Pop and Futurism

New futurist answers!

Questions, before engagement:

(a) At what recent points would you say pop music has been futuristic? Early eighties, spurred by fancy new synths and a futurist culture at large? The late-ninties moment when trip-hop knock-offs could chart, electronica started charting if it was crude enough (Chemical Brothers, Prodigy), and dance techniques were trickling over into hip-hop, Timbaland-style?

(b) Is pop really responsible for its own futurism, or must it necessarily come from the public at large? The early eighties are the most "futuristic" point I can remember in pop music, but they're also the most "futuristic" cultural moment I can remember at all. If we put the late-nineties futurist blip down to the big Everything Is Great technology boom, wouldn't that suggest an upcoming no-more- future reversal for pop?

(c) Is it really possible for pop to sound futuristic without borrowing its futurist elements from less visible scenes? Could one make arguments in favor of a certain Kraftwerk Principle, wherein a "new" sound must be codified and given "edgy" (or "futuristic") cultural connotations in some more forward-looking experimental scene -- packaged up, essentially, for easy introduction into pop's vocabulary?

Oh, and (d): aren't we at a technological plateau, where the last decade has seen huge leaps in the kinds of sounds people were making, but right now there's no stunningly new technology for pop to get its hands on? I think this is an important point. I remember watching that dance-oriented MTV show a few years ago (Amp?) and noting that its imagery underwent a slow transition from 3-d CGI robots and such to time-lapse photography of tides and blooming flowers -- creating a sense of natural processes as actually post-robotic, the most complex technology available. And as I type this, I'm listening to Fennesz's Endless Summer, with its prominent placement not of clicks and cuts and glitches, but super-processed acoustic guitar. Does there come a flip-back point -- like infinity in a number line -- where the only way to trump technological futurism becomes some sort of naturalist futurism?

(e) Am I completely talking out of my ass here?

you're so right about amp, i noted that at the time too. although pastoral imagery in techno was hardly new when most of the vids started picking up on it. that show was great though, remember that squarepusher one with the kids in the hospital? what song was that?

A lot of what I see happening both in pop and indie scenes is (to coin rapidly cliche-ing phrase) retro-futurism. In other words, sampling of older, retro-ish genres like funk/soul (esp. in Hip Hop where 'Crate-digging' is fetishized) combined with sequencing/sampling/ filtering/drum machines to give a new edge to the sound.

Does there come a flip-back point -- like infinity in a number line -- where the only way to trump technological futurism becomes some sort of naturalist futurism?

Good point, Nitsuh. One great example of this trend in the pop market was last year's Moby album. I also read an interview with Matmos recently where they said (of Bjork) "...She would tell us to make it sound like a garden."

I also think GLitch and the electronic 'vanguard' are moving away from the electronic sterility and toward a warmer, more 'natural/ chaotic' sound. Fennesz is a perfect example, also Jan Jelinek et al experimenting with analog filters and record/needle noises.

a) Squarepusher track = Come on you Selecta. IIRC

b) Turner, there's a new album on Mille Plateaux by Donnacha Costello called "Together is the New Alone" that goes further into the sound you're describing. I haven't heard myself but it supposed to be glitchy ambient with acoustic guitar. And very good too.

c) Nitsuh's points are great. But I'm fascinated by this technological plateau and esp. naturalist futurism. Nick in BadII was taking the piss sort of, but I must confess that I actually thought "yeah that's about right." Come to think of it, somewhere last year I've seemed to have slipped into a state where I hardly listen to old music anymore. Just some dub, some Roxy and some Kraftwerk, but even those are getting less playtime. The thought of listening to say the Stooges at this moment feels very alien, very close to what you once felt when putting on a 78rpm record.

technological plateau PLUS the conceptual forward work was done at the turing machine level in the 50s and 60s (not all realised at that stage admittedly)

i just realised i missed stockhausen at the barbican: that fucking fuck bin laden!!

IMO, Pop and Futurism starts with _technopop_ by the Buggles and ends with _coming age_ by Motocompo. Futurism in music continue in works like Autechre and their programs who compose songs, but it's not pop.

More thoughts on the new futurism that was today on In Review. Also, 80s futurism = humanistic, cf. Flock of Seagulls all about love and running in a world of machines. All like Logan's Run, or sometimes about machines with hearts. Hence the goth/emotionalist crosspollination. Contrast late 90s pop-futurism which is about the horde and rave massive rather than the individual. Also, 70s futurism was either prog escapism focused on sole-listener -- not as voice of humanity but rather solopsistic philosopher -- or afro-futurism which is its whole own distinct tradition.

I must say Sterling that I kinda half lost you with your most recent entry in regards to the rock'n'roll-analogous direction for hip hop/r&b you mention - it would help, I think, if you had an example of what you mean...? Or hasn't it happened anywhere yet?

As for the matter at hand: I think you're pretty much right about the progression in aesthetic capability vs aesthetic of progress. I think there was an aesthetic of anti-humanism for a while, which I think many of us tend to associate with the future for a number of reasons (psychologically = fits in with the dangers warned about in 20th Century humanist sci-fi; with Kraftwerk's man-machine aesthetic; with fears about totalitarian governments/evils of hypercapitalism; with The Matrix - on that note, surely Missy's Da Real World album was some sort of pinnacle for this?). A reaction was inevitable. I don't think what we're seeing now is a single reaction as such - more like a disintegration (though not neccessarily in a bad way). The process of these divergences coalescing into a single paradigmatic shift is something we're too close to to identify at the mo'.

I might have some related thoughts on what's happening when I finally post my extended thoughts on Jay-Z's new album (possibly tomorrow, possibly not).

No real examples yet, just sortof a trend towards "dirty" R&B (see also Aaliyah's Rock The Boat) and staid hip-hop. Early rock had the same themes as Craig David, y'know? So maybe those sorts of themes will progress sortof as they did in rock -- which is to say, "parents" (and other rigid moral forces) vs. sexuality rather than money vs. love.