4 Jul
2003
4 Jul
'03
2:19 p.m.
If you want to hear some really creative US music, check out
filipino-american etrinity. Granted part of his style is derivative of uk
club music like 2step and drum and bass and also house, but he also
improvs everything live with a chinese erhu player on some tracks, really
cool stuff. Funny enough there's more creative US artists to be found on
mp3.com or their own websites than on major record labels. The labels
won't sign you unless you're being totally derivatie, you can't even get
gigs in clubs unless you're derivative. I perform live with linux but
can only get about half a dozen gigs a year and labels won't touch me with
a million foot pole. And its not because I suck, I've studied music at the
graduate level at calarts, that's unfortunately part of the problem. The
music industry is now completely divorced from creativity, everything is
100% derivative, unless it came up in the early 90s like Sonic Youth, who
manage to hang in there. Only in hip hop and rnb do I hear any creative
use of sound, a producer like R Kelly or Timbaland is getting a chance to
do more creatively. I've got my music on my own website:
http://asapien.org
and to hear etrinity:
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/6/etrinity.html
and also check out professor vast, he's a local indian american artist who
plays a mix of hendrix, ed rush/optical and traditional indian sounds,
with some chord progressions grabbed off Miles Davis Kinda Blue album.
On Thu, 3 Jul 2003, Paul Winkler wrote:
On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 09:21:28AM +0100, Daniel James
wrote:
Heh. I've been very disappointed by the two most recent "new sound
emerging from the underground" phenomena here in the US. There
was "electroclash", from my hometown of Brooklyn, which was touted as a
new synthesis of dance music and punk but when I finally heard it was
indistinguishable from early depeche mode / new order / etc.
Then there's the neo-garage-punk thing - White Stripes, Hives etc. -
it's OK I guess, but I swear I've heard it all before. Stooges, anyone?
I just picked up the reissue of Essential Logic on the Kill Rock Stars
label. Brilliant stuff mostly from 1978-1982, contemporaneous with
Gang of Four and the Raincoats; and nobody's done anything like it since.
I keep wondering - where are the modern-day counterparts to these people?
--
Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com
Look! Up in the sky! It's ENERGY PERFORMANCE ARTIST ENCEPHALOPATHY!
(random hero from isometric.spaceninja.com)
Most of
the
older stuff has just been forgotten.
This might explain why so much music around in the UK at the moment is
derivative. If you know your music (either because like me, you own a
turntable and have lots of old vinyl, or because like everyone else I
know, you use Kazaa a lot) you can pinpoint the exact source of a
riff, or a vocal. Not samples, but pale imitations. I guess most
people can't, otherwise they'd be buying the original instead.