I have been involved in a collective of electronic musicians going under the name TEFOSAV for the last three years. It comprises of mostly unsigned electronic composers and designers hoping to get feedback or responses for their music. By far the most popular genre in the collective is the IDM "Intelligent Dance Music" style, taking influence from Aphex Twin, Autechre, Esan, Plaid etc...
Someone mentioned something interesting the other day that as a composer of this style of electronica, he'd been taken aback by the quality of the music he hears every day on the radio. I shall reproduce his post:
As I've been getting more experimental and learning about how sounds work together and such, I am finding it easier and easier to be completely overwhelmed by music. Sounds and such can completely utterly wash over me, and I can just be so happy and smile and sing along - and it's so much stronger than it was before I knew anything.
Likewise, my CD player was stolen a few months ago, and I have been unable to listen to anything but the radio in the car for the past few months.
Luckily, I live in a place where we have kick ass radio stations (i.e. WFMU) and I can listen to backwards country music/arabian techno if I so choose. But, really, I've been listening to a good large amount of strictly "pop" music.
What I've been finding, surprisingly, is that a lot of it is really fucking good.
If you strip away the manufactured aspect and the image and such, and just listen to the music for the MUSIC ... it's quite interesting how pop music forms and what kind of interesting techniques it puts forth.
What i'm always interested in is how weird things (like the snare rushes and such) are watered down for a mainstream audience, and how comfortable most of it sounds.
The production, likewise, is incredibly tight ALWAYS.
Anyway, I'm just very interested in pop music and I think it has a lot to teach us as 'avante' electronic musicians.
that's all
john
[taken from: the TEFOSAV messageboard http://www.tefosav.com]
Just thought I'd see what you guys made of it. Is IDM a lazy-man's genre for musicians who can't be bothered to write proper polished music? Or are the pop producers the ones who are taking IDM ideas and polishing them so much, they almost become invisible to the ear?
― dog latin, Wednesday, 25 September 2002 12:39 (twenty-three years ago)
I think a move away from 'watering down' and 'diluting' as metaphors is U & K. It's not dilution so much as cocktail-making i.e. weirdness AND hooks not hooks used to make weirdness palatable (in fact of course the novelty aspect of the weirdness IS a hook too!).
Does he give any examples of the stuff he likes?
Anyway this sounds quite positive - I think its a good idea for creative 'collectives' of any kind to be open to outside influence as much as possible. What sort of reaction has he got?
― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 25 September 2002 12:48 (twenty-three years ago)
yeh examples would be good...i suspect he's talkin about 'urban' pop like DC and all those Neptunes related efforts...as nice as they are, there's no wow factor production wise with things like 'cant get you out of my head' because the hook is more in the lyrics...as for Stargate's productions - too derivative i reckon tho they've got the catchy hooks nailed down
but is pop music really produced in more sophisticated ways now then it was ten years ago? and if we have the annoying IDM tag, what about Intelligent Pop Music - and who represents that?
― blueski, Wednesday, 25 September 2002 13:00 (twenty-three years ago)
intelligent pop music = Daft Punk and Air
I think John was talking about pop music in general from SAW to the Neptunes to the Chemical Brothers as opposed to bedroom composers like Mu-ziq, Four Tet and Phonem.
― dog latin, Wednesday, 25 September 2002 13:02 (twenty-three years ago)
whats so intelligent pop about Daft Punk and Air tho?
both these bands have IDM leanings too by its own definition
IDM sucks as a term but most examples quoted are even more illogical given that no-one actually DANCES to Four Tet et al
― blueski, Wednesday, 25 September 2002 13:07 (twenty-three years ago)
eeek! Please let's not get into the infamous "does that mean all other music is dumb?" and "but I can't dance to that at all" arguments. The stupidity of the label "IDM" is very real, but it gets discussed all the time. In fact, I guess I'm not talking about IDM and Chart Pop specifically, the discussion could just as well relate to Lo-Fi vs Britpop or Black Metal vs Nu Metal, The Melvins and Black Flag vs Busted and Sum 41.
― dog latin, Wednesday, 25 September 2002 13:12 (twenty-three years ago)