Progressive Electronic genre

 

There is a side of music, in any discipline, that is not going to be recognized by the "progressive" ... and this is on account of one scene and its styles, a lot more than anything else.

 

Jazz, was far more progressive, and selective in their experiments that most rock music ever was ... and the ECM label was a perfect example of the insane expressions and experiments at the time, from Keith Jarrett, to Egberto Gismonti, to Jan Garbarek, to Terje Rypdal, and so many others.

 

My biggest issue with the "progressive" definition, has been that it refuses to acknowledge more music that deserves the credit. Here are a few examples:

 

Beaver and Krause -- Early pioneers of electronica. Did a 3AM Swamp that Tangerine Dream made a tribute to.

 

Terry Riley -- Too classical minded with the synthesizer to be appreciated as "progressive".

 

Klaus Schulze -- Too far out there and into too many "meditations" to be appreciated. Yet he went from the huge moogs to the massive digital stuff and is still mixing the two and doing wonderful work. He also had a very large set of stuff with Aphex Twin and others that few will listen to or appreciate.

 

For all intents and purposes, the European electronic scene was massive and the number of people playing around with these sounds and ideas was not small. And the variations were deep and very cultural. In many ways, they were extremely progressive because they were experimenting with the medium in music ... and that is not something that is a part of the "progressive" definition, but it encompasses more than half of all the folks named as the topofthepop charts that we have or other websites have. This lack of respect for the experimentation and music, completely away from the conventional designs is what all this was about, and is being ignored. I kinda joke/think that too many people think that is not music because it does not have the melody embodied in the ABA format of most songs! ... music brought down to 1st grade level!!!!!

 

The other side of this, is that the definition is stuck on "rock". And it can not enjoy the insane experiments that folks like the "Incredible String Band" and many other singers did ... like Roy Harper, Peter Hammill (he's appreciated more for his band than his own work! -- which is FAR BETTER!)

 

In the end, this hurts a lot of other music disciplines that end up ignored, and should never be.

 

But I am not sure that everyone has as strong a sense of "history" and "time", as some of us have attempted to show ... instead of trying to show what the time and place was like through "progressive" ... which of course, is vapid, vaccuous, and completely insane ... specially when most of these folks do not even take in consideration the lyrics and the social points and stand that so many of these people undertook! In some ways, the electronic scene was safer, because it had no "lyrics" ... but at the same time, it also made them more invisible in the "public" eye ... because in top ten, you have to have lyrics! AND a format! ... which of course is NOT progressive at all!

Very well said! I think you make a valid point about many genres and artists being overlooked. In my opinion this stems from the question whether "progressive rock" embodies a particular sound or, instead, an attitude. This leads to a situation where The Flower Kings are considered "prog" because they sound like Yes (even though, IMO, mimicking a 20 year old style is not very progressive in the dictionary sense of the word), and Tool is considered progressive even though they don't particularly sound like Yes or Genesis because they take a genre (metal) and progress it by adding weird and diverse elements like ambient passages and fibonacci sequences or whatever, and this is considered to be similar to what the original bands were trying to do. At the end of the day I think it would be impossible to create and then abide by any hard measure of progginess and instead it comes down to what the collective body of prog fans (or on this website, the collaborators ) consider prog. And the truth is that while most people here will agree that Porcupine Tree or Ozric Tentacles is prog, bands or artists with less of a rock background like Terry Riley or Aphex Twin won't have much support because most fans are coming from rock backgrounds and aren't as interested. Which is as it should be, since basically a genre label is supposed to identify similar music. If 80% of people that like ELP like Transatlantic it makes a lot of sense to include Transatlantic in the genre, but if only 3% like Aphex Twin there is less value in thinking of the two artists occupying a similar niche.

Ramleh.

 

 

 

 

 

Comando Bruno.

 

 

 

 

 

Esplendor Geometrico.