Is music in a slump?
Just from looking through gig listings, reviews, and the like, there doesn't seem to be much going on compared to, I don't know, three or four years ago. In terms of new bands coming through, festivals being good, exciting gigs happening anyway. I mean, I'm sure there are some, and these things always have their own ebb and flow, but 'the scene', such as it is, seems a bit flat nowadays.
What ARE the kids up to these days?
*NB This isn't an opportunity for marckee et al to tell us how many crap gigs they've been to this week.
- Relevant artist taggings:
- Back To The Old School »[x]
- The Whore Moans »[x]
- The Generous days »[x]
- Sweet Jane Andrews Lane Theatre Saturday October 17th @ 10.30pm »[x]
- White Williams »[x]
White Williams
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Globally
Haven't heard a good favela-skiffle band in years.
No
depends where you look
a quick browse at the fabric or corsica or any decent club listings shows electronic music is in an incredibly healthy state
Yeah, I was trying to avoid saying *British guitar music* because no-one wants THAT thread
I just wanted to know if there was a general consensus of a slump or if I genuinely am too old to know what the kids are up to.
YR A BORING
</default response>
you're getting old
Thanks, Dad
Seriously though, I was digging through my CDs yesterday and kept noticing shit albums by no-mark schmindie bands (Blood Red Shoes and Sons & Daughters spring to mind) and realising that I haven't bought a depressingly uninspired guitar album in aaaaaaaages. I mean, I could buy the Spector one but a) they're shit and b) it's not even aimed at the likes of me.
Just listen to Mark Rileys show.
There's still loads of uninspired indie bands around that would be right up your street!
I tried to start listening to that again
I really, really tried :(
Just awful.
But if I put on Radio 4 at 7 when I'm cooking dinner, I'm gonna start getting into the Archers. I can't allow that.
Eurgh
Absolute Classic Rock saves me a lot of radio-identity angst if I'm honest.
I'm not having that.
He's younger than me.
I think the problem is that it just isn't 1994 anymore.
same as it ever was
just read Simon Reynold's 'Retromania'...
...for a really depressing outlook on the state of music today.
*music journalism
You KNOW how this is going to go. Why put yourself through it?
I just thought the music board goblins needed something to get their teeth into
after the recent incidents of teasing and unserious threads.
Prepare for wave after wave of
it's-the-same-as-it-ever-was-you-just-have-to-look lies
And the people trying to convince themselves that what they're currently into IS as good as they want it to be
Been there, done that, got the Mr Scruff album.
For what it's worth
I've felt much the same way the last few years, so - for instance - for a long while I dived headlong into old rockabilly records as an avenue to channel my welled up pretension.
There are still fresh ways to be a music cock, you just have to seek them out
It's not that, it's more the fact that loads of 18-25 types and beyond are in bands
Because people that age always are in bands, I just don't know what they're up to. Isn't music easier to produce/put out nowadays? Where are the kids and what are they up to?
I refuse to accept that everyone is enjoying Pendulum at Reading.
rockabilly? pffft.
Western swing's where it's at mate.
THIS IS MY NEW STOCK ANSWER TO EVERYTHING
I'm perfectly cheered, thanks
This isn't a *IS INDIE MUSIC DEAD?* or *ARE BLACK PEOPLE KILLING INDIE MUSIC?* thread, just thought we could have a nice discussion about where music is going at the moment, maybe mention some interesting, non-shit bands that are about, even throw some wild speculation about as to what the next-big-thing may be. No need to bring all your baggage with you.
This is going to be the best re-bump + jag in the history of Dis!
haha
Are slumps killing music?
Was just thinking this morning
how completely amazing this year has been for stuff I like. I mean just off the top of my head and in the next couple of months alone-
Daphni ~ Jialong
Swans ~ The Seer
Maria Minerva ~ Will Happiness Find Me?
The xx ~ Coexist
Holy Other ~ Held
LV ~ Sebenza
Mala - Mala in Cuba
Bee Mask ~ Vapourware/Bee Mask ~ When We Were Eating Unripe Pears
Sun Araw ~ Inner Treaty
take this post seriously
only a serious music fan would use a ~ rather than a -
I'm not entirely sure why I bother to post outside the dance thread y'know.
Christ...
...but that's a nightmarish list.
Is that LV from Coolio and LV?
music is always a bit stagnant at the end of summer in between the festival merry go round
and Fresher's Week
it'll pick up again in October sometime
mind you, I think that computers may well be having a detrimental effect on live music insofar as the increase of ease with which a single person can write and record (and upload) with a laptop has reduced the actual necessity of people actually getting together in rehearsal rooms to make music as bands - which in turn lowers the chances that a critical mass of talented artists are out and playing and exchanging ideas and creating scenes and sounds
probably a lot of musical productivity is being lost as well because it's a much bigger (and more difficult) leap to go from a bedroom studio to standing alone on stage in front of people than it is to go from lunking your amps and instruments to the rehearsal room to lunking your amps and instruments to the local room above a pub to play in front of your band's collective mates/family
Good point actually
My 'band' is largely computer-music based, I think we've managed about 3 rehearsals in as many years.
It's funny because band practices usually feel like a waste of time, but it's only by getting together week in, week out that songs really develop. That said, my old band used to spend (collectively) £80/week on rehearsals, which hardly encourages anyone to get back to the rehearsal room.
£80 a week on rehearsals?
Jeez, where on earth were you practicing?
(My lot pay £35 a month each, we do around 7/8hrs a week)
Agree that being in a room together, and bouncing ideas around, and things sometimes happening by mistake is where interesting things happen. I think from a personal perspective that's why I've never been able to make a solo project work!
Er, somewhere in Sheffield
2 x 3hr rehearsals a week, £40 a pop (it may have been more like £35, but still).
Not much when divided between a four-piece band, but a lot more expensive than doing it all at home.
There's tons of great music out there
You just have to put the effort in and go to gigs. Don't rely on the radio or magazines to give you inspiration. i can't remember the last time I heard a song from the commercial media that made me take notice. The ones I do hear I've normally seen live already!
I go to about 150-200 gigs a year and virtually all the Artists I see are playing the small pub/club circuit. One or two have made a name for themselves (The Boxer Rebellion, The Duke Spirit, Josh T Pearson) but the majority are struggling for any recognition.
..and there's tonnes and tonnes of shite out there!
As one who plays in the kinds of gigs you're talking about, the whole "the majority are struggling for any recognition." and "can't remember the last time I heard a song from the commercial media that made me take notice" did rather make me LOL.
Less bands than there used to be though... In sheer numbers, I mean. Costs a lot to do it and that seems to have had an impact. Students don't have the disposable income anymore!
``I go to about 150-200 gigs a year...``
I shudder at how much absolute tedious shite you'd have to sit through to achieve that.
Because of the venues I go to...
There's no problem with re admission. I can leave a Pub and come back if I don't like something. More difficult at the bigger venues I agree. That's why I stick to small gigs in the majority.
I don't think Artist numbers are down. I live in London, so I have a massive choice of live music every night. Not sure about other towns/cities. People with disposable income to see the gigs is an entirley different argument tho, I agree.
Not really but it seems everything has gone really samey
Does this help?
Obvious answer is no, and that you're probably just getting older and losing interest (to a degree)
Better question might be whether a particular genre/style is in a slump, which you've hinted at above anyway. Something like if you would have listened to the Libertines etc years ago, what would you listen to now? The Vaccines? Eugh.
[...]
Sorry, the 90s were a total slump?!?!
Oh, you're a troll. My bad, as you were.
the late 90s
not the 90s
Good point... My Bad
But I'd still contest it. The artistic end of Brit-pop happened in 1997, for example...
ok computer, 'Blur', 'attack of the grey lantern'
etc etc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_in_music
Haha!
Okay, okay.
*hides idlewild, oceansize and prized mclusky records*
We can't be friends
Actually, sir, I would go out of my way to invent all of those bands; One changed my mind, one changed my sound, one changed my life. Perhaps it’s a formative moment – I was in my absolute putty-like state in the years you’re decrying and much of the music that is UTTERLY DEAR to my heart was recorded in a five year period (not un-coincidentally forming my stay at college and university). I can’t ignore 13 any more than I can Californication so even American bands were in on the act/joke. “Thirteen tales from Urban Bohemia” has been equally vital to my survival of these later years. The Fragile was a required demonstration of the limits inherent to Industrial Music. I could go on but, well, there’s a gin a-callin’ me and, at 30 years old, I’m disinclined to shout at deaf ears…
As for your last point, I hated the Libertines for the same reasons I hated early-nineties Britpop. They were so desperately opposed and irrelevant to everything I had grown to respect/expect from musicians.
Thing is, I never viewed it as a slump, I just viewed it as music that wasn’t written for me; I am a target market, I am not their target market.
Being as old as the hills
the 'music is dead' thing tends to be cyclical. 99% of everything is unremarkable and it was ever thus.
However, I think that it is a good point that most music seems to be consumed on the internet now. Back in the old days (say five years ago) if you were fed up with the radio or the NME you would have to go and see new bands play live and hope that you found a good one. Nowadays everyone can happily surf the net, download the music, watch the Youtube and do so in splendid isolation. Like-minded fans are more likely to meet on a forum than they are at a gig.
And it just isn't as exciting when a band's success is measured in how many hits they get on their Facebook or Twitter feeds rather than the number of snotty brats with the band's logo scrawled on their T shirts.
It isn't the music, its you
Condescending reply!
Listen to Death Grips Money Store and you'll be fine
or start experimenting with hard drugs. either way, everybody wins.
Agreed
It's all a bit 'help i caught my dad with my cheese toastie maker' for my liking.
It depends how you define it I guess
I can still find two or three things that delight me a week but then I'm getting sent quite alot. If you are defining it via a narrow mainstream of guitar band releases then yes it is. Sure digital has opened up vast possibilities and ways of discovering 'new music' but the sheer ammount of stuff floating around the net may have swamped the quality to an extent.Also the slow decline in live music may be linked to its cost and the recession and the fact that it is easier and cheaper for some to sit at home shuffling through Spotify on their PC, than experience the real thing... I think the answer is, the whole industry is in flux for better or worse...
A slump is a relative thing
I guess I was just interested to know if other people had noticed or if I was imagining it, and to what extent it was part of the natural order of things or if there was *big* changes going on.
Good post though (yours, not mine)
A slump then?
what?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBZ2NdNR-JM
*waves*
I've only been to two proper gigs since the start of the Olympics.
I do think that there is a lack of a 'scene' or a 'movement' at the moment, and I think that a lot of this originates in the fall of printed media and mainstream radio, and the superseding of music blogs and forums by twitter, spotify, bandcamp etc. In many ways this is a good thing - in the days of movements bands could be shunned just for not fitting in, but it also means that there are thousands of bands trying to get attention and no real, easily graspable, narrative exists.
I also think that part of it might be down to you personally, for a couple of reasons. Music is not filtered and then fed to us as much now - you have to really put in the effort, it seems, to hear interesting things. I also get the impression that your tastes are less skewed towards electronic and/or noise/drone stuff, which is where a lot of the more interesting music is coming from at the moment. I dunno, does that sound fair?
That's fairly fair
I think you're right(ish), but the way I consume (eurgh) music these days is the same as always - read the same websites, listen to the same radio, read the same paper, talk to friends. I just don't feel like anything is being forced on me like in the past, which indicates that you're right in terms of their not being a hyped scene at the moment. Electronica etc is pretty dull, maybe that's it.
The thing that set me off thinking about this was actually the DJing of...certain DiSers. A few years ago a lot of the indie 'hits' (you know, The Rat, LCD etc) were recent songs, but I suddenly realised that they're all relatively old now, and there aren't any new indie hits to fight their corner. Most of the modern songs that get played on nights out these days are pop songs. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but contrary to popular belief I quite like new songs.
That's what I mean though - the old ways of consuming music,
such as radio, newspapers, music websites (as in the likes of Pitchfork and DiS as opposed to twitter, facebook and bandcamp and the like) are not really the places to hear new music these days.
Even online, the whole single point of reference, with an implied arbitration of taste, has gone. the emergence of twitter and dominance of facebook has killed off the old online forums and websites, and I don't think that they've adequately replaced them when it comes to finding out about music, to be honest.
Perhaps it turns out that a lot of the old music forums, tied to bands or scenes or websites, were driven less by a passion to bond over their subject, and more by the users desire to just have a way of wasting time in the office talking to other people.
We get more traffic on DiS than ever before
And there are now more posts and replies per day than at any point in DiS' history.
Not sure how this fits your theory...
also...
Back when we had 5 full-time staff and posted 20-30 articles on DiS per day, a lot of it was only getting 300 hits, whereas now everything gets at least 3k, even the teeny albums no-ones heard of get alright traffic. Plus with less news being posted, more people come to the boards to share news and discuss it.
I appreciate why you felt you had to respond to that,
but do you honestly think that Drowned In Sound is as influential now as it was, say, five/six years ago when it comes to breaking bands, documenting a scene, setting the agenda and determining the narrative?
Pitchfork gets more visitors that it did back in 2004/2005, by several orders of magnitude, but I'd still argue that it doesn't have the impact that it did back then.
YEAHBUT
Regardless of how the anoraks discover new music, decent stuff has always filtered down to the likes of me. It just isn't at the moment.
I declare it a slump.
Sub-thread maybe - let's list some good current (new-ish) British guitar bands
I'll start with
Hookworms
Paws
The KVB
Hookworms
Great live band. Trying to get them to play The Hope & Anchor in Islington at the end of September
definitely
until the next radiohead album
Yes, and it will stay in a slump
as long as you ignore bands like this:
http://snd.sc/MFiTOx
Tell me, have you listened to a band lately that you really discovered yourself? A band from the deepest depths of the internet?Or do you just slavely follow the likes of Pitchfork, Uncut and NME in their solid but o so safe music choices?
In case of the latter: yes, music will stay in a slump.
My advice if you want to hear something exiting: Go search soundcloud, bandcamp,myspace(almost dead that one) etc.....yes , there will be a lot of crap.....but also lots of ineteresting stuf.
http://lolpics.se/pics/1266.jpg
incidentally, what makes that band so special?
sound like a million other things, except with an odd power metal guitar pretension.
(THEANSWERIBET: it's your band)
What a waste of time
Take cues from people all across the spectrum who get exposed to music and provide numerous filters and descriptions, OR, sift through all the shit yourself. This attitude is nonsense.
is music heading for a fall?
A fall.....don't you folks
call that autumn?
I'm a bit younger than you
bu I agree with you.
Guntrip@
No.
i am the publisher...
I'm the same
Not much is really getting me going. Nothing grabs me, nothing makes rapidly email everyone I know and buy tickets and buy books.
The new cat power album is pretty good though.