What sounds cutting edge in 2016?

if you do come close to making something that sounds like it could've been made 20-40 years ago.. it has these quotation marks superglued around it.

it's just that it can be so death-affirming and depressing when i listen to this: http://www.discogs.com/Various-Soul-Fire-The-Majestic-Collection/release/557307

subconsciously detecting the granular gaps between authentic-60s sound replication and productions that are *almost there*

NB: these are just my thoughts, i'm not judging or putting down people's tastes or w/e

mockery of Jute Gyte is on the increase on ILX, which actually cheers me a great deal; when something cultural is more broadly mocked, its importance becomes more obvious

― sounding like a silly Iain Banks on a track (imago), Wednesday, 13 January 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The state of this.

I guess I should say that my interest in this topic comes from things like Simon Reynolds' Retromania and Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My life, which discuss the causes and manifestations of a lack of interest in the future, a lack of faith in it, and a general inability to conceive of or create a future that's too different to our present.

How doesn't most music today imagine a future that isn't different to ours? You do know these thoughts (even if Retromania is from a couple of years ago) were based on about a decade old tossed off sentences in blogs both of them probably haven't bothered to update, right? Why are you swallowing this reactionary trash?

the future arrived and it was some people destroying the environment

Jlin and Visionist sound cutting edge to me

There is plenty of innovative or experimental or exciting music out there, and a lot that is none of those things and still wonderful, but I think people are pouring scorn on 'cutting-edge' because it's a concept for try-hards.

I dunno, I think it's important that ILM have one yearly thread where people can discuss new music that totally blows minds

1. 'Just as all the colours in the spectrum have now been seen and all the land masses in the world have been mapped, so too are all the possible sounds in the world now accessible to us, largely thanks to technology'

vs

2. 'The whole Retromania argument is bullshit. Of course new sounds are being forged all the time. Anyone spouting crap about 'no shock of the new', 'no truly new innovations' is blind to what is actually happening in music today'.

So which is it to be?

If only there were some other arguments one might make...

a better word for this is fashion, not cutting edge.

http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/904.pdf

'Retromania' gets a bad rap from people who didn't actually read the book past the introduction.

How you can muster the enthusiasm to have this virtually identical earnest conversation for like the fiftieth time is beyond me.

Just as all the colours in the spectrum have now been seen

this is a really philosophically weird account of vision

Of course new sounds are being forged all the time.

this is a really philosophically weird account of hearing

I dunno, I think it's important that ILM have one yearly thread where people can discuss new music that totally blows minds

― i have measured out my life in Goffey, Coombes (Noodle Vague), Thursday, January 14, 2016 2:13 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

impossible, can't make ILM threads without it becoming a big fussy arm waving thing

there is often a waving motion of part of the arm involved, yes

it's a finger and it's not a wave

'Retromania' gets a bad rap from people who didn't actually read the book past the introduction.

― canoon fooder (dog latin), Thursday, 14 January 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I haven't read a word of it.

ignorance is blissed

Nobody's positive thoughts on it -- actually regurgitation of the same reactionary clap trap -- has made me want to pick it up.

i've read it and iirc my assessment of it was 'simon reynolds is a grumpy old revanchist modernist'

I don't really follow most of what y'all are saying but all I would say is this:

what sounds "fresh" is relative to what the listener is already familiar with, and is going to vary widely from listener to listener as a result

Do you mean that it's no longer possible to create a music that *no-one* is already familiar with? Because that sounds like bollocks to me.

yes, but is bollocks cutting edge?

I don't know what's cutting edge and don't listen to a lot of new music but I support this thread. Carry on with the actual recommendations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQxx0ESyNjk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eUv9xzTv94

If only there were some other arguments one might make...

Oh, if only...

keith rowe & graham lambkin - making a

― ANU (sisilafami)

if this was made by anybody else, would it have been released? i thought this one was pretty bland, what are your thoughts on it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItMJtA8vfpw&feature=youtu.be

if this was made by anybody else, would it have been released? i thought this one was pretty bland, what are your thoughts on it?

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n)

Devin Disanto is nobody but his stuff gets released and is comparable to making a, so yeah.

I have no thoughs except that i enjoy listen to it.

As I've been reminded this week, Bowie's '70s output is a pretty good perpetual answer to this question regardless of year. Particularly the Berlin stuff.

I have no thoughs except that i enjoy listen to it.

so much for music discussion. the disanto/hoffman recording is dynamic and eventful, with structured activity, and an abundance of novel, sometimes jarring sounds.. it's puzzling, with elements of narrative and exposition. there's a liveliness to it. while Making a is comprised of sound events, there's nothing really interesting about it. i can't argue with your response, but there's a marked depth and coherence to three exercises. Making a is really hard to engage with, in comparison

I think 'making a' is as eventful, it's just that sometimes you wanna listen to something quiet and soothing.

http://asystems.co

More please.

the cutting paper w scissors thing turned out actually pretty prescient w the whole ASMR boom.

Saw Lotic DJ last night in the side room of Tresor and he played mostly r&b and rap anthems mixed with edits of his own and lots of that post-dubstep-post-footwork "experimental club music" you can find all over Beatport and it sounded both really out-there and really fun. I was expecting simply lots of horrible noises so I guess I should check his Boiler Room?

Lotic has done nothing but bore me to tears and write irritating posts about PC Music but if it's the future then it's the future I guess

I need to listen to this Elysia Crampton...Rev, did you listen to the E+E album that was getting some hype once upon a time...?

("this"...I meant "some")

boxedjoy, his own records are much farther out than his dj sets, the BR set is very enjoyable.

Yeah it was my boyfriend who wanted us to go and I was expecting it to be like that "when you play Lotic at a party" meme video tbh so I was really surprised to be hearing Rae Sremmurd and Rihanna - not even edits, just played straight

How very revealing that Imago finds a post denouncing racism and homophobia to be "irritating".

I forgot we actually did this two years ago so no sense in going back over old ground I suppose.

how very revealing? fuck off

it was all the stuff about insincerity that painted the actual music of lower worth that was irritating

racism and homophobia need to be called out wherever they exist. this is so obvious and true I can't quite believe you're flinging such poisonous murmurings my way

and if 'imago is a bigot, I read his Fader rant' is a thing now, then sure my posts there were totally wrong and misguided but at the heart of it was a disdain for The Fader as a shitty hipstery music-as-fashion sooo woke yah sex is so great yah these people singing about sex is so sexy they just want to impose their young sexy sex on us and we should be honoured superiority complex disguised as a magazine

...rather than disdain for people of any race or culture or orientation

Anyway, back on topic, Elysia Crampton is kind of awesome and has always grabbed me much much more than Lotic.

imago much love but you did start throwing shade at lotic completely unprompted, so your shock and awe at other people "flinging poisonous murmurings your way" comes off as slightly disingenuous.

Racism and homophobia need to be called our wherever they exist, as long as it happens in a way that doesn't disparage music you like, in which case it becomes so irritating that you have to bring it up two years later for no reason.