Comments on: Indie rock is a dead language

By: Matt M

Matt M — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 02:55:06 +0000

So the increasingly audible history of music may be part of it. But only a part. I don’t think it can account for the collective failure of nerve that seems to have gripped popular culture. Those that engaged with previous sonic upheavals (punk, rave) were often those with the deepest knowledge of musical history. Despite McLaren’s best efforts to paint him as a moron, John Lydon was into Krautrock, Dub, Beefheart, etc.

The POV you’ve given here is primarily an aesthetic one whereas I’d lean as much towards economics & demographics in trying to understand what’s going on. The best hip hop in the US has come from the South & West – precisely the parts of the country experiencing demographic & economic growth.

As I think we discussed at the CD 16 launch, grime is partially the result of a certain level of racial integration happening in the UK – and a confidence to own their won form hip-hop by black britons.

I agree there will be a whirlwind of popular music, I just doubt it will be driven by the usual suspects. I think we are reaching a tipping point but with their inward focus most Western cultural commentators are ill-equipped to understand it.

Or to put it another way. World Music in the 80s was Live Aidized (the pity & curiousity of dilettante First Worlders) where as 20 years later it will be Wal-Martized – imported to the Developed World because it is cheaper & better than the local stuff – but based on hybridised outcomes of US/European forms (rock, techno, hip hop)…

By: matt

matt — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:20:33 +0000

The boomers have a lot to answer for! But really I think it’s got a lot more to do with the massive availability of music (or writing, art, whatever), the increasing documentation of everything (my feelings, your one-off gig in 1983) and a pervasive conservatism across the world. There’s wild music coming from outside Western societies for sure (kwaito, baile funk and the constantly overturning Jamaican music scene) but there’s some wild stuff happening in the west too, and I think the grime and dubstep scene of the past five years is one of the most compelling. It’s stepped away from building a legacy by releasing records on cheap/nasty white label 12″ pressings, sidestepping the usual record outlets and avoiding the rockist press. Ever since I first heard the roots of grime, and dubstep for that matter, appear, I’ve been amazed that it didn’t cut a swathe through music fans across the world. At the very least, bass fans. But it is generally pretty weird music, and that doesn’t seem to gel with the current climate in which it’s only okay to like weird music if it can be contextualised, for example, to the no wave scene in NY in the early ’80s. I like to think that there’s a period of massive musical consolidation going on now, the calm before a cyclone of thrillingly inventive music, but it could keep spinning in ever tighter circles, documenting the increasingly fine minutiae of the past.

By: Matt M

Matt M — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:15:18 +0000

So I don’t think you can divorce the sonic from the social. People use & share music to create meaning among themselves (& have a bloody good time). The boomers are still the biggest demographic so it’s unsuprising that the music they consumed (from rock ‘n’ roll to punk) remains dominant stylistically.

What is surprising is that young people seem look to those musics rather than creating their own thing.

My bet is that we have to start looking outside Western (US, Western Europe, Australia) societies for genuinely thrilling music. Follow the demographic pressure. Where are there heaps of young people with money to spend & a voice to find? The leakage of South Asian music into the mainstream (e.g. Panjabi MC) & the popularity of Brazilian sounds (e.g. Carioca Funk) indicate where the next great sonic movements are going to come from. And it ain’t our backyard…