The future of music made to sound like the past

On the original Dukes of Stratosfear mini-LP there was definitely a more concerted effort to get the sounds exactly right, on the subsequent LP it sounds like they pretty much gave up on that, with one or two exceptions, too much like hard work I expect.

it's funny when I actually listen to old r&b, soul, motown etc the drums, kick, snare aren't nearly as loud as you think of them being

The tambourines are though

haha yep

also at this point we should probably treat the 90s as a kind of detour or interlude instead of calling everything 80s revival

― nothing (Left), Thursday, March 18, 2021 4:18 AM (six hours ago)

this is an interesting if highly parochial idea

obviously all these order-imposing narratives are in some sense bullshit. you can pick them up & put them down for whatever purpose

i'd assume this is because some synthwave stuff started out imitating a particular 80s style & then the rest of the genre became about imitating those imitators rather than imitating 80s synthpop more broadly

xp
sorry Left, I actually wrote a longer post thinking about the idea more seriously but I bored myself and deleted it. Suffice to say I basically agree that if "80s mostly US/UK pop" or other 80s genres had been given a more specific name, the "80s revival" stuff might not seem so mired in retroism / nostalgia

does post-disco work or is that too vague/specific/offbase? i guess you'd have to define it more expansively than usual

Synthpop probably would cover a lot of the bases tbh, except that as a name it already sounds kind of retro

I keep thinking of that Black Pumas record, which was a big retro soul NPR/Starbucks-y record with some good songs and impressively '60s one-man-band production. But it did land a little too heavily on the side of cosplay.

Even that Raphael Saadiq run of albums where he was wearing suits in the studio and everything had something modern to recommend them...like Matt says it was clearly influenced by breakbeats and hip-hop as much as the original stuff, and you'd never actually mistake those records for (instant) vintage.

if "80s mostly US/UK pop" or other 80s genres had been given a more specific name, the "80s revival" stuff might not seem so mired in retroism / nostalgia

I take your point, but how does, say, post-punk fit into this model?

Right that's a good example: if that had been called something other than "post-punk" which locates the music in a pretty specific era (I mean yes, anything after 1977 could technically be "post-punk" but it makes punk an important point of reference, which is no longer relevant), would it seem less revivalist? Indie might make a good counterpoint.

I guess what I'm asking is: what's different about rock, folk, jazz, classical, rap, or what have you, where those genres can endure and produce new-but-recognizably-generic works without being revivalist? Admittedly, the thread is def not about this question.

i'd assume this is because some synthwave stuff started out imitating a particular 80s style & then the rest of the genre became about imitating those imitators rather than imitating 80s synthpop more broadly

― ufo, Thursday, March 18, 2021 9:53 AM (fifty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is definitely true IMO in regards to shoegaze or indie pop bands accused of rehashing late 80s early 90s styles. Easy to spot because the punk edge to those classic acts are often instead replaced with a glossiness that isn’t true to the originators.

what's different about rock, folk, jazz, classical, rap, or what have you, where those genres can endure and produce new-but-recognizably-generic works without being revivalist?

It's a very good question. I'll have to ponder it but I suspect others will come up with much better answers anyway.

Is that true though? Anyone making boom-bap rap now is either going to sound revivalist, or putting a spin on an old style. Same for anyone making jazz with swing and walking basslines.

I think a lot of it has to do with how either the rhythm or production has changed over the years. Maybe folk and classical get away with being less tied to a decade/period because those elements are not central? Or maybe I'm just not in touch enough with the melodic/compositional elements over different modern eras for those styles.

i can't believe that other post-prefixed word hasn't come up yet, admirable restraint

Is that true though? Anyone making boom-bap rap now is either going to sound revivalist, or putting a spin on an old style.

but isn't everything putting a spin on an old style? I feel like the axis descended from Roc Marciano's Marcberg (Conway the Machine, Westside Gunn, Benny the Butcher, Boldy James, Ka, Elcamino, Rome Streetz late period DJ Muggs, Daringer production in general) def has a big connection to the 90s but they way they do things, so much more minimal, less drums on a lot of it, def feels new and I wouldn't ever say that was recorded in 96

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c24Wp4N34oA

jesus that is terrible

this is how you write a song called "ice station zebra"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzWBUtnqJ4I

actually silkworm is an example of a band that embraced classic rock without seeming retro

Sure, I just assume there must be some unspun trad boom bap stuff that I don't hear. :)

This is your zone, you would know best. I guess it's like anything else, you have to be in tune with the style to catch some of those spins.

no matter how hard you try to emulate the sound of vintage gear, even down to recording on tape, there's always gonna be one link (or more) in your signal chain that's modern and up-to-date, whether it's in the recording process or a piece of gear, which is gonna rub away some of the "old-ness" and reveal the modern artifice beneath.

But as a listener that's really fine by me. When I put on The Chesterfield Kings' debut it mimics the looks and sound of a 60s album very closely, but it's a knowing recreation done by a band in the 80s. I like the songs and the sound though, so the provenance doesn't matter to me. And I've been listening to it for about 40 years, so I don't really understand "it'll never mean all that much to me for long so I shouldn't pay it too much attention."

Yeah---and this thread has certain albums coming back through my head once again, as they frequently do, ones that dealt w living in time as implicit-to-explicit subject and experience and basic material, personal and other history: John Wesley Harding, Sgt. Pepper's, Workingman's Dead, Music From Bog Pink---and they weren't going for retro-revivalism-recreation of an exact previous musical instance: it's all the present tense, the transience of that, the effect of ideas and memories of past-present-future, as evoked by musical powers of association (strategic, but also knowing when to get out of the way and let it flow like it will anyway, through various points of view, who knows what isolated and shared fanverses). Which is pretty much what I get from Sault's 2020 albums (haven't heard the previous).
(Also, in Lieber & Stoller's joint autobio, they talk about how their writing and production of "Is That All There Is?" for Peggy Lee was viewed with some trepidation by suits: would it seem like a bummer, man, in thee midst of Go-Go Sixties? No, it was one of her biggest hits; a lot of people related.)

Music From Big Pink too.

And I've been listening to it for about 40 years, so I don't really understand "it'll never mean all that much to me for long so I shouldn't pay it too much attention."

That's what interests me, Dan: how specific my own experience is. I'm glad to hear you have different one. I think a reviewer's words about Brian Wilson's completed Smile have always haunted me: he said that he predicted that though it was technically a good job, people wouldn't be listening to it much in a few years time. At the time I was a bit defensive, as I loved the project, but he's kind of right. I hardly ever listen to it now, whereas if it had actually come out in 1967, I probably would.

tbf only reason I stopped listening to it was because the Beach Boys finally released official versions of the Sessions.

I imagine if bootlegs were the only option, I'd have continued much longer with the Wilson version, which I actually got into probably 5 years after it came out

This was my first thought:

https://cdn.hmv.com/r/w-1280/p-webp/hmv/files/af/afccfb4d-d564-450b-b85d-7f6329543c99.jpg

yeah he was jansch worship at first

really moved on from that in cool directions though

Haven't listened to any version of any of the xp Smile material for several years, but I remember my favorite takes from the original sessions as great but seeming overall like a merry blur, like what was the ultimate point, but with the Nonesuch album---incl. working again w Van Dyke Parks, incl. on even more uneartherd bits, but at reasonable length etc, and I think they wrote/revised some more---I felt like I got it re the views of American history as remembered/filtered through pop culture and other layers of personal haze and speculative fiction and 60s shifts, now ongoing through finally getting it together, that late mastery and the ageing voice, of artistry and the body---I wrote at the time, "He's thee old Boy in The Bubble, just keeps rollin' along."
Although, while finding the Wondermints effective, I did miss the original voices---if somebody could airlift those into the Nonesuch Smile, and post the results, I'd 'ppreciate it.

original voices of the other Boys, that is; I like old Brian just fine, rasping out of the corner of his mouth and all.

otm

i think brian wilson presents smile is a better overall work...but the way it sounds like the past/not like the past is pretty much what this thread is about

xpost - i always feel like there's a certain degree of autotune going on with brian

that's why they call him b-pain

lol

I'm on a sloooooop

Stripper Girl

I can't think of his name now, but there's a singer in his 70s or 80s who recently recorded a single that totally fooled me that it was from the 60s or early 70s. His career had never really taken off back then and it was hard to be sniffy about it.

I don't think it was Charles Bradley I was thinking of here (who has now died and was a bit younger) but it may as well have been:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za-MIjJnzPM