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Topic ClosedThe changing cultural role of electronic music

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Toaster Mantis View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: The changing cultural role of electronic music
    Posted: October 13 2013 at 03:51
My father owns a Danish-language encyclopedia of rock music published in 1974. When I look up all the big name 1st generation electronic musicians (JM Jarre, Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream) they're described as this really inaccessible avant-garde type of music that's aimed at niche audiences compared to the guitar-based rock music that was popular back then.

Today, it's practically the opposite: The vast majority of popular music is synthesizer-based, and guitar-oriented styles of music are becoming more and more of a subcultural niche. I wager it's half the result of Kraftwerk adapting the electronic instrumentation to a pop-friendly songwriting format on Trans-Europe Express, half the result of synthesizers becoming cheaper and more user-friendly in the 1980s to the point. Brian Eno's tenure as producer of other artists' records might also be at least as important. Of course, the avant-garde elitist side of electronic music kind of lives on in ambient/drone/industrial/noise/etc.

On the other hand, I'm saying all this from the vantage point of several decades' hindsight: I was born in 1988 and didn't develop an active interest in electronic music until around 2010. It would be interesting to get a perspective on all this from the posters who have been following electronic music's history since the 1970s.

(moderators, feel free to move this to another forum if it's somewhat off-topic - I think it's relevant in a discussion of the "generation gap" between the Krautrock-aligned progressive electronic scene and most post-Kraftwerk electronica)


Edited by Toaster Mantis - October 13 2013 at 05:23
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 13 2013 at 06:28
A lot of this change comes from the popularity of the synth - as well as a need to control it further. Back in the old days, when they were huge as refrigerators and had countless of strange nobs on them, the results often amounted in music that was highly improvised. Today electronic music is mostly used in strictly controlled environments, where every sound is calculated and known before it reaches your ears. When it does it can be everything from ambient, dub step, dark wave, trance, IDM and glitch - and much of it also features in popular dance music, where they seem to be stealing a bit of the street cred - just like always really. Happened back in the 60s too where everything suddenly had to be "psychedelic". Now it's with underground electronic. 
Jon Hopkin's new 2013 album Immunity is a great album, but most of what he does sounds awfully close to the European underground trance scene anno 2006-2007 incorporated with some mid 90s Orbital. There's a certain sound in the electronics here that I hear in a lot of modern popular hits. All of a sudden it's back 5 years in order to sound hip - like a reversal of the 70s, where English speaking countries often heard albums years before the very countries that now are cutting edge. Maybe it's the English/American viewpoint a lot of these are seen from? 


Edited by Guldbamsen - October 13 2013 at 06:29
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 13 2013 at 11:49
I tend to separate "Electronic Music" from synthesiser-based music. One is a very broad church of styles of music while the other is music made using a type of instrument, in my mind they are unrelated.
 
In 1974 bulk of Tangerine Dreams albums were not synthesiser-based, however, they were electronic and certainly psychedelic avant garde in style. Phaedra marked the beginning of the Berlin School (along with Schulze, Hoenig and Ashra) and the use of synths and sequenced rhythms moved the music away from the avant garde and (in the case of TD) towards a more Progressive Rock style of structured music (such as on Cyclone and Force Majeure). Kraftwerke and Neu! took this several stages further and were a strong influence on the emerging English "electronic" groups of the late 70s of Tubeway Army, Ultravox! and Human League, but that influence was non-existent in bands that followed after them - this is most evident in the style music that those three morphed into during the "New Romantic" era of the 1980s: Synth Pop (there is no real musical connection between Tubeway Army's first album and Numan's pop hits, Foxx-Ultravox!'s System of Romance and Ure-Ultravox's Vienna or The League's chart-flopping Reproduction and the chart-topping Dare).
 
Once the Pop world discovered the synthesiser and started making Synth Pop any connection with "traditional" electronic music was broken, even Depeche Mode with their seemingly Köln-inspired industrial Synth-Pop were simply following after Ultravox, Bowie/Eno/Berlin and OMD - the influence of Conny Plank was secondhand. All subsequent popular synth-based music (ie Dance Music) is a derivation from those early 80s Synth-Pop origins, not from traditional electronic music or electro-acoustic music or even some of the more rock-oriented electronic music (T.O.N.T.O, Synergy, Jarre, Vangelis et al) or classical-inspired synth music (Carlos, Tomita, Kitarō). It is only in recent times we've attempted to join the dots and relate one back to the other, so with modern IDM music we see a connection that perhaps does not exist because we want the "I" to mean more, (just as some what to see the "Progressive" in Prog Rock to be adjectival and not just as a meaningless noun), for Intelligent Dance Music not to be a derogatory oxymoron in our personal music appreciation libraries we need to make that connection back to more loftier music, whereas perhaps what we really mean is simply "Interesting" Dance Music. (all hail the Aphex Twin). The generation gap is a physical gap with few crossing places.
 
Even with "ambient" electronic the direct line-of-sight connections between the minimalistic, avant garde of the Reich and Riley to Eno to The Orb to FSOL to Coil to Tribes of Neurot to Amber Asylum to Burzum to Mortiis to Merzbow to Bass Communion is perhaps more of an illusion than at first meets the eye (or ear).
 
The primary role of the synthesiser in a Rock band was no different to the Mellotron, it was there to provide orchestral backing, not as a lead instrument or as the sole instrument. Prior to the creation of the synth (and that means the analogue and/or digital synthesis of tone) this musical polyfiller required employing a small studio orchestra, heard at its worse on productions such as Genesis To Relevation and David Bowie's first eponymous album. Even in most Prog Rock bands the synth was there to bulk-out the production, (not every band had an Emerson or a Wakeman), just as the Moody Blues and King Crimson used the Mellotron, or it was used as a gimmicky sound effect (cue Roxy Music), or disparagingly rejected (Queen) - it some respects it took Pink Floyd to open Pandora's box of delights and show what the synth could do as the primary instrument in a piece of music (and even "On The Run" was met with a wave of criticism back in '73 for being "computer generated").
 
The Sampling Synth was a different beast - now the keyboardist could not only play every instrument in the orchestra, he could create new sounds and replace the whole band - music created using the sampling synth can produce music in any style, be that rock, classical, ambient, jazz , this does not make all music created using it "electronic music". Nor do I believe that guitar-based music is niche or marginalised anymore now than it has ever been - we would not have described Motown or soul music as either guitar or synthesiser based music yet the modern Pop world still seems to be dominated by R&B artists such as Beyoncé, Adele, Rhianna regardless of what instruments are used to provide the backing music to their plaintive caterwauling.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 14 2013 at 02:49
Quite enlightening post, Dean. It provides a very different perspective from what I've read about the history of electronic music in the writings of music critics like Jim Derogatis or Simon Reynolds. Both of those were born in the 1960s and did not start professionally reviewing until the 1980s, after all. Derogatis in particular being very keen on drawing perhaps less broken lineages between then and now than the historical record might support. (he once named Ritchie Valens as a forerunner of grunge, after all...)

Good point on the distinction between electronic music and the synthesizer-based by the way, it's never something I've thought that much about.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 14 2013 at 05:40

If you write History, you allways tends to create "lines". More or less correct, they are used for the reader to understand, relative connections between time and style.

I real life people get inspired by a lot of diffrent sources, often far away from the project they are working on.
 
NB: Brian Eno's first attempt on making "Electronic" music, was guitar based. Big smile
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 14 2013 at 16:49
I only like late 70s electronic with proper drums eg. Heldon interface and Stand by and Devo freedom of choice

Edited by dr prog - October 14 2013 at 16:50
All I like is prog related bands beginning late 60's/early 70's. Their music from 1968 - 83 has the composition and sound which will never be beaten. Perfect blend of jazz, classical, folk and rock.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: October 14 2013 at 16:56
Brilliant contribution to the discussion.
 
I think that's pretty much said all that needs to be said.
 
/thread
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