What is the sound of the future?

Fin25 · 2023-04-03T10:01:26.401Z

I can’t speak for everyone else, but things are shifting here in the UK.

Grime and Drill have been stuck carrying the torch for angry youth for a long time and, as much as it’s been fun watching the UK establishment blame it for everything from gang violence to inner city poverty, the anger is spreading out.

In much the same way that Autechre were kinda the grandparents of all that hyperpop shit, there’s an emerging set of artists for whom Whitehouse might be their grandparents, and people are loving it.

Take Benefits as an example, aggressively shouted poetry over harsh noise. I mean, it’s right up my street, but I’d never expect such a thing to be garnering five star reviews in the NME. The anger is back, and this time it’s been listening to Merzbow…

It’s hard to say that it had something to do with that Whitehouse video going viral on tiktok a few years ago, but it’s noticeable that it was a relatively large (like 3 million views out of nowhere) and sudden exposure to power electronics that reached way beyond anywhere that such things have managed to penetrate up to that point.

Now obviously the influence is much clearer in a lot of US hip-hop (like Death Grips, Clipping etc.) but people over here seem much more receptive to more extreme musical experiences than previously. Now this is obviously my own very subjective and anecdotal experience, but the last few open mics I’ve done I’ve gone pretty hard with the noise (mostly at nights involving decent but somewhat standard techno/acid/ambient sort of stuff) and my expectation was that I’d probably be met with a collective need for a fag break and a few indifferent slow claps at the end. That hasn’t been my experience at all, people have been loving it, the response has been far more positive than any of the more “normal” stuff I’ve been doing previously. Maybe it’s just the novelty factor, time will tell, but music is definitely getting political again, and that’s usually a sign that a shift is coming, and that shift seems to be making a racket.

LoomieDarko · 2023-04-03T11:38:39.916Z

As humans start to live through different alternative realities, I think future is yesterday, and that there is no future anymore.
Only parallel versions of an elastic time, future for someone, past for someone else.

Time will find back its linearity when internet will burn, and human will start to learn again how to live in reality

JamesM · 2023-04-03T11:51:15.944Z

brisket:

They might be happy listening to the Bee Gees and playing Chopin on pianos.

Fuck me!
I’m already living in the future!

TBH I’m playing Chopin on a Prophet~6

onthebannedwagon · 2023-04-03T12:03:05.157Z

In the distant future I’m pretty sure AI will resurrect Sade and make her into a godhead.

PofM · 2023-04-03T14:08:22.870Z

Hmm, Smooth Operator does sound like the name of an algorithm for improving AI generated content.

raindro · 2023-04-03T14:13:02.560Z

That sounds great.

Lots of good answers here. I think stuff like Osmose will be big. More “acoustic” sounding electronic instruments. Also, more/easier forms of collaboration. And more AI help to make interesting harmony/timbres/everything.

thermionic · 2023-04-03T15:15:55.892Z

Dava:

With that in mind, perhaps the music of the future will indeed reflect a return to a more open-ended, participatory, folk-like experience of music, somehow rooted in an increasing need for a certain sense of organic, human creativity, whilst not necessarily eschewing technology but embracing it for such ends.

I can only speak for American society, but I’d say this goal would require more public spaces for the public good.

Online spaces have seemingly made it harder for me to meet “my people” in person for such exchanges.

I’m for the idea(s), of course!

Fin25 · 2023-04-03T15:17:23.367Z

PofM:

Hmm, Smooth Operator does sound like the name of an algorithm for improving AI generated content

I always thought she was singing about her love for FM synthesis.

DonovanDwyer · 2023-04-03T15:31:43.077Z

“Logistic Map Bifurcation Diagram” sounds like the debut EP title from whomever The Sound of the Future is.

DonovanDwyer · 2023-04-03T15:39:08.903Z

Fin25:

Take Benefits as an example

Love this.

thermionic · 2023-04-03T16:06:23.175Z

Fin25:

Maybe it’s just the novelty factor, time will tell, but music is definitely getting political again, and that’s usually a sign that a shift is coming, and that shift seems to be making a racket.

To add on, I guess even lyricless music that is angry and disaffected becomes political when the people making it are coopted by politicians who can so easily swap expression/symptom with cause of any problems.

Influential culture that welcomes marginalized people is the easiest bait to rile up the elderly with hate in their hearts and open wallets to anyone who amasses power on claims that they can halt the progress of time and suppress grown adults as if they were “unruly children”.

shigginpit · 2023-04-03T16:16:49.711Z

image720×407 97.8 KB

smosher · 2023-04-03T16:31:16.619Z

Come to think of it, since that’s a famous diagram in chaos theory I would be very surprised if no one has put it on an album cover.

There is also a neat 3D version:

bifurcation3D657×942 54 KB

RhythmDroid · 2023-04-03T16:48:36.660Z

The “music of the future” will not be about a novel sound, but about whichever concept resonates with the mood or zeitgeist of the largest number of people […in the 1st world or anywhere that is concerned with such questions]

Mood predictions:
Technopessimism
Technoskepticism
Technosuspicion
Technoburnout
Pre-internet nostalgia
A longing for the time before we were made aware of every form of suffering in every last corner of the world.

shigginpit · 2023-04-03T17:03:19.709Z

image1280×720 164 KB

shigginpit · 2023-04-03T17:17:24.850Z

RhythmDroid:

Pre-internet nostalgia
A longing for the time before we were made aware of every form of suffering in every last corner of the world.

the beginning of the end.

image300×269 28.3 KB

RhythmDroid · 2023-04-03T17:30:45.057Z

Exactly.

the promise and the potential was so great - and now here we are getting obese watching reactions to reactions to reactions with just enough autonomy left in our thumb to reach for the Close Tab button, only to be overcome and click the “add to cart” button.

Nothing’s better than a Saturday afternoon where you forget what time it is, sit on a sun-warmed, dry-grass-overtaken curb on a side street, listening to the intro to Mayonaise by the Smashing Pumpkins remembering when the biggest challenge in life was finding a topic for your 1-page English assignment due Monday and if that girl you had a crush on was falling for your best friend instead…

shigginpit · 2023-04-03T17:41:33.394Z

fuuuuuuckkkk. that’s like the second best song of all time. I remember learning to play it on the guitar and thinking there’s no way I just learned this magic spell.

I stood inside of a shower stall with an acoustic guitar tuned to whatever open g or whatever funky tuning that song is actually in, literally in a concrete and tile glass door shower stall with the guitar at a super weird angle cocked upwards, with a cheap tape recorder so I could get the right amount of reverb and try to record that feeling, that magic. the internet had all but washed that memory away.

double like! thanks!

I just verified, the tuning was " EbminMaj7 open tuning ." on mayonaise

Fin25 · 2023-04-03T17:55:11.677Z

thermionic:

I guess even lyricless music that is angry and disaffected becomes political when the people making it are coopted by politicians

Luckily for us in the UK, almost all our politicians were born in the 1700s, so it’s rare they get close enough to anything past Bach to make much of an impact.

obscurerobot · 2023-04-03T17:57:22.723Z

Fin25:

so it’s rare they get close enough to anything past Bach to make much of an impact.

NME – 11 Jul 18

Rage Against the Machine sent Nigel Farage a cease and desist letter over his...

Rage Against the Machine are demanding that Nigel Farage rename his 'Nigel Farage Against the Machine' podcast.

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

I’m 99.9999999% sure the NK one is fake, but if I was Kim Jong Un, I would absolutely force the military orchestra to play my favorite tunes from Swiss Boarding School.