Five Years 2010-2015

To talk about the state of music as it is today, without any benefit of hindsight, would seem like an arrogantly bold move. But the fact is the task is made so much easy by the current, catch all sonic landscape. All these years of musical experimentation and technological innovation has given todays artists an unparalleled palette with which to make music, but more importantly, I think the internet has allowed listeners to expand their tastes immeasurably. This was mostly true throughout the 2000s, where anything really went, but you still got the impression back then that there were genres. Yes, the lines were blurring as artists took on influences from other genres, but there were still lines.

Instead, todays music, seems to comfortably straddle genres, inhabiting a world where artists can comfortably make music without established scenes, knowing that someone, out there on the internet, can find and like it on it’s own merits. What genre is Channel Orange? Mainly its an R&B album with glimmering pop, there are guest rap spots by Earl Sweatshirt and Andre 3000 and the overall vibe is distinctly indie.

Defining indie is the hardest job in the world, it’s such a broad umbrella term, but in general it refers to music that seems intimate, private, thoughtful. And that’s Channel Orange all over, it starts with the jingle of a PS1 booting up, putting listeners in the mindset of teenagers alone in their bedroom.

The blend of genres in this next track seems impossible. House music is grounded in repetition, in building a groove steadily and strongly over 8 to 20 minutes, for the groove to find its way deep into the audience, for people to dance the whole night through. Pop music on the other hand is built to be ear catching, brief and varied. Anything goes in pop music, as long as its entertaining and doesn’t out stay it’s welcome.

Only one band in the past can claim to have even come close to uniting these two disparate genres. Basement Jaxxs music, as brilliant as it is, seems to flip between the two, breaking house music up with manic reggae preachers, whistles, whooshes, sound effects and keeping all their songs at a radio friendly run time.

On the other hand, these two, literally kids, have made music that is undeniably house. It has a sense of patience and groove not found anywhere in pop, despite the fact that their debut album no less, has become a smash hit. 

 Just because there are no longer these thriving, united pushes in music scenes doesn’t mean there aren’t any trends to be aware of. As I’ll discuss later, rock, especially in the mainstream, has been on a great decline. Glistening and weird pop, though, is very in vogue. 

 The following band made their name for themselves with a trilogy of indie rock oriented concept albums about the life of a son of a prostitute in an oppressive 19^th century fantasy city. Once they’d tied that all up in 2009, they recorded an EP of 4 songs in the style of each 9 colours in the colour spectrum, effectively producing a folk E.P, a metal E.P, a hard rock E.P etc. I could honestly play something from each one, they’re all brilliant, but this is off of their Indigo record. 

 My favourite current artist is also very much responsible for moving genres into this broad space. Kanye Wests is like a modern day David Bowie, he is restless with any one persona and shifts musically album by album. To those only aware of his public persona, brash, egotistical and just a little bit mental, to hand him such high praise seems unjust. But that part of his head that doesn’t stop him from 20 minute, auto-tuned rants at festivals his greatest asset. Kanye West does not hold the ability to doubt himself. He is truly fearless. And this can be seen in his astounding creativity. Definitely more than any other rapper, Kanye puts his emphasis on the music.

His lines may, quite often, be plain old naff, but his sense of rhyme and impassioned delivery give them such a provocative energy. The beats on his latest album, Yeezus, sound more like metal than rap, he auto-tunes Billie Holiday and samples eastern European prog music. On 808 and heartbreaks, he attempted, some would say unsuccessfully, to create a modern day blues unhinged and off kiltered by alien autotune. And his 2010 magnus opus, My Beautiful, Dark Twisted Fantasy mixed everything, like, just, everything into a lush, bombastic masterpiece.

I couldn’t bring up rap music in the past five years without bringing up Kendrick Lamaar. Good Kid, Mad City has only been out for 2 and a half years now, but is already being heralded as one of the best albums of all time, and definitely one of the best rap albums. 

One noticeable thing about current music is the utter decline of rock. Sure bands like The Black Keys, Jack White, Kasabian, Queens of the Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys remain popular, but they’ve all been around from the early 2000s. More than that, those bands are diluting the rock sound with other aspects. Yeah, AM by Arctic Monkeys was great and hugely popular, but now their sound borrows a decidedly not-rock drum machine from hip-hop and they’ve let R&B influence them.

Who’s to say why this is. If I was to have a punt at it, I’d say the internet has opened up the music of the past to this current generation in a way never seen before. Any tech-savvy kid, which lets face it, is all of them, can illegally download the entire catalogue of Led Zeppelin, AC/DC or Nirvana in an instant. Rock musicians aren’t just competing with each other, they now have to contest the entire history of rock, which is frankly an impossible task. And why would rock kids sit around reading Kerrang magazine when they can get a compilation of 80 fantastic songs with a plastic guitar for their Xbox for £15 in a Game bargain bucket?

That’s not to say there isn’t fantastic rock being made, just most people aren’t listening to it, and these rockers are fighting different battles. It’s not enough just to rock. Parquet Courts rock, but with brains and style. This next band however, embrace the youth and energy of rock as if their very life depends on it. My old housemate compared them to watching me play Rock Band, and that was a far more acute observation than he realised, because tied into the loundness and ferocity of their music is also this hunger for stardom that they’re well aware is a mere fantasy, but push at as if breaking out is the only option left to them. 

 Now, just as the internet has had a huge impact on the demand side of music; that is, the way people consume their music, modern technology has also revolutionised the way, and reason, people make music. Ed Harrison was an amateur game developer when he was recruited off of some forums to work on the sound design of a fan made mod to the hugely  popular PC video game Half Life 2. He ended up recording an absolutely staggering soundtrack, entitled Neotokyo, which stands perfectly well on its own as a fantastic album. His compostitions blend minimal techno with a vast array of oriental, acoustic instruments to create a paranoid, overbearing cyberpunk masterpiece, and best of all the whole album is available free of charge on the internet.

 Whatever changes happen in music, there will always be talented songwriters, crafting away. From Laura Stevensons criminally underrated second album, Wheel, this track is called Renee.

One of the impressive aspects of todays music scene is the way there is still a receptive audience for older, established artists, who in turn are changing up their styles to create stuff that’s wonderfully new. Blues Funeral by Mark Lanegan Band, marries Marks wonderful, whiskey and heroin stained voice with trance inducing electronica and big beats. Nothing sounds quite like the eclectic mix of odd instruments utilised by PJ Harvey on 2011s Let England Shake, and her deeply humanist, politically aware and anti-war sentiments hit a nerve with critics and consumers alike.

Graham Coxon and Paul Weller have both gone stomping around krautrock for inspiration while Damon Alburn continues his attempts to be this generations David Byrne, introducing western audiences to world music and experimenting with modern technology, going as far as composing an album solely on an iPad. In 2013, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds took another left turn in their long and brilliant history with Push the Sky Away. Inspired apparently by late nights spent surfing Wikipedia, Cave and co. pre-empt the Snowden revelations and increasing awareness of NSA activity with an atmosphere of oppressive paranoia and fear. This is Higgs Boson Blues

The question overhanging todays music, though, is, does the consumption via playlists and mp3s and promotion less midnight launches devalue music. In the old days, getting an album was an event. I can only piece together the experience from listening to older music fans, but the talk enthusiastically of taking the journey to the record store, the personal expense, the physical presence of an album and how this all added to the experience, and significance of the music. But also, it seems in the past music had a lot more to do with identity. The cost prohibited young people from listening to everything, so what you listened to said something about who you were. And there was so much more change in society to fight for. Were you a punk and violently against the grey establishment? Were you arty and cool going round with your Dark Side of the Moon vinyl or were you rallying against racial inequality with Whats Going On? Were you hip with your Nike high-tops and your Run DMC, or were you dark and angry with your Black Sabbath and your head banging brethren?

Now, in an age when a dozen albums are vying for your attention every week, and you can pick and choose songs at will on iTunes, or just put on endless playlists that scatter tracks from across time and genres, is something lost? When the only real constraint on what you can listen to is your amount of free time, can music matter as much? Is music in the digital age as important?

All those points are valid, but I’d argue ever broadening your musical horizons means you’re a lot more likely to find that one album that matters to you more than anyone else. Whatever niche your preference for music falls into, you can now find a perfect record tailored to that taste. Less than music being a label to associate with, this way of consuming music allows for greater individuality. And yes, some impact is lost by removing those external factors, but that only puts emphasis on what’s in the music.

But most of all, it allows for a cultural shift away from fighting the outside world, and to fighting the inside world. This is WU LYF. And this is Heavy Pop