2009: the great fuzzening (aka WHY IS MUSIC SO SOFT?)

ok this is probably an incoherent and insubstantiated thought, but it seems to me that a lot of what's around and being touted at the moment is awfully damn pillowy. and i mean in many different arenas. even aside from yr plain white t's and so forth, i mean there's all the-dream stuff (which is distinguished from the previous timbaland-dominated era in part by its cloudy lushness vs. tim's stuttery angles) and then in the indie realm it there's the sort of apotheosis of dreamy driftiness with animal collective and grizzly bear (neither of which i love, fwiw). and even, it seems to me, an act like wolves in the throne room -- who i do like a lot -- are deep into the ambient end of things, burying the machine-gun rhythms in waterfalls of big gorgeous sound.

i'm not particularly decrying or objecting to any of this, although some of it i like more than others. but there seems to be an almost across-the-board move away from sharpness and spikiness and punchiness toward various kinds of dreamscapes. and so, you know, I WONDER WHAT IT MEANS, and all. (country seems to be sort of exempt from this, but country so much moves on its own lagging timeline that i guess you'd expect that.)

and ok i'm sure there are tons of counter-example to cite and ways in which this is not categorically true. still, i think there's an aesthetic something going on. it would be easy to call it an obama-era thing, except almost all of it precedes him.

electrik red drink in my cup

Y'know, I think you're right. There is this tendency across a number of genres. Don't know what it means, though.

Maybe there's an underlying cycle of fuzzy/clean production as production technology develops?

i mean i think even the vig-ization of green day has done this to them to some degree. it's the layers of fuzz, the sort of gauzy underwaterness of it.

technology, well there's definitely a sort of digital brightness to the sound that's different from fuzz that's come before. and it definitely seems like a cycle of some sort. there was that stretch in the late '90s to early '00s that was all about minimalism -- exemplified by timbaland, but obviously not only by him -- and in some ways this seems like an almost inevitable cycling out of that. but i'm curious about how it functions culturally, what it means if anything. not that i have any big ideas about that.

maybe it's partly just the 20-year mark of shoegaze/mbv making its generational presence felt. i've seen "shoegaze" used as an adjective an awful lot the last few years.

and to be clear, by "soft" in the thread title i don't mean like "soft rock." a lot of this stuff is loud. but it's fuzzy, with layers you can sink into.

too sleepy and drunk right now but I look forward to seeing this thread tomorrow. The only observation I have is that the "soft" thing seems really pervasive to me as well, from indie acts like Neko or Fleet Foxes to the whole "Balearic" thing and that slow motion house/disco thread.

I think MBV are more of a reference point for middle-aged fans and critics than the musicians; certainly the BM hordes couldn't give a fuck about them.

If there is a social trend here, I think it's more likely to be to do with changes in recreational drug use than Obama or whatever: skunk displacing ecstasy and coke, perhaps?

There's also Glasvegas and Belong, two of my favorite bands of the decade. I wish metal did this even more or more completely, obliterating the blast beats and, especially, those goddamned vocals. That Wolves track leaves far too many gaps in the fuzzening for my tastes. For the billionth time, the only metal band this decade who fuzzed out with 100% success for me was The Angelic Process.

And you're right about The-Dream/Electrik Red although "P Is For Power" on the latter's album ruins the theory beautifully, recalling Tim/Jay-Z's knuckle-dragging "It's Hot (Some Like It Hot)."

As for how it functions culturally - a crappy economy makes us want to bliss out?

I think "Drink in My Cup" is just about the last Dream-related song I'd use to prove this point.

ha, i know what you mean but that's kind of why i threw it up there -- it's kind of a banger, but even as a banger it has that syrupy synth and big fuzzy curtain in the background. i mean, contrast it with lil jon stuff circa 5-6 years ago and it's like a hydrofoil vs. a low-rider.

a; People want dreamy escapism in a recession (Shoegaze peaked in early 90s recession)?
b; People reacting to the minimalism of the late 90s / early 00s (Strokes as much as Timbaland)?
c; People reacting to the in-your-faceness of the midd 00s (Kaiser Chiefs etc)?
d; People culturally tired of aggression after 8 years of war on terror etc.

Everything described in this thread explains why the following is the most welcome (if not quite best) song of the year:

XXXposts: and the balearic revivalism is definitely part of the same thing, yeah. i like the idea that it's connected to drugs -- the music all sounds kinda druggy -- but i don't know which drugs exactly. people were doing plenty of e all through the minimalist years. and i don't think that many people have really picked up the drank/lean. but maybe i'm wrong, i mostly drink red wine, what do i know?

c; People reacting to the in-your-faceness of the midd 00s (Kaiser Chiefs etc)?

I guess that's where Lil Jon gets to fit in.

The Field is a part of this, definitely.

yeah and i think it's why i'm more lukewarm on the field than on a lot of earlier kompakt heroes. like, where did the taut little click/tick tracks go?

(microhouse is for fogies)

with beards

all these are good examples but in indie rock there's def been more rough-edged lo-fi stuff than soft, pillowy stuff but that's why i appreciate grizzly bear even tho i think their music is a snooze. at least they're opening themselves up

i don't know, there's obviously been the siltbreeze revival and all, and vivian girls have gotten some attention and so forth, but i think grizzly bear is probably about to sell a lot more records than vivian girls have. (of course even the siltbreeze stuff isn't really minimalist. it has its own kind of lo-fi maximalism.)

could be the increased popularity of ketamine in the last few years

fucking fleet fuxxers

xpost welcome back Grimey Simey!

As for how it functions culturally - a crappy economy makes us want to bliss out?

― Kevin John Bozelka, Friday, 29 May 2009 06:59 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Could be true for all I know (altho 'true' or 'not true' are going to be hard to qualify here) but it's contradicted by eg Reagan-era hardcore and rave/jungle in early 90s Britain

And late 70s punk.

"Maybe there's an underlying cycle of fuzzy/clean production as production technology develops?"

i've noticed a lot of big, lush reverbs in rap/r&b lately (akon right now being one of the first ones where i really noticed it) which is in direct opposition to the super clean, almost reverb-less sound of the preceding 10 years. i put this to:

a) pro tools getting better at mixing multiple tracks (up to a few years ago i think it wasn't really as capable of getting a good, sharp mix out of loads of layered tracks as 24 track tape through a big desk) so you can afford to add some lush reverbs now
b) these sorts of things go in cycles, the 90's were thick with reverb (just listen to, say, fugees the score) so the 00's had a backlash against that, now the cycle is coming around to big reverbs and polyrythms again.

anyway 00's reflected the 80's with angular, quantitized rhythms and simple melodies/instrumentation, so now the 00's will do the opposite.

also, the democrats are in office again.

sorry, the 10's

Or, maybe put differently, it's been 80s-revivalism in the 00s, and 90s-revivalism forthcoming in the 10s. That kind of nostalgia works in 20-year cycles, I think.

and the 90's were very fuzzy. also, the dems were in office.

90s revivalism has already been present in house music for a while

where is the softness and lushness in grunge and britpop?

good question, but it's true that '90s hip-hop and r&b were pretty lush, at least pre-timbaland. yr boyz ii men, yr chronic, yr "waterfalls." so obviously there are some cyclical things. it's just interesting to me that right now this kind of wave-of-sound thing seems prevalent in a lot of different genres. i like the pro tools angle, which helps account for the particular, bright sheen of the mixes.

"90s revivalism has already been present in house music for a while"

the british are always about 5 years ahead of the curve with regards to their nostalgia cycle i've noticed. or at least it tends to kick off earlier there...

As for how it functions culturally - a crappy economy makes us want to bliss out?

― Kevin John Bozelka, Friday, 29 May 2009 06:59 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Could be true for all I know (altho 'true' or 'not true' are going to be hard to qualify here) but it's contradicted by eg Reagan-era hardcore and rave/jungle in early 90s Britain

― Down In The Babestation At Midnight (DJ Mencap), Friday, May 29, 2009 4:58 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

here's a thought - a crappy economy makes us want to form baseless theories that attribute every trend and new development in any area of culture to the crappy economy?

is this really a thing? what about all the synth harshness of those hipster dance/rock acts?

it's still a fuzzy harshness though, isn't it?

here's a thought - a crappy economy makes us want to form baseless theories that attribute every trend and new development in any area of culture to the crappy economy?

― frankly mr. cankly (some dude), Friday, May 29, 2009 1:17 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

COSINE. can someone tape this up in every editor's office and make it a rolling banner on every msgboard please

i mean it's a nice-sounding theory but there are too many examples and counter-examples from then and now for it to hold any water for me

but then i don't believe in these cross-cultural trends at all really, so wvs

xpost there's a kind of high mid-range buzz in most of yr hipsterdance-y stuff - not necessarily intentional but it's where synth distortion and mock hi-hat noise meet. it is the mean-sounding equiv of the soft shoegaze fuzziness.

FWIW I was countering a generalisation rather than positing my own theory there - I don't think there's a lot of mileage in trying to link this to culture/economy altho some people obv have fun doing so, so...

i was caning busta & mariah's 'i know what u want' this morning, which about as soft as you get, and reflecting on how that sort of smooth softness just wouldn't get anywhere chartwise these days.

also, that awful harpy la roux is apparently popular in 2009.

i mean it's a nice-sounding theory but there are too many examples and counter-examples from then and now for it to hold any water for me

well there always are. there's never just one thing going on. i think of the early '00s as being full of minimalist stuff and can give you plenty of examples, but there was also, you know, nickelback. otoh, it's absurd to say different eras don't have different and particular sounds, usually across genres. (e.g. the way disco production infiltrated everything in the late '70s, including eventually punk.)

but right, plenty of exceptions. just curious about the commonalities.

Okay thoughts on the album:

- It's really good, in ways I hadn't anticipated and maybe can't quite articulate yet.

- The reason they are really good is nothing to do with the 'ZOMG! They are mixing indie punk with African and Irish music!" Emperor's New Clothes nonsense present in all the hype. If anything, these moments are brief flourishes and nothing more. And once again it shows how low collective expectations of new guitar bands have become, that if one shows any evidence of knowing what to do with a rhythm section then it suddenly beocmes a huge selling point.

- The moments when there ARE African or Irish influences prominent in the music threaten to teeter over into atrocious Sting/Paul Simon territory but never actually do so. Possibly because the band understand the value of RESTRAINT.

- This sense of restraint is maybe why Nick Southall might have been right all along. Compared to most of the other overhyped rock records of the last few years, this one feels so... tidy! You listen to any haircut indie of the past through years, starting from The Killers and through Bloc Party, the Arctic Monkeys, The Klaxons and Los Fucking Campasinos and there's just sonic clutter everywhere. The Vampire Weekend album hardly puts anything anywhere that doesn't need to be there, and that feels refreshing and crisp - cf the bass and drums at the start of 'Campus'. Ironically this is exactly what I would have attacked The Strokes for in 2001.

- It's bubblegum pop grown up a few years, with exactly the same concerns dressed up differently, isn't it? "I see you walking across the campus..." is the sort of timeless girly chorus you'd expect to hear in any pop record of the last few decades. Production-wise, it sounds like that as well, and yet I don't even remotely hold that against it...

― Matt DC, Sunday, January 27, 2008 12:52 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

What is truly the common thread with all this stuff: prominent use of thick synthesiser sounds.

Obv a lot of rock and indie is reacting to the predominant position of electroclash/electro-house these past few years.

The particular euro-synthy vibe of some R&B/hip hop and the generalised synthy lushness of a lot of it may or may not be connected

I guess Lady Gaga is the point where the two trends converge...

Also schaffel-pop (which makes a line covering indie, electrohouse, microhouse, chartpop and R&B)

The particular euro-synthy vibe of some R&B/hip hop and the generalised synthy lushness of a lot of it may or may not be connected

yeah, stargate is one obvious euro-link.

tho whether they're driving that sound or reflecting its pervasiveness, i don't know. both, i suppose.

My armchair analysis is "that sound" (the pillowy) could not be reproduced digitally until recently- you could get lost in a Zep record back in the day with a bong or you could rock out depending on your mood but with the first Zep CD's that wasn't possible (I thought they sounded shrill and harsh) until digital technology and the knowledge on how to use it caught up.

I blame the My Bloody Valentine reunion. Now everybody wants a bit of that "sort of fluff on the needle sort of a sound"

But you know, for some of us, it never really went away.

I think you're assuming everyone making music like this cares about MBV.