Koki on 26/2/2012 at 06:25
Quote Posted by dethtoll
"Oh, you strongly disagree, you must think your opinion is fact! who wants to see me piledrive this bottle of mountain dew"
I do!
june gloom on 26/2/2012 at 07:04
hell, me too
Jason Moyer on 26/2/2012 at 08:49
Quote Posted by Muzman
The problem we've got here, to me, is the systematic elimination of all popular dance-electronica as being any good
I don't see anyone being critical of anything due to popularity. There's a very loose correlation between popularity and quality just because the vast majority of people's tastes are shaped more by marketing than critical analysis, but it doesn't take much effort to give dozens of examples of popular music that is amazing and obscure music that is terrible and vice versa. And, of course, the nature of any skill-based activity means there are always way more examples of things that are obscure and/or terrible than there are examples that are popular and/or good, whether we're talking about music, writing, video games, or sport.
Muzman on 26/2/2012 at 10:19
Yeah but there we're heading towards there being such a thing as an acceptable dubstep track for one of these trailers, when I doubt there really is. Most disdain and arguments against it seems to stem from a place of it having no validity at all, it being an illegitimate corruption of proper(electronic) music (as per the disdain for every new genre of music since time immemorial) . Popularty is just the bitter icing on the hate cake. (I would of course suggest the thought process is actually backwards and people are rationalising an opinion not arrived at through reason in the least, but that's usual).
It's a mistake to group everyone who doesn't like it together on this of course, but I'm being terse.
Quote Posted by dethtoll
See, it's not a problem of "popular" electronic music being shit though. The problem is that dubstep is simply the logical conclusion of what's happened to electronic music since the Eurodance years. Dubstep is boring at best; offensive and unlistenable at worst. For years, the argument against electronic music of any stripe was that it was repetitive; I would argue that's largely the point, and indeed I can't think of
any kind of music that isn't repetitive on some level. Dubstep, however, takes this to cartoonish new heights; most of it's simply a beat with some drops following an interminable intro. Drops are like breakdowns in metal -- they're the lens flares of their particular music genre, and should be used sparingly.
At the risk of tripping the Fogey Alert, I miss the days when (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0gRNMddCDk) electronica wasn't considered "safe" to listen to. This was nasty and aggressive, the kind you'd put a cyberpunk movie to. 80s cyberpunk, the kind Evabot hates.
Yeah definitely tripping the fogey alarm. IDM from 1994 still sounds more 'futuristic' to me than just about anything, even though it's dated as fuck to some people by now. Aging sucks.
I also don't know how you get the idea that dubstep is
more repetitive than anything yet (than Hardcore or any straight beat stuff? Come on now. Drum and Bass is just drums and some bass ). It's got the most broken, occasionally a-rhythmic, beats yet. People profess dancing to it is impossible. If we're talking about the Skrillex end of things I will pay 'structurally predicable' or something like that, which is certainly true. Gimmicky? Extreme for its own sake? I could see that in a lot of cases. But cartoonishly repetitive? Can't do it. The popularity of that stuff has more in common with the verse-chorus of Rock than anything else in dance, I'd dare say.
People did used to whinge about Electro-Industrial tracks being shoehorned everywhere to back in the days when that was hip. It wasn't even really chart topping outside a few acts, it was just sort of there wherever you looked. The style was even too easy to do for some people, once you worked out the keys and the chords, the production tricks and the synth sounds. That stuff went back to its niche after a while and forever sounds mid nineties now to most people, but much that it did became quietly part of the landscape. Something similar will probably happen here. And then there'll be a Lounge revival or something for people to complain about.
Jason Moyer on 26/2/2012 at 10:25
Well, he did use the phrase "not safe to listen to" and then linked to Photek, which was about as mainstream as IDM ever became outside of the big 3 (RDJ/Squarepusher/Autechre). For christ's sake, MTV used to play this video multiple times a day at one time: (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qJKxaWb0_A). Of course, being top-40 doesn't make it any less awesome.
SubJeff on 26/2/2012 at 12:28
What Muz said.
Kuuso on 26/2/2012 at 12:42
I would recommend anyone interested in electronic music and hating on dubstep to watch the documentary Bassweight (with subtitles, if you can find, the artists speak such Londonese that even natives can't understand it). It'll explain the genre very well.
At the risk of sounding elitists, the discussion here (and generally too) just shows that people don't know what they're talking about. You can accuse dubstep of various things, but repetition isn't one of them. Dubstep has the most interesting rhythmic base of all the big electronic genres (and the people knowing where the genre stems from see this as given) and that's why it's tempo is usually fairly slow as well (otherwise it would descend into some sort of breaks). The use of various effects is stellar across the field with pioneering work.
If anything, accuse dubstep of the overly fixation on sub bass, flirting too much with grime and the artists turning into cokeheads. Also, if anything, Dubstep "wasn't safe to listen". Of course, it growing so big, it has become safe as everything that is good and draws attention. It's for better imo, because the people who are "deep" in it, so to speak, are fucking scary dopeheads.
henke on 26/2/2012 at 17:37
Quote Posted by dethtoll
So what you're suggesting is that during a discussion of dubstep, if I want to say I dislike dubstep, I should say it ONCE -- or preferably not at all -- then take my righteous drubbings because I'm a big fun-hating stupidhead, and leave the thread forever because my opinion doesn't matter?
No it's good that you keep posting on the subject. I wasn't really sure what you meant by your initial post:
Quote Posted by dethtoll
there is absolutely zero reason for anyone to use dubstep in anything, mother of god it's all toilet sounds
But then after reading your additional posts I started getting an idea of what you were saying.
Quote Posted by dethtoll
heh dubshit
Quote Posted by dethtoll
hipster-fucked corpse of techno that was murdered by europeans in fishnet
Quote Posted by dethtoll
I actually like a lot of varieties of electronic music. Dubstep is not one of them.
Stop me if I'm wrong but, you don't really care for dubstep, do you?
Koki on 26/2/2012 at 18:04
I thought it was about Obama.
Boxsmith on 26/2/2012 at 18:18
Quote Posted by faetal
Good example is how I adore NIN, but can't stand most industrial.
I'm curious, what industrial music have you heard and hated? Industrial isn't really the genre you should be looking at if you're into NIN -- lumping Reznor in with the likes of Throbbing Gristle is all kinds of silly.
