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.

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