Good Simon Reynolds post on "the future" in music:Perhaps there’s a three-way division here.
Futurism
Artists who make an overt ideology out of their aspiration to make tomorrow’s music today (this would include quite a few techno people, but also a group like The Young Gods, or earlier, the Art of Noise--both of whom could also be seen as having a relationship to the actual early 20th Century movement Futurism, adding a tinge of retro-Futurism)
Futuristic
Artists who play with science fiction imagery, a set of signifiers and associations that refer back to a tradition of how the Future was envisaged or sonically imagined. For quite some time--even in the early 90s--this kind of thing already had a retro-futurist tinge to it. Again lots of techno artists went in for this kind of imagery but so did a lot of genres (synthpop, industrial, space music) outside the dance field.
Futuroid
The actually emergent or unforeheard elements in music.
(Why not call this 'modernist'? Well, Modernism is itself a style, a period-bound thing to the point where there is such a thing as retro-modernism... Not all futuroid things are going to manifest as stark/lacking ornament/bleak/brutal/abstract/functional/minimalist, i.e. the cliches of modernism... For instance breakbeat science as it evolved turned into a kind of rhythmic baroque, and wildstyle graffiti, while futuroid and futuristic, was not Modernist in that style-defined sense of stark etc).
To map this onto the old Raymond Williams residual/emergent dichotomy, most musics that are any good or at all enjoyable or have any impact on the wider culture are going to involve a mixture of futuroid and traditional. A wholly Futuroid music would probably be as indigestible as Marinetti’s proposed Italo-Futurist replacement for pasta--a dish of perfumed sand. As for "futuroid," the only way you could really evaluate something "unforeheard" would be after it already occurred, so this category is paradoxical and possibly useless for present criticism or music creation. But the 3-way definition is a good way of getting at the differences between what's actually happening that's forward-looking, unexamined retro notions (a la The Jetsons) of what's ahead, and the undefinable something that the future will recognize as avant garde or "ahead of its time." I agree with the statement in his post that early '90s breakbeat hardcore was more revolutionary than what came after, drum and basswise, yet was about musicians trying to top each other with new gear "in the now"--not with some eye cocked on the future.
As musical innovation becomes more or less arbitrary (as nothing is more easy than breaking rules with nowadays' equipment and mindsets) and the actual time of production loses importance (in relation to when a piece of music is "discovered") -- maybe the question of future or time or pioneering gets a bit weird.
Here in Germany there is a radio station that plays the same dumb Hard Trance style music for almost ten years now. The style is very defined already and while it is still taking influence from other genres, it stagnated long ago, as these influences rely on other styles that are also very defined. It is a very sure shot what to expect if to turn to this station. Sometimes i like to listen to it. When it hits the nerve of the time, more people will listen to it and maybe start to consider something as a classic that they hear.
But this music has been around for so long, and still it is not part of now, or the future or the past. It is just escapist, it tries to go in any direction away from anything that could be real. Sometimes it has some small elements of "content", but they are not very important in the overall picture.
As the "mechanics" of the sound are already totally worked out in the most efficient way in this genre, it seems strange that there is still so much produced that hardly is different from what exists already. But to escape you probably need to escape with something slightly new each time, so it shouldn't resemble exactly a time that you already experienced. And i doubt it will ever stop to do its job. It's perfectly engineering for a special need. Maybe once people will be able to produce this sound on their mobile phones or wrist watches, still it will hardly lose its cultural meaning or have another effect on passionate listeners.
No other style i know is as worn out and at the same time as durable. It's already played on town fairs at the carousel and the ferris wheel and the rollercoaster.
So, from the perspective of Hard Trance, there is no future and no past and no futurism or futuroids or whatever. All this is just something to get away from into the arms of Hard Trance. And in general i wonder where all this need for a future comes from when you can just sit in a blinking carousel and listen to Hard Trance and eat fries!
Generic hiphop probably fills the same function in the States. People never get tired of those beats. We have satellite stations that offer 24 hour hard trance but it is a specialty. That's one thing I always like hearing about Europe--that techno and trance are ubiquitous popular music. I think it's described more as futuristic in the States because "normal" music is country and blues based pop tunes.
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Good Simon Reynolds post on "the future" in music:As for "futuroid," the only way you could really evaluate something "unforeheard" would be after it already occurred, so this category is paradoxical and possibly useless for present criticism or music creation. But the 3-way definition is a good way of getting at the differences between what's actually happening that's forward-looking, unexamined retro notions (a la The Jetsons) of what's ahead, and the undefinable something that the future will recognize as avant garde or "ahead of its time." I agree with the statement in his post that early '90s breakbeat hardcore was more revolutionary than what came after, drum and basswise, yet was about musicians trying to top each other with new gear "in the now"--not with some eye cocked on the future.
- tom moody 12-04-2006 8:55 pm
As musical innovation becomes more or less arbitrary (as nothing is more easy than breaking rules with nowadays' equipment and mindsets) and the actual time of production loses importance (in relation to when a piece of music is "discovered") -- maybe the question of future or time or pioneering gets a bit weird.
Here in Germany there is a radio station that plays the same dumb Hard Trance style music for almost ten years now. The style is very defined already and while it is still taking influence from other genres, it stagnated long ago, as these influences rely on other styles that are also very defined. It is a very sure shot what to expect if to turn to this station. Sometimes i like to listen to it. When it hits the nerve of the time, more people will listen to it and maybe start to consider something as a classic that they hear.
But this music has been around for so long, and still it is not part of now, or the future or the past. It is just escapist, it tries to go in any direction away from anything that could be real. Sometimes it has some small elements of "content", but they are not very important in the overall picture.
As the "mechanics" of the sound are already totally worked out in the most efficient way in this genre, it seems strange that there is still so much produced that hardly is different from what exists already. But to escape you probably need to escape with something slightly new each time, so it shouldn't resemble exactly a time that you already experienced. And i doubt it will ever stop to do its job. It's perfectly engineering for a special need. Maybe once people will be able to produce this sound on their mobile phones or wrist watches, still it will hardly lose its cultural meaning or have another effect on passionate listeners.
No other style i know is as worn out and at the same time as durable. It's already played on town fairs at the carousel and the ferris wheel and the rollercoaster.
So, from the perspective of Hard Trance, there is no future and no past and no futurism or futuroids or whatever. All this is just something to get away from into the arms of Hard Trance. And in general i wonder where all this need for a future comes from when you can just sit in a blinking carousel and listen to Hard Trance and eat fries!
- drx (guest) 12-05-2006 1:50 am
Generic hiphop probably fills the same function in the States. People never get tired of those beats. We have satellite stations that offer 24 hour hard trance but it is a specialty. That's one thing I always like hearing about Europe--that techno and trance are ubiquitous popular music. I think it's described more as futuristic in the States because "normal" music is country and blues based pop tunes.
- tom moody 12-05-2006 10:27 am