What is the sound of now?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

In yesterday's conversation about Pizzicato Five and pop, Cis drew a kind of distinction between pop which obeys current sonic rules and pop which refuses to (apols if my precis loses a lot of subtlety).

This interested me and got me thinking what the current rules of pop might be - not just in terms of sound, but attitude, look, emotional content, trends, etc.

What characterises late 00s pop? What is happening now which wouldn't or couldn't have happened before? What will allow a kid in ten years time to identify music from now? (in the way that a music fan who had never heard records or seen pictures of Suzi Quatro, or A Flock Of Seagulls, or Ned's Atomic Dustbin might be able to put them in place and time)

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Actually these last two questions are asking potentially very different things?

What is happening now which wouldn't or couldn't have happened before? = what is special about nowpop?

What will allow a kid in ten years time to identify music from now? = what is generic about nowpop?

The answers to i. often become limit cases of the answers to ii.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> What is happening now which wouldn't or couldn't have happened before? = what is special about nowpop?

Hardly anything that couldn't have been done ten years ago (or thirty years ago as regards the guitar band plague). What has changed is the accessibility - there are no boundary pushers but LOADS more boundary huggers with cheap production software/guitar pedals.

However when you look at different genres instead of the general pop sphere, things get more specific. UK dance music is currently all about the electro vworp noise (eg Groove Armada/Bodyrox/Calvin Harris) that isn't exactly new but has never been this widespread. RnB's current schtick is Timbaland-emulation & minimal beats (again, not new but now omnipresent). Indie bands are apparently all about being comedy buskers with less emphasis on the hard guitar noises & more focus on 'real life lyrics'. Oh god, I hope our generation's calling card won't be that...

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

Is pop any more accessible than it was 20, 25 years ago? Yes, the technology is more advanced than it was then but I think the technological barriers to making pop were effectively dismantled long ago.

Perhaps you're saying that technology in the 00s is enslaving (encouraging homogeneity) rather than liberating...? But I'm not even sure that argument really flies.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> Is pop any more accessible than it was 20, 25 years ago?

Probably not technologically, no. Thinking about this post made me all depressed about the State Of Things Today so my response wasn't massively well thought out, I admit...