Music genres – handles or pigeonholes? (probably both)

It’s a common complaint from musicians: “I don’t do goth/post-rock/folk/trip hop/indie/prog (or whatever). You can’t pigeonhole me!”

Same thing with fans. I’ve read a ton of forum threads complaining about genre names. “What the hell does post-rock mean? Aren’t bands still playing rock? Why isn’t it called post-rap? Post-rock isn’t a real genre.” And various other quibbles from people who hate seeing their favorite musicians get pigeonholed, or resent seeing musicians they don’t like surf their way into undeserved recognition atop some made up fad.

I totally get it. I’m the king of “you can’t pigeonhole me.” I’m 100 percent eclectic in musical taste. Politically, neither fish nor fowl.

I do think there’s a nasty tendency in some circles (*cough* Pitchfork) to use labels in order to dismiss a band or collection of bands. Like, “Oh yeah, we figured out what these guys are. Just another example of X. If anyone still cares about X, this is part of that whole X knockoff crowd. That scene is so quaint isn’t it? Moving right along…”

Just look at this list of genres: http://rateyourmusic.com/rgenre/

Drumfunk, Sqweee, Glitch-hop, Witch House and Turbo-folk are just a few of many genre names that make me scratch my head. Are these really real? Is somebody pulling our legs?

Who comes up with this stuff anyway? It used to be DJs and music journalists, but now I guess it’s mostly bloggers with a lot more hits than I get. Somehow the names catch on, silly or not. Shoegaze is one I use a lot that sounds pretty ridiculous (whatever you want to call it, I like it). It was originally a put-down for bands playing noise-drenched stuff who tended to stand on the stage and look down at their shoes, but now it’s so common that bands will claim the term.

Classifying music into groups will always be a messy business. There are some musicians (usually my favorites) who defy classification. There are musicians who get lumped into a group who sound nothing like their supposed peers.

Television’s Marquee Moon (1977) came from one of the original CBGBs bands, often touted as one of the first punk bands or even “proto-punk.” Yet to me its style has a lot in common with Magazine’s Real Life (1978), which came out just a year later and is considered one of the first postpunk albums. Can you really go from proto- to post- in just one year?

World music is a really messy genre. It can sound like anything, and isn’t everything part of the world? And speaking of the world, now everything has gone global. You have millions of musicians, talented and otherwise, making tunes on laptops and releasing them on the Internet. Anyone can be influenced by anyone. It was hard enough to classify things in the blues-R&B-rock continuum, especially when jazz and classical kept rearing their ugly heads. Now throw in influences from every country in the world and classifying anything becomes virtually impossible.

Yet we have to try. Why? Because if we don’t, we can’t find music we like, and we can’t talk about it.

I understand the principle of “it’s all music.” But don’t you think the average Chuck Berry fan would be a bit put off if you played a Godspeed You Black Emperor album said, “Here’s some of that music stuff you claim to like”? And suppose he had an open mind and even kind of liked it, but just never heard GYBE before and asked, “what is this?” Sorry, but I’m going to have to say post-rock, because he might then find and enjoy Sigur Ros. Post-rock is a clear case of “you gotta call it something.” Would you consider a Chuck Berry song rock? Definitely. Would you consider a Godspeed You Black Emperor song rock? Not too sure… Thus, post-rock.

I agree that genre names often suck, but they can be useful, even some “hairline distinctions.” For example, dark ambient. It bleeds into regular ambient (another term people argue over), as well as industrial (ditto). But there are certain groups that people who say they like dark ambient tend to like.  I like to give and get recommendations. How am I supposed to do that if I can’t pick a genre name? If I just ask for “music” recommendations, I could get anything from Beethoven to the Ramones. I like both of those, but they’re not going to help me find Coil, Lustmord or Voice of Eye.

A genre name might be a stupid word, but once it catches on and people start hanging ideas on it, what can you do? You’re pretty much stuck with it.

Still, I can’t help but wonder what will happen if people are still listening to this stuff hundreds of years from now? Are we going to get names like tenth wave Electro-acoustic-neo-post-psych-prog? Hell, that name probably exists already.

True Colour of Blood – soothing dark ambient

A while back I got a note from Eric Kesner of True Colour Of Blood, who wanted me to check out a 15-year retrospective of his work. I don’t normally do unsolicited stuff, but I finally got around to downloading the album and it’s good drone ambient, kind of in the same vein as Voice of Eye, a group I blogged about back in February. Also reminds me of some of the more understated works by artists like Caul and Ure Thrall.

He produces his droning ambient using a guitar and bow. Darkly atmospheric, it has a nice texture if you want to listen to it and chill out, but it also works well as background if you’re trying to get things done. Download his album from Rapidshare if you get the chance. Why not? It’s free….

Here’s a link to his MySpace page if you want to stream a bit first and see what you think.

And a cool video someone made for one of his songs:

Take a mysterious journey with Voice of Eye

I was driving down a country road late at night in 1993, desperately trying to get something on the radio I could stand to listen to before I fell asleep at the wheel. Somewhere on the left of the dial, drifting in from an almost-out-of-range college radio station out of Houston, I heard something so strange I wondered if I was dreaming. I wasn’t even sure if it was music. It had tribal-sounding percussion, but it wasn’t exactly a beat like a normal song. It was moving, fascinating and a bit ominous. I had to know who and what it was.

The DJ named the song and band just before the signal faded: “The Ascension of Jolene” by Voice of Eye. It sounded so mystical and otherworldly. From then on, for years, I would ask about Voice of Eye at various record stores. Nothing but blank stares. Finally, sometime in the late ’90s – paydirt. Waterloo Records in Austin didn’t have any VoE, but they had heard of it and put in an order for the 1995 album Transmigration. Beautiful and strange, the album’s theme is the journey of the soul after death. Listen to it in the dark and it will take you places.

That was my introduction to a type of music known as dark ambient. And of course straight up ambient. From there I discovered numerous ambient artists, including Brian Eno, who coined the term ambient. I started hunting down ambient collections and discovered folks like Lustmord, Life Garden, Randy Greif, Caul, William Orbit and Paul Schutze.

Eventually I tracked down the album that had that first VoE song I heard, “Ascension of Jolene.” It was on a compilation called Arrhythmia 2 (good luck finding it. It’s way out of print, but you might have luck at Randy Greif’s online mailorder store, which is where I got it.) That compilation in turn introduced me to yet another musical scene, experimental underground percussion by the likes of Crash Worship ADRV, which is a whole other story and something for another post.

I’ve introduced a few people to dark ambient who found it disturbing, comparing it to horror movie soundtrack music (not a bad comparison for some of it). I guess I’ve been expanding my musical horizons long enough that it doesn’t bother me. I like music that challenges me and carries me through a range of emotions. Ambient per se, is usually something you can either listen to or use as background and ignore. Dark ambient, while it can be beautiful and relaxing, often demands your attention. I have no problem with that. I like music that takes me on journeys, something VoE definitely does.

Voice of Eye (Jim Wilson and Bonnie McNairn) aren’t the electronic artists you might expect. They do use electronics, but not synthesizers. They produce their soundscapes organically, making a lot of their own instruments with names like “bass thing” and “jeemna.” According to their “About” on MySpace, “Voice of Eye’s modus operandi is to take sound sources that are acoustic in origin, then process them through little black boxes to warp time and widen sonic perception.” You can see a slide show with pictures of those instruments at the bottom of their MySpace page.

And below are a couple of YouTube videos, one of them showing a live performance (wish I could catch one of those):

VoE took a bit of a hiatus a few years ago, but they are back at it again. Originally from Houston, they have since set up shop in Taos, New Mexico. They’ve also released a few more albums. One of them,  Seven Directions Divergent, I just ordered via PayPal and their website. Apparently it contains more song-oriented material than the other VoE albums I’ve heard, which is intriguing.

They have four CDs available on their website. Check them out here: http://www.voiceofeye.com/