The Novice’s Guide to the Intricate Nature of New Music Genres

I am an electro and techno novice. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I am a music novice, despite spending hours and hours each week listening to varying genres and lovingly gobbling up facts, names, dates and discographies in my spare time. The fact that the people who write on this blog are essentially all bound by the same loving affection for music, I don’t many of us are masters of it. Or maybe that’s just me.

See, music for me has always become more amazing the more I try to learn about it. When I was younger it seemed a very small thing; essentially only existing as far as the radio allowed me to hear. Of course, that was a silly assumption, but it was the reality of music as I grew up. There was this “past” that existed because my parents had heard it, and the present as I heard it. It took an awakening in my early teens as to music’s true widespread nature, and it opened my eyes. Bands that are known to do this to people are known by some as “gateway” bands; the bands that open our eyes to further deeper knowledge and sourcing of greater expanses of music from around the genres of music.

I was brought up on rock music, and slowly found electronic music via my love for the recent output of Radiohead and Boards of Canada. If anyone is to say that the Radiohead albums I am referring to (specifically Kid A and Amnesiac) are over rated, I can only suggest that they might be right, but what it gave me was something beyond simple music. They opened my ears and mind to a whole new style and creative process behind music. Electronic music that was cerebral and interesting suddenly existed beyond the Ibiza Annual adverts and the club music that I had grown up with.

This awakening has only brought me to realise just how little I do know of the music that I am getting involved with. When I discovered the branch of rock music that is named “Shoe-gaze” I was aghast at not having known about it before, and quite quickly I devoured Slow Dive and My Bloody Valentine, the two poster-bands of the genre, and then moved onto more obscure types of shoe gaze, ending in the other genres of shit gaze and electro shoe gaze, or “nu-show gaze”. All made up genres, you understand, much like the “nu-rave” fascination for those three months in 2006.

It led me to remember a phrase I heard at work early this year; “a jack of all trades, a master of none” – my skimming of these genres, and others, had lead me to not really delve deep into them in the same way that my rock music knowledge was. It is always a difficult expectation of people when you start to dip your toes in the deep ocean of a new genre, especially ones that are so wide and vast that it might seem daunting.

I fell into minimal techno via an incredible thread on the world famous Drowned in Sound message boards a long time ago. It is a legendary thread on there for bringing to the masses an almost exhaustive compendium of musical choice cuts from an incredibly detailed hive mind of music (if you want to read the thread, it is here , but be warned – it’s 827 replies will make it a lengthy one to load and an even lengthier one to read) It spawned a massive Spotify playlist that sadly is no longer around, but I picked off various cuts from it and bits and pieces I liked and sprinkled these tracks all over my Wednesday Graveyard playlists that I religiously built in 2009 and 2010. I’ve abandoned them since, but I wish to return to them in the future, and I will post them on here if and when I do.

I made the conscious decision to get into this genre a few months back when I became very bored of rock music almost overnight. I didn’t quite fully grasp the nature of my commitment, and it is only when I look at being involved more and more the less and less I actually seem to know. I started loving The Field and was chastised for not listening to Arthur Oskan, Patlac, or Walls. I’d not heard of them; I now have, and they intrigue me.

The journey into a new music genre is always quite a challenge. First of all you need some guidance on where to even start, and in some cases even that is a most contested point. If you chose the wrong era, or the wrong route to start down, you are either going to be put off for life or going to be sucked in for the long term, reading up on Wikis, detailing on Discogs and most importantly, seeking out all their music on Peer to Peer networks, sharing mixtapes/iMixes, jumping up and down on Spotify playlists and... god help you, joining a forum.

Interestingly, despite all of this, I still enjoy it more than anything else I find in music. Sure, I love seeing bands live and hearing new material from artists I know and love, but there is nothing more daunting or exciting than realising that there is a whole world of new music out there that you might like or you might hate and that’s the point. It is obviously not for everyone, and those who seek out details in each genre are quite different to those who exhaust their singular genre, but that’s the beauty of it. I can write 1000 words on why and how to approach a new genre, and Nick or Gareth could write 1000 words on why they love a particular song. That’s the beauty of it all, really.

Music is cool.

Six Shuffle #1 - 28th July 2011

A long time ago, in 2008, I had my own music blog with a friend.  I wrote a lot on it.  One of my favourite things that I did was a feature called "Six Shuffle" - I would play my entire musical library on Shuffle, six times in a row, and have to write something about the song or artist in the time that the song played for, without skipping the track.

It was fun, for me at least.  You can check the archive by clicking here. Be warned, it's wanky and poorly written for the most part, so it should be fairly recognisable as my own writing.  So, here it is: the "rebooted" first edition of Six Shuffle for Tones of Town.

The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
The final and title track of the debut album from one of Scotland's greatest recent exports.  The Twilight Sad are up there with some of my favourite bands of all time, simply because they seem to do exactly what I wanted to do if I had been in a band - loud angry Scottish vocals, spooky lyrics, crashing waves of distortion and guitar, and thudding drumming.  They are my own musical tastes distilled into one band, and this track, a long, winding, immersive ambient track, misses a few things that make the band such a favourite of mine... but that is precisely why I like this track so much.  It embodies their range, and also echoes there EP release Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards, It Did. that expanded on most of the tracks from the first record to this slow, drawn out expanse.  It works.

The Beatles - We Can Work It Out
This is a stark contrast to The Twilight Sad.  Taken from Past Masters Vol. 2, or the indie-est selection of Beatles tracks you can get this side of the Stereo versus Mono debacle that plagues their back catalogue.  I made the mistake of keeping the Stereo mixes as they play havoc with my left-ear deafness - it sounds like the Fab Four are screaming in my right ear with a band playing just slightly off to the left, in a different room.  Anyway, this song is one my favourites from the band, partly due to the changing pace of ryhthm, and the sweet melody that permeates through the track.  Also, an accordion?  Points given.

The Horrors - I Only Think of You
This neatly ties to a Tweet I made a few weeks back:

 

I have barely listened to any Horrors material before the release of the recent album Skying, and I did feel dirty listening to their third LP before their first and second, so I acquired them and started listening to them... but they made no impact.  This track is over 7 minutes long, and in that run time it feels like nothing happens.  It is like a cover of How Soon is Now? or My Bloody Valentine that never quite made it.  The production feels like 20 years old, which isn't a bad thing... but it feels so bloody boring.  Maybe in context it works, but as a solo track... meh.  Also, I am yet to be convinced by Skying, but it's at least slightly more interesting on first listen that this track.

Radiohead - How to Disappear Completely

Ah, Kid A... the best/worst Radiohead album there has ever been - in my eyes, it's their Magnus Opus, but my best friend finds it abhorrent.  He is an ardent Bends/Pablo Honey fan, and can't even really listen to OK Computer.  However, in a spate of that "you SHALL like what I like" I have tried to force the later Radiohead releases upon him, letting him hear Knives Out, or Reckoner, and this, one of their most beautiful songs ever put to record.  Some suggest Nude is better, or Street Spirit, or even the recent Codex, but this for me is such a fabulous pop song, with exquisite instrumentation and a clever structure, especially in the face of the rest of the album.  You can draw the lines from this to Nude, I guess, seeing as they are from similar time periods in the bands lifespan.  I really enjoy Kid A and Amnesiac, as not only are they good records, but my gateway albums into electronic experimentation and various other artists, which I think they were and are for a lot of music fans. 

Boards of Canada - Paul Russell's Piece

Speaking of moving into electronic music, Boards, already circle jerked by me on this blog, appear here in one of their shorter, rarer cuts.  The track just ended... moving into...

Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy

Apple really need to look at their random algorithm.  I have 50Gb of music at my disposal and they pick two Boards tracks.  I am not complaining.  Dayvan is one of the stand out tracks from the band, and their most famous track - it's adorned hundreds of BBC programmes since it's 2006 debut.  It appears also on the 2006 EP Trans Canada Highway, which I love.  It's not my favourite Boards track, not by a long way, but it's certainly one that I love to hear, and smile when I know it's coming up.  The previous track in the shuffle is actually from their first "release" if you can call it that, whilst its canonical presence within the Boards discography is still discussed amongst fans.  See, it comes from A Few Old Tunes (Side II) which is a bootlegged tape of cuts from before the band had made a true release.  The story suggests that it was handed out to friends and family in the 1990s.  It has a sister; Old Tunes Vol. 2, both of which I downloaded a long time ago - I don't even know if a real copy still exists. There is still a lot of mystery surrounding the release, which I happen to love.

Bonus Seventh Track

Incubus - Magic Medicine

The Sound of Boards of Canada

Okay, Christ, here comes the pretentious music blog faux-writer that is going to talk about an artist that is outside the mainstream but critically acclaimed beyond their years and adored by fans and musos alike. But there's a difference here because I am not going to try and preach to you about why you should like them but instead going to explain why I like them so much and why they make such a difference in my musical life.

They are Boards of Canada.

From Scotland and Canada (a good mix, if you ask me) they infused TV show samples, organic musical noises and sounds to create three of the most lauded electronic records of all time - Music Has the Right to Children, Geogaddi, and The Campfire Headphase. They also created some fo the most sought after EPs; Trans Canada Highway, Twoism, Boc Maxima and the Peel Sessions. Throw that output into the mix with two rare, unofficial, not even release 'tapes' that have been Torrented since they discovered, A Few Old Tunes and Old Tunes Vol. 2, and the fact that very little has been heard of them since 2006 and you have the makings of a indie hard-on.

But that's not what I love about them. Their output is something that is an ever presence on my playlist because of the sound. The albums have a dream like quality to them, a perfect balance of melody, bass, hooks and floaty production that cools, soothes and calms me. The records have this strange space between the tracks, almost like room to breathe, with each piece and track so meticulously pieced together, balanced perfectly like a great building designed to look like an illusion.

The songs have an ethereal style to them. There are the trademarks of Boards music - something that's sometimes missing from other bands' outputs. The trademark children's voices invoking a sense of insane innocence, and the swooping synth fade-in-and-outs that back ground an almost icey front melody or sound. It sounds like like a flowing back and forth wave of water that soundtracks the comings and goings of life and the way the universe is built.

I found Boards of Canada late in my musical life and like most of my recent finds they are so different to what I used to listen to it belies my youthful rock sounds that I demanded so heavy handedly during the first decade. Boards are almost the antithesis of my Nu Metal mindset that I used to carry with me everywhere I went. Now, growning up, I didn't ever expect a band or artist to affect me as much as the angst ridden songs had done in my teenage years. However, I was wrong.

Take the track Dayvan Cowboy, which appears on both The Campfire Headphase and the Trans Canada Highway EP - the song is regarded by most in the BoC community as the true mainstream single, and it is a great track, but to call it mainstream obscures the fact that it doesn't "start" until one third of the way through the running time. The EP In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country is with out a doubt in my mind my favourite EP ever released by any artist. The EP opens with a swoop synth base and a rattling rim shot sound effect that is slowly accompanied by drum rhythms and further swooning waves of slowly, brooding synth. The effect that it creates is something akin to watching rain fall down a pane of newly installed glass as a lightning storm rumbles on in the far distance.

It is this sound that makes me love Boards of Canada so much, and slowly ingest everything they have produced and that I can find. By obtaining their sought after tapes from their early years that were simply made for friends and family, I can see the genesis of a strange eye for the unusual and marking them and making them into something greater than before. The slow build up is a stylistic love letter to the art of pace and restrained craft that I admire so greatly.

So, I am going to try and get my friends to discover the band? No, I am not. When I was younger there was a strange nee for validation, the requirement to get my friends to enjoy, love and appreciate the bands that I love in tandem with me. This left me frustrated when my attempts to make my friend understand Rage Against the Machine ("I hate rapping") and Mars Volta ("Sounds like he is just going mental on a guitar") to the point of high blood pressure diagnosis. So, no, I am not going to force my friends to listen to them, and nor am I writing this to try and covnince you that you are wrong to dislike them or to have no listened to them. No, this is not a article to recruit members to the fanbase, but something that I want people to understand, take in, and accept that they are above and beyond some of the other artists I may off the cuff say are my "favourite artists of all time" because, and this is ture, very few can create such an incredible sound, and an incredible thread of consciousness through that very sound.


The worst thing I can say for Boards of Canada is that you don't need to focus on their music. It can be played in the back ground of almost anything and sit there, unobtrusive. This is why when listening to the albums I can almost say with absolute certainty you will hear something that you will have heard before. It's most likely going to be Roygbiv, which has been used almost endlessly by Charlie Brooker and others as background music for TV shows. The strange thing about this, whilst it could be seen as a problem, it has in fact allowed me to enjoy their music more and interpret their sound and style more fluidly than other artists I have listened to.

They have soundtracked walking in the snow home from a night out at the pub, driving to meet my girlfriend at the airport, sitting in the sunshine outside next to a pool in 90F heat, and the most productive and decisive moments in my day job. These moments are all linked to the music of Boards of Canada, and the sound of the artist, and they are the moments that make these albums the most important in my regular listening rotation. They are like a clean white room with a glass of cold, fresh highland water, whilst a blue sky and bright sunshine is outside and I can see sweeping rolling hills and trees moving in a slow breeze. There are birds flying, probably kids cycling. And occasionally a large 70'' metallic robot walks by fighting off an alien species of invading aliens.

If I were to force you to listen to the artists, I'd just wholesale tell you to head to the Warp Records store and buy everything. But that's un realistic. Unfortunately, they are not on Spotify, so I am going to have deal with faulty Youtube links.

This track is the title track from In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country.


This is one of my favourite peices of music of all time, 1969 from the album Geogaddi.


This track is called Turquoise Hexagon Sun from the album Music Has the Right to Children. The voices in the background are incredibly effective, and almost decipherable.


This is '84 Pontiac Dream. Taken from the album The Campfire Headphase, this album features no children voices, and a little guitar. This was a major change in design but the album kept the style and sound of the other albums. It is much maligned by the fan base for this, but I love it for the differences.


And finally, something a little different. From the EP Twoism, this is the title track.

Putting A Ban on the Guitar

I stand atop the Empire State Building as the bombers scar the sky and the clouds of firey smoke rise above the burning trees in Central Park. The sirens are long gone and echoes of the explosions from the apocalyptic hell bringers are still ricocheting off the walls as the city slowly dies from inside. The stories below are filled with the papers of offices firebombed, the streets below only glimpsed through the smoke are blocked by cars, trucks, taxis and fire engines, all failing to escape the end, and the air is still apart from the sound of a radio.

In the corner is a single radio station, manned by the last valiantly broadcasting hero, playing the last five years of popular music slowly and steadfastly, and in the smoke filled world there is a sudden feeling that we could’ve done so much better if there just had been no guitar.

Imagine a band forced to have to create their sound scapes without the use of the six stringed clichéd that sits affront most indie rock bands and transcends that genre to the point of ubiquitous-ness. Is the guitar over used? Yes, I think so. It is a mainstay of pop rock, in the same way soaring stings and the piano are the mainstays of the ballad that the X Factor hand pick to bullshit us with. Is this overuse a problem? Not really actually, it’s something as a fan of the music that is predominately guitar led I have to put up with I suppose. However it doesn’t stop me from thinking what it would be like if a band just avoided using them.

Imagine The Beatles were forced to create all their pop rock hooks with electronic, or string based orchestra, or maybe even chip tunes, using only Gameboys and the Roland 808? Would it force a band to be more innovative when they are not allowed to resort to the other instruments to create… would necessity become the mother of invention?

I actually don’t think so – the ease in which an artist can build a song and melody on a guitar opens the world to more artists, and in quantity you’d get some quality. That’s the world we have right now – the number of guitar bands I listen to daily probably show me how wrong this line of thinking might be, and Keane, a self imposed guitar less band are one of the dullest bands around. They’d probably have been slightly more palatable if their music had been guitar based.

This is not to say that a band wouldn’t benefit from the lack of a guitar. Artists such as The Knife, Boards of Canada, maybe even La Roux, most certainly are more interesting for their less guitar / more instruments approach, if electronic music can be seen as a change, but surely there would be more jazz based artists, more saxophone, more woodwind based mainstream acts – it would change up the top 40 that’s for sure. In my apocalypse everyone is friendly, the world is becoming a better place, and instead of every teenage getting a Squire Stratocaster replica, they get a Scarlatti 120 bass Accordion.