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Looper's Delight
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On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Matt Davignon wrote: > There's a tenet of experimental music that I don't agree with so much > these days, and it's the idea that everything must be new. > .............. My concern is that the push for "newness" > often leads away from uniqueness. > > I am so with you in this thoughtful post, Matt! And that may seem odd, as I actually have always been what I call an 'exoticist' or a 'xenophiliac' in my musical life. I've always desired to seek out the 'new' or the 'exotic'. In more prosaic stylistic terms, I got bored with rock, funk, jazz and soul at one point so it led me into studying different kinds of global cultural musics........to me, the more exotic, the more interesting...........I tried to explore every single percussion tradition........and later, scalar traditions in my own journey. Along the way, I became fascinated with the fact that found objects and objects that were specifically defined as non-musical could be recontextualized to create new instruments..... .......this led me to electronic music (far later than almost anyone I know who has explored those modes of expression) and digital sound design. Of course, the danger of 'exoticism' is that one becomes a 'jack of all trades and a master of none' as my father used to disapprovingly and sceptically say to me when I was a young musician.* At the same time, being interested in large amounts of musical styles and modes of making musics can also make one very unique. But part of all of this journey was just what all artists do: they try to find out who they are and how to best express themselves...........with some it is exploring spanish classical guitar in a tradition that is hundreds of years old without a lot of innovation......or someone like me who flits about stylistically like some kind of ADD butterfly. Because, like you, I have performed at so many new, experimental, avant garde, impovisatory, jazz and live looping festivals, I have come to see that there are 'flavors of the month' and that those 'flavors' frequently are very, very conservative in their implementation and very stifling of creativity..............dubstep is one of those genres, at least to me. I've also been turned down for music festivals because my own brand of experimentalism didn't match what the people who run the festivals have deemed is the 'right' kind of experimentalism. It stung like hell but in the same breath, I have turned down dozens of looping artists from the Y2K festivals because they were only processing loops live and not creating them live. They felt as stung as I did, I imagine. To the exoticist, the enemy can frequently, and knee jerkedly, be tradition, but as I see it, this is misplaced. The true enemy, imho, is fundamentalist orthodoxy, especially when orthodoxy is used in the name of creating an 'Us' and 'Them' environment in musical 'schools'. Loving playing the Blues in traditional ways, conservatively still has tons of room for creativity, expression, passion and aesthetic beauty just as the Electronic musician who craves the new has the same chance in their music. I'm down with all of it, as long as people aren't snobs because of their own 'orthodoxy'. Another thing that occurs to me is that the lion share of musicians on the planet who are really obnoxious about their own stylistic fundamentalism are young musicians (and by young, I mean, experientially young which may or may not be chronologically young). Most people have their healthy share of insecurities but experientially young people seem to be more insecure. It is why I hear my younger friends bemoaning how stuck up the 'hipsters' are in the musical scene. If you aren't rocking fender guitars drenched in spring (NOT digital) reverb with a kind of bright, surf rock vibe and vocals drenched in the same verb as is the orthodoxy of a lot of the trendy Brooklyn bands in indie rock, it's harder to find gigs for young bands..................but it's always been like this (or at least in my 40 years of experience in the music biz). There will always be snobbish hipsters who eschew anything outside of the latest fad. And anyone who isn't inside of this stylistic 'mainstream' will feel stung. Anyway, sorry for the length of the musings, but this post just really got me thinking about it all. **** oh, and by the way, much as I like your post, I have a very small nitpick with one thing you said: you wrote: (Such as dubstep, which while nice, is pretty much industrial/IDM with echoes.) Errrr, I'm not a fan of dubstep to be honest, but I have studied it and I think your definition is just too pat. Dubstep, has a lot of influence from Dub Reggae which industrial/IDM doesnt; it has a preoccupation with very deep and long subsonic distorted bass lines that have NOT traditionally been in industrial/IDM and it also has had a preoccupation with remixing psychelia which also has not been a major portion of industrial/IDM in the same way. For my tastes, there is just not very much creativity going on in the movement but I also don't know it well enough to say so (I can just hear my dubstep aficianado buddies groan as they read this post, except they never will because they wouldn't be caught dead on this forum.......<smile>) And yet, in the same breath, I have a lot of metal students lately and I'm frankly confused at all the micro definitions that metalheads take so seriously............I don't see all that many differences between thrash, death, speed, black, melodic black, gothic, drone, sludge and other kinds of metal. Sometimes, according to my students, the fact that a singer growls as opposed to singing or screaming will change the genre name of metal. I'm lost, but they love it and I love them, so I'm gonna sort it all out.............lol..........I just got my first professional double bass drum pedal towards that end.