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90s and early 2000s were cemented by works like these. By these I really mean electronica and it’s influence. It had hit mainstream. Warp was full on, having al

90s and early 2000s were cemented by works like these. By these I really mean electronica and it’s influence. It had hit mainstream. Warp was full on, having all sorts of artists and releasing their Artificial Intelligence compilation. Darude had just come out with Sandstorm and Digitally Imported radio was taking off with Shoutcast. Elsewhere, Nu-Metal for example was starting to come into its own, lots of new music that we haven’t heard before with all sorts of genre overlaps. Textures that did not exist before. We knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that we were in a musical zeitgeist. Has anything like this ever happened since? I keep chasing the dragon but I haven’t seen anything of this sort occur. It seems like we’ve mostly stabilized and are back to an equilibrium.

Barneyhill 2y ago
Yeah... I definitely share the feeling that we've hit a wall in terms of new sounds. Currently I think some of the work happening in the audio/ML space is the most promising in terms of emerging possibilities but things are still moving much slower than I thought they would. Here's a couple projects we've done developing novel audio interfaces that leverage ML: https://github.com/vroomai https://github.com/vroomai - I'm still confident we'll see a breakout use-case in this area soon.
pentaphobe 2y ago
If you find the dragon I hope you'll let us know! I've a suspicion that what's missing is those early producers drew inspiration from a diverse set of non-genre (or non-electronic) art, and also were driven at least partially by the lack of good experimental electronica in their early years (scarcity breeding experimentation or something?) Whereas nowadays most people are (justifiably) inspired by a preponderance of music _within the style they're creating_. Pair that with a strong focus on "how to sound like X" style tutorial content and I imagine it's tougher to extricate yourself from Building A Product long enough to invent. I often feel kinda retroactively jealous of how much amazing tutorial content is at our fingertips these days, "you can learn anything!" but do wonder if the relative isolation and drought in those early days was perhaps more of a benefit to prolific output than this abundance of input is. Much easier to consume than produce - unless there's nothing to consume :)
iamacyborg 2y ago
I suspect it falls in your early 00’s umbrella but dupstep from 04-08 was a pretty special time that saw literal school children producing a sound that went global with the rise of internet usage at the time.
imp0cat 2y ago
I think that every generation has such an event. The invention of electrified instruments must have been quite similar.
an_aparallel 2y ago
i think the 2000-2010 period was so magical because of the democratisation of the music creation process. FL studio had just hit a few years before, was famously pirated, and was in wide use in the (imo) heartland of electronic music - the UK -- in the afformentioned genres Dubstep, and previously Grime (UK garage was previous to these two and was very much living in Logic/Cubase with hardware at the forefront). I think rampant piracy of an easy to use - gamified production environment pushed music forward in a big way. Renoise did similar things for the mid-2000s North American breakcore scene, and its much prettier sibling IDM was more in-love with MAX/MSP, Csound, Pure Data and so on. After this period - i think Trap kicked everyone aside in conjunction with Soundcloud becoming the defacto standard for music sharing - vinyl was STILL very much en-vogue in 2000-2010 period. Trap was also accompanied by De-constructed club (ala Sophie) as the new hotness. One of the big draws in this period was complete irreverence for tradition, and lineage. The avante garde and pop world very much were co-mingling. This peaked with hyperpop being coined as a genre. Right now?? I think "global bass" is the new-ness. UK and the USA have been sidelined imo - South Africa (qgom and related) and Nigeria with their local styles - Afrobeats, amapiano and others I cannot remember for the life of me...check out labels like Nyege Nyege, Hakuna Kalula and so on...It's really all about Africa right now. And music consumption via viral tiktok is very very much on-trend (sadly) And even more recently? most likely BR Funk (Brazilian) is making waves. You know its making waves because - low sound quality has in my opinion always been a marker of something new. Trap was pretty aweful sounding until it got its bearings. As a side - i think a KEY to these strong musical movements is a strong geographical identity...whenever music styles are exported, something is lost. What made (early) dubstep special was the influences of the kids living in those areas - SE Asian supermarkets, traditional SE Asian musics (as samples), and the UK hardcore continuum together are a beautiful thing :)

Barneyhill 2y ago

Yeah... I definitely share the feeling that we've hit a wall in terms of new sounds. Currently I think some of the work happening in the audio/ML space is the most promising in terms of emerging possibilities but things are still moving much slower than I thought they would. Here's a couple projects we've done developing novel audio interfaces that leverage ML: https://github.com/vroomai https://github.com/vroomai - I'm still confident we'll see a breakout use-case in this area soon.

pentaphobe 2y ago

If you find the dragon I hope you'll let us know! I've a suspicion that what's missing is those early producers drew inspiration from a diverse set of non-genre (or non-electronic) art, and also were driven at least partially by the lack of good experimental electronica in their early years (scarcity breeding experimentation or something?) Whereas nowadays most people are (justifiably) inspired by a preponderance of music _within the style they're creating_. Pair that with a strong focus on "how to sound like X" style tutorial content and I imagine it's tougher to extricate yourself from Building A Product long enough to invent. I often feel kinda retroactively jealous of how much amazing tutorial content is at our fingertips these days, "you can learn anything!" but do wonder if the relative isolation and drought in those early days was perhaps more of a benefit to prolific output than this abundance of input is. Much easier to consume than produce - unless there's nothing to consume :)

iamacyborg 2y ago

I suspect it falls in your early 00’s umbrella but dupstep from 04-08 was a pretty special time that saw literal school children producing a sound that went global with the rise of internet usage at the time.

imp0cat 2y ago

I think that every generation has such an event. The invention of electrified instruments must have been quite similar.

an_aparallel 2y ago

i think the 2000-2010 period was so magical because of the democratisation of the music creation process. FL studio had just hit a few years before, was famously pirated, and was in wide use in the (imo) heartland of electronic music - the UK -- in the afformentioned genres Dubstep, and previously Grime (UK garage was previous to these two and was very much living in Logic/Cubase with hardware at the forefront). I think rampant piracy of an easy to use - gamified production environment pushed music forward in a big way. Renoise did similar things for the mid-2000s North American breakcore scene, and its much prettier sibling IDM was more in-love with MAX/MSP, Csound, Pure Data and so on. After this period - i think Trap kicked everyone aside in conjunction with Soundcloud becoming the defacto standard for music sharing - vinyl was STILL very much en-vogue in 2000-2010 period. Trap was also accompanied by De-constructed club (ala Sophie) as the new hotness. One of the big draws in this period was complete irreverence for tradition, and lineage. The avante garde and pop world very much were co-mingling. This peaked with hyperpop being coined as a genre. Right now?? I think "global bass" is the new-ness. UK and the USA have been sidelined imo - South Africa (qgom and related) and Nigeria with their local styles - Afrobeats, amapiano and others I cannot remember for the life of me...check out labels like Nyege Nyege, Hakuna Kalula and so on...It's really all about Africa right now. And music consumption via viral tiktok is very very much on-trend (sadly) And even more recently? most likely BR Funk (Brazilian) is making waves. You know its making waves because - low sound quality has in my opinion always been a marker of something new. Trap was pretty aweful sounding until it got its bearings. As a side - i think a KEY to these strong musical movements is a strong geographical identity...whenever music styles are exported, something is lost. What made (early) dubstep special was the influences of the kids living in those areas - SE Asian supermarkets, traditional SE Asian musics (as samples), and the UK hardcore continuum together are a beautiful thing :)