Innovation : What music would you play to most impress upon someone living in 1994 that you really were from the future?

I am particularly interested in ideas surrounding technology and innovation as I think that progress in the former, does not necessarily equal achievement in the other but pop music in essence is the same thing throughtout history, just with its variables tweaked by production techniques.

I guess i think that the 10 year period stated has been a decade of postmodern pop and i don't things any tracks today provide irrevocable proof of any substantial innovation in that time. There is a killer argument against this which I am very aware of course and I am being polemical but I think an interesting question to ask is 10 years into the future what from 2004 won’t sound jaded and old hat?

I'm still not sure what I’m saying. Blah semantics. Blah history. Blah futurology. It's 9.30 and I’ve already hoovered the stairs. Sorry for this.

What's the "slightly new guise"?

If you were floored by it when it actually did come out, then perhaps it is not a good answer to the question. Or perhaps you are a bad judge. I am perhaps being mischievious. I am perhaps being vacuous.

It's a good question, and the above paragraph leads me to wonder if things which sound innovative ever actually are part of a general continuum.

There are so many factors to consider that would make something seem shocking or new.

Do you think someone in 1994 hearing the future would slap their forehead and go "Of course!"? Or to put it another way, if you somehow presented them with a false version of the future, that they might sense that it didn't seem right?

I'm thinking Dizzee's probably closest to the mark here, but what about something like "Milkshake"?

I think I'd be more inclined to show them The Matrix and an iPod, to be honest.

(xpost) techstep punkmetal with enormous clown shoes

isn't this just "Firestarter", Stevem?

"Sound Of The Underground".

I can't help feeling this question would have ben a lot easier to answer in 1994 re:1984.

isn't this just "Firestarter", Stevem?
you're about 50bpm too slow for starters...

Alternatively, I Luv U is a pretty good shout. Maybe Get Yr Freak On, We Need A Resolution or anything off Kaleidoscope.

I wouldn't play anything too obviously 'futuristic' - techno was too big in 1994 for recent Autechre or Aphex or Orbital or anything to really convince anyone.

"salt shaker " = miami bass X bleep & bass

haha steve, speaking of clown shoe metalstep, did you hear that dylan "master of puppets" remix?

Imagine how that would fuck with your head in 1994.

I think the 'slap on forehead' effect would be optimal if you play something that has a vaguely recognizable template, e.g. RnB. So Milkshake, Resolution or Pass dat Dutch

Playing stuff like Fennesz or even Dizzee would probably seem too remote and therefore would probably be dismissed (or admired) as just some very left field stuff.

If Dizzee Rascal "floors" you or any other hyperbolically shocked reaction, you really have a low threshold for musical surprises. Step back for a second and realize that it's just a slightly tweaked hip-hop album.

in general, i think its only technological advancement or movement of fringe tech to centre, that could count here. for the former, i dont know, Richard Devine or something? for the latter, possibly dizzee, but while it sounds different to what went before, if it came out in 94, i dont think you would be amazingly surprised (or, at least, no more so than 02), perhaps something like toxic, because the hiphop/tech/pop mash melee would have been something alien at that point, as in the audience perhaps didnt exist, whereas the audience for leftfield/tech innovation didnt just exist in 94, it was at its height

which is why i presume n chose this particular year for this, a year already primed for 'future sound'

I did, partly. Also, because it was 10 years ago.

i really don't agree with this, if only because i don't think i do have a low threshold for musical surprises (and i'd be pretty surprised if anyone else thought i did), and "i luv u" really did floor me on first listen.

I've been thinking the same thing, is it just a coincidence that this phenomenon currently exists in all 'modern' genres (metal, dance music, hiphop, industrial)?

Partly, but I don't think one would necessarily have to be told this (that would be cheating). It's something intrinsic to the sound that no matter how way out it seemed, it would obviously be a commercial pop record. Same with Milkshake.

part of the 'woah, future!' thrill i get from that is the video tho

Actually, "Rosa Parks" would be good, too. And "The Whole World". Hell, basically play them every Outkast album after they went crazy.

http://www.superseventies.com/framptoncover.gif 1976

If I was into Hardfloor, or the stuff that Harthouse or Rising High were putting out, at the time I don't think I'd consider it that big a leap of the imagination. Not something to leap for joy about - Hardfloor to Fragma being an obvious case in point - but there you go

any random track from Miss E - So Addictive
Chemical Brothers, "Music: Response"
Jay-Z, "Big Pimpin'"
Cannibal Ox, "Scream Phoenix"
Jason Forrest, "Inkhuk"
Basement Jaxx, "Lucky Star"
Madvillain, "Money Folder" (not so much for the music as for the "waitwaitwait that's Zevlove X?!" factor)

RUBICON

STEREOLOVE (ME & TIMY MIX)

SO MUCH LOVE TO GIVE

ETC.

Carefull lest you awaken the beast Lynskey.

Chapterhouse-tronica then

Dan, you seem to be hung up on the criterion of things being in the charts, rather than the music itself.

That's because in most cases the music was already around in some form or another in 1994; the big difference is in its mainstream acceptance. The main reason why I like more chart music now than I did ten years ago is because the music in the charts is more representative of my core musical tastes (and I've always liked the UK charts more than the US charts for precisely the same reason).

And Dan, I think you're right that Radiohead might be a good choice for a "futuristic"-sounding indie band, but I wouldn't choose "Pyramid Song" -- I'd choose something with more complex beats, or at least something glitchier (in a manner that might sound overly familiar in 2004 but hadn't yet become so in 1994). So even the track on Amnesiac immediately before, "Packd Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box," would work better.

I am boggled that you think the beat to "Pack'd..." (aka "this is a sample beat that came with this Rebirth mod") is more complex than the beat to "Pyramid Song" (aka "the song that no one can find the 4-beat pattern in even though it's there").

I wonder if I share this sentiment entirely, hm. I think there's a certain indefinable sense of something I miss in much current chart music in comparison to earlier things, but at the same time there are newer elements in turn to offset any individually-perceived gaps.

"Pyramid" surely is more complex, music-theory-wise: the time signature, or at least how you feel it, is odd. But I don't think that odd time signatures are a mark of innovation or futuristic-ness. Someone in 1994 isn't going to say, "In the future, they play music that you have trouble feeling in 4/4? What the fucking fuck?"

But they will likely be impressed by softly scattered, scrambled electronic beats, especially in the context of what's nominally a somewhat mainstream "rock" song. I'd submit the end of "Sit Down, Stand Up," too.

I think probably the one genre that's come the farthest in terms of being barely recognizable to its 94 era fans would have to be hip-hop.

Linkin Park is another good suggestion actually, but I hate them.

It's much more "This is the song that was chosen as the commercial lead-in for one of the most celebrated albums of that year?" than anything else, a theme which runs through every song I suggested.

"There will be this program called Cool Edit, and it will be affordable, and even if you can't afford it, you can download it from the internet!"

Also wtf is this "Galang"? I looked on SLSK last night but all I could find was tthis mental dancehall track called "Galang Gal" by someone called Crystal Vibe or something. It's pretty nuts and very cool.

Nah, that wouldn't really work. By 1994 there had already been plenty of ultra-noisy-fast stuff. The Locust might sound weird but certainly not unprecedented.

tell them Xtina revived the rock-chick schtick, then how baffled would they be when 'Genie In A Bottle' comes out, heh

Galang by M.I.A. It's a kind of Bhangraesque sense assault. I love it. Thank you, ILM. So much for slsk being best - I found it without any trouble on Acqlite.

mya 'gilang'.

Micronauts 'The Jag'
Death In Vegas ft Iggy Pop 'Aisha'
Aphex Twin 'Windowlicker'
Felix 'Silver Screen Shower Scene (LRD mix or original)'
Osymyso 'Intro Inspection'
Basement Jaxx 'Good Luck'
Afuken 'Skidoos'*
Junior Boys 'Last Exit (Fennesz mix)'*
Truth Hurts ft Rakim 'Addictive' ("wow Apache Indian becomes a huge influence then?")
Kraftwerk 'Tour De France 03' (seriously)

*contrary to earlier comments i think these would both really impress '94 dwellers

p.s. Get my e-mail?

pps Wondered when Aphex would pop up.

(UK Top 10, 7/5/94)

To return to the original point, amongst that lot, "Toxic" would sound like it came from another planet, not just 10 years into the future.

Any of the vocal versions of Ice Rink might do it, though.

i've been so blind...

a lot of stuff on R&S in '94/'95 sounded so futuristic to me at the time. Future/Past's 'Hyperspace', Jacob Optical Stairway's 'Fragments Of A Lost Language', Ken Ishii's 'Extra', Model 500's 'The Flow', DJ Hell's 'My Definition Of House Music', 69's 'Puntang' - i got most of these from the excellent tape that came with Muzik issue 3. i suppose it's more a sense of timelessness than futurism tho, i wouldn't say any of those tracks sound really dated today as in obsolete because they seem to provide something that has been since lost/replaced naturally.

Also, Cornelius is U&K and I can't believe I didn't mention him before - I nominate "Thankyou For The Music".

If we don't then starting this thread was a waste of time.

Man, that chart rundown brings it all back.

N, I'm outfitting the DeLorean right now, in fact.

Jess and I pretty much on the same page, which is nice (the little string line that ends the second verse is Elfman, dammit!)

Shulkie, Bloodshy and Avant produced 'Toxic' and 'Showdown' for ITZ. They're Swedish.

Baaderoni, see my summation of the song in the 'Toxic vs Faint' thread.

Baaderoni, I think what helps 'Toxic' is that it's also one of Cathy Dennis' best pop song efforts, plus it has a kinda universal appeal (simple, catchy, criss-cross styles, also would've sounded less clean in '94). Also, Steve just expounded on the post-D. Punk riffs for you, which are key to understanding it's essential modernity.

my desire to see Britney down the French disco

You filthy beggar...

No, really, as in "See, I told you Damon was the worst thing about Blur, no REALLY."

Heh heh heh.

I think bearing in mind Music For The Jilted Generation came out in 94 then Lucky Star is not that big a leap of faith, chorus especially.

Do you think, with all these records you have suggested, that someone in 1994 would actually be more than 'floored' in the sense that people have been saying that things like Dizzee Rascal and Aphex Twin affected them when they first heard them. Do you think they would have the sense that it really was not right that they were hearing them. Like one of those glitches in the Matrix or whatever? Or would they just think 'far out'?

If not, what if you'd played them to someone in 1964, or 1924?

Perhaps Dizzee Rascal and Aphex Twin actually did have this kind of effect on you. I don't know.

no melody?

possibly the only melody from any number one of the last ten years which anyone over 50 would be able to hum or whistle.

or in 2004, come to think of it.

'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' floored me in 2001. The de/construction of the phrases...had anything like that been done before, even in hip hop? if so remind me

sorry stevem - i know you did, i'm just a cheeky scrounger, what can i say?

Most of it would probably not really be recognized as music

Several x-posts; well, yeah, it's not NO melody, obviously, but the melody seemed so almost subverted by the rhythm - I'm gonna have to listen to it again, aren't I? Also, if you'd heard the Flaming Lips do it live you'd think it had no melody!

I reckon if I'd never heard Aphex Twin, Bodyrock, Harder Faster etc today and someone came up to me with a mix of these I'd still be very much floored - same as the first time I heard Smile or the White Album.

Bodyrock was a great choice until I remembered 'On A Ragga Tip'. '2010' is better for the job.

The instrumental of 'Get Busy' would raise some eyebrows.

The de/construction of the phrases...had anything like that been done before, even in hip hop? if so remind me

Weren't some points about Todd Edwards made upthread?

*which also suggests a fun tangent as in 'what tracks really do sound like they didn't originate from planet Earth, let alone the present day'

what music would you play to DEPRESS someone living in 1994 that you were really from the future of horrible music?

You and Marcello both, Steve, but I'd play them the innovative shit of the day as context for what I'd be playing from Timbaland et Fantasma onwards.

Obviously, the "ahead of it's time factor" has to play a part b/c we then get to see how music/genres/genre subsets have caught up to the innovations laid down since. This is why I made my point about pop production advancements - 'Toxic' being the current example of how certain techniques from more exclusive genres are being applied to a populist hit.

Innovation doesn't necessarily floor someone, the complete package can also work just as well. Hearing Todd before 'Harder, Better...' dulled a lot of its 'newness' impact (as did hearing Prince), but as its own complete entity, yes, it did rock my earth.

A confession: what got me to notice Missy back in Maryland, '97 (besides her videos and her girth) wasn't 'The Rain', which did nothing for me at the time. It was 'Beep Me 911', which is definitely weirder.

'Beep Me 911' made me go wtf more than any other Missy track ever

Squarepusher - "Do You Know Squarepusher?" and "My Red Hot Car"

What, where? ;-)

"Toxic" honestly hasn't stuck with me, so I'm befuddled at the endless praise for it, but it sure as hell is better than "Me Against the Music" -- which I suppose you could take back to someone ten years ago and say "Madonna is now reduced to doing this."

He sounds a bit like one of my best friends, a guy who vehemently held "modern music producers" to mean anyone working outside pop/r'n'b/vocal hip hop.

You are so not a member of the Offspring.

http://www.superseventies.com/framptoncover.gif

Uh, that wasn't a talkbox on the Cher hit, Stewart.

No, but the effect was pretty similar to a vocoder, so it wouldn't have sounded particularly alien to anyone from about 1977 onwards.

Mya - Fallen (Remix)
Mis-Teeq - B With Me (single mix)
Kelis - Caught Out There
Usher - Yeah
Lumidee - Never Leave You (much more than "Get Busy")
Junior Boys - High Come Down (for the indie kids)

Also... it was actually released closer to 1994 than 2004, but Björk's Homogenic still sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. If it didn't already exist, you could play it NOW and it would sound like it came from the future. And it just doesn't seem like part of any trend... I could be missing something, I was only 12 in '94, but was there anything which was building up to an album which sounded like Homogenic in any way?

Brilliant and absolutely true.

Haha, I just happen to DISAGREE!

See Warp Records '93 to present.

Anyone but anal-retentive wannabe-musos like myself who differentiate between Vocoders (Kraftwerk), Talkboxes (Frampton) and Autotuners (Cher) - all similar but different.

I'll shut up now.

"The Locust"
Nah, that wouldn't really work. By 1994 there had already been plenty of ultra-noisy-fast stuff. The Locust might sound weird but certainly not unprecedented.

-- latebloomer (posercore24...), May 12th, 2004 2:59 AM. (latebloomer) (later)

yeah, considering that the members of the locust (well JP and Gabe at least) were pretty major figures in that scene as high schoolers, i think if their fans or even casual listeners would have heard what they are doing now* back then, it would have been a pretty intense reaction.

*which brings up a peeve of mine how some people just think that fast music sounds all the same.

Hahaha what if you brought back _The Rainbow Children_?????

*PHWAOING*

"You should listen to this!"
"Gee! Thanks, future dude! ...Um, what the hell is this?"
"Sorrygottago."

*GNIOAWHP*

this was a really interesting qn in 04 (gah) and might be again now! much harder to answer, maybe this is b/c i am half-asleep though

[can we get the "lol M.I.A." jokez out of the way asap please? thankyou!]

T/S: Tradition vs. Innovation

i'd play them generic club rap, the likes of which we can't avoid in any club in any country anywhere on this planet. sigh.

easy. "Buy You A Drank"

(no relation to res's post)

WE THE BEST

this thread is 90% "I'd play them some stupid electronic crap"

I'd play them a ringtone on my phone, n00bs.

and by that i mean "time-travel fantasy n00bs".

Show 'em an iPhone, leave.

Nothing an iPhone does would work in 1994, Ned.

I'd play them something off one of the Popshopping comps

I feel like "I Was A Lover" by TV on the Radio would be a good choice. that came out, what, two years ago? and the novelty still hasn't really worn off for me. rest of the album kinda blew, tho.

yeah that's pretty weird without being completely awful

budos band

lcd soundsystem

linkin park

I changed my answer

oh good one

Tangoterje - "Diamonds"

So that I could say "I am from so far in the future that people in my era consider it fair game to remix Paul Simon"

Mainstream pop-emo would probably have convinced me in the mid-90s, in that I did conceive of emo becoming mainstream at some point but that point still seemed far away.

can we get the "lol M.I.A." jokez out of the way asap please? thankyou!

M.I.A. wouldn't be a bad choice, actually. Ditto Rhianna's Umbrella or Justin Timberlake's SexyBack, for pop stuff. I'd probably say TVOTR's Wolf Like Me or The Knife's Silent Shout or Burial's Archangel or Ellen Allien & Apparat's Metric or a Girl Talk song or The Field's Everyday or Studio's Out There or The Hold Steady's Chillout Tent. And for the older set (who need reassurance, like me), I'd say Richard Hawley's The Ocean or Wilco's Impossible Germany.

Bah. Too many answers. My apologies.

Why would "Impossible Germany" convince someone you were from the future?

(I like the album FWIW.)

Because it would come from a strange world where song titles are italicized.

Haha. It wouldn't. That's why I said it would only be for "the older set," who need reassurance that the future won't be too scary and new.

Impossible Germany might convince someone that you're from the past.

"4 Minutes"

btw the qn is now what you'd play to someone in 1998, etc, which is what makes it a bit harder

Battles

Haha OK, I see your point, Daniel.

1998 is really hard because so many "futuristic" sounding things were above-board at that time (ie, MTV's 'Amp') as well as self-consciously "old-timey" sounding things (ie, Cherry Poppin' Daddies etc). So it's kind of hard to stake out anything that would make it really clear your music was from any other time. Piracy Funds Terrorism might, maybe, still pack a punch but "4 Minutes" isn't going to sound all that mind-blowing with both "We Have Explosive" and "Ray of Light" already on the table.

As for all the R&B stuff, so-called contemporary R&B was around in 1994 too, only the most staccato, hip-hop influenced stuff had a strictly black audience. Mary J. Blige had been around for a couple years already in 1994.

Girl Talk is my choice. The person from a decade ago would hear music they know shuffled up. I think it works because GT isn't really creating a new sound but working with stuff that could only be done as well with future technologies.

My first mashup experience was pretty exciting!

Trapped in the Closet

Probably Murcof's "Cosmos" from last year, maybe Deathspell Omega, maybe Ulver's "Blood Inside". Maybe even Working For A Nuclear Free City, who take sound familiar to 1994 and completely overhaul them.

it's about 1998 now

i still don't know what my answer is but 'buy u a drank' seems the best answer so far

this was a lot easier when rappers would shout out the year in every song

tempted to say bootleg of Animal Collective's set at Primavera festival

Yeah, Animal Collective seems to be a very naughties thing (even tho I don't get their appeal, for the most part).

I don't see how 'Buy You a Drank' would blow anyone's 98 mind.

if somebody played me Girl Talk in 1998 to prove they were from the future I would just get profoundly depressed

can all the ppl suggesting ass-weak shitty commercial chartpop on this thread please go away and stfu and cry into your miley cyrus bedsheets

Someone in 1994 hearing Girl Talk

"So Negativland would later start doing happy hardcore then?"

Granted, I'm thinking "Buy U a drank" and other choices may not work, because a lot of the current charttoppers owe a lot to electronic R&B from the early 80s.

Ricardo Villalobos?

somehow this makes sense to me

still sticking with "i luv u".

I still think I'd have been shoked to hear hireklon in 1884

shocked

nothing rattled those victorians

wtf with my typing in that post!

Whether we like the future music isn't the issue, though, is it? Taste questions aside, Girl Talk seems like the best answer so far, 'cuz that kind of ADD mashup is an obviously viable pop form that didn't and really couldn't exist in '94 (by "obviously", I mean that the crowd-pleasing potential/intent would be clear to just about anyone from '94 for whom you played it). More importantly, Girl Talk treats music from the early 90s as nostalgic source material, further emphasizing the music's relative futureness. Especially when mulched in with bits from other, as-yet-unreleased pop hits.

Whatever it might owe to 80s, R&B, there's no way that any pop-literate person would mistake Buy U a Drank for a product of that era. It's a good choice.

you're forgetting that the thread title included the word "impress"

Umm, "impress upon someone that..." /= "impress someone."

okay yeah actually I misread that

still, you'd want them to think the future was pretty cool still.

Oval Diskont94 still sounds like it's from the future.

Yeah, but happy hardcore was pretty much everywhere in 1994, so if anything, Girl Talk would be MOST relevant in 1994 than today IMHO.

Oval Diskont94 still sounds like it's from the future.

so does DI Go Pop.

"YAHHH!!!"

I think Battles may be the best answer hear, actually.

here

the best mainstream answer maybe

Yeah, but Don Caballero was already at a peak in 1994. Battles would sound notably unfuturistic in 1998, especially.

Especially when Don Cab was doing the Line 6 pedal delay thing and was more in control by Ian Williams (relatively speaking)

why do people always say dancey hip-house ish like dude'n'em or whatever? watch my feet is a dope song but not too far from the kind of shit pretty tony was droppin in 86

btw I like this thread, despite the surface level relativism of "being impressed" and "futuristic".

and what - Who brought up Dude n Nem?

I changed my answer

-- bernard snowy, Tuesday, August 5, 2008 9:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

oh good one

-- El Tomboto, Tuesday, August 5, 2008 9:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

+ pplz nominating like get low & salt shaker & shit like that

hit the fuckers with Kayo Dot "Choirs Of The Eye" or Fantomas "Suspended Animation"

or maybe even a bit of BoC for the whole "futuristic nostalgia" headfuck

oh, i'd like to hit the fucker

BofC already had an album released by '98.

i'm assuming in "happy hardcore was everywhere in '94", everywhere means Europe?

The Girl Talk = happy hardcore thing isn't working for me.

Plus, the thing about Girl Talk is that it's really well-done and it's poptimistic in a way that might be 2000s-ish, but the spirit of the thing is not fundamentally different from e.g. Paul's Boutique or Odelay, both albums that were being regularly namechecked/discussed in 1998 - setting aside Negativland et al which are more of a in-the-know thing.

you are all lunatics

what is your answer

I liked 311 sometiems around 1994 so search me

sometime

just got offed u dig 311?

fuck now I'm going to watch 311 vids on youtube forever

Is that the number you call when things are just sort of okay?

311 are unknown to me, I'll have a reccy on the 'tube...

oh my goddddddddddd
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt-nBwJR3KA

my fav.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYqnpFU8aUQ

everyone feel free to click on 311 vids.

I tried that, but there's something wrong with my headphones and it makes 311 sound very bad.

T_~

I would play:
1. 'Dance Wiv Me' by Dizzee Rascal because in 1994 UK rap could never be good
2. 'Somebody Told Me' by the Killers because high-compression would sound pretty fresh
3. 'Dirrty' by Christina Aguilera, not sure why this strikes me as modern but maybe a similar reason to no. 2
4. 'What Goes Around Comes Around' or 'Lovestoned' by Justin Timberlake because that two-part structure was really unusual (still is)
5. 'Relax' by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and hope they hadn't heard it before, because it still sounds like nothing else ever

Gary Numan's Cars still sounds more futuristic than anything this decade.

i liked this thread.

can't blame 311

Threads I remember having at least passing references to 311 (i won't even try to link them on nuILX):

* Xhuxk: "['Two Princes'] was funkier than any other rock song to make it onto the radio in its decade."
* mix for a lady that loves 311
* What is the best song on this mix CD of vaguely funky major label alterna-metal songs from 1992-1995 and, more importantly, what songs am I missing?
* Worst (and/or best) 311 Song Title
* tell me why i should hate 311

Plus, the thing about Girl Talk is that it's really well-done and it's poptimistic in a way that might be 2000s-ish, but the spirit of the thing is not fundamentally different from e.g. Paul's Boutique or Odelay, both albums that were being regularly namechecked/discussed in 1998 - setting aside Negativland et al which are more of a in-the-know thing.

Not to mention Steinski, which predates all of these acts.

But I still like Girl Talk as an answer. Or The Jonas Bros.

I would lay nothing at all and say that music isn't in fashion anymore...

people had enough sense in 04 not to say 2manyDJs. STOP SAYING GIRL TALK.

also for stupid people who can't understand why people are nominating vaguely mainstream stuff:

I think the 'slap on forehead' effect would be optimal if you play something that has a vaguely recognizable template, e.g. RnB. So Milkshake, Resolution or Pass dat Dutch

Playing stuff like Fennesz or even Dizzee would probably seem too remote and therefore would probably be dismissed (or admired) as just some very left field stuff.

-- Baaderoni (Fabfunk), Tuesday, May 11, 2004 12:03 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

am i going to be the first person to say Missy Elliott?

One thing you may do is of course play a mixture of The Darkness, Annie, Kylie Minogue, Wig Wam and Alphabeat.

"You thought the 80s had ended? Hah!"

am i going to be the first person to say Missy Elliott?

No:

Maybe Get Yr Freak On, We Need A Resolution or anything off Kaleidoscope.

-- Matt DC (Matt DC), Tuesday, 11 May 2004 10:31

also missy elliott was already around in 1998, the year we are now referring to

If you had played me Battles in 1998, I would probably have imagined it was an incredibly inventive collaboration between members of, say, TRS-80, the Fucking Champs, and Tortoise -- I don't think it would have occurred to me that it sounded out-of-the-future, except for maybe being amazed by the vocal manipulation on Leyendecker. Aesthetically, not too much.

It's hard to imagine anything that would read as clear futurism, given that the mid to late 90s had a really strong futurist aesthetic themselves, and not too much has happened technologically since then that's super-audible. But if you'd played me "A Milli" in 1998 and told me it was a big hit, I'd probably have been surprised.

"Wait (The Whisper Song)"

Oh, and also, if you wanted to play something that would be easily digested as "futuristic" by 1998 ears, I think you could do worse than some kind of Goldfrapp "Oh La La" or glammy electro-house stuff -- it's like the next jump up from an electro aesthetic that was about to strike 2000's ears as being new-again and refreshing anyway.

(I am assuming there are some unspoken rules here where it wouldn't do to just play some Audion or random minimal stuff to 1998's electronic-music fans and let them be amazed by the plug-in effects of the future and whatnot.)

^^^ wait wait I take that back completely about Goldfrappy stuff

TOO LATE

i don't have the $$$ to hire my own mod ;_;

1. 'Dance Wiv Me' by Dizzee Rascal because in 1994 UK rap could never be good

fuck you Gunshot were great

Where's that "ILX has been boring lately" thread? It was right at the time, but this thread and the "what's the best/worst thing about the decade" threads that began the last few days are great, lively reads.

OPPPS. Maybe too meta.

I mean it's sitting right there like five posts up on New Answers

Girl Talk works fine for some imaginary pop fan in '94, 2 Many DJ's not so much (more obviously comparable to Steinski/Paul's Boutique type stuff). Not so sure about what would really do the trick in '98.

actually I just remembered the King Unique edit of Hatiras' "Spaced Invader" sez it's 29 sept 2004 at the beginning of the vocal, so I would just play that. It also has the advantage of being completely fucking awesome.

Spiraling by Keane.

Or Salt Water (Scott Walker Mix) by Acoustic Ladyland.

"put on"

Crystal Castles

the beat would be pretty alien to someone from 98 as would jeezy's rapping style, and then there's kanye autotune verse

The My Bloody Valentine box set.

If said person was from 1998 you could play some Keane or Coldplay. "You thought Britpop was over when Spice Girls arrived?"

Girl Talk works fine for some imaginary pop fan in '94

Which is sort of cheating, though, b/c of the implied ten-year limit on the thread... was Girl Talk guy even working on the stuff in his bedroom in 2004?

Add me to the people who've gone with "Yeah".

usher or lcd?

Maybe we should just play some Crazy Frog hits and claim that the shit charted....high. It's ridiculous enough to work.

xpost: I meant Usher, but LCD would be the perfect accompaniment.

i think 'piece of me' could work

Missy was around in 1998 but Get Ur Freak On wasn't. I'm going with that.

Cassie - Me & U (Neon Coyote mix)

# Innovation : What music would you play to most impress upon someone living in 1994 that you really were from the future? [Started by N. (nickdastoor), last updated 37 seconds ago] 128 new answers
# WOLFMOTHER [Started by slow jamz and white guy indie acoustic shit (Chris V), last updated 4 minutes ago] 9 new answers

piece of me would sound like some dreck wanna-be top 40 stuff. There's nothing particularly futuristic.

Girl Talk i don't really get as being futuristic at all. besides the dust bros shit, it's not even as dense as peak period bomb squad stuff like PE and Son of Bazerk...plus dudes like Ron G were already doing beat blends/beat matching of hip hop and r&b hits on mixtapes and shit...

the more i think about it the real answer is: nothing

most of my suggestions are avant-garde metal, lots of stuff there that was unimaginable in 1998

What would the person of 1994/8 make of this. Really, what? :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU

They'd just wonder if they'd stumbled on a flashback show, is all.

yeah i don't really know a lot of newer stuff like that but still what about shit like earth or refused or voivod godflesh/napalm stuff, there was always a lot of weirdo metal

(xpost to offed)

i was listening to this old dimension hatross cassette in my car and it *still* sounds futuristic!

No, Matt, you were clearly talking about Ric Astley's weirdo metal.

^that i'd like to hear!

Kidz Bop version of float on

earth aren't THAT weird compared to many who've taken up the baton, for instance; their own cover band sunn 0))) are significantly odder, and that's the well-known tip of the iceberg

meant to say "one-time cover band", anderson and o'malley transcended their roots

calculating infinity by dillinger escape plan will be 10 years old next year! yikes!

earth aren't THAT weird compared to many who've taken up the baton, for instance; their own cover band sunn 0))) are significantly odder, and that's the well-known tip of the iceberg

-- Just got offed, Thursday, August 7, 2008 4:04 PM (0 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

yeah like i said i haven't heard as much as you have. but the more i think about this thread the more i think the 90s just never ended.

The Darkness.

-- Tuomas (Tuomas), Tuesday, May 11, 2004 12:26 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

Tuomas was OTM all along, if we're trying to impress a rocker that is.

Most rockers hated "grunge" during its heyday. They wanted their Skid Rows and Warrants, still. The Darkness is none of the above, but all rockers love AC/DC, and most can tolerate Cheap Trick. While The Darkness are very poncey, forsaken rockers in 1994 would probably be stoked if they heard the Darkness as "the future", as their idea of proper rock music will have been vilified and they knew grunge was definitely going to die (even though it was dying by then anyway.)

why the darkness as the future when they had the wildhearts as the present :P

Well, grunge wasn't officially dead then. it's all about timing in that context

The Wildhearts were rock'n'roll! They were everything The Darkness aspired to be but weren't.

the wildhearts were queen?

no but they were the freewheeling ass-kicking hard-pop act that justin hawkins didn't have the balls to emulate

the wildhearts could have been all of that and more, but if they were around in 1994, they were probably (sadly) ignored because that just wasn't what the hype was looking at those days. For the most part, no hype = not impressive.

We're not talking quality here, lj

at least quality in a technical manner

I guess. They were indeed around in 1994, and I feel it's important to note that they have also outlasted The Darkness.

Hyped "grunge" bands like Soundgarden were more than capable of making great hard-pop; I'd personally argue they were more heavy-metal-pop than grunge. Listen to "Like Suicide" and tell me that's not a classic hard-rock song, maybe one of THE 90's hard-rock classics.

The vocals on Down on the upside are awesome

pretty noose is my jam

Animal Collective - Water Curses

M@tt, your comment that the 90s never ended is brilliant. I've been thinking about this question for three days now and drawing a total blank.

Ah, you know, there really is a lot of Animal Collective that would have accomplished this, for me, if we're talking about 1998 -- I think even if you'd played me something like "Slippi," I'd have been surprised to hear stuff that sounded rather sonically out there being turned that much toward pop. Surely true of lots of their newer stuff as well.

I don't think I'd ever seen a Line 6 Pod in 1998, either, so half of the effects would have seemed different from what I was used to.

Those seem like the big technological things that'd be audibly different: modeling effects, modeling amps, Ableton synths + common plug-ins, and heavy compression

How about The Go Team (or is it the Go! Team?)? I wouldn't have necessarily been BLOWN AWAY by it in 1998 but if you'd insisted that this was the music of the future I would have found it sort of plausible.

xpost

all a line 6 is is just cramming a bunch of crappy digital DOD pedals that existed in the 80s and 90s into one box.

I dunno, I think the "carefully sample existing gear and try to model its sounds with DSP" approach is kind of unique to Line6. see also: that ridiculous 'modeling guitar' they make, where you can flip a switch and go from a Les Paul sound to a 12-string or a sitar.

i dunno. that line 6 pod sounds like ass IMO. plus all the stuff they sample and model already existed and are familiar.

Yes, but the point is that lots and lots of people use Line 6 stuff nowadays, and it has a specific sound and coloration that's kind of unique to it. The very fact that you think it "sounds like ass" just underlines that -- there's a specific sound and feel to it that I think would have stuck out to 1998 ears.

I mean, plenty of common software effects plug-ins sound crappy compared to old hardware, but if I'd heard them in the mid-90s I'd still have thought "weird, I don't think I've ever heard this kind of reverb tone before," or whatever -- the same way you can hear the difference between a digital flanger in an 80s song versus the way it'd have been done in the 70s.

Note: this is part of why I think it'd be easy to impress the past with stuff that contains lots of software synths -- like the T2 record or something -- because the softsynth sound that's common now would surely have scanned as weird and unfamiliar in the late 90s

I wonder if, besides pure hardware/software there are any trends that are radically different. I'm talking about in terms of genre/mico genres or even combinations of sounds and styles that hadn't been juxtaposed yet.

I'd play them minimal techno and tell them it's the only music that survived the Y2K societal collapse.

From a quick scan of release dates in my iTunes library:

Deerhoof's Milk Man would have been a pretty odd thing to think about indie rock becoming from '94, when Yo La Tengo was pretty much the top of the game.

Cobra Killer's fucked up techno only kind of makes sense even in 2004, and Annie's Anniemal sounded pretty forward for pop.

And if we can stretch it to include 2003, Macho Man Randy Savage's album Be A Man would leave no doubt that I was from a dystopic future where rap-rock had skullfucked every other musical genre into a Genet-level of obscene absurdity.

Although "Drop It Like It's Hot," if we can go a year in the other direction, would be fucking mind-blowing to think of Snoop doing.

most of my suggestions are avant-garde metal, lots of stuff there that was unimaginable in 1998

Unless said person was a metal fan, he would claim that extreme metal has been around since the early 80s, and there is nothing new about this at all.

Revive. It's now 2006.

p sure nothing. maybe i'll play miley to myself 10 years ago and be like "this is hannah montana"

i could play "versace" and be like "a lot of rap sounds like this now, its p cool"

i could play new kanye and be like "this is the new kanye and he is married to kim kardashian and they are both miserable together"

i could play the new foo fighters and be like "you dont even listen to the foo fighters, this is actually from 2008 or something idk oh yeah barack obama is president"

ooh, i know, i'd play myself fka twigs, that would i think be legit surprising music.

this thread has never been easy, but i do kinda think musical time is slowing down (or maybe this just = getting old). i liked nabisco's approach upthread of focusing on particular technologies that weren't really in circulation before so that even if the progression now seems obvious and gradual, they really add up to a recording that wouldn't sound like an older recording. but i have no idea if there's been anything like that in the last decade, and everything else feels more like "stuff that was a small subgenre is now really dominant" which can't really impress somebody if you just have one song to play. also some of the biggest and most iconic songs that everyone's trying to ape have been throwbacks, for years now - get lucky, just hold on we're going home, uptown funk.

2006 is still before the really clubby pop thing took over right? something with those rave sirens and the buildup/climax thing would not sound super familiar as a pop hit, but that only puts you a few years in the future. uhhmm. for some reason i'm reaching for "formation" but i can't exactly explain which sonic elements or combinations sound like they would not have been on anybody's radar in 2006.

Show them Spotify

some dubstep definitely

genuine question: how different is versace from stuff like juvenile and the hot boys?

the more i think about this thread the more i think the 90s just never ended.

― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 7 August 2008 16:05 (7 years ago)

still OTM

Alternate question then: what one song would you play if you only had present-day music with you and desperately needed to convince them you were not from the future?

The Darkness.

The textures of 10s pop are really different from 10 years ago, those overdriven basslines and layers upon layers of synths would have sounded very maximalist and quite different to a lot of pop. Like my initial thought was Skrillex or bombastic EDM of some description, although the Justice blog-house stuff that was in some ways its precursor was very prevalent in 06.

Future or Young Thug would be pretty difficult for someone immersed in mid-00s rap to get their head round, the whole autotune thing hadn't really become ubiquitous back then.

Anything referencing Obama or the financial crisis - like imagine playing someone 'The Recession' and explaining "well yeah there's going to be this huge financial crash on a scale not seen since the 20s, but you also get a black president" and then explaining that this is all just two years away. Or play them Kendrick and explain Ferguson.

JME had already released Serious by this point but having to explain the lyrics to 'Don't @ Me' would be really wearying, the cultural shift required for an East London grime MC to be rapping about people being dicks online is enormous. And you probably have to explain Twitter.

On that note, Busy Signal - Text Message

The textures of 10s pop are really different from 10 years ago, those overdriven basslines and layers upon layers of synths would have sounded very maximalist and quite different to a lot of pop. Like my initial thought was Skrillex or bombastic EDM of some description, although the Justice blog-house stuff that was in some ways its precursor was very prevalent in 06.

Yeah, these were pretty much my thoughts when I saw this revive.

Even this, which sounds like the epitome of 'FUTUREROBOTNIGHMTAREMASHUPWOAH' music wouldn't have sounded out of place on that Caspa & Rusko Fabric mix or on that electrohouse transforming car ad from c2006.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_708cGMAxE

What about the Jlin album? Even though I've been following footwork for a few years now, I definitely got that 'shock of the new' feeling watching her play out the other night.
Algiers? I know they're kind of a composite of old sounds, but the production and composition sounds bang up to date...
Where Are U Now?, I think sounds like it couldn't have come out ten years ago.
And then there's all that MESH/Holly Herndon/Rabit/Actress grime-design stuff which when heard on headphones or big speakers sounds really impressive and somehow more fully-realised than what a band like Autechre were doing circa 2006.

still a really interesting question!

texturally holly herndon sounds extremely similar to the ellen allien & apparat album that came out in 2006. in general as per the discussion 12 (!) years ago, i'm not sure leftfield electronica really works as an answer here; it might not sound on-trend for 2006 but would it sound definitively from the future?

i think matt dc otm in terms of the answer probably being lyrical, though i'm not even sure "don't @ me" would be a stretch; facebook was well under way by 2006 iirc, certainly myspace, def the concept of people being dicks online. facebook was prob the tipping point for "oh one day everyone will be on the internet"

would video technology count? that 360˚ björk one, that interactive azealia banks one etc

some dubstep definitely

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, February 16, 2016 6:03 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol by 2006 dubstep was only a year away from being on a britney track

I don't think the Jlin album would sound particularly weird to 1990s techno kid... I don't follow juke/footwork, so maybe it stands out compared to that, but to me it actually sounds more '90s than most '10s electronic music. The fast cut-ups, the rumbling basses and hard-hitting dry bass drums, the minimal arrangements, these are all things that I associate with harder/more experimental forms of 90s techno. She even samples Mortal Kombat on one track! In fact, my first though when I heard it was, "this is like gabber if gabber was less heavy and more syncopated". So yeah, it's a great album but not very "2010s futuristic".

yeezus, life of pablo, OPE, yearning kru, arca, actress, some of young thugs weirdest stuff (mainly from his first tape). something like kendrick would explain the political landscape, but musically, it doesnt sound that modern, unless youre talking something like alright, maybe.

i really have no idea why arca and actress always crop up in these discussions. we had idm in the 90s! and i presume we had droning synth whatevia where nothing happens by 2006 too

And I agree with Matt and Lex that experimental electronic music probably isn't the answer here. The major technological and production innovations (mostly the move from hardware to software, plugins, digital editing, etc) that made electronic music take huge leaps in the 90s were pretty much all available by the 00s, there haven't been such game-changing shifts in electronic music in this millennium, so it's been more a question of reshuffling and refining styles that originated in the 90s and 80s.

(xpost)

Yeah, the IDM of today really isn't that different from IDM of the 90s.

texturally holly herndon sounds extremely similar to the ellen allien & apparat album that came out in 2006. in general as per the discussion 12 (!) years ago, i'm not sure leftfield electronica really works as an answer here; it might not sound on-trend for 2006 but would it sound definitively from the future?

Texturally Holly Herndon is really quite different to Orchestra of Bubbles but on a thread in which she's been described as "grime design" I can probably let that pass. I agree that there's not really any electronic music that would sound like any great mystery to anyone in 06, because by that point any listener to that stuff had already been well conditioned to accept weird sounds or incredible sound design. It's also why Arca or Rabit or whoever don't really work as answers.

But slow, sparse, morose rap music where everyone sings in emo robot voices and sells truckloads in the process? *That's* weird in the era of Stay Fly/What You Know/Shoulder Lean.

Another answer might be Skales or Wizkid or Ball-J or someone like that, there's no easy frame of reference for that stuff in 2006.

When did T-Pain really start going crazy with autotune?

Gangnam Style. Explain how big it was. Youtube still quite new in 06.

I dunno, the idea of international pop hit coming from a country who's music scene people in the West knew nothing about and whose language they couldn't understand was already trailblazed by Dragostea din tei in 2004. And that tune spawned its own memes as well.

yeah Gangnam Style is a novelty dance tune with a funny video. I couldn't see it being beyond the realms of imagination. YouTube was already a bit of a thing in '06 (I think?) or at least Internet phenomena were

really have no idea why arca and actress always crop up in these discussions. we had idm in the 90s

Yeah but as I said up thread, even the most future-forward stuff from 2006 sounds relatively flat-plan by comparison. I think it's mostly down to sound design and pallette. there's just a bigger, more 3D feel to the newer stuff I think. Really, compare late 90s Warp stuff with MESH and while it might not be objectively 'better', it's certainly different.

afrobeats is a great call. part of me wants to say that reggaeton was filling the non-US/UK world dance space at the time but I don't think they're comparable.

Sam Hunt

I think a better choice than Gangnam Style would be explaining that Harlem Shake was a Number 1 Hit.

2006 was the YouTube got bought out, and "You" was named person of the year by Time. It was around for sure. But my mental history is hazy - feel like it did not become anything like what it is now until a good while later. Smart phones and abundant data just weren't *that* common. But I was a Luddite and got my first cell phone, a nice little flip kind, in 2006. So I might be misremembering.

Also for the second question, I feel like half of the stuff from Art Angels could possibly pass off as being from 2006.

Well, you know what my answer is.

Actually, my answer is a tie between JG in the 24-tone metal serialism corner, and a combination of KING and Dawn Richard in the pop corner

beady eye

If I had access to a time machine, I'd go back to 1994 all and play 'em something like, I dunno, the recent Bloc Party record or The 1975 or a recent Coldplay record and be all like: "This is what is going to happen to music", and the people of 1994 would be like "FUCK! FUCK! NO! We must do what we can to ensure this NEVER happens!"

Gaz Co----

the people of 1994 had enough shit indie of their own

dizzee's "i luv u", i reckon. i remember being completely floored by that in 2002, let alone 1994.
― toby (tsg20), Tuesday, 11 May 2004 08:54 (11 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is still the correct answer

Or Jlin, who sounds nothing like 90s IDM or techno to me

Standard-issue footwork does have some of the same hallmarks as 90s gabba etc (mostly cos it's quite crudely put-together on grid-based software), but Jlin's music would confuse the shit out of 2006 me.

the Aristophanes song off Art Angels

looking back at the answers from 2004, i think i would try to persuade 2006 person i was from the future by playing them 'i luv u' and hoping they haven't heard it before

what "90s IDM" sounds like Arca? is that a joke?

I would play them "The Hills" and say "this was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 6 weeks in a row"

^^^ a good one. especially not knowing anything else about it. part of picturing the future involves imagining that people then are stranger, spacier, full of ennui, sitting in strange white rooms with mirrored shades, minds blown out by Snow Crash or nuclear war or whatever. like basically if there'd been a revive in 2010 i would have picked "bad romance" in a heartbeat. anyway, the weeknd's kind of bleak, slow, screechy, distorted-voice smash hit song fits with this.

also maybe for 2005-2015, "bitch better have my money." the syllable-syllable-syllable delivery, just this side of atonal, against this squirming techno-landscape of sounds that i don't even notice listening to the song but man there's a lot of shit in there that might have counted as a freaky hook in itself back then, all the individually stretched-out drum hits or whatever they are. and just the overdubbed repetition of the title as relentless chant. not unprecedented, but it does sound like robots made it.

also incidentally i can't believe rihanna's whole recorded career is only a decade long! maybe one of the few things i've thought about this week that doesn't make me feel old.

what "90s IDM" sounds like Arca? is that a joke?

I haven't heard that much of Arca, but what I've heard doesn't sound that dissimilar from acts like Phthalocyanine or Steel (the Biochip C side project). Certainly not like something that would make me go, "only in the 2010s!".

yea as far as weirdo leftfield electronic shit goes the 90s was prime for this stuff

I'm listening to the first couple of tracks on the Arca album now and I think you could pretty easily convince someone that this was a crossover production between Black Dog Productions and Digital Hardcore Records circa 1997

or you could play arca next to some random track off of like a mille plateaux compilation eg "modulations & transformations 4" or something and it wouldn't sound too far off

But slow, sparse, morose rap music where everyone sings in emo robot voices and sells truckloads in the process? *That's* weird in the era of Stay Fly/What You Know/Shoulder Lean.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, February 16, 2016 7:12 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea agree

Yeah, the "Modulations & Transformations" comps are full of stuff like this (including tracks by the aforementioned Steel).

(xpost)

yeah the deeper I'm going into the Arca album, the easier it's becoming to point to someone in the 90s doing something similar; my handicap is that at the time I was mostly just sticking with Aphex/Squarepusher to scratch this specific itch and filling the rest of my time with dayglo raver music so I'm grasping a little for specific names

i feel like i ask someone every few months wtf is supposed to be so mind-blowingly avant-garde about arca - as opposed to just, like, sketches of kinda cool sounds that don't go anywhere - and i've never read any convincing answer

I think Alec Empire (whom you obviously know) was doing stuff like this outside Digital Hardcore, like on Mille Plateaux. And the tracks he produced for the second Nicolette album aren't too far from this sound either.

(xpost)

Where Are U Now?, I think sounds like it couldn't have come out ten years ago.

curious, what about it? imo all these EDM pop hits kind of use the same vocabulary, dance-pop hits w/ buildups and everything have been around for v long time. i could be wrong though, have there been major shifts in like the mechanisms of how EDM pop hits work? obv there was a big explosion in the popularity of EDM as a pop genre but musically not a lot seems too different to me than earlier dance-pop tunes

yeah, you can hear this sound palette on top of the abrasiveness of the DHR roster, which is why I referenced them/him

xp: "Where Are U Now?" wouldn't have come out 10 years ago because people would have fallen over laughing at how pathetically inept it sounds

The textures of 10s pop are really different from 10 years ago, those overdriven basslines and layers upon layers of synths would have sounded very maximalist and quite different to a lot of pop. Like my initial thought was Skrillex or bombastic EDM of some description, although the Justice blog-house stuff that was in some ways its precursor was very prevalent in 06.

okay i missed this, you answered my question a little

*groans*

yea as far as weirdo leftfield electronic shit goes the 90s was prime for this stuff

― marcos, Tuesday, February 16, 2016 12:54 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

FP

lol sorry about that, i got nothing

lol @ mille plateaux being the END-ALL of weirdo leftfield electronic shit, most of it was just shit that hardcore electro-acoustic dudes had been doing since the 80s.

BUT.. damn, can't believe i hadn't heard steel before, tuomas otm, wrt that.

sketches of kinda cool sounds that don't go anywhere

fair enough, different strokes.

reading intelligent people comparing something like this:

i don't know any black dog that sounds like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcNG-zMlB8Q

or any arca songs that are like ambient breakbeat or whatever but fine

I'm listening to the first couple of tracks on the Arca album now and I think you could pretty easily convince someone that this was a crossover production between Black Dog Productions and Digital Hardcore Records circa 1997

― its subtle brume (DJP), Tuesday, February 16, 2016 12:54 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean, this would be an innovative combination in the 90s! just my 2cents

y'know i'm listening to the first Req album on Warp (from around '96?) and if it had come out in 2015 i would have been playing the same captain-save-a-knob-twiddler game, so i recant.

never said the 90s was "END ALL" for leftfield electronica, just that it was very common if you listened to certain things and that i don't think arca would blow anyone's mind who had already heard a bunch of mille plateaux and possibly warp stuff

no judgement on arca, he is super talented

i mean my main precedent for enjoying something like arca is precisely those late 90s early 00s leftfield/IDM experiments

i guess to me Arca sounds like he's using 10-ish pop textures to create mille plateaux stuff. i regret submitting my 2 cents.

no, i stand by your original statement. sound design & texture & rhythms are the substance of the genre, so i think it's too reductive to say that he's doing the same shit but with different sounds.

one important difference to me is that most of the '90s/00s experimental electronic music has a very cold, nerdy, scientific vibe most of the time. with, say, Arca and Rabit, it doesn't seem like the point is to prove anything technically, it's coming from a more emotional (and i want to say cinematic?) place.

cinematic kind of captures the difference i feel.

but i understand how it's reductive in this age to look towards new electronic records as the default for being on the cutting edge.

for being on the cutting edge of music "in general", i mean.

i get cinematic but arca's music is as cold and unemotional as any 90s idm to me

actually Katie Gately might be a legit answer to this thread

if we're talking 'idm'

or weird electronica

every time I see a comment somewhere about how Death Grips or Yeezus-era Kanye "just discovered that Techno Animal album!" I sigh a little harder

there are always precursors to songs or textures but if you stack what's played on mainstream format radio/satellite radio on the "normal" stations now versus 2006 it'd still be interesting to the 2006 standpoint to see what's bubbled up into public consciousness

even if Arca's work was a perfect simulation of some branch of 90s idm, it'd still be shocking to know that it's the production work for a top-selling artist and people go around listening to it without finding anything outsider about it

every artist being reduced to sounding kind of like a fringe act five people endorsed a decade ago

Arca doesn't seem even close to a good answer for this thread. Outside of the software he uses, and maybe some of the actual instrument sounds, I don't think he'd sound all any more futuristic to an experimental musician in the 70s, than from the 90s. IMO you don't actually have to look for a left-field electronic artist here -- like, I bet if you just sent back a generic trap instrumental, to a time when nobody was doing drum patterns like that in the 90s, they'd think it was cool and totally fresh. And I still say a lot of footwork would've sound completely out of the blue in the 90s.

It's a lot harder for me to imagine modern rock music that would have sounded totally new to me in the 90s.

sorry some syntax issues there

I really think the best answer lies in country precisely because it's one of the least "cutting edge" genres.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YOb4VUgRqo0

In 2006, Colt Ford's country/rap hybrid was still a couple years away (and several more years away from making it on the radio). So was the popularization of auto-tune for effect. Pretty impossible to imagine Break Up in a Small Town being a country radio hit in 2006 alongside, like, Jesus Take the Wheel.

lmao

yeah what if the answer to this is actually Taylor Swift

Tswift occurred to me tbh

actually you might have a point now i think about it

country is one of only a few genres that has only broken free from deeply entrenched conservatism in relatively recent times

that doesn't mean it sounds 'from the future', more 'sacrilegious and bizarre', but maybe that's enough

country is one of only a few genres that has only broken free from deeply entrenched conservatism in relatively recent times

...

omg stop talking about country lj

srsly

i sorta agree with Dominique. one could argue that current electronic musicians have much more precise control of their sound pallette and their compositional(?) framework (and the interactions of the two) than their predecessors in the 90s, let alone the 70s. but obviously this increase in "control" isn't a thing that you can really hear... unless.... perhaps (as an amateur electronic musician) when i "stan" for Arca i'm probably projecting what i perceive as the possibilities of being able to control vast complex networks of sound with elegant technique... lol idk what i'm talking about.

like, I bet if you just sent back a generic trap instrumental, to a time when nobody was doing drum patterns like that in the 90s, they'd think it was cool and totally fresh.

meant to say something about that quoted post fragment, i think it's otm, anyway

musical forensic proof that michael jackson wrote the sonic the hedgehog soundtrack seems like future knowledge even though all the clues were there...

Huh?

y'know i'm listening to the first Req album on Warp (from around '96?) and if it had come out in 2015 i would have been playing the same captain-save-a-knob-twiddler game, so i recant.

― lute bro (brimstead), Tuesday, 16 February 2016 21:30 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I remember thinking this sounded bloody awful when it came out (actually think it was a bit later than 96). HAven't listened to it since. Wonder what I'd make of it now.

oh hang on in was Sketchbook from '02 that I heard. I Think the earlier albums came out on Skint

Farrah Abraham

lock thread plz

could we be doing this with anything else? is there a film we could do this with? I don't even think people dress all that differently now to how they did in '06. Compare fashion between '86 and '96 though...

I started promoting my suburban club nights in '06. We started with just dance music. House and electro were really popular and dubstep had just started reaching the wider consciousness but was still relatively underground. To increase footfall I opened up the remit to encourage a more eclectic mix of music. I think there was less of an onus on playing stuff that was bang up to date, and djs and audiences were quite happy to hear tunes from just a few years ago. somehow I feel that in '16 I'd feel pressured to play a very modern set or not play stuff from '10-13 so much.

Every time someone mentions some kind of weirdo noise metal or Wire-friendly electronica I just think that they're missing the point. I think by 2006 those frontiers had already been broken to such an extent that Arca or Jute Gyte or Katie Gately whoever wouldn't have sounded defineably like "the future", they would be more likely to have been mistaken for a particularly unique or weird take on the present. They're outliers, they aren't representative of any kind of broader cultural shift. Ears that are already conditioned to 'weird guitar noise' wouldn't find anything particularly out there about JG. If you tried to explain that in ten years loads of music would sound like that, then they might, but it doesn't.

The reason I mentioned Future and Young Thug upthread is that these are artist operating pretty close to the mainstream, channeling broader musical and cultural shifts, who still sound pretty weird now, the idea that this sound would be more or less mainstream would be really quite odd to 2006 listeners, because there are several steps in between that they wouldn't have experienced.

Other than wider political/economic issues, the big development in the last ten years is the rise of the constantly networked individual, which was on the horizon and broadly predictable by 2006, but you wouldn't have predicted the specifics. I know MySpace existed, but the idea of so much of humanity, across all generations and backgrounds, communicating constantly through the internet, and that being normal, would still have required quite a leap of faith. Any kind of lyrical or musical content that comes from that direction is coming from a *very* different place to 2006 pop.

Fair enough, but the challenge of this thread, as I see it, is to find a single piece of music and present it without the context of 'this is what sounds mainstream now' and still have it blow minds. You're right that lyrical content is probably a more fruitful way to find examples of this, given that lyrical content often spells out what music can only imply; I'd be very interested in good examples of non-lyrical content which are able to do this (and don't come across, like you say, as outliers of discourses which already exist).

mainstream-facing music tends to provide its own context in some ways - cf discussion upthread about how "milkshake" or "try again" might have blown 1994 minds while still being recognisable as pop songs

I agree with all of what Matt DC said. Part of why I like Future and Thug is that they do sound 'futuristic' to me for whatever reason.

For reference, here are a few things from the EOY polls that came out in 2006:

The Knife - Silent Shout
Fedde La Grande - Put Your Hands Up For Detroit
Beyonce – Irreplaceable
Hot Chip - Boys From School
Ricardo Villalobos - Fizheuer Zieheuer
The Gossip - Standing In The Way of Control
Justice vs Simian - We Are Your Friends
Justin Timberlake - SexyBack
Lupe Fiasco - Kick, Push
T.I. - What You Know
Kleerup (feat. Robyn) - With Every Heartbeat

All of these feel kind of recent or representative or reminiscent of things that are popular today. Of course, it's the more LOL entries, like Young Folks and Lily Allen and Gnarls Barkley

imago, what Matt DC is saying is that Jute Gyte could realistically have done what he was doing at any point between, say, 2000 and right now. If I went back to 2006 with Ship of Theseus and said 'I am from the future, and I have the music to prove it', the reaction would probably have been 'that's very interesting/excruciating, but I don't believe you'.

xp sorry posted before i finished

Of course, it's the more LOL entries, like Young Folks and Lily Allen and Gnarls Barkley

But by 1994 listeners (or UK listeners at least) were already pretty accustomed to weird noises making their way into the mainstream.

one could argue that we are still in the fallout from the 88-95 period, and that the major shift has been the incorporation and recontextualization of elements from that time period, the gradual shifft of those elements into the mainstream, and hip hops appropriation of them
― gareth (gareth), Tuesday, May 11, 2004 12:26 PM (11 years ago)

I actually think that, broadly, we are still in this period. I can't think of many records from the last couple of years that would sound as alien to 2006 listeners as Acid Trax or Rebel Without A Pause would have sounded to late-70s listeners. It's not just that the sounds themselves would have been completely different, it's that 70s listeners just wouldn't have understood the physical or social context in which those records were designed to be listened to. No comparable shift in social behaviour has taken place in the past decade.

"Best Friend"

Jute Gyte is like Tuomas saying The Darkness as the 1st answer to this thread.

To run this sideways I have become a more casual alien listener. In the last 3/4 years I've only listened to a burst of new recorded music once a year (this is besides my own tastes and recitals I go to which do sometimes have new-ish music) - and that's around the time of the ILX tracks/albums poll. Its become like a check for me - have I become that alien stuck in the past person? The answer is always no. Always feels very familiar..certain sounds might cross-over which will introduce a hybrid, but crossover as an act is what I'm often expecting.

Probably many x-posts but this is to DL re: other media.

Go back and watch an 06 movie and you'll be surprised, I reckon. We watched something we thought was "not that old" the other week and boggled at how dated it seemed. Wish I could remember what it was.

also i have no doubt that dog latin doesn't dress any differently to 2006 but fashion has altered so wildly since then

hahahaha

tbh the single best suggestion in this year's revive is dc's sam hunt suggestion - it's at once a totally recognisable context presented in a way that would have been pretty alien in 2006 (and there are tons more country/edm/rap hybrids that could probably be better examples, if worse songs)

I agree with MattDC that using something from the outer limits of Wire-approved music misses the point of this. You have to be using pop music, I think. I also agree that sonically there aren't many if any sounds available now that weren't available a decade ago - just techniques and contexts.

But I also feel like it's a bit of a cop-out to use a lyrical juxtaposition for this, like you could fine a reference to any new technology in any otherwise old-sounding song from any era and use it to 'prove' you were from the future. I know there's more to it than that in what Matt's saying; I guess the romantic in me just wants a blazingly 'new' pop sound that speaks beyond lyrics or technologies.

I'm not familiar with Sam Hunt but wasn't Bubba Sparxx doing country hip hop like 13 years ago? Is SH coming from the other direction?

tbh I'd go back to 2006 and find lex and play him 'woo' and say 'this is what rihanna sounds like in 2016 isn't it great' and he wd try 2 kill me idk

Wire-approved music isn't its own universe - using a lot of structures and techniques within pop conetxts from that end of things (AND vice-versa) should be an aim.

Jute Gyte is pathetic but only if you've are used to not only 'weird guitar noise' but some other contexts and structures these noises have been used in.

I literally mentioned Jute Gyte once. In the same post I mentioned Dawn Richard and KING. Why aren't they being discussed?

JG himself is probably more versed in xenharmonic composition than you fwiw

I love KING but the idea of them sounding like any kind of future is a bit odd.

also i have no doubt that dog latin doesn't dress any differently to 2006 but fashion has altered so wildly since then

― cher guevara (lex pretend), Wednesday, 17 February 2016 10:30 (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*removes shutter-shades*

Dawn Richard is a crossing over. Good, clear ideas - well executed.

JG himself is probably more versed in xenharmonic composition than you fwiw

― odysseus (imago), Wednesday, 17 February 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You are into big words huh?

I still think the answer to this is that (as mh said upthread) there is always going to be some sort of precursor to any kind of music out today, it's about the incremental changes. Even something like 'Rebel Without A Pause', you could argue, had some sort of precedent in '76 within funk or proto-rap or something.
Still, 'Trap Queen', while it isn't that different from something like 'What You Know' on paper, is still significant in that there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then, in terms of how people respond to music and what has become acceptable to the mainstream (especially in the US). EDM and that whole rap/trance crossover thing was yet to happen in 2006. 'Trap Queen', with all those pretty starscapey arpeggios would have sounded far-out back then, I think, but still recognisable as pop music.

I think this thread relies on the conceit that "it sounds like nothing I've heard before" = "it sounds like the future".

I kinda disagree with this premise. Arguably, music never sounds like "the future" so much as "the present's imagined future" i.e. "futuristic music" only sounds like that because it arrives at a point in time when listeners' sense of what-happens-next aligns with it.

In truth if you took some purportedly hypermodern piece of music back to X point in time it would be categorised as one or more of:

1. Not Music
2. Bad Music
3. Retro Music
4. Unfashionable Music

i.e. the same as fashion: things only sound exciting when they imply lines of possibility stretching out from the now, i.e. precisely when they are in context.

Even things which were objectively groundbreaking at the point of release: say, Phuture's "Acid Tracks" or 4 Hero's "Journey From The Light" or Aaliyah's "One In A Million". I tend to think that if you take these tunes back 10 or 20 years and play them to people, those people won't have the context to understand what this is suddenly leaping ahead of. It's because these tunes immediately sparked a million imitators that we can readily understand how exciting they were.

Or in other words, this experiment would simply turn every so-called "sounds like the future" tune into Cher's "Believe", whose legit groundbreaking/influential sonic qualities were difficult to appreciate or understand until it had inspired a legion of followers in its wake.

Lock thread, then.

How far would you have to go back in time with one of the big pop hits of the day before people literally stopped understanding what you played them as 'music'? Or at least how far would you have to go with a big pop hit before people genuinely believed you were from the future?

I started promoting my suburban club nights in '06. We started with just dance music. House and electro were really popular and dubstep had just started reaching the wider consciousness but was still relatively underground. To increase footfall I opened up the remit to encourage a more eclectic mix of music. I think there was less of an onus on playing stuff that was bang up to date, and djs and audiences were quite happy to hear tunes from just a few years ago. somehow I feel that in '16 I'd feel pressured to play a very modern set or not play stuff from '10-13 so much.

this is how i felt about 03 during 06

at least as far as i remember

A lot of listeners tend to assume that what previous generations can't take about their generation's music is that it's harder/faster/noisier/weirder/more aggressive, and that might be true in some cases. But I think one generation only really alienates another by taking away something that had been considered more or less indispensable by the previous generation - complex harmony, "musicianship"/technical aptitude, 'real instruments', vocal melodies, song structures.

The only thing I can think of that this generation has really taken away, in a lot of its pop music, is the unadorned human voice, and why autotune is the one thing that a lot of older listeners really struggle with, the one thing that doesn't make sense to them.

This is an imperfect theory but I think it holds in more cases than it doesn't.

Yeah, I quite like as a theory.

i've never understood why so many people who hate autotune probably wouldn't bat an eyelid @ a vocoder being used in an eighties song.

but yeah, you're right Matt, it's usually not so much 'this music is too loud for my ears', more often 'how am i supposed to enjoy this? it's completely lacking in my favourite ingredient!'. Probably why you get so many 'where is the protest music?' articles. it's not that protest music doesn't exist; it's just not being dished out in the same way as Bob Dylan or the Clash or Public Enemy used to do it and therefore slips past the radars of people who are accustomed to these methods.

The only thing I can think of that this generation has really taken away, in a lot of its pop music, is the unadorned human voice, and why autotune is the one thing that a lot of older listeners really struggle with, the one thing that doesn't make sense to them.

Voice boxes and vocoders were already common in the 1970s, so I don't think this theory holds... In the 80s there were many electro hits with processed voices, in the 90s helium house tunes with the chipmunk voice populated the charts, and so on.

I think what makes autotune hard to digest for older listeners is not its distance from "pure" human singing rather than its closeness to it... In other words, the Uncanny Valley factor. Robot voices on electro tunes are easier to swallow than something that sounds almost like human but not quite.

yeah maybe. there's also the whole thing about it being considered 'cheating'. i know an ageing punker guy who owns a studio and considers Melodyne to be the devil.

You know, because in the good old days we'd scramble down a canyon to get a good reverb effect on our voices.

Yeah, the "cheating" argument is super silly considering that singing blunders on pop records have always been covered with various techniques, like tape splitting the vocals from several different takes, using backing singers, etc.

is there something to be said for the fact that some of the biggest-selling acts pop juggernauts (and by this, I mean Beyonce, Kanye, Coldplay etc) were already established as huge stars by 2006? Not sure if the same comparison could have been made for the equivalents from decades past... U2 86-96 is one. Bowie 76-86 perhaps. Those 10 year spans feel like different worlds in comparison to '06-16.

I guess Adele has happened in the intervening decade, but time does feel like it's compressed. I put that down to the fact that I'm now an old fart well into my 30s, though; I'm sure 15 year olds think 2006 was FUCKING AGES AGO. Because for them it was more than half their life and for me it's less than a third.

Punk studio guy bemoaning autotune is daft; punk was about embracing technical ineptitude! Though I guess not masking/hiding it.

because we're old and once you hit some stage of adulthood all music seems to be part of an ever-present now

to a 15 year old, 2006 was 2/3 of their lives ago

Shit yeah, 2/3s.

also i have no doubt that dog latin doesn't dress any differently to 2006 but fashion has altered so wildly since then
― cher guevara (lex pretend), Wednesday, 17 February 2016 10:30 (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm genuinely interested in some examples of this to be honest. Believe it or not, I do have an interest in style, but Googling 'Fashion trends 2005 vs 2015' throws up the following links on the first page:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/08/07/indie-fashion-men-2005-libertines-pete-doherty_n_7955564.html
http://www.mtv.com/news/2683703/2005-style-trends/

So it's not within reason to say the average person walking down the street in 2016 wouldn't look very out of place in '06. It's not that nothing has changed at all, but compare high and low fashion of the mid-70s to that of the eighties and there's a significant and very obvious difference there. Most people, if presented with wordless front-page copies of magazines from 1976 and 1986 would be able to easily discern the rough era they were published, judging from the hairstyles, cut of clothes, types of material being used etc.. I'm not entirely sure it would be quite so easy today, but I'd like to be proved wrong.

'ever-present now' seems like a very appropriate phrase to the sensation of engaging with culture as you get older. "Holy shit, Children of Men/Silent Shout/Donuts/The Drift/The Departed/that horrible TVontheRadio album/Pan's Labyrinth/etc was ten years ago!" happens a LOT in my house.

DL, you've noticed beards, right? And waistcoats? And fixed-gear bikes? I know I'm behind the times but these were not prevelent in 2005/06 and have already come and gone.

I'm sure 15 year olds think 2006 was FUCKING AGES AGO. Because for them it was more than half their life and for me it's less than a third.

I'm always surprised when I see teenagers walking around with MCR and Fall Out Boy t-shirts wearing pretty much exactly the same get-up they did ten years ago.

How often do you see massed groups of teenagers? Cos I spend every day surrounded by 18-21 year olds.

DL, you've noticed beards, right? And waistcoats? And fixed-gear bikes? I know I'm behind the times but these were not prevelent in 2005/06 and have already come and gone.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 17 February 2016 13:54 (18 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YEeeaaah... I dunno. P sure hipsters existed in 2006, but I get your point.

nick works at Stringfellows?

xp Well, there's this site: http://www.pop-buzz.com which is really popular and covers all those pop-punk and post-eom bands. Lots of teenagers walking around Bristol wearing stuff like that, but I guess kids wore Nirvana t-shirts well into the late 90s/early-00s.

'emo', not eom

Kids are still wearing Nirvana t-shirts now!

I work at an institution of learning and research.

xxps beards is definitely the big one. even now, most blokes you see beyond a certain age aren't clean-shaven.

hah I still see kids wearing nirvana tshirts and slipknot ones. the baffling ones are the kids wearing stone roses shirts i keep seeing. I guess they saw them at t in the park?

That's also just one little sub-culture of teenagers. And as much as we might like to say "they're all the same!" from the scared vantage point of your mid-30s, I doubt they see it what way.

nick - i know. I was joking

10 years ago the girls here were all wearing leggings and big foofy boots. Now they're all wearing skinnies with turn-ups and Nike Airs, or sports stash. (The guys are all still wearing gillets and brogues, but that's a demographic thing.)

I was talking to DL! There were xposts.

That's also just one little sub-culture of teenagers. And as much as we might like to say "they're all the same!" from the scared vantage point of your mid-30s, I doubt they see it what way.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 17 February 2016 14:00 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I didn't say this?

No you said I'm always surprised when I see teenagers walking around with MCR and Fall Out Boy t-shirts wearing pretty much exactly the same get-up they did ten years ago.

But goth / rock / emo kids have, broadly speaking, been dressed similarly (ie black, pained) since... the 70s? Probably before.

xp I didn't say they were 'all the same' though. But yeah, same me t-shirts and haircuts etc... Not the same as goths/rockers from ten or more years before that. I'm not even sure if it's seen as a revival or just a continuation.

Autocorrect does not like the word 'emo'

Who does?

I'm always surprised when I see teenagers walking around with MCR and Fall Out Boy t-shirts wearing pretty much exactly the same get-up they did ten years ago.

― posted with permission by (dog latin), Wednesday, February 17, 2016 7:55 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, but ten years ago those groups were new music for teens, and teens now think of them as pop standards or originators

it's like kids in the mid 90s wearing third-wave ska t-shirts, lol

Arguably, music never sounds like "the future" so much as "the present's imagined future" i.e. "futuristic music" only sounds like that because it arrives at a point in time when listeners' sense of what-happens-next aligns with it.

i.e. the same as fashion: things only sound exciting when they imply lines of possibility stretching out from the now, i.e. precisely when they are in context.

great post

that said i don't get how only these would be the categories of understanding? lol

In truth if you took some purportedly hypermodern piece of music back to X point in time it would be categorised as one or more of:

1. Not Music
2. Bad Music
3. Retro Music
4. Unfashionable Music

like if you brought some of the weirder morose spacey young thug tracks off barter 6 and played them to a rap fan in 2006 i don't really see any them saying "well, let me see, this is one of the following: not music, bad music, retro music, or unfashionable music"

that's kind of the quandary of science fiction writers, William Gibson posing that he just writes the future as an extension of what exists in the present

with music that's one approach taken, the other being portrayals of "future music" as noise incomprehensible as music to the present ear

DL, you've noticed beards, right? And waistcoats? And fixed-gear bikes? I know I'm behind the times but these were not prevelent in 2005/06 and have already come and gone.

Beards have definitely not gone.

the future is not evenly distributed

yea beards have completely permeated the mainstream, almost every male colleague at my work has one now or has grown one in the past few years, even my father-in-law who dresses super conservative (like wears a jacket/blazer every single day) and shaved every single day for the past 50 years now has a beard

some dude in Kansas is probably really into the idea of opening a fixed gear bike maintenance shop xp

marcos otm

like if you brought some of the weirder morose spacey young thug tracks off barter 6 and played them to a rap fan in 2006 i don't really see any them saying "well, let me see, this is one of the following: not music, bad music, retro music, or unfashionable music"

― marcos, Wednesday, 17 February 2016 15:41 (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can imagine them being a bit baffled that music like that could be so popular and being a bit IDGI, maybe? Sad Future sounds a bit like a response to something else, like an antidote to the EDM-hop of previous years.

I'd play then the Disc from the Bootleg "Cutting Edge" set that has all the session versions of "Like a Rolling Stone" and tell them that the copyright was going to expire on this stuff, which was why it got released on a 18CD set.

Just play them Coldplay and Rhianna.

and tell them this is what it was all for.

Gucci Mane's Trap House, from 2005, really sounds like the midpoint between Three 6 Mafia in 1995 and mainstream rap in 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pjLA4SrI-c