Thread where you name musical genres and subgenres you don't really care to investigate (further) as other ILXors politely try to disabuse you of your apathy, in vain

A team-building exercise.

To kick things off:

Brostep

spectral music

just kidding, pom

Have you considered listening to brostep? You might like it. xp

sund4r otm

is "brostep" a genre or an insult?

Good thing I refreshed this page before coming up with a diplomatically persuasive argument in favour of spectral music.

As for brostep, perhaps the problem is that I haven't looked past Skrillex?

It's an insult, just like 'impressionism'.

what is spectral music? (earnest question)

there's def some Patricia Taxxon take on brostep somewhere that obviates the entire rest of the genre, being Better At EDM is kind of her deal

Darn I had all my Grisey links all ready and everything

the dubstep I was listening to in 2007/2008 was usually really heavy and aggressive, quite often with a comically macabre sample / rap / vocal in the acid techno tradition, then when Skrillex came along there was suddenly this narrative about how it had all been downtempo stuff like Burial before and these fratboys had come along and ruined it

happy to accept all spectral knowledge, even if i just wanted to troll the thread starter a lil bit haha

Like, the opening track of this basically takes brostep and incorporates it with, like, *puts snob hat on* proper composition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l1-l7vD3Mc

oh @ ums it's an approach to harmonic writing that was investigated primarily by Tristan Mureil and Gerard Grisey, wherein the harmonic series and its overtones inform the way chords are structures. "Partiels" is the basic entry-point, Saariaho and Lindberg are contemporary European proponents, Tenney stateside.

*structured

Idk what brostep is. I just wanted to try to politely disabuse pom in vain.

Opera. But don't bother trying to change my mind.

what is spectral music? (earnest question)

Sund4r and fgti are in a much better position to answer this but it's a subset of modern Western notated art music that focuses on sound spectra. It's a timbre-oriented compositional style and it loves to fuck with microtones. Here's an example.

xps thx fgti!

Idk what brostep is. I just wanted to try to politely disabuse pom in vain.

And you have succeeded!

I see "brostep" as the EDM equivalent to thrash metal, it's quite often ridiculous, but the artists / fans are completely in on the joke, and it doesn't stop the music being exciting.

This is technically drumstep (all of this brostep is technically something or other else, not sure it matters) but is a nice example anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKwjkzMiAx0

thanks fgti!! will investigate

Re: Patricia Taxxon, does that one involve vocals? Because it's my one stumbling block with her work.

the opening track is completely instrumental, as is much of the album

The 4tet that pom linked rules, check that out too. "Spectralism" is afaic the most functional and compositionally useful harmonic development in chamber music of the last hundred years, has created the most interesting works. I have friends who studied with Murail at Columbia and they raved about him

I don't like any grunge or post-grunge beyond Nirvana (who seem to be not at all representative of the genre)

*everyone recommends Soundgarden simultaneously*

That Reso strikes me as less self-consciously meatheaded than Skrillex. Not bad.

xps have you tried Bush?

I have heard and did not enjoy the works of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, sorry.

Alice in Chains also deserve a chance, especially Dirt.

When I read "post-grunge" I think Harvey Milk

xpost Brad (the band)
Wellwater Conspiracy?

Dust by Screaming Trees?

Catherine Wheel's mid-period stuff is probably my favourite grunge-adjacent music

I like both Ferment and Chrome a great deal but I never bothered exploring their subsequent output.

Ums, Claude Vivier's Lonely Child is a spectral-influenced piece for soprano + orchestra that is very beautiful and comparatively accessible; one of my favourite pieces of music.

one of my favourite pieces of music

cosign

it's def an acquired taste but Adam & Eve does the post-grunge thing with unequalled elegance and scope imo

CaAL, do you prefer Nevermind to Bleach and In Utero?

How do you feel about Weezer? Sloan?

xp Yes. I like the pop punk bits of Nirvana best, also used to enjoy Babes In Toyland and RATM when they were on TV around 93, what I can't take is all the sludgy guitars and constipated vocals and overcompressed production and the cock-rock posturing which made it across from hair metal.

How about Hole?

what about Mudhoney? (or were you talking post nirvana bands?)

Hole are good. I do like some US Indie Rock from the early 90s, was a big fan of Madder Rose

Don't know if I have ever heard Mudhoney, the name puts me off a bit.

Presumably song titles such as 'Touch Me I'm Sick' aren't your cup of tea either.

Ums, Claude Vivier's Lonely Child is a spectral-influenced piece for soprano + orchestra that is very beautiful and comparatively accessible; one of my favourite pieces of music.

― Inside there's a box and that box has another box within (Sund4r), Friday, January 29, 2021 9:44 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

cool with check it out

Don't know if I have ever heard Mudhoney, the name puts me off a bit.

― ٩(͡๏̯͡๏)۶ (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, January 29, 2021 9:56 AM (0 seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

i mean if you like punky, garagey stuff i can't imagine not liking superfuzz bigmuff + early singles...they def don't have the overwrought, portentous thing

touch me i'm sick is a great song title

it is weird they arguably invented grunge kinda but don't really have a lot to do with many of those bands maybe except nirvana

Agreed. More topical than ever, to boot.

xp

You might like Sloan's Twice Removed if you don't know it.

Feel like Weezer are an ok pop punk band, not sure why they are a big deal.

Just listened to Touch Me I'm Sick and it's perfectly fine garage punk, not what I expected

I prefer Sloan's later post-Spectralist work, personally

metal

Re: brostep, I should do the (non-pandemic?) exercise of taking a photo of one of the posters I see for the local corny campus nightclub and looking up the Soundclouds of all the dj/producers.

Also is brostep qua brostep still a thing, or has it just morphed into a bleak miasma of trap EDM and future bass with 2-3 heavy drops per track?

not sure it was ever a thing tbh

The blues (not the old, screechy, creepy kind but any standard twelve-bar blues from let's say the latter half of the 20th C. on, the plodding and utterly predictable kind that sounds like it was produced in a factory from a B.B. King mold and that makes me want to die when I hear it)

there is an og dubstep revival brewing though

Old Lunch, you mean electric blues? if so then yes, it all sounds like Blueshammer to me too.

"modern" electric blues is a pretty good call for me as well

could never get into bb king

albert king is better but i think he had a real bad influence on stuff moving forard

Yeah, I don't know exactly what it's called because I've spent precisely zero minutes researching it but let's go with electric blues, sure. It's horrid.

Bongo Dog Band effectively skewered it over half a century ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw-TVrR8wZc

feel like born under a bad sign by albert king is the template (though i'm far from a blues scholar)

one electric blues guy i can get into is rory gallagher, he was a little wilder or has some kinda spirit that moves me

speaking of kings, freddie king has the most interesting playing style imo. some great songs too

never checked him out, too many kings!

Have u heard Clapton Unplugged?

Seriously, I really like the London Howlin' Wolf Sessions, which meets the standard of meeting the strictest genre requirements and being really good.

luther allison might be a good place to turn for electric blues skeptics too. intensely soulful vocals + hendrix-y guitar pyrotechnics in a traditional blues framework.

Have u heard Clapton Unplugged?

― Inside there's a box and that box has another box within (Sund4r), Friday, January 29, 2021 11:01 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

gotta love slowhand! his hands are so slow

lol

electroswing

Grisey could very plausibly be a "brostep" producer's name. Many xps.

Pronounced à l'anglaise, it's true.

I'd like to second electroswing btw.

If I think about electroswing in terms of the Lost Vagueness tent at Glastonbury then it feels like it could have had some merit, it was a fun thing to visit. They set up their own festival one time and I actually worked there as a steward, unfortunately I have to report that it was a disaster for many reasons, first among them the failure to book a single good musician to play.

all modern doom metal
any soul or gospel music made after 1980
rockabilly after 1965

If I was passionate about anything in these styles that occurred before these demarcation lines I'd probably be more amenable to exploring further, but as it is I respect more than love even the classic artists and records in these three genres so I'm not terribly invested in hearing, say, a great new rockabilly band at this point in my life

INdustrial noir jazz stuff or at least assume there must be more of it.

semi acoustic folkjazz beyond Pentangle

I mostly agree with you, re: gospel/rockabilly, but when you say 'doom metal', are you including its offshoots (death/funeral)? Because there's still a lot of frankly incredible stuff happening on that front. Same goes for 'soul', which is a very broad umbrella: do D'Angelo and Frank Ocean not count in your book?

xp it's not very industrial but as far as noir-ish jazz is concerned, I very much enjoyed Aidan Moffatt's Aux pieds de la nuit, released last year under his Nyx Nott alias. And there's lots of amazing ECM-esque acoustic folk jazz – some of which is more recent, much of which is not.

the dubstep I was listening to in 2007/2008 was usually really heavy and aggressive, quite often with a comically macabre sample / rap / vocal in the acid techno tradition

"grim reapah!" burbbhrbhbbhbburbbb.

I mostly agree with you, re: gospel/rockabilly, but when you say 'doom metal', are you including its offshoots (death/funeral)? Because there's still a lot of frankly incredible stuff happening on that front. Same goes for 'soul', which is a very broad umbrella: do D'Angelo and Frank Ocean not count in your book?

I can appreciate the really raw and ridiculous funeral doom, stuff like Worship and Moss, but on the whole the genre just leaves me cold. I know this sounds like Steve Hoffman Clapton Dad talk, but it seems to me that anyone who owns the right equipment (Les Paul + vintage Orange amps + pedals) and tunes down to C can pretty easily approximate this sound to the point where only true believers can tell the difference. I know that this in and of itself is not really a reason to avoid an entire genre (how many Eno or Steve Roach fans would pass a blindfold test listening to any of the thousands of ambient artists doing similar things on tape labels?), but I just don't hear anything compelling or new in the stuff I've heard. Sure, it all sounds better when you are baked, but not nearly as good - or as psychedelic! - as a record on Blue Note or Impulse! or Sabbath or Candlemass or St Vitus or...

I love D'Angelo, and I guess I consider him an artist that transcends the genre. I was thinking more of nth generation clones like St Paul & The Broken Bones and most of the Daptone catalog. I appreciate the musicianship, to a degree, but I never hear any tunes, nor anything that makes me want to hear it over, say, Sam Cooke or Al Green.

You should check out The Ruins of Beverast for contemporary doom metal that very much transcends the genre – the 4th world-esque Exuvia (2017), say, or his latest, The Thule Grimoires, which will be officially released next week. Also worth mentioning is last year's Stygian by Atramentus, which is a funeral doom entity unto itself. I have no idea whether you'd like it, but I just wanted to point out that the genre has not run its course by any means.

That said, I sympathize with your lack of patience for self-conscious trad clones in general.

I'm always up for recommendations, so thanks! I'll check those out. (Which I guess is the point of this thread!)

Any time! That and a polite space for challops are indeed the point of this thread. :)

like St Paul & The Broken Bones and most of the Daptone catalog. I appreciate the musicianship, to a degree, but I never hear any tunes, nor anything that makes me want to hear it over, say, Sam Cooke or Al Green.

― Paul Ponzi, Saturday, January 30, 2021 10:32 AM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah i get the same thing, like why am i not just listening to a stax comp or something

sharyn jones and charles bradley and sonny knight were a little different just because they were all basically old soul artists that would have been the same 30 years prior they just didn't get the breaks

I've got so much more to learn about the music of bygone decades that I don't especially feel the need to hear deliberate retreads, unless it's a (sub)genre I've almost exhausted and I just can't get enough of that sound.

I think this is unfair to Sharon Jones, who I view as a notable exception but I see your point

There are more genres I don't want to hear than ones I do, at this point, but country in particular is one big-ass red flag for me. Post-Trump, I don't want to hear shit about country music ever again. I don't care if your favorite artist is "one of the good ones" or not. The genre as a whole is by and for what has to be considered, at this point in history, the worst parts of American society, and even the exceptions are tainted by association.

"I've got so much more to learn about the music of bygone decades that I don't especially feel the need to hear deliberate retreads"

Not pointing at anyone's favourite artists or genres, but I agree completely.