Hell yeah, dah Police, I have a funny story, back in the early 80s my
neighbor was a big fan and had the Police bumper sticker on her car. Well,
the anal immigrants from West Germany across the street didn't know that
it was a band, when they saw the sticker they thought she was pretending
to be a cop and called the sheriff's office, telling them the neighbor is
impersonating a police officer (a serious felony offense), well later in
the day a sherrif's tactical squadrom shows up next door, and we hear all
this laughing, as when they investigated the Germans are pointing at the
sticker saying , "There officer, dat sticker is impersonating police".
Yeah, doesn't have much to do with "idm", eh? But really part of why IDM
is suffering today is that most new artists get more concerned about being
accepted by their peers by sounding as identical to Aphex Twin and
company as possible. I don't really blame people for trying to copy
Richard cause he's a baaad, baaad artist. But to really be an artist takes
something really scary, reaching in and out for something new. Its not at
all easy, and its actually quite impossible to technically do something
"new" in the post post modern era we live in. But what you can do is reach
inside to place your personal stamp on the music. That's the intelligent
part. The Dance part is diffiult as well, I'll admit to my own faults
here, but things like beat matching and flow that are important to regular
Dance music should also be important to IDM, since its trying to be dance
music. And its really, really hard, whether you're just a wedding dj or
you do a live pa, but people like Aphex have the wicked grooves that never
lose the lock. There's other styles of music that don't require beats at
all, and there's always places in the flow of dance when people need a
quick break, and then there's totally ambient chill room music. But to me
that's not IDM, that's ambient, like I have some tracks that are
completely illbient, where hardcore clashing beats make sense, and the
music could work very well for certain movie scenes, but its not something
I'd play for 3 hours live to get people to dance, its something I'd play
in an art music festival, cause that audience fears the beat as much as
dancers fear pure noise. The Dance part also includes getting people to
dance, so really what we're dealing with here is quirky, original
electronic dance music. So I'd say no, the Police weren't IDM, they were
really doing a very unique form of Progressive Rock based on jazz and
reggae as well as euro-classical rather than the straight classical music
influence that was more prevalent in the other Prog Rockers that came
earlier like ELP. They were really an evolution of what groups like King
Crimson were doing in the early 70s, but with the Bob Marley and Miles
Davis influences and with Stings very heady lyrics.
So IDM, while still needing to be funky, dance-able music to still be
dance music, has to work really hard to shun the usual cliches. To me Juan
Atkins is really like the Godfather of IDMl, as he started out in '78 and
was making music that is both dance-able and very quircky and unique.
On Fri, 26 Jul 2002, EggyToast wrote:
quoted 29 lines At 07:35 PM 7/26/2002 -0400, you wrote:
> At 07:35 PM 7/26/2002 -0400, you wrote:
> > > But hell, I'm fueling the flamewar with this email so I guess I suck too.
> >
> >Jesus, someone accuses me of sucking and everyone wants to jump on the
> >bandwagon. I am the one that SUCKS. /I/ AM the OG sucker. Deal with it.
>
> Hey hey, I clearly said you rule, and since I contribute absolutely nothing
> to the list, my opinion is obviously better. You're going to have to try
> harder if you really want to suck.
>
> >Why hasn't anybody mentioned Cypress Hill in the hip hop thread?
> >And if you want some good IDMish rock, try The Police. Before IDM even
> >existed.
>
> The best thing about the police is that they were able to do so much with
> so few instruments. None of this "glitchy string instrument
> cacophony." Just a bass, a guitar, and some drums. Stuff like "Walking on
> the moon" is classic.
> -------
> eggytoast.com
> -------
> with lather thingy
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org
>
>