From charred death to deep filthstep: the 1,264 genres that make modern music

The Guardian ^ | Thursday 4 September 2014 12.30 EDT | Rob Fitzpatrick

[a fool in paradise]

A ‘data alchemist’ has split music into over 1,000 bewildering microgenres. But what lies out there beyond witch house, and what on Earth does skweee sound like?

(article excerpted, here's the list; descriptions at the link)

...Well, here are 10 genres (we could have nominated about 50) that even mouth-breathing indie record-shop blowhards (full disclosure: I used to be a mouth-breathing indie-record shop blowhard) would be hardpressed to help you find …

1. Vaporwave
Check: Food Pyramid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhBg9vAsDGk

2. Blackgaze
Check: Alcest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADIEAW65H5o

3. Duranguense
Check: Reencuentro Musical
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lmdVmmk-yk

4. Deep filthstep
Check: Denis Mash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hSQYhkLbYU

5. Skweee
Check: Baba Stiltz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq6KeQLCQpM

6. Fallen angel
Check: Sanctorium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfIxjQWBADg

7. Chalga
Check: Slavena
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB8kYzNGM9g

8. Charred death
Check: Crow Black Sky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4ra40Pvvy0

9. Laboratorio
Check: "All of them"
Valentin Clastrier au festival NoBorder 02
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_ftvK1xfs4

10. lowercase
Check: Tetsu Inoue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YoeeNe0swQ

[a fool in paradise]

Virtually all of it is described as a mashup of existing genres.

Nothing but a virtual Tower of Babel. No two people speaking the same language anymore.

And it isn't a "movement" unless other people pick it up or you at least establish yourself in the public.

A bunch of nobodies and the Guardian pimping for hipsted cred clicks.

[dead]

Every note a genre, every band a pioneer.

[WXRGina]

They don’t make music anymore (broad generalization, I know, but maybe you know what I mean). We’re stuck listening to the music of the 1920s through 1970s, mostly. Then there’s classical music, real music.

[Sergio]

home viewing bookmark

[a fool in paradise]

John Cage named a piece 4’33” and defined a genre unto itself. No matter what somebody else calls it, no matter how they play it, no matter the length, it’ll always be HIS concept.

[a fool in paradise]

Music is still made but the genre classification is so much hairsplitting (and at that point the sounds are redundant) that any concept of “marketplace” has been fragmented into nothingness.

The common culture is gone. So be it.

[dead]

Most of the ten links where different flavors of techno.

But #3 "Reencuentro musical" was fun - disco tejano.

And I love lots of world music, but #9 Valentin Clastrier was ghastly. Cheese grater accordion music!

[caver]

Did Yoko Ono get her own genre?

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

Hrm...I see.

[Fresh Wind]

Did Yoko Ono get her own genre?

No, that honor goes to the first tomcat that got in a fight with another tomcat out by the back fence.

[a fool in paradise]

Well in the 50s there was “cat music” so she must have come up with some other term.

[Ransomed]

I actually invented filthstep. It came to me when I was walking in the yard right after the neighbor’s dog had made his daily visit. I thought, “there needs to be a musical style that accurately reflects my emotions right now.” And a brilliant genre was born.

You’re welcome.

Freegards

[Brother Cracker]

11. Surfinbird

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gc4QTqslN4

[Fresh Wind]

I prefer Chopin. Does that mean I’m not hip?

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

There are only two genres. I like or I don’t.

[EveningStar]

ping

[februus]

As a teenager I started making electronic music in the mid seventies.
I stumbled on the concept of looped and found material that I could
record on an Acai reel to reel. I bought a dozen Grundig Dicktaphones
from a school swap, and built an elaborate plywood deck with an assemblage
of recorders and spliced tape (and coke bottles to act as guides for the
tape, so that one long spliced piece of tape could route through multiple
recorders during playback - you could measure beats and the amount of delay
for your loops this way), along with four mics, a rackmounted echoplex and
an eight-channel PA. Using the Dicktaphone’s ability to step and repeat
(essentially a “sample”)and a shortwave radio to get foreign speech and
static I made some of the first loop-based electronica. I also purchased
a EMS Synthi - the great analog/digital hybrid synth (used by
British bands like Syd’s Pink Floyd and Bowie and Brian Eno) - which was
capable of accepting hi-level inputs to bend and treat guitars and vocals
and provide beats. Eventually all of this was replaced by samplers, and
some of my friends went on to create Sonic Foundry which made both software
and sample packages for the home computer user (they have since sold that
part of their biz to Sony Digital which still operates out of my hometown).
I still make electronic music - promoted by websites like soundcloud - usually
dubstep or 8bar or future garage. I know how these hybrid styles accumulate -
but even if you don’t think you listen to it - it is played all the time -
on commercials, at sporting events - my son’s HS football team uses dubstep
anthems for pre-game warmups since the steady 140 BPM gets the adrenals
flowing.

Anyway - this was a really fun article to read and thank you for posting it.

[Joe Brower]

Ping.

[Billthedrill]

Some interesting stuff in there but entire genres containing two bands? Uh, no. I blame Rolling Stone. Because to somebody there, there's a deep and abiding intellectual difference between Trance and House, between Black, Dark, Doom, and Gothic metal. Right.

[Squawk 8888]

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