spotify.com/track/5J2X2Kq3OshOW4QMKjLNCH

check the ravey synth stabs

"I mean I assume mixing 70-100 individual acoustic instrument tracks would be challenging too,"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRWbbWGeeuQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fidi0JvFAnk

i always want people to hear dolden. at least once.

i like modern fancy pants music when it sounds like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHYUxE3-f4Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0DeLpHyT9M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMEq3AtGThk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhjWm2LGZCw

also really like what i've heard from People Magazine faves Matmos and their new album:

http://www.people.com/article/matmos-releasing-album-washing-machine-noises

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1SKEfOtGSM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyzY_FNEIZU

Pulse Emitter's Digital Rainforest

https://pulseemitter.bandcamp.com/album/digital-rainforest

Dolden actually recorded real instruments and then assembled them on tape, right? If there is anything I don't want to hear, it is a 100-part orchestral piece played on MIDI versions of acoustic instruments.

wiki says "digitally recorded" but I think Dolden's work probably provides a template. Earlnash's post felt like reading a description of PD.

he's the first thing i thought of reading that. still sounds pretty uh current too.

cheers crut, this is great

Fwiw:

Several hundred painstakingly scored and multitracked solo acoustic instruments collide to produce a super-dense musical black hole that even Iannis Xenakis would have shied away from.

Created almost exclusively in his private recording studio, Dolden's music is extremely dense in texture. It is produced through the meticulous layering of hundreds of individual tracks of instrumental and vocal performances which are combined to produce timbres that it would not be possible to realize outside the studio environment. These "tape" compositions are often combined with live performance aspects through additional parts written for soloists or ensembles.

What would "MIDI versions of acoustic instruments" sound like? Surely still an often amorphous-sounding mass?

black midi >>>>>>>>>>>> paul dolden

You gonna listen to it and come back in five mins and claim Dolden is the greatest transcendental genius of this or any other century?

I'm more interested in acoustic versions of MIDI instruments tbh. especially #102 FX 6 (goblins)

I listened to some Dolden earlier. It was a bit dull. Might try again later

more like Dullden amirite folks

What would "MIDI versions of acoustic instruments" sound like?

A Finale/Sibelius demo, I imagine?

I'm more interested in acoustic versions of MIDI instruments tbh

This would interest me more, too.

Odwalla88

I've been trying to remember the name of Paul Dolden for years, he's someone that my dad used to listen but neither of us could remember what his name was. I hated it when I was young but hearing him now I've got to say I'm finding l'ivresse de la vitesse fucking astonishing. TRUE STORY.

So indirect thanks are in order people of ILM, ta.

Careful, xyzzz will call you a neophyte wanker!

I wonder what my life would have been like if my Dad listened to Paul Dolden.

different

louis just skip to the last four minutes of l'ivresse, scott's second link, if you want a little less boredom in your life

PAUL DOLDEN

I live in a fantasy world where I was convinced his last record was going to get a lot of reviews just because he'd finally made a CD with a bunch of 2-4 minute long tracks instead of the 15-20 minute long movements he usually comes up with

ha ha

I wish I had something notable to add to this thread but this week's mostly just listening to 'blowout comb'

Kid Smpl's recent EPs sound cutting-edge to me, in that i have a hard time imagining them being made prior to now.

https://smbls.bandcamp.com/album/precinct

STARA RZEKA sounds sort of cutting edge to me

https://stararzeka.bandcamp.com/

Oh Louie I am just so disappointed! Here I am in ILM semi-retirement looking at the next generation claiming they are listening to all the trascendental noise, avant-garde genuises and when they don't see that Dolden is doing the business I just despair!

I live in a fantasy world where I was convinced his last record was going to get a lot of reviews just because he'd finally made a CD with a bunch of 2-4 minute long tracks instead of the 15-20 minute long movements he usually comes up with

LOL Milton its not length that's the problem - haven't listened to the latest but you could listen to the older stuff in short bursts too, more how much is going for every bloody second (iirc took years to put the old tracks together)

yeah the black midi thing is cool

I just realised that: i) Who Has the Biggest Sound? just came out last year and ii) I have not heard it. Listening on Naxos now; sounds great.

Dolden is pretty interesting music. Some of the other links are weird and wonderful too.

"What would "MIDI versions of acoustic instruments" sound like? Surely still an often amorphous-sounding mass?"

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, November 10, 2015 12:00 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would suppose that a good portion of all film music is made in a box now unless you got a serious budget. How they do it is by using computers with huge libraries of samples where they use different sounds depending on how hard or long you want the note to sound. How they model some of this isn't new technology but with CPU power and huge fast hard drives they can get pretty detailed sounds from a sampled/triggered by MIDI sound. Some film musicians are known for making their own banks of sounds, I know that Cliff Martinez does quite a bit of tuned percussion sampling to use as sounds. Those sounds being pretty primary on his Solaris soundtrack.

louis just skip to the last four minutes of l'ivresse, scott's second link, if you want a little less boredom in your life

― Milton Parker, Tuesday, November 10, 2015 7:53 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well I just did this and yes - it was brilliant

feeling a little better about PAUL DOLDEN. will even listen to more; he and black midi can both stay in this thread. xyzzzz otm or something, wonder what scornful comment he'll cook up now!

Kid Smpl's recent EPs sound cutting-edge to me, in that i have a hard time imagining them being made prior to now.

Liking this.

Chillax Louie.

I know that Cliff Martinez does quite a bit of tuned percussion sampling to use as sounds. Those sounds being pretty primary on his Solaris soundtrack.

The remake? I can't remember much abt it - I'll check it out.

http://everynoise.com/engenremap-gravewave.html

Jlin

Visionist

Kuedo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGiPlzcNpws

I saw a video interview with Martinez a few years ago going into making the soundtrack which was really interesting but I couldn't find it again on the fly.

A lot of this talk is just making me think of some really terrible Zappa records

i love gabor lazar but his stuff is so close to not even being music (please please don't go there) that it's kind of depressing to consider him "cutting edge"

you should hear what's going on in my basement right now. far out...

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/12226979_10154339196947137_6882167257310729138_n.jpg?oh=ed0864ebefef5ceba479c1c21e57036a&oe=56B39C40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPQ_Ac0uQr0

anne-f jacques and tim olive at my store last night were...wow! so good.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/v/t1.0-9/12279000_10154343464197137_3615488219475071010_n.jpg?oh=441a62c4069f0ee1ee6c09403a9a70f4&oe=56B95C47

that looks interesting... do they have recordings of that setup in action?

always wanted to try something like that.

they have CDs together but i haven't listened to them yet. bought them last night. also bought a DVD from anne that is her music with animation by julie doucet!

been going on about AE_LIVE stuff, was sort of dismayed at the lack of coverage/discussion for the recent recordings, but it's still autechre music.. feels like they're realizing these ideal sound worlds, with lots of animated detail, super plasticity to the sounds/structure, and some heavy hitting parts. upon hearing the Dublin recording for the first time, i almost felt relief, like 'they finally did it'.. it's gorgeous stuff.

cool whats going on in that basement? is there audio?

New Zora Jones ep sounds futuristic, riyl: arca and visionist

reviewed @
http://www.passionweiss.com/2015/11/18/zora-jones-unveils-100-ladies-moves-both-minds-and-asses/

spotify: Zora Jones - 100 Ladies

https://open.spotify.com/album/0rVpMPYShtFjrTwaulNm87

great show today.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/12313765_10154365288932137_4268434911588120068_n.jpg?oh=5b69bcc427de7c11b408f474b1ec0820&oe=56DD18F5

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/v/t1.0-9/12316098_10154365212902137_342112158489136364_n.jpg?oh=1f845c3cc9dd3cf88060ac3467b7e26b&oe=56E71FE1

"that looks interesting... do they have recordings of that setup in action?"

voila...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgJpL9tndN0

wtf sounds futuristic about zora jones and arca, ~moody instrumental grime exactly how you've expected it to sound like for years

and like idm existed in the 90s

If one were to argue in favour of Arca-style electronica etc being 'cutting edge', it would be a matter of sound design maybe? Like, listen to some of those Aphex demoes he released earlier this year and compare them to the MESH record and there's a huge gulf.

I'd say maybe that 'One Sec' single by Mumdance x Novelist would count as cutting edge. I can't think of anything like it (i.e. beat-free vocal grime) having come out before. And also what's great about it is it's not coming straight out of grime, and not some avant-garde or art music arena.

I wonder what the overlap would be between people who describe music as 'cutting edge' and people who describe restaurants as 'funky'.

at least with Arca it's the molten, elastic, slippery quality- his stuff has so much caprice in the way forms come and go- even programming intensive 90s IDM tended to have a metronomic hi hat grid that ticked away underneath the fancy snare workouts. To my ears, the Arca / M.E.S.H. moment is about giving up the grid and being a lot less reliable, formally. It's spiritually akin to IDM but not the same formally.

there can still be cutting edge idm or instrumental grime in 2015 in theory, you don't have to invent a new genre to be cutting edge

xp These guys' music seems to have something in common with Autechre's 'Quaristice' album, which I was very keen on at the time thanks to its being made up of shorter, sketchier tracks rather than over-busy 10 minute epics.

to my ears both arca's slipperiness and penchant for shorter tracks come across as slight, everything feels like a semi-interesting sketch that's not especially compelling in its current form. i had less patience with the new album than the first

didn't hear what was special about m.e.s.h. either

i wasn't mad about Arca's first album (not heard the new one) for similar reasons, although I kind of liked the angle in theory.

Not sure I could describe Arca as 'moody instrumental grime' though. I didn't realise Arca had anything to do with grime until more recently. I guess this more recent evolution of grime is pretty interesting - that the idea of the MC and beats in general are almost being peeled back to reveal just what's underneath; the inner workings. Again, I'm thinking of Autechre and they're much-touted but often imperceptible allegiance to hip hop and breaks-based music. And also when dubstep split into brostep and the more post-dubsteppy stuff on Hyperdub, neither of which really held that much in common with the original sound other than in name.

ah no i was referring to zora jones with the grime description, not arca

I guess this more recent evolution of grime is pretty interesting - that the idea of the MC and beats in general are almost being peeled back to reveal just what's underneath; the inner workings

instrumental grime is sometimes good (and not new in any sense) but in general shifting the focus away from the MC is a boring development

how would simon reynolds answer this question?

"Bleep bloop blorp..."

at least with Arca it's the molten, elastic, slippery quality- his stuff has so much caprice in the way forms come and go- even programming intensive 90s IDM tended to have a metronomic hi hat grid that ticked away underneath the fancy snare workouts. To my ears, the Arca / M.E.S.H. moment is about giving up the grid and being a lot less reliable, formally. It's spiritually akin to IDM but not the same formally.

― the tune was space, Monday, November 30, 2015 8:53 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well said.

btw people who have only heard Arca's albums should check out his Stretch EPs and the &&&&& mixtape, they're much more beat-oriented and accessible. maybe not quite as singular, but i come back to them more often.

he's also a really sick DJ, I just DJed with him in Iceland last week and he melts down other people's songs in a very startling way when he Djs

would love to hear that!

http://killedincars.tumblr.com/image/135585989879

Hmmm

http://killedincars.tumblr.com/image/135585989879

^I suspect this probably hits a lot of the bases when answering this question

I thought that this topic, perhaps more than any other, merits a 2016 thread, so I made one - What sounds cutting edge in 2016?