Whither the mix CD?

Something I've been thinking about recently is how important and iconic artist/DJ mix albums were in my formative years as a music fan.

The golden age of these must have been in the late 90s and early 2000s. People talked in husehd whispers about things like 2ManyDJs, Journeys By DJ, Decks, EFX & 909, the Fabric and FabricLive mixes, BadMeaningGood, Immer... All so important to me getting into various styles and opening my mind to new music, as well as gaining an appreciation for mixing and selecting.

But I don't think I've even come across a new one of these in a good while.

There are reasons for this: the demise of the CD and the move to streaming means high-profile hour-long mixes are less likely to be relesed as official albums (even on Spotify you can't get a lot of the above mentioned) and more likely to go out on Soundcloud or Mixcloud.

But I think this is a bit of a shame really. There doens't seem to be this sense of shared occasion with stremaing a DJ mix on Soundcloud, and these mixes feel more like bonuses than carefully-curated main events.

Anyway, maybe there are some recent examples people can throw this way. And what are the some of the most important mix albums to you?

Not really what you're talking about, but I miss making mix cds. I would give them away as xmas/birthday presents, leave them lying about for strangers to pick up. It was a fun way of processing the music I liked and seeing how different things fit together. But now there are so few people listening to CDs that I stopped doing it. If I worked I could probably find enough friends through facebook that listen to CDs, but it feels like a moment that's passed.

Yup, same. I still like making mixes and putting them up on Soundcloud but it's not really the same - it's less personal and more something I do to promote my portfolio as a DJ.

And don't get me started on mixtapes. What do teenagers gift their crushes nowadays anyway? Roblox experiences? ;-)

I’ve made one every year since 2002, bore the shit out of my friends with them. I haven’t made them as physical discs since 2011 but I still use the same software to crossfade etc. and then render to a disc length of audio files. I don’t think anyone really cares but I guess I like the ritual of saving candidates, sequencing, etc.

Boiler Room sets are the closest modern-day equivalent to the commercial mix CD, surely?

I was going to say that the DJ-Kicks series is still issued on physical discs, but maybe it too is slowing down lately?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ-Kicks

Yeah DJ mixes for home listening have all moved onto Twitch, YouTube and Mixcloud. Curated compilations went the same way - it's all just playlists on Spotify/Apple Music/Tidal now.

You may think that this loses the "shared experience" of tens of thousands (what did those Fabric CDs sell?) of listeners sharing the same experience, but then again, even if 90% of the 22 million streams for this Fred Again mix are bots, that's still a bigger audience than Immer ever got.

(shared experience twice even)

I loved the Fabric mix cd's but yeah they seem to be winding down a bit. I guess Mixcloud is the way to go now but a part of me likes having these things curated to me (if you know what I mean). Last Fabric CD I got was the Octo Octa one and that was 3 years ago now.

Yeah and you know what, I just don't really want to sit there and watch a dude mixing on CDJs with drunk people behind him for more than 5 minutes. Kibnd of spoils the illusion of the "mix as journey" really - I dunno, it's the difference between listening to a studio album and watching a concert: They're different levels of experience.

I have a DJ Kicks release on vinyl and it's weird cuz it's not actually mixed at all, it's just regular edits of all the tracks. great tracks and all but it kind of defeats the point, no??

On the Floor at the Boutique by Fatboy Slim and Brothers Gonna Work It Out by the Chemical Brothers were both massively important to me as a teenager. just the whole idea of a dancefloor filling mix CD was mindblowing at the time.

Soundslike to thread!

xp pretty sure the dj kicks vinyl is for djs

everyone otm + i basically try to make a "mix cd" whenever i post to "djs post your mixes"

i agree with siegbran except i also think the listening experience is significantly different. i can't tell you exactly how except that i really do think my zoomer friends who go to dance tents at coachella are experiencing / approaching it differently than i am when i go to an all night warehouse party

and no it's not just because i'm trapped in a rotting 46 year old body and they're fresh and young, except i'm not in their brains so i can't exactly tell you what the difference is. impossible to say this without sounding like a boomer dinosaur but i think "the music" is secondary to "the experience" for sure

I identify with the sentiment in this thread -- dj mixes were very important to me in college when I was discovering electronic dance music, and they opened doors that I would have never explored otherwise.

However I just assumed it was me that became less engaged with the form, not that the form was dying out. Philip Sherburne still does a "best DJ mixes of the month" column for Pitchfork. Best of 2023 so far was published back in May: https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/best-dj-mixes-2023/

I was recently having a related discussion with Deej - we don’t talk/think enough about how changing patterns of music consumption and interaction change our relationship to music. Dance music’s relative decentering of the individual artist discography makes some of these dynamics more interesting to think about.

One aspect of the dominance of the mix-cd especially in the early-to-mid 2000s is that the rise of digital downloads and file sharing, but the fact that we still did not have streaming or endless online mixes, meant that commercially-available DJ mixes entered a sweet spot between gatekeeping and participation. Before that, you had to be very invested in the dance music economy (going to record shops, buying vinyl etc) to really engage with what a DJ mix was doing in an informed manner. Afterwards, the playing field became so levelled that any one mix or mixer could no longer assume or command gatekeeping power.

But for a while there what made DJ mixes so prominent was not just their quality in and of themselves, but how (with the help of soulseek, YouTube, discogs.com and online discussion forums like this one) they could send you on chains of inquiry, down rabbit holes of particular artists, labels or scenes. So you could, say, spend a productive weekend carefully tracing all the creative inflows and outflows that resulted in a finished product mix. Which in turn made the way in which a given mix tied together those various strands into a single articulation seem potentially more important, a framing device for listener and participant perspectives on these scenes more broadly.

It’s the way in which they occupied this role as a pivot point for broader engagement which I think has now receded - this is not a good or bad thing per se, just a thing, but I think people who despair at “keeping up” with dance music (or finding it interesting at all!) now would occasionally benefit from reflecting on how much their changing relationship to the music is a function of the changing structure of forms of engagement which are practically available now.

again not much to add except yeah that sounds right

one of my most played (maybe #1?) mixes on my soundcloud is a deep dive into the acido / sued family of artists, which basically boils down to four or so artists (dreesen, svn, sw, pg) in various combinations

this was cool to make and still fun to listen to but sure in 2023 why not just let spotify serve you up a mix of tracks by these guys and other simpatico artists?

only actual benefit to *my* mix is getting to hear *my own* personal lens on this stuff, and like any average navel my own is mostly of interest only to the navel gazer in question himself and not the average punter

Yeah it does sound right. Not living in a city, I used to consume dance music primarily through mix CDs. Now it's more likely that I'll find an EP on Bandcamp, buy it, but mostly just play one key track from it or put it in a Spotify playlist called "Bangin dance choons" or something

Yeah I actually really like exploiting the power of Spotify’s algorithms - I spend a lot of time constructing personal playlists chasing highly specific notions of a vibe that probably only exist and make sense in my own head. DJ mixes struggle to compete with that now.

Yeah I actually really like exploiting the power of Spotify’s algorithms - I spend a lot of time constructing personal playlists chasing highly specific notions of a vibe that probably only exist and make sense in my own head. DJ mixes struggle to compete with that now.

I just don't really want to sit there and watch a dude mixing on CDJs with drunk people behind him for more than 5 minutes. Kibnd of spoils the illusion of the "mix as journey" really

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uyr1UL4tAw

XP I like to do this too (the Spotify algo rabbit hole) and (much as it's a burden on my inbox), Bandcamp recommendations also turn up a lot of treasure.

But there's something very satisfying that I miss about those well-curated and mixed 60-minute albums that are intended primarily for listening to at home in your own time, which is slightly different from watching a Boiler Room set or listening to a mix that was recorded in a live setting.

Those Badmeaninggood comps by Skitz, Roots Manuva, Peanut Butter Wolf, for example, gave the artist a brief (What does hip hop mean to you?) and let them go wild. Some of them had barely any actual hip hop on them. Instead it was a whole panoply of disco, dancehall, new wave, electro etc. Just so so important to me at the time

XP this is bangin!

even if 90% of the 22 million streams for this Fred Again mix are bots, that's still a bigger audience than Immer ever got.

Nobody who bought Immer, or any other mix CD, ever listened to it a second time

(can’t properly what saer’s link is on phone but did a looooot of playing mixes / streaming train journeys in 2020 / 21)

and then subsequently a fuckloaf of Cercle mixes on mountains and balloons and glaciers etc

genuine ty autocorrect

Mix CDs were probably more important to me in the '90s than albums. They could open windows onto new worlds of music. They enabled you to hear and own obscure dance tracks in the days before the internet when the only other way to discover them was either in clubs or spending too much time hanging around the counter at small record shops.

Their rise in the early '90s was caused by record labels seeking to catch the market that couldn't get enough of the unofficial mix tapes with recordings of live DJ sets (their history goes back to NY block parties in the 70s). I'll love that Colin Dale mix tape I've got til I die. At their peak they were as talked about as any album. But with thousands of new DJ mixes available all over the internet, with most old mixes a click away, with CDs becoming a niche format there's not the money to be made by them and besides a few legacy series holding on they seem to be going the way of shellac.

Anyways, some love for the X-Mix series. Originally intended as a VHS video with trippy computer graphics accompanied by dance music, the CD releases were amazing. The first had Paul Van Dyk catching the peak of euro-trance in 1993, before the sound of the series shifted on Laurent Garnier's towards techno. X-Mix 2 was my introduction to Detroit techno. The back half's flawlessly mixed run of Galaxy to Galaxy -> Rhythm is Rhythm -> Kenny Larkin had my jaw hit the floor the first time I heard it and shifted my entire taste in music for ever. The series continued with mixes from Richie Hawtin/John Acquaviva, Dave Angel, Ken Ishii, Kevin Saunderson (this one deserves a special mention; when I think of the many faces of Detroit techno this is the first sound I think of), Dave Clarke, Hardfloor... These mix CDs were core to my music tastes.

(can’t properly what saer’s link is on phone but did a looooot of playing mixes / streaming train journeys in 2020 / 21)

★ 4K 🇫🇷 Marseille St-Charles - Lyon Part-Dieu cab ride en BB 22200 [07.2022] Führerstandsmitfahrt

For something more interesting to look at if you are unable to leave the house and look at a mixture of nature and the built environment while the mix is playing

Not only was it otherwise difficult to hear this music, it was often difficult or impossible to go to a night where these DJs were playing, so this was the only way to get a feel for what a set might be like. Imagining the crowd at one of these gigs was part of what made them great. Certain tracks, or types of track, suggested a certain kind of crowd

Yes OTM.

I think Jeff Mills 'Live At The Liquid Room' is one of those. That's notable for not being part of a branded series like JbDJ or DJ Kicks which started the same year iirc.

There are transitions in 90s Radio 1 Essential Mixes that I still think about today, including from sets by acts who were probably better producers than they were DJs.

Getting that same buzz from streaming or downloaded mixes seems quite achievable though, I just seemed to lose interest in listening to mixes by the time that was in full swing.

xpost I agree with those saying watching a Boiler Room set isnt the same. I've never really bothered with them for the most part. I dgaf about watching a DJ. However, I do watch this from time to time. This is the stuff of (meme) legend tbf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXJil6osy6o

I went crazy for one track in a Kaytranada BR set from a few years ago that I heard only recently. IDing the track, immediately buying it on Bandcamp and listening to was very satisfying (dropping it in your own set even more so I imagine :). That whole process just taking minutes is undeniably cool.

hd club/festival footage is ghastly, but I can totally get with 90s/00s shaky handheld footage of raves and stuff

Yeah. I'm not sure which bit of that Solomun set Michael B posted is meant to be the memey bit, but future generations are going to look back on these and ROFL so hard

It's almost got a vintage TOTP vibe to it

hd club/festival footage is ghastly, but I can totally get with 90s/00s shaky handheld footage of raves and stuff

Recently watched a bit of a Todd Edwards set in Romford from 20 years ago on YT. The footage quality and the music are fine but ayyy the crowd looks at least 80% male.

Nobody who bought Immer, or any other mix CD, ever listened to it a second time

― serving bundt (sic)

this is so absurdly false lmao

figured that was a joke?

immer 2 > immer 1 while I’m here

even I've listened to my Immer CD more than once

haha okay! maybe i wasn't following the convo carefully enough

we don’t talk/think enough about how changing patterns of music consumption and interaction change our relationship to music.

I spend a lot of time constructing personal playlists chasing highly specific notions of a vibe that probably only exist and make sense in my own head.

^altho this discussion is beside the main point of the thread — does the humble “I made this for you” mixtape/CD need its own thread?

oh I'm sure there is one already

I think there was another period in the '10s where curated online mix series like Resident Advisor, FACT, and others (idk, BBC Essential, Solid Steel, Dekmantel, XLR8R, etc) held some weight. There were mixes that felt like an event and artists would treat them with care because it could be a big moment for them. But of course it's different now...there are more mixes online than you could ever listen to, those series are in the hundreds, it's just another form of unpaid work to get some exposure for producers/DJs, etc.

i feel like the "curated compilations" are an adjacent but slightly different thing (similar but not exactly the same as how i've always said "eclectic dance genres" like big beat, balearic, electroclash have always existed just adjacent to "proper" dance music like house and dnb)

they now take up their own space on BANDCAMP mostly

As frogbs alludes there was a whole thing of releasing a mix CD alongside a vinyl compilation (and/or CD) of the individual tracks... like "now YOU be the DJ!" and I loved that shit. Clearing all the rights for those must have been hell. I hardly ever listened to the mix, but it was a fantastic way to have all these otherwise unobtainable tracks to mix with. Off the top of my head the Back To Mine series (partic. Danny Tenaglia), Matt Jam Lamont - The Jam Experience, The Grandfather Paradox - Henrik Schwarz, Ame, Dixon, the Strange Games And Funky Things mixes...

The first CD mix that properly blew my mind and that I returned to again and again was the Optimo mix from Hogmanay 2000 (I've still got my CD!)

It's almost already there tbh!

It feels like you’re kind of arbitrarily deciding what things are and aren’t new — historical cosplay is not new but eventually dj/club culture will be a museum piece (which would be new)

Idk I see a lot of gen z producers etc doing drum n bass or deep house or garage or all three, and being very attuned to the “right way” to do it, in a way I don’t remember anyone really doing when those genres were new — or at the very least not in a way which would take up so much oxygen, as it does now. I used the word cosplay but I don’t even just mean it metaphorically, it feels like this anti gatekeeper stance really *is* like embracing cosplay, that people’s ability to replicate a “feel” with ruthless accuracy is a kind of historical dress up appreciated for how elaborate and particular it is

What’s interesting to me is dance music itself, its appreciation broadly, is a continuum stretching back 100s of years, like the museumification is true of certain historical periods but there’s no reason our distribution platforms and curators need to play into that, to be overwhelmed by it

It feels like you’re kind of arbitrarily deciding what things are and aren’t new — historical cosplay is not new but eventually dj/club culture will be a museum piece (which would be new)

im worried im explaining this poorly, but I feel like the 'nothing ever really changes' vs. 'the thing thats ACTUALLY different now' dynamic ... I dont think 'dance music' as such will 'end' the way people predict hip hop will, or that jazz did. 'dance music' is way too general of a concept. techno and house will certainly loop less large as the primary organizing principles as we get further from that time

I guess im lamenting a discursive and curatorial narrowness that is *enabling* the kind of museumification I see happening...subgenre purism so disconnected from whats actually *interesting* in favor of what fits our expectations of these genres' sounds. in other words, genre being reverse-engineered: "this sounds like garage so its garage" "this sounds like drum n bass so its new drum n bass." thats just cosplay

certainly loop less large

funny slip. they will LOOM less large

the number of “95 era fetishism” intelligent dnb mixes

“this sounds just like the stage selection music on a ps1” … stfu you were born after 9/11

drum n bass or deep house or garage or all three, and being very attuned to the “right way” to do it, in a way I don’t remember anyone really doing when those genres were new — or at the very least not in a way which would take up so much oxygen, as it does now

techstep was super gatekeeper-y, to its detriment

i know what you mean but i think that was a case of closed production + distribution channels. you couldn’t get played by a big dj if your acetate wasn’t pressed by the right crew (why play a crap pressing on the valve soundsystem etc etc?!?) but you couldn’t get pressed by the right crew if you didn’t have the right engineer or the studio time at the right spot, you couldn’t meet those guys without word of mouth, which … you don’t get if you don’t get played out

so you get the closed system where andy c just plays ram releases and lemon d and dillinja just play their own tracks and so on, and lesser dudes have to go invent genres like dubstep in order to get their records pressed

now the production and distro channels are blown wide open, but paradoxically the sounds are just as conservatively constructed

here’s how i think of it

first wave = mid 80s og chicago and detroit

acid house cash in, brief lull for rave

second wave = early 90s, midwest / ny / berlin

third wave = mid 90s, starting to flowering of weird genres like downtempo and dnb

second lull = millenial turn toward pop and electroclash, renewed interest in disco, crap like moombahton

fourth wave = mid 00s minimal

third lull = everything goes balearic, disco gets huge enough out of proportion (to the second lull) that desperation for new trax leads ppl start listening to crap like city pop

fifth wave = berghain revival of real house and techno, second flowering of weird genres (post dubstep, experimental club, footwork, etc)

fifth wave ends when pandemic starts and we’re more ot less in the next lull right now

interesting, my personal experience w/minimal was that it peaked in maybe 2001 but I am not a clubber

I like that summary (and have 5th wave nostalgia).

that’s not really a history of “the music” but more “the money”. i see the “waves” as periods where you have a lot of expansion in terms of new genres, new scenes, new styles, big new clubs or club nights that set the tone for an entire genre (like fwd for dubstep or tyrant / fabric for early tech house or berghain for revival techno or twice as nice for ukg etc etc) and yes new record labels and new networks

the “lulls” are interesting because i don’t see it as a lull in terms of creative activity, or even commercial activity. some of the biggest stuff happens during the “lulls”, whether it’s the late late 90s megaclub era or ibiza superclub dominance of late mnml (remember CIRCO LOCO lmao) or every fred whatshisname and four tet playing a packed rave in times square.

i see the lull more in terms of a sort of creative exhaustion. there’s definitely cool stuff happening right now - i still hear good new footwork trax! - but there’s very little sense of new out there

this probably sounds familiar to tim f and others, this is (i think) the last vestiges of an outlook i developed as an early reyn01ds acolyte. i think most of his poptimist ideas about 80s / 90s / 00s dance music aren’t so great now (maybe 25 years later he feels the same way) but i’m pretty sure this ebb and flow view of dance - where the ebb is actually the part where dance music triumphantly struts into the mainstream spotlight, while actually doing very little new, and the flows are mostly hidden from the public and based around insider activity - is stolen from him

how it relates to the broader conversation about retro vs new i kind of have no idea. i really do think we are entering something new, if for no other reason than the dominance of beatport and bandcamp is a disruption in the existing dee jay / club night / record label / record store / mixtape / official release / clubgoer ecosystem

plus i haven’t read retromania

interesting, my personal experience w/minimal was that it peaked in maybe 2001 but I am not a clubber

― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve)

i mean when the clubbier perlon / playhouse / kompakt MNML stuff which was dominating clubs. villalobos was voted #1 dj of the year in 2006, 2008, 2010, he and hawtin headlined (?) love parade to a crowd of 300k in 2006, etc

if you’re talking what i think of as “real minimal” ie the “clicks and cuts” type stuff or the “hardcore minimal” of labels like PROFAN or SAHKO, i totally agree with the earlier timeline

yes, that Raster-Noton stuff is exactly what I associate w/"minimal", I am slowly realizing that it mutated into something else later

I think 1945-2008 was treated as the norm when it was the anomaly.

Not in music per se, but maps relatively well with a slightly later start date, 195x

I’m actually kind of anti-“retromania” as a concept. I think of it more as a problem of discourse than music, and more like a lack of imagination of people’s reporting on “what’s going on.” That they’re trapped in a linear way of thinking about a future which is unfolding in nonlinear linearity.

I’m sure things are going on we’re not just into. There’s also stuff that is clearly on the edge of what is playing in Berlin ie:

Revived jersey club remixes among tiktok teens
Continual rise of amapiano among both the chill out house boring ppl and the more rugged dance fans depending on their flavor / taste
The weird Russian co option of mid 90s Memphis rap as house music called phonk or drift or whatever into some kind of bro-y Slavic edm
Endless “fast” remixes of pop songs
Etc

Whatever the fuck cyberspeed is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEI9l1Kgs0g

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

haha phonk, an entire genre built around the sound of raider klan mixtapes. not sure i’m into it but raider klan probably my favorite rap stuff of the last 15 years aside from flo milli

actually raider klan and flo milli probably the only new rap stuff i got into in the 10s and i’m wondering if the “mysterious phonk” album was not actually late 00s

they’re trapped in a linear way of thinking about a future which is unfolding in nonlinear linearity

linear yes in that ppl think in terms of cause and effect and other nonsense like “influence” that we know is wrong

but it’s also falsely cyclical, idk how many times since 9/11 i’ve thought “welp that was the mccarthyist late 50s surely the swinging early 60s are back soon” or “damn this stagflation and weak dem leadership kinda sucks but is the next reagan right around the corner”

idk if i’m doing exactly the same thing in music but that false consciousness around “decades” has not done anyone any favors … i think anvil is right in that if you look at 1940s and maybe throw in the 1930s “jazz age” and “the depression” it’s right around when people start thinking in terms of “decade cycles”.

i’m not sure where this decades thing comes from but i think of pew research helpfully pointing out last month that “generations” are a social construction without any firm demographic footing and that their unquestioned prevalence as a unit of analysis has set sociology back a ways (and they’re not going to use them anymore at pew for that reason!)

i have little confidence that people will ever stop saying “wow so 70s” every time jamiroquai puts out a new track but … it might help

The pattern recognition thing that exists around this is quite interesting when you consider the small time frame in which its based. The current president of the United States was alive both before and after it.

someone has probably already noted this but this compulsive search for *whatever* — and in modes of cultural production that are just decades old!— is like if you made an academic practice out of survivorship bias

is that the art of pretend forgetfulness? i’m not sure what the right word is for *whatever* either … “pattern” doesn’t quite cut it, “fixed relationships”, “fixed signifiers” both sound off to me.

in my case i have to put the search down to anxiety, the whatever is not prophecy, it’s not quite fortune telling either but when i talk about this stuff i always feel this need to know that something regenerative is coming our way, something to push back on the sense that OK, now the scene really is dead this time, really

i guess the good news with cultural criticism in specific and being a scenester in general is that you’re not trying to explain complex long term phenomena, you’re just trying to make ppl buy into your biases your expertly curated tastes, so a little survivorship bias isn’t the end of the world

What do teenagers do for their crush now - whatsapp them a link to a Spotify playlist? Do the really precious ones make actual mixtapes and give their crush a thrift store Walkman to listen on?

I feel like there's something weird about the concepts of progress and regeneration in this context. Its kind of a quirk of a technology which led to entire genres arriving and then being discarded in incredibly minute timeframes, and now if that kind of churn doesnt exist we think of it as some kind of cultural ossification, but why?

We never churned through styles so quickly before, its an anomaly due to technology. And mixing up technological progress with creativity. Are the later genres progress on the former genres? What if they had arrived in a different order due to a quirk of things being invented in a different order?

I don't think it's entirely due to technology, it makes me think of jazz where there was a prevailing narrative about progress and iteration at least through the '70s. From bebop onward the harmony and rhythm got more complex, drummers' limbs got more independent, it went from dance music to listening music, then the new thing started dispensing with boundaries of harmony and rhythm entirely once they couldn't get any more complex, then technology started becoming a factor with fusion.

There's also the narrative that pops up about some of these changes being driven by outpacing white/Euro imitators, which I haven't really seen reflected in interviews, but there's certainly a competitive drive in jazz (virtuosity, have your own voice, do something new). And other economic & culture factors (big bands not being feasible financially, especially after losing popularity to r&b and rock & roll).

You're probably right that technology is the main driver in electronic music though. And while I don't necessarily agree with 'progress' as an unquestioned value in jazz since it can lead to people discarding earlier music, looking for 'new' (to me) sounds and styles in electronic music is a big part of the appeal for me.

Oh and about minimal, I found this podcast was pretty interesting as far as the initial rise and timeline: https://www.stitcher.com/show/not-a-diving-podcast-with-scuba/episode/071-jeremy-p-caulfield-304152591

re: Boiler Room mentions above I'm very fond of this channel of early 20-something Brooklynites DJing in various house party settings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nvewes8Inc

I like that. Less obviously garish than Boiler Room

I don't think it's entirely due to technology, it makes me think of jazz where there was a prevailing narrative about progress and iteration at least through the '70s. From bebop onward the harmony and rhythm got more complex, drummers' limbs got more independent, it went from dance music to listening music, then the new thing started dispensing with boundaries of harmony and rhythm entirely once they couldn't get any more complex, then technology started becoming a factor with fusion.

Technology surely a factor throughout this story, i.e. the evolution and popularization of radio and records?

So you can see the entire 20th century as an "anomaly" in that more ppl were exposed to more music than ever before, and this accelerated as the century went on, and now we live post this era because it's plateaued into everyone, at least in theory, having access to everything. And I can see how that would mean this narrative of progress goes away, but also feels strange to think it would be back to the pre-recorded music status quo.

Yeah, good points.

I like Keep Hush as another Boiler Room alternative: https://youtube.com/@KeepHush?si=FJ8KcI35TKrBcZUp

Also every time I listen to Mumdance's weekly radio show I get that 'rush of the new'.

And I can see how that would mean this narrative of progress goes away, but also feels strange to think it would be back to the pre-recorded music status quo.

Its not necessarily that "progress" goes away, but that the rate of "progress" was anomalous and it didn't make sense to assume that rate would be continuous.

I don't really like using the word progress in this context. Unless its like if I walk from north to south everything is new but it would also be new if I walked from south to north.

I think there's also a weird expectation being landed on music. A new record doesn't just have to be new and interesting on its own terms, thats not enough,, it must also be a precursor or vanguard of a whole new genre too, and this should happen every 3.5 years. If this doesnt happen (or if in the past this didn't come quickly enough), this is a sign of musical or cultural ossification. Or a sure sign that a big social/cultural/musical wave is coming, just like it did last time, like the pattern recognition says

Jordan's jazz comparison is v interesting, and I take Daniel's point too. But my hunch (not very informed) is that art historiography was the template for understanding the "progress" narrative, particularly the history of painting from some point in the 19thc. up until abstraction & minimalism. The way this story was told to me was an intense but meticulous analysis and deconstruction of every aspect of painting method and theory, unfurling in a series of startling, even shocking revelations of the new.

Literature and cinema have comparable but maybe less linear trajectories?

Well note I didn't say "progress goes away", I specifically said "the narrative of progress" by which I meant exactly the kind of expectations you mention - music as a succession of brand new movements that clash with each other and supplant each other. Agreed this is a terrible way to think if you truly take "progress" literally, i.e. each new movement is better than the last, but I don't know if anyone actually does that? For me as a young music geek it was admitidely just a very exciting framework, less a question of inferior musics being replaced by superior models in a technological kind of mentality and more like a good mystery novel where every other chapter something happens that shakes everything up, which obv doesn't render the previous chapters retroactively less compelling.

Anyway I agree that it's not really fit for purpose anymore as a framework for music in 2023. But if the rate of "progress" of the 20th century was an anomaly nonetheless the current situation is radically different from that of a pre 20th century musical landscape, meaning the anomaly has surely landed us somewhere else, so can't just be shrugged off.

xpost to rob

I don't think it's at all strange to think music would continue to change at a rapid pace when that is exactly what we all experienced for most of our lives. Yes, it might be an anomaly if you take the very long view, but from the perspective of anyone growing up in the late 20th century it would seem completely normal.

And now that now that computers are so powerful, ubiquitous, and affordable, it feels a bit ironic and disappointing that instead of empowering a world of previously unheard sounds & styles, more often than not this just means producers can more easily reproduce retro sounds and assemble Splice samples like Legos.

(a gross generalization of course, there's obviously a lot of creative and crazy music out there, but it does feel like this sometimes)

I don't think it's at all strange to think music would continue to change at a rapid pace when that is exactly what we all experienced for most of our lives. Yes, it might be an anomaly if you take the very long view, but from the perspective of anyone growing up in the late 20th century it would seem completely normal.

From within the timeframe of course it seems normal, during that timeframe it IS normal. But once we're outside the timeframe and starting to have these questions and laments about "what happened?, something has changed" it can then make more send to look a longer view

pre 20th century musical landscape

I was thinking pre WW2 rather than pre 20th century, but these things are fuzzy. Not specifically in musical terms but I think we're much closer to that landscape than we were 20 years ago, as the post-effects of the war gradually filter out

I agree with all that Daniel, if that wasn't clear. And in painting I don't think anyone ever tried to convince me that, say post-impressionism was superior to impressionism, more that you couldn't have gotten to Cezanne without Renoir first (or what have you; I'm on shaky ground with art history, it's been too long). And yes "progress" I think even in the rigid and quasi-mystical version of this narrative mostly means the steady arrival of novelty, though I liked Jordan's point that in jazz there was a self-conscious attempt to achieve literal progress (clearly tied to related visions of political & social progress, I think it's safe to say?) and you do see that crop up in various avant-garde movements. I'm no expert on dance music, but a lot of its ethos/discourse/whatever is explicitly about the future or futurism

I reject a lot of the framing in here and say again—I think the notion that there's 'not progress' is being oriented around 'what is happening in music' and not in 'how we're telling stories about what is happening in music' is basically wrong

there was a tremendous amount of forward motion in the 2010s hip hop scene, right as sfj was writing in the new yorker that it was dead. just as an example.

anyway re what Vahid was saying about decades up above, and the fact that the past is *always* a part of us but that doesn't mean it has to be so in a retro cosplay way, I like this spoken bit from utah phillips

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHcQ0XkiGU8

i also dislike framing things in terms of "progress", prefer to just think in terms of "change", or perhaps maybe just "reacting to the past" vs "progressing into the future" ... even "evolution" in the biological sense is just change, not progress

agree w/ deej also that we want to separate "what is happening" vs "how we're telling stories"

i was kind of getting at this with my "false chronology of dance culture" but to give another example there's a story of disco that involves donna summer tv appearances and disco dance lessons on late night with johnny carson and the the disco demolition rally, that's a sort of a broad storytelling where america is telling itself stories about it's relationship to disco music (it's the hottest thing! it's for everyone! no we hate it and it's anti american, burn it!)

then there's a different story that's about disco moving from meaning a place or event where hipsters dance all night to soul funk and pop music with heavy rhythms to meaning long 12" singles where the rhythm section is doing a heavy 4x4 and there's lots of repeated string and horn parts and big drum breakdowns etc, which is more of a "what is happening"

both stories are important, both are about change vs progress, but they sort of happen separately (the disco arc the average person knows is pretty much wholly separate in time from the disco arc described by soul jazz comps)

I dunno, I'd assumed that the entire conversation so far had been explicitly about "how we're telling stories about what is happening in music", as I said above it's the narrative of progress we're talking about not progress itself, etc.

But of course it's difficult to keep that distinction tidy because the stories we tell about what's happening in music inevitably bleed into the music too.

Going back to technological progress being behind much of the rapid turnover and changes in the postwar period, it would be more accurate to say a changes in material conditions (with technological progress being an example of, but not the only form of)

But we should probably also separate out the idea of individual innovative new records or innovative developments in local scenes Houston or Ankara, from the wholesale genre turnover, the lack of which is being lamented, and there seems to be some conflation.

The laments above don't seem to be about a lack of interesting new records, but that they are not ushering in new paradigm shifts. These seems to completely different things

damn this was a good thread

i still love a mixtape.
last few days i have been all over soulsavers/dj shadow + cut chemist/psycho pab/girl talk/dj format etc mixtapes that i purchased on cd of course.

lukas i can’t remember if we ever got this sorted but my slsk is up and running

i had to break in through a skylight and evade your laser motion detectors but I did get it

sweet!