Worst "genre" created by a journalist part 4534547668686 : 'Hypnagogic Pop' by David Keenan.

am content to no longer subscribe to this magazine, for a number of reasons

i do thumb through my back issues on occasion tho

Emeralds are awesome, Pocahaunted suck. There are way more bands both of these bands sound like other than each other.

solar bridge = top drawer lo-fi psych-drone

i just signed a deal to write a 33 1/3 book about hypnagogic pop....it's gonna basically be a first person account of me surfing the internet today....some ILXORS will be making cameo appearances! : )

i'm trying to think of something snappy and contrarian

sorry to derail, but ilx poster: "i know, right?": did you used to post under a different name? i think i'm guilty of having you mixed up with someone else for a very, very long time

no i've pretty much always been me iirc ; )

The last time i got this annoyed by the wire was when they used Vladislav Delay instead of Luomo which I figured is because Luomo is a more famous handle.

he uses difft handles for difft releases tho, i assume the wire just used whatever he was using at the time

I can't help thinking that the phrase 'hypnagogic pop' would be a better description of MBV etc than it is of Pocahaunted et al. And if it fits to any act these days, I reckon it'd be Grouper.

(oh okay thanks) (xposts)

this thread is now #3 on google for Hypnagogic Pop
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=hypnagogic+pop&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=

the wire in playing fast and loose with the definition of "pop" shocker

indeed it may be a few dozen Skaters and Pocahaunted albums since I heard anything by them, but I really have no idea what they have to do with 'pop'.

"The last time i got this annoyed by the wire was when they used Vladislav Delay instead of Luomo which I figured is because Luomo is a more famous handle.

he uses difft handles for difft releases tho, i assume the wire just used whatever he was using at the time"

Also I'm not sure this would necessarily be true for readers of the Wire anyway.

i found the pdf of the hypnagogic pop on another board
hxxp://www.mediafire.com/?i0kyoexginm

reminds me of when the wire were really into Cocorosie

so you can read it all to your hearts content
xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjrQjt-d9o0

^ Kitchens of Distinction claiming the h-word the term for shoegaze

didnt the cure do it first?

i don't get why they don't just throw it in some hauntology bracket

giving it it's own thread where people start discussing it essentially legitimizes it, so good work herms

i just signed a deal to write a 33 1/3 book about hypnagogic pop....it's gonna basically be a first person account of me surfing the internet today....some ILXORS will be making cameo appearances! : )

― I'm a Matt...I'm a DC (M@tt He1ges0n), Monday, July 20, 2009 4:02 PM (1 hour ago)

i'll be cool, sounds like a bit of fun

^^^will be cool

i found the pdf of the hypnagogic pop on another board

Until I read the full article I won't know for sure, but there may be a connection of some kind with the Hypnagogue EP by former Keenan faves Current 93.

i think originally the term for bands like the skaters and pocohaunted was 'moan-wave'. srsly.

yep.

i would not call emeralds 'moan-wave,' they're of the 'new age wave.' ;) and theyre a relatively new band, compared to the skaters anyways..

ahh sorry, it said on that message board it was a PDF. I didnt d/l it as i have the magazine.

1) The day I give even half a toss about anything D Keenan says about music is ... well, the day someone invents a time machine and punts me back to 1996.

1.5) An erstwhile ILXor who might not care to be named here once amused the shit out of me with a hastily improvised and astonishingly vitriolic Keenan flipbook.

2) That Emeralds album remains one of the best things I've heard this year, though.

so weird, Emeralds used to suck so much upon inception, now i'm kind of into it.

also, Skaters as 'moan-wave' is fucking ridiculous. Skaters are fucking DMT caveman music.

the wire - 12 mags in a row where i like about 5% of the writing. i won't be re-subscribing (after 10 years).

I kind of think that 'to wind people up' is a pretty good reason to come up with spurious genre names at this point in time

Also a quick skim of this article made it seem pretty interesting and made me want to hear more Skaters stuff especially... I have a number of problems with David Keenan but I don't blanket hate everything he does or says

^^^otm

skaters rule and deserved the whole six pages to themselves, really

I do have one of James Ferraro's tapes he did as Lamborghini Crystal and I guess the whole aesthetic of that project is like taking old corny 80s synth-rock and straight-to-VHS movie soundtracks as the basis, then makng them all twisted and confusing and sounding like it's been passed down to an nth-generation cassette... I mean the validity of this (and what Ariel Pink does which is sort of similar) is up for debate perhaps but the more I think about it 'hypnagogic pop' is actually a pretty cool way of describing it IMO

so er how about that british visionary jazz article eh?

James Ferraro deserves the whole six pages. Spencer just isn't as good. Lamborghini Crystal, 90210, ED FLEX are SO MUCH BETTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE.

Obvi this is a valid form. It's the transmogrification of the stuff of life. The roadside temple is MEMORY THEATER. If you take your fetish past all limits you're left with the CRYSTAL BALL. It's therapy as neuromancy.

i would not call emeralds 'moan-wave,' they're of the 'new age wave.'

yeah, the processed pan flute is taking the place of the vocals through delay pedal, which is one of the defining characteristics of moan-wave.

I had vaguely considered hypnagogia wrt, say, Stars of the Lid, Windy and Carl, maybe Landing or Grouper (though yep, Emeralds works too), and had some never-to-be-realised delusions of a tape label called something hypnagogic, so I don't know whether to be pleased or disappointed if this is now a Thing. Though D. Keenan irritates me, so the latter beckons, but I haven't read the article yet, here goes...

Had a quick skim of this one: sounded like Merzbowing 80s hits. DK seemed to spend quite a lot of time talking about 80s pop as this bloated thing while evade the reason this seemed to be picked up in the first place: that it was GOOD MUSIC FULL STOP.

(xpostish) Is "moanwave" the name for every drone/noise act that shoves the microphone up close and cups it and goes "wauhhhheerrrrrrrrr-rrrr-rrr" into it over some polite bowing and clattering of Tibetan bowls and little tinkly bells? I am all for that having a genre of its own so I can avoid it more easily

(PS I dig some of this stuff but there's a lot of it about and it gets tired pretty quickly - OK, I like drone/psych/noise/whatever better when harmonically rich and not just sparse creepy noises, trouble is telling which is which before paying for yr limited edition $15 C20 or 3" CD-R in packaging hand-made from bracken and 1970s toilet paper)

haha has anyone in this thread managed to actually read & not skim the whole article yet?

Is "moanwave" the name for every drone/noise act that shoves the microphone up close and cups it and goes "wauhhhheerrrrrrrrr-rrrr-rrr" into it over some polite bowing and clattering of Tibetan bowls and little tinkly bells?

microphone technique is correct. Could be tinkly bells, bowls and bowing action ... could be guitar drone ... could be pretty much anything that is a) repetitive and b) demonstrative of minimal technical aptitude on an instrument

xp thomp - not me ... my "power-skim" left me with the impression that it is new age hippy drone mixed with melodic 80s fluff.

Yeah the gamelany stuff is pretty much just not as good (except Pacific Rat Temple maybe?). Most of James Ferraro's work is not like that though.

remember "subterranean metal"?

no

protip: use the contextual clues of this thread to figure out what it was!

Sunn 0))

if u google it savage pencil seems to implicitly accept "yes, that was just a made-up label for the sake of getting wire readers to pay attention". which it is nice, that he admits it.

should have called it BritFunk

Level 42 and others already did that in the late 70s/early 80s

Now we have data science analyzing listening habits and the likes of Spotify giving us monikers like "Escape Room" that qualify groups of artists that listeners seem to seek in parallel

Blame Glenn McDonald.

wank sock

had a hypnogogic moment where i got confused by the fact he has the name same as someone i know

This is striving hard to reach Bobby Gillespie levels of bullshit

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/david-keenan-i-ve-been-quite-close-to-madness-writing-these-books-1.4401052

it's not a good combo when the writer of the piece is just as full of shit as their interviewee!

I could envisage David becoming a character in the ongoing Chronicles of Boaby on ILX, I'm not sure how to depict an Airdrie accent though because I don't believe such a thing exists. Possibilities are there for a Four Yorkshiremen type sketch, could do with maybe one more West of Scotland windbag though.

(xp) Not exactly uncommon though!

"shroomadelica" c2000 had to be the most barrel-scrapey of the lot

For Keenan, logic is secondary to logos. He uses language as an instrument of spell-casting, of grammar as grimoire, distrusting the literary algorithms of plot mechanics, objective realism.

Fuck off with your plotless grimoire you talentless fuck. I saw his free jazz trio once, he's not exactly Albert Ayler put it that way.

I don't really have a problem with the guy, he's a bit of a hustler and a bullshitter, always was, but he's done well for himself. Plus he had to grow up in Airdrie, so he has my sympathy

I've not read any of his books so shouldn't laugh too much either I suppose. Anyone else?

I read his first novel and it was just OK. I actually wanted a more 'realistic' treatment - I live quite near to Airdrie now, and would like to have learnt more about its history, and more about the Scottish alternative music scene prior to the 1990s. But that might be more appropriate for non-fiction rather than fiction.

England's Hidden Reverse is p essential, and Volcanic Tongue was a great source of out sounds. In person have always found DK to be pretty genial and certainly not averse to having a chat, or an argument, with anyone. He's an enthusiast as much as he is a bullshitter and a hustler, and I can forgive him a lot for that. The Subcurrent Festivals he put on in Glasgow were fantastic.

Yes, I think he's been involved in some good things. Some not so good, mind you.

Wikipedia article on Keenan:

In an August 2009 piece for The Wire, Keenan coined "hypnagogic pop" to describe a group of musicians whose work resembled "pop music refracted through the memory of a memory". His article incited a slew of hate mail that derided hypnagogic pop as the "worst genre created by a journalist".[2]

Citation:

The article in The Wire magazine that defined the term "hypnagogic pop" garnered a slew of semi-hate mail, describing it as the "worst genre created by a journalist".

England's Hidden Reverse is peculiar and obsessive and unsettling. Even if you're not into the music he uses as a framing device (Coil, Current 93 etc) it's well worth a read.

he never answers my calls - tough guy to get a hold of

I got England's Hidden Reverse out of the library thinking I would just read the few pages about Psychic TV. Despite not having heard any records by Current 93, Coil or NWW, I found the whole book gripping and read it all. It has a lot of interview input from the artists, and insightful observations of the role of the occult in music and culture.

i like david keenan!

there, i said it.

Did anyone listen to the new album track on his website? Aside from the singing, it's like an outtake from The Unforgettable Fire, I didn't expect that, guess I was expecting angles and Pere Ubu.

I like him too, but there are more than one

I really like Keenan (irl and on the page - both are something of a construct you have to get yr head around) and have long felt vaguely guilty about slagging him off on this particular thread 11 years ago. He's clearly one of the good folk when you look across the entire field of play (not that he's even a music writer any more).

hypnagogic pop is a good term.