New Age and "world music" sounds and imagery in electronic music

I was just listening to some early 90s records by Atom Heart and Exquisite Corpse, and it made me remember the days when electronic and dance music used to have all these New Age and Third World signifiers, like pan pipes, whale songs, Indian or Tibetan chants, "tribal" percussions, etc. It was most prominent in ambient and trance, with acts like Banco de Gaia specializing in this type of music, but you also had these signifiers in popular tunes too, like "The P.ower of A.merican N.atives" or songs by The Shamen.

The question I was thinking of was, though, where did this stuff come from and where did it go? Why isn't anyone doing music like this anymore? (Outside of some isolated niches such as psychedelic trance.) I guess it was part of a techno hippie movement that was prominent in the early 90s, which resulted in stuff like Timothy Leary being sampled on dance records, but not all of the people producing this stuff were hippies... Was the reason this kind of music mostly faded away disillusionment with Ecstacy, mutation of 90s countercultures into something different in the 00s, or what?

Sorry, I accidentally wrote Timothy Leary when I meant Terence McKenna.

i always assumed that the sounds became prominent due to the easy availability of sample libraries.

someone once told me that the whole of lifeforms by fsol is all built off pretty basic presets/library samples ..

not sure thats entirely correct, but such a suggestion does probably have a smidgen of truth ..

and now i will have 'return to innocence' stuck in my head all day

LOL this is such a Tuomas thread.

Are you really unaware that this has been the sound du jour of outre electronic music for the past few years.

xp
I was going to write that some of this turns up in the way chillwave/vaporware/etc filters 90s electronic music, but I can't think of any examples featuring chant/whale samples right now. Maybe you're right! (or maybe I'm just forgetful)

Are you really unaware that this has been the sound du jour of outre electronic music for the past few years.

It has? I'm not really hip to the new sounds kids today are producing, can you name some examples?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHeCq5tsR24

blimey, could be a planet dog b-side.

i always assumed that the sounds became prominent due to the easy availability of sample libraries.

Good call

http://www.junodownload.com/plus/2012/11/07/juno-plus-podcast-47-young-marco/

Haha I was literally ABOUT to link to that mix.

Also feel like - apart from, like, chillwave, obv - Ronny & Renzo are a perhaps unsung heroes w/r/t to bringing some of these ideas back.

i can't ID anything on it - i wasn't even sure it was new stuff.

xpost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfq0cGd3xLU

^ Dolphins Into The Future - lots of chimes and bird songs and tribal drums and the like

yeah, on a similar tip was gonna mention all the james ferraro stuff that has a merry old time w/ 'obvious' new age sounds/signifiers

Are these new tunes part of some (ironic) appropriation of the 1990s, or are there people doing this stuff without the irony or nostalgia factor? That might be a key difference, because AFAIK, back in the 90s most people doing this music were quite serious about it.

nice sounds i think, is their reasoning.

don't think this has ever entirely gone away. house has always had some of these elements there at diff times.

early 80s dance music: preoccupation with street credentials
early 90s dance music: *panpipes*
early 00s dance music: preoccupation with street credentials
early 10s dance music: *panpipes*

(sorry, this is super-glib and reductive and inaccurate - certainly not hard to think of counterexamples - and this is actually an interesting topic which I look forward to thinking/reading about in more detail)

and now i will have 'return to innocence' stuck in my head all day

fyi i have literally not gone a single minute since i wrote this without a voice in the back of my head going HI-YA-HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

insofar as it's a nostalgia thing i think it's nostalgia leaning towards the original stuff, windham hill via ambient etc, rather than towards the 90s use.

Is it possible to make e.g. #SEAPUNK without an element of irony? Doesn't rule out also taking your music seriously.

Heaps of irony in stuff like Chill Out. The seeming absence of irony in a lot of more rave-associated stuff in the early 90s was probably #drugs.

insofar as it's a nostalgia thing i think it's nostalgia leaning towards the original stuff, windham hill via ambient etc, rather than towards the 90s use.

― opie dead eyed piece of shit (Merdeyeux), Thursday, October 3, 2013 1:41 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes the latest wave is a love letter back to the original sources. iasos, laraaji. when I hear things like that new oneohtrix, it sounds like an early 80's mashup of hearts of space with 'zoolook' and 'deep breakfast'.

1980 track from kevin braheny, though this youtube rip is sourced from an early 90's hearts of space compilation hilariously packaged / marketed towards the post-'chill out' audience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrRs68AKDiI

& never forget, the weekly soundtrack to the tv show watched by millions

http://cosmic_voyager.tripod.com/cosmosindex.htm

(if anyone has files of that original braheny cassette, please drop me a line)

http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=776025

Heaps of irony in stuff like Chill Out.

No doubt, but I don't think Chill Out really fits what I'm talking about here, KLF were never really part of this "scene". And I don't think the early 90s records of artists like Banco de Gaia or Exquisite Corpse or Psychick Warriors of Gaia or Cosmic Baby were meant to be ironic, or at least I don't see any irony either in the presentation or the music itself. I mean, the inner sleeve of Exquisite Corpse's Inner Light quotes that famous (though apocryphal, but I doubt EC knew that) speech by Chief Seattle in its entirety, and the sleeve for Banco de Gaia's Last Train to Llhasa has some political commentary on China's suppression of Tibet. I think most of those 1990s producers were quite sincere (if sometimes misguided) in using these signifiers.

seems like this thread is worth reviving... all this stuff seems vaguely balearic but it's probably not a bad idea to post the new mood hut / yoga house / young marco / etc jams here

a.r.t. wilson (Andras Fox) - janine's theme

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_F9gz3GGyQ

(rad video too)