[atsonicpark]

I've done some innovative stuff with my bands. Sounds egotistical, but I really have, that doesn't mean it's good, that just means I tried to do something different. I pioneered the speeding up of video game sounding pop songs with screaming over top. I don't think that stuff was very good (I don't make that kind of music anymore and haven't since around 1999) but for a while I was trying to make music specifically that I hadn't heard anything like before. Nowadays I make music that I naturally wnat to make but I think I occasionally stumbled upon a few things that had never been done before. Still, you can throw that into genres like "noise" and whatnot I guess if you really wanted to.

I think glitch music is pretty innovative and new, though the roots of that can be traced back to before 1990 I'm sure. I think stuff like Ryoji Ikeda and Alva Noto are really "innovative".

I'm willing to say "Balloon Music" by Judy Dunaway is pretty innovative and unlike anything that came before, though it can be traced back to classical music and noise, I guess. I dunno. There's been some innovative experimental stuff...

I'm willing to say that a lot of stuff Omoide Hatoba did was extremely innovative and there was really nothing like it.

I dunno. I think the guitarist of Melt Banana is pretty innovative.

I think Sun City Girls did some completely innovative stuff (amongst their 100+ releases), though they'd been around before 1990.

Really, any bands with 100+ releases are probably going to have shit unlike you've ever heard before.

ORTHRELM is pretty innovative; "Ov" sounds like nothing I've ever heard.

[Florya]

Originally Posted by ✌➬

All music is borrowed from something. There will always be new innovations, the only reason you are not hearing it is because shitty bands outweigh the good ones.

Please list some of these innovators and I'll give them a listen.

I'm not slagging 'modern' music, there is some great stuff out there.I just haven't heard anything that's made me think 'Fuck, I've never heard anything like that before!'

I think the closest I've come recently was when I went to see Holy Fuck, with all their circuit bent gadgetry. But even they started to sound a bit 'Krautrock'
After a while.

[This Is Not Here]

You've picked some good examples of 70s/80s innovative music, however I don't feel what you're demanding of my examples, "a totally new type of music" is even remotely supplied by some of your own, namely Swans, Sonic Youth, Joy Division, Bauhaus. They're all innovative, and they sound different to much that went before, but NONE are in themselves "a totally new type of music".

[fugazifan]

Originally Posted by Florya

That's my whole point. Even if they sound 'original' and 'innovative', their music is influenced by what came before it.

that sounds like every musician, ever. i highly doubt that you will find something that isnt influenced by something else. nobody invented any kind of music from scratch. and if he says he did, he is a liar.
so what is innovative music?

[atsonicpark]

Also, MBV weren't that innovative; they just had good production! Isn't Anything had some innovative guitar work, but Loveless was a hybrid of a lot of pop music and dream pop and noise rock that had come out or was coming out at the same time.

[Florya]

Judy Dunaway and Omoide Hatoba. I'll track them down.

Thanks

[atsonicpark]

Originally Posted by fugazifan

that sounds like every musician, ever. i highly doubt that you will find something that isnt influenced by something else. nobody invented any kind of music from scratch. and if he says he did, he is a liar.
so what is innovative music?

It's interesting, I started making music when I was 12, and the first music I made was just me making sounds with my mouth. That's how I discovered Merzbow, through mp3.com, as some of my mouth noises were really.. noisey. That's how I discovered noise music period! I had never heard anything like it and wasn't inspired by anything, I just did it naturally. Same goes for me screaming over video game sounds... at first, I just taped video game music off of my tv, sped it up in sound recorder, and screamed over it. I hate all that shit now, and these aren't good examples at all. But I'm willing to guess that lots of innovative recordings have been made exactly like that.

I have a cd by this guy named Neil Perry, and the entire record is him playing with a blender and yelling about his bathroom. It's unlike anything I've ever heard. Same goes for Human Lobster, which is just a guy screaming over pop songs. He just screams the words to pre-recorded songs in time with the pop songs.

So, yeah, if you look deep in the outsider music/experimental music/avant garde music underground, there's all kinds of shit unlike anything you'll ever hear. Maybe not GOOD shit, but...

As for popular music, "glitch" music was really the last big innovation I think.

[atsonicpark]

Originally Posted by Florya

Judy Dunaway and Omoide Hatoba. I'll track them down.

Thanks

Judy Dunaway is a composer, improvisor and conceptual artist who is primarily known for her sound works for latex balloons. Since 1990 Judy Dunaway has composed over thirty works for balloons as instruments and has also made this her main instrument for improvisation.

Omoide Hatoba is... I dunno. It's a Boredoms side project but it's better than the Boredoms and doesn't really sound like them. I honestly can't even explain how they sound to you.

[atsonicpark]

Oh, also, this one's pretty obvious, but I think Xiu Xiu are actually really innovative, as are artists that work in a similiar field (Autistic Daughters for example). You can connect them to pop music, electronic music, classical music, etc... but they kinda... I dunno. It's something very different. I'm not even a big Xiu Xiu fan but I hadn't heard anything like them when they came out, certainly. Also, has anyone mentioned Spiderland by Slint yet? That didn't sound like anyone else.

Just looking through my cd's now, I can name about 100 bands I consider extremely "innovative"... innovation is everywhere man but certainly, the artists I consider TRULY innovative.. Throbbing Gristle, Captain Beefheart, Harry Partch, Einsturzende Neubauten, The Residents, Suicide, etc... they already all happened, and I think they all took a lot of the music most of us listen to pretty logical extremes. So, I dunno.

[This Is Not Here]

Originally Posted by atsonicpark

I have a cd by this guy named Neil Perry, and the entire record is him playing with a blender and yelling about his bathroom. It's unlike anything I've ever heard. Same goes for Human Lobster, which is just a guy screaming over pop songs. He just screams the words to pre-recorded songs in time with the pop songs.
.

Ha ha, that was hilarious to read, and whats more they sound really interesting to listen to! Where can i get hold of these?

[atsonicpark]

Haha I can rip them sometime. They're REALLY not that good beyond a laugh, to be honest, but... they are beyond anything I've ever heard.

http://www.indieville.com/oddities.htm

A lot of those are pretty innovative.. but for really weird reasons, not always having to do with music... It's a great read, either way.

JLIAT is really innovative, I think. http://www.jliat.com/ even though it's the worst page ever. All of his albums are very conceptual. He programmed a Beethoven symphony with all the notes being pre-programmed percussion sounds. He released cd's of silence, cd's of single tones, cd's of bomb explosions, cd's that will damage your cd player, etc. Again, none of that stuff is really... I dunno... "good", but it IS innovative.

There will always be people way in the underground doing innovative things.

[Florya]

Originally Posted by This Is Not Here

You've picked some good examples of 70s/80s innovative music, however I don't feel what you're demanding of my examples, "a totally new type of music" is even remotely supplied by some of your own, namely Swans, Sonic Youth, Joy Division, Bauhaus. They're all innovative, and they sound different to much that went before, but NONE are in themselves "a totally new type of music".

Ok so some of my examples weren't that great. What I'm getting at is that when I played 'Filth' for the first time, back in 1983, it blew me away. I had never heard anything like it before.
Same with 'Brother James', 'Day of The Lords' and 'Stigmata Martyr'.

The same with 'Despair' by SPK and 'John of Patmos' by Eyeless in Gaza and 'Thirsty Animal' by Einsturzende Neubaten.

I understand the 'nothing is truly new, everything is a rehash of previous work' argument, but when an artist takes such a giant step that what they produce is unrecognisable from anything that preceded it, then that is an evolutionary step in music. A new species of music.

That evolution seems to have ground to a halt.

[fugazifan]

i think there have definatly been innovations in this past decade or so. i dont know about rediscovering music through them, but defiantly there have been truly interesting musicians that have made truly interesting music. like gastr del sol, charambalides, earth (to some extent) even fahey's 90s output, simply because he completely deconstructed a genre that he was a true innovater of, and made it completely foreign. i dont know if any of these artists are innovators, or just really good, but it doesnt really matter, cause there is always good music around us, the rest is just semantics...

[atsonicpark]

Right. If you don't think there's innovative music, you're just looking in the wrong place. I hear new bands every month that sounds unlike anything I've ever heard.

I highly reccomend this blog for a lot of new (and old) bands unlike anything I've ever heard before: http://killedincars.blogspot.com/

...for example, I didn't realize to live and shave in la's "wigmaker in 18th century..." was released in 2002. I thought it was older. See, right there, that album is EXTREMELY innovative.. holy shit.

[Danny Himself]

 

Tom Waits may look a bit more raggedy in his old age, but he's still inventing new ground to cover all the time, with each album he releases. And how many albums has he had released since 1990..? Like.. 5 or 6 maybe? Plus a number of musicals and operas he's written. For post-1990 innovation then check this man's shit; The Black Rider and Bone Machine.

There's a number of other post-1990 acts I can rave about here, though whether you could class them as original/innovative or not is an entirely personal opinion;

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, at least for a few albums, came up with some of the strangest music you could hear, full of- but not limited to- neo-blues-psychedelic riffage, unwarranted and unexpected screaming, nonsensical rambling, theremin solos.. good stuff. Orange is a good place to start.

I'd argue some of the best hip hop came out of the 90s- basically being the 'new wave' to the 'punk' of NWA, Public Enemy, et al. Hello Nasty by Beastie Boys and Enter The Wu Tang by Wu Tang Clan are couple musts. Hell, Beck's Odelay is some of the dust brother's best work.

As far as that, there's been fantastic singer-songwriters to come forward since 1990. Conor Oberst, Chan Marshall, M. Ward. Some completely off-the-wall time machines like The Squirrel Nut Zippers, Dresden Dolls, She & Him..

[atsonicpark]

Ah, forgot about some of those. That reminds me... I don't like Bjork, but the album of vocal-only stuff is really innovative. I don't like Mike Patton, but lots of his stuff is innovative, though a lot of his better ideas are cribbed from John Zorn, which reminds me.. half the stuff released on Tzadik records is pretty damn innovative. I actually find a lot of William Basinski stuff innovative, even though it's essentially "just" ambient music (he often takes old decaying tapes and records him playing them until the loops completely decay; his "watermusic" album is based on random elements of looped notes that play in different times and make completely new loops as they go along). How about Tetuzi Akiyama or Marc Ribot or even Fred Frith's continued output? It's all essentially "guitar-based" music but they're still doing original things. Same goes for Derek Bailey's past-1990 output though it's steeped in jazz, it's probably unlike any guitarist you'll ever hear, and his technique actually changed a lot when he got carpal tunnel syndrome. And so on and so forth. Entire record labels are dedicated to exciting new sounds; Crucial Blast, Anticon (really, have you ever heard a group like Clouddead?), Raster-Norton, even some of the Ipecac and Skin Graft stuff. Etc.........

[demonrail666]

I think the problem is that rock has never really embraced the concept of newness. It seems far more interested in ideas of authenticity, rebellion or power/intensity than anything else. When 'newness' does emerge within rock it increasingly seems to stem from bringing in pre-existing ideas from other styles (such as free jazz, dub, etc) rather than tinkering with rock itself. In that sense I'd say that SY are probably one of the last truly innovative (rather than new) pure Rock groups. I'm sure there are other examples but I can't think of one off the top of my head. Certainly the Valentines seem to me more like an interesting synthesis of SY, Dinosaur Jnr, Cocteau Twins and (at least on Loveless) dance music.

I agree. I think most innovations are made out of limitations. wether it comes to music or anything else.
misuse of tools etc.

I just wanted to thrwo this inside, this thread gives me headaches, I already forgot with who I agree

Originally Posted by Florya

Ok so some of my examples weren't that great. What I'm getting at is that when I played 'Filth' for the first time, back in 1983, it blew me away. I had never heard anything like it before.
Same with 'Brother James', 'Day of The Lords' and 'Stigmata Martyr'.

The same with 'Despair' by SPK and 'John of Patmos' by Eyeless in Gaza and 'Thirsty Animal' by Einsturzende Neubaten.

I understand the 'nothing is truly new, everything is a rehash of previous work' argument, but when an artist takes such a giant step that what they produce is unrecognisable from anything that preceded it, then that is an evolutionary step in music. A new species of music.

That evolution seems to have ground to a halt.

I think a lot of the more 'visible' punk in the late 70's damaged certain people's expections of music in the UK, and I often hear the same sort of words you've been posting on this thread from those who came from punk around your age. Morrisey also really destroyed enthusiasm for anything other than conservative, and ultimately safe music, while cunningly making his fans feel like they are outsiders, when in fact they are just deluded.

A number of people have been mentioned already, plus add Birchville Cat Motel, Fennesz made some truly innovative music, hip hop, grime, turntablism etc came up with innovative stuff. There is a thing called the internet now, where you can search and discover thousands of bands, some of them terrible, some of the time average, some of them good, some of them really great, and also some of them doing new things with an eye to the future.

Your point is a personal one. Jut because you don't feel it like you used to, that has nothing to do with the way music carries on evolving regardless.

[demonrail666]

People crave innovation but seem reluctant to fully embrace its consequences. They like the idea of it, so long as it doesn't fuck with certain things they hold dear about the kind of music they like. The general attitude seems to be that innovation is great so long as it still 'Rocks'. Hence the ongoing popularity of bands such as SY and the Valentines - neither of whom, despite their apparent open-mindedness have done much to mess around with the fundamentals of Rock as far as I'm concerned.