5 very strange music
genres:
Here are five genres that I can almost guarantee are not on your Spotify playlist.
“Gabba” or “Gabber”:
A form of extremely fast techno/house which appeared in the Netherlands in the
late 1980’s. Gabba (Dutch slang for “mate”), drew influence from the Detroit
techno scene, but took a harder more aggressive approach, focusing on distorted
repetitive synths and glitch bit-crushed samples, played at 150bpm or higher. The genre developed a small
but passionate following in the Netherlands, the UK and even Israel. Unfortunately,
the scene also developed a small following of Neo-Nazi’s in the 90’s which
permanently damaged its reputation, leading to a number of high-profile Gabba
artists (Gabberers?) to release tracks speaking out against racism.
Example: 3 Steps Ahead – Drop
it
Grindcore: Possibly
the fastest and most "hard-core" metal sub-genre ever. Despite taking considerable
skill to actually play, Grindcore is frequently mocked for its bizarre,
unintelligible vocals, ridiculous band names such as Agoraphobic Nosebleed and
A*al C**t (yes, it is what you think it is), and having some of the shortest
songs of any genre. One group by the name of Brutal Truth, were actually awarded a Guinness
World Record for the shortest music video of all time for their song Collateral Damage, at just four seconds
long. I have to say, it’s a pretty
cool video.
Example: Brutal Truth – Collateral
Damage
Unblack Metal:
Black metal is reasonably well known these days, with early bands of the taking
on the black magic and satanic imagery of earlier forms of metal, but instead
taking it very, very seriously. So seriously in fact, a few Scandanavian black
metal bands started committing some pretty horrendous crimes, including burning
down churches and murdering each other, simply in order to maintain their image. So
what were all the Christian Metal heads to do? Well, they came up with their
own answer to the genre in the form of Unblack Metal, AKA Christian Black
Metal. Basically, it’s exactly what you’d expect, black metal instrumentals,
but with lyrics praising Jesus and stuff. Overall, it’s probably the most
oxymoronic genre you’ll ever hear.
Example: Admonish – Journey
Into Afterlife
Schranz: Basically
the tempo of Gabba, but even harder and with more distorted sounds. It’s
extremely unpleasant to the ears, unless maybe you’ve taken a large dose of
methamphetamine and stayed up for two weeks. Nobody really knows why it’s
called Schranz, all we know is the term was created by a German record store
owner in the mid 90’s, it’s extremely hard to find, and it appears to be dying
out. Maybe that’s a good thing…
Example: This remix of Faithless – Insomnia
Danger Music: A
form of experimental Japanese rock, Danger Music is essentially just noise and
feedback with some notes and melodies thrown in now and again. The essential
philosophy behind Danger is that the music, or its performance, should be able
to harm the listener. Takehisa Kosugi’s composition Music for a Revolution, for example, encourages listeners to gouge
out their own eyeballs, one now, and one in five years’ time. One performer,
Yamtaka Eye of the groups Hanatarash and Boredoms, utilises all sorts of noise
making equipment from power tools to broken glass, and has previously required
audience members to sign waivers before attending his shows. Eye’s early shows
were truly terrifying and extremely dangerous experiences, and he was
eventually banned from most venues. Here’s why:
He once drove a bulldozer through the back of the stage
during a performance.
During one show, he cut a dead cat in half with a machete.
He almost lost a leg after attempting to strap a running circular saw to his back.
Hanatarash were once forced to end a show early when Eye
prepared to throw a lit Molotov cocktail onto the stage.
Example: Yamataka Eye – Live
footage:
(Don’t worry, you won’t see the cat thing, I didn't want to
see that either).
5 of the worst things to happen to music.
1. Music on mobile phones.
Maybe this should actually be one of the worst things to happen to public transport, but if I have to hear another pus-filled tweeny-bopper play Skrillex at full volume on a bus at 8am, I’m going to use their Galaxy S4 to beat them to death.
2. Canada.
Canada gave us Arcade Fire, Rush, Maple Syrup, the Walkie Talkie, Ice Hockey, and 35,344,962 people who are even more irrationally polite than us Brits.
The problem is they were so polite they decided against tying concrete blocks to Justin Bieber’s feet and throwing him off a pier at birth, which is a shame.
3. Old people who say “music was better in my day”.
These people need to be tied naked to a pole and pelted with rotting fruit by passers-by.
They choose to ignore the Bay City Rollers, Rick Astley, Gary Glitter, Jason Donovan, Boy George, Vanilla Ice and The Archies, and simply pretend the only bands which existed “in their day” are the ones they still listen to 30 years later when they're filling out tax forms. They don’t even try to listen to good contemporary music, instead deciding that all people under the age of 40 must only listen to One Direction and Skrillex.
4. Skrillex
Not Skrillex as an individual, but the “Bro-Step” fad that he kick-started.
The fad is long gone now, but the pain lingers. Six years ago when I arrived at college, all I could hear blasting from cars, iPod speakers and, of course, bloody mobile phones was:
SCREEEE!! WUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUB SCREEEE!!! WUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUB SCREEEE!!! “Pulp Fiction quote” SCREEEE!! WUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUB
No amount of electro-convulsive shock therapy and mind-numbing prescription drugs will ever ease the mental trauma of hearing this shit every single time I left the house.
5. “Novelty” or “fun” singles.
With the exception of Rage Against the Machine getting the UK Christmas number one in 2009, any time a “fun” or “novelty” song gets released everyone has a good laugh don’t they? It’s just a bit of fun isn’t it?
It is until you’ve heard Who Let the Dogs Out!? for the 8th time over your workplace radio and suddenly everything goes black. You come to, sweating, as you strangle your manager with an extension cord while everyone looks on in shock.
Then who goes to prison? Not the Baha Men, no they just get more royalties.
Piracy: A brief history and discussion
Love it or loathe it, piracy has been and will be around for decades. Its impact upon artists, the record industry, and the experience of listening to and owning music has been absolutely colossal.
First it was choirs copying sheet music and musicians ripping each other off. Then it was unauthorised vinyl recordings from live shows, and you had to “know a guy who knew a guy” to get your hands on one. When you eventually did, the recording sounded like the band was playing underwater with pillows in front of their amps.
Then everything sped up, the compact tape came into existence in Germany 1964, and with the addition of Dolby sound in the 70s it became the perfect pirate’s tool. Now all you needed was an expensive stereo that had a record player and tape deck, and you could copy your favourite LP onto a small, portable medium and play it on your Sony Walkman (released in 1979). The 70s also gave us sampling, which gave us Hip-Hop as we know it today.
The 80’s became infamous as the era the mixtape became popularised, perhaps the most benign form of piracy but piracy nonetheless. Teenagers would pop a blank tape into their massive Boom Boxes (not a euphemism), flick on the radio, and wait for cheesy, overly sentimental songs to appear so they could tape them and give them away to some other spotty miscreant with a hormone imbalance they found attractive.
Piracy became increasingly personalised, with custom playlists, quick and high quality home recording, and terrible drawings of hearts on the cover. The mixtape also helped many early hip-hop artists, as they rapped over stolen music to produce quick and easy promo-tapes when they couldn't find a decent DJ or producer. This is a practice which continues to this day, one example being Frank Ocean's debut mixtape, Ultra Nostalgia.
(Those damn hippity-hoppers! With their highly inventive methods of manipulating music to create even more music! Crim’nals, all of em!)
But even in the age of shiny tracksuits and this haircut, a huge backlash against piracy was under way. The BPI, worried about the potential sales damage from lovesick teeny-boppers, came up with the campaign Home taping is killing music, with posters pasted in record shop windows and in the back of magazines to discourage the evils of the mixtape destroying our beloved music industry.
Ironically, the logo for this campaign became a de-facto logo for pirates themselves.
Later, as CD’s and floppy disks hit the market, so did a host of further anti-piracy campaigns. My favourite is Don’t Copy That Floppy featuring actor and lawyer MC Double Def DP (the DP stands for Disk Protector, not the other DP).
Others include:
Piracy, it’s a crime (AKA – “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car”)
Now, it’s easy to laugh at how out of touch and hyperbolic most of these campaigns were, but the point remains. If people can get music, films, and porn without paying, how can these prestigious industries survive?
It’s a contentious topic, which became surrounded by more and more questions as technology pushed piracy into the mainstream: How should we pay musicians? Should we have record labels anymore? Are pirates really criminals? Is there any point in trying to stop it when the campaigns are so laughably crap?
The questions went on and on and no one was really sure, despite some very strong opinions from artists and industry moguls on both sides. In 2000, Metallica got a bit* pissed off with Napster, having seen a copy of their then unreleased track I Disappear floating around the site. They took them to court, got a settlement, and then kicked up a media shit-storm, which coerced a band of not-so-merry-musicians and the RIAA to take out a number of further lawsuits against the network.**
Then a few artists came to Napster’s defence, particularly Chuck D of Public Enemy, proclaiming Napster and other sites as a great promotional tool and a way for new customers to hear music they might not otherwise have been exposed to.
I grew up with piracy. By the mid 2000’s, when I was really starting to explore music, there was a whole host of piracy options. There were CD burners for your computer, so you could quickly and easily copy a high quality album from a friend in about ten minutes; plus Limewire, Kazaa, and a truckload of other Peer to Peer (P2P) network options.
And then the Lord said, “Let there be Torrents!” and it was so.
I got in with some nerdy types on some chat forum and was invited to become a member of a website called Oink.cd, a torrent tracker site where, once a member, you could post requests of whatever album or film you may be looking for. If you didn’t respond to enough requests within a certain time, your ability to download what you wanted would get taken away until you uploaded enough material.
I was absolutely hooked and began to drown myself in music, episodes of South Park, and films (although at the time, they still took 2-3 days to download) and quickly spread to word to my friends. Once Oink got shut down, we simply went back to P2P and swapping/burning CDs to get what we wanted until we heard about the Pirate Bay.
Yes, I was a full time Knock off Nigel. I know many of you reading this are too. I still have a considerable chunk of entertainment left over from my teenage years and I sometimes feel a little pang of guilt when I put on my iPod and I realise I never supported a particular artist. I didn’t buy their album, I stole it, I didn’t see them live, and I didn’t even buy a lousy t-shirt.
So I asked myself, do I have any excuses to pirate today? I’m now in my mid-20s, I have a good job that pays well and there is a vast array of free, legal streaming services available like Spotify. Pay a small price, and you don’t even have to listen to adverts.
I asked some friends what they thought of piracy today in 2014, and they raised some interesting points.
Paul said: “I do not feel guilty for pirating. We have reached a new age of streaming technology in which it is almost expected that a company should be able to provide easy access to media at an affordable price. (Spotify, Groove Shark, Netflix, Love Film, and Steam for gaming). They have set the bench mark for pricing and availability and others should follow in suit. It is not okay for large corporations to cling to old pricing and delivery methods.”
Maarten*** said: “Used to pirate everything, now I pirate nothing, mainly due to Spotify and Netflix. Also vinyl is back so people have re-learned the value of having the physical product.
Pirating is unreliable and feels a bit dirty to me now. I can't play an instrument and regard musicians and artists highly. It's a moral thing.”
Andrea said: “I buy occasionally but mainly stream. Never pirate! I rarely listen to music out and about and Youtube is endless fun at home.”
Georgina said: “But Youtube and Spotify are practically piracy even if people don't admit it. You can listen to whole albums or playlists or compilations or discographies for a nominal fee - or even free. The artists must get so little. I buy vinyl, but always second hand and so the artist still sees nothing. I feel guilty about it but I love music and having access to it is one of the best things ever (for the listener). I find it hard to justify as anything other than theft.”
It’s clear that piracy has brought negative and positive changes to the entertainment industry, and has given us many things. Without piracy, there would be so much we wouldn’t have seen or heard, and you could argue that it has directly resulted in great services like Spotify, Netflix, Lovefilm, and Grooveshark.
But still, we are left with too many questions. Is Spotify a viable way for artists to make a living? Can artists support themselves as their source of income moves away from singles and albums, towards touring, merchandise, and advertising? Is it okay to stream an album on Youtube, without the artist’s permission, just to see if you like it before you decide to buy it? Should someone be fined, or imprisoned, for pirating an album they couldn’t find elsewhere? Are we at a point where we should decriminalise piracy, like a country might decriminalise prostitution or drugs?
I was hoping to come to a conclusion, but I’m just as confused as when I started. All I know is please support the artists you love any way you can afford to, even if it is just a measly 99p purchase from iTunes.
*Read – Extremely pissed off
**Things were not actually that simple but this is the gist of it.
***It’s the Dutch spelling of Martin, before you ask.
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