Electro-______ music genres: The Hybrid of the hybrid

Electricity. A spark. A pulse. A presence that has been consistent in maintaining an identity in music for quite some time. Adding this pre-fix to genres of music i.e. (electro-pop, electro-rock) can almost be seen as an injustice... for Electro has all the capabilities of standing on its own. The hybridity between electro and other genres is essentially what induces an inflammatory reception in the senses. An electric-feel per say (to borrow from MGMT).

I started thinking of this post in terms of what first comes to mind when I think of electronic music. I first thought geographically, and mostly associated the genre with Europe. Then I started to think of the music I am listening to these days, and I realized most of the stuff I am really digging is one form of electro or another. Either electro pop, electro-synth-pop, electro indie-rock, etc etc etc….Even Wikipedia has a very extensive list of the different sub-genres which you can check out here:

So, in terms of a breakdown here are some interesting sub-genres that I think are worth looking at:

The resurgence of the DJ: (EURO style)

Tiesto

Armin Van Buren

David Guetta

Paul Van Dyk

Ferry Corsten

Electro-pop (UK style)

La Roux

is an English electropop duo band whose music is influenced by 1980s synthpop including Yazoo, Depeche Mode, The Human League, Heaven 17, and Blancmange. I got to see them live this summer in Los Angeles and they really had that element that literally put a jolt of electricity through the crowd. The playful melodies in songs such as "I'm Not Your Toy" and "Tigerlily" re-charged the initially dull audience into replicas of the energizer bunny.

Little Boots

is an English electropop musician who sings and plays the keyboard, piano, stylophone and a Japanese electronic instrument, called Tenori-on is definitely putting her stamp on the electro-pop movement. Check out her songs "Stuck on Repeat" and "New in Town"

and across the Pond...

In Lady GaGa’s new album The Fame Mons†er: a new, monstrous side of GaGa is shown. A side that can be attributed to the European Electro-Industrial vibe present in her songs such as "Dance in the Dark". This new eerie and metallic sound substantiates her equally eerie lyrics that allude to other highly respected artists such as Plath and Kubrick. The album’s high-voltage delivers and liberates the listener. An escape to a filthy over-sized 'warehouse' somewhere in Eastern Europe, echoing with the sharp current of electricity.

Down Under

Sneaky Sound System

are very well received in the dance scene, and some of their stuff has been remixed by Tiesto making for an interesting sound:

Cut Copy

is a synthpop band from Melbourne, Australia. Their sound, often labeled as electropop, draws considerable influence from 80s new wave, synth-pop and post-punk genres.

Ladyhawke

all of her music is very nostalgic of the 1980s, (her name is a riff on the movie of that decade), but her music featuring PNAU is especially noteworthy.

Rock fusion

MGMT

"We weren't trying to start a band," remarked Goldwasser. "We were just hanging out, showing each other music that we liked." They experimented with noise rock and electronica before settling on what David Marchese of Spin calls "their current brand of shape-shifting psychedelic pop."

Phoenix

An interesting thing about Phoenix (who I think are one of the best indie rock outfits on the scene today): In early 2009, it was announced that the band was returning with a new album titled Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, which was released on May 25, 2009. The album was recorded in Paris by Cassius's Philippe Zdar who co-produced and mixed the album. Cassius is a French house music duo consisting of producers Philippe Cerboneschi and Hubert Blanc-Francard, better known as Philippe Zdar and Boom Bass. You can definitely hear the house influence on Phoenix's new record (especially in Fences, Girlfriend, and Armistice) which I think makes for an amazing one, and the technique in the recording is phenomenal.

Experimental (goes Canadian)

Crystal Castles

is an experimental electronic music band from the province of Ontario consisting of producer Ethan Kath and vocalist Alice Glass. Crystal Castles are known for their chaotic live shows and their low-fi melancholic home productions. To listen to Crystal Castles "is to be cast adrift in a vortex of deafening pain without a safety net. You get the feeling you could do anything in the world, but that that "anything" would ultimately mean nothing. Crystal Castles marks a nuanced emotional territory that dance music never covered before." (BBC).

MSTRKRFT

is an electronic music group from Toronto. MSTRKRFT (pronounced Master Kraft) have been commissioned to remix songs by such artists as Justice, Bloc Party, Metric, Wolfmother, and Annie and The Kills...and you have probably heard Heartbreaker featuring John Legend, one of their singles:

These are just some of my favorites, and hopefully are illustrative of how influential electronic music is across the board...perhaps it is THE postmodern musical genre of our time, and can be counted on for constantly mixing and remixing (quite literally) the music scene for our enjoyment and paving the way for more groundbreaking sounds to come...

PS... I also love this Felix Da Housecat Remix of the Nina Simone song "Sinnerman" which is now being featured in the new HTC mobile phone commercial you have probably seen on TV in the past couple of weeks...

The Slavery of Narrative and the Ivory Tower Dilemma

I found Peter Greenaway's film roster to be both slightly disturbing and fascinating (and as a reference, The Pillow Book is apparently one of his warmer films). Up until this point, I had considered myself to be adequately in-the-know when it came to the 'Art-house' genre, but I had never heard of Greenaway or his films. (Sidenote: in the Salon interview the journalist mentions that Greenway thinks "most movies are empty and sentimental -- and that includes art-house pictures, which Greenaway treats with as much disdain as mainstream Hollywood products"—so with this statement, I guess I don’t feel quite as bad.)

What I found to be most interesting in reading through his interviews was this notion of the narrative in cinema, and his feelings of enslavement by the very idea. Usually when someone critiques a film (not necessarily a professional critic, but maybe an average consumer of this popular art form) you will hear them say something like, “it was a little slow”, or maybe ‘it was too fast paced’, (the latter being less common I presume). I think it’s safe to say that these critiques are really of the narrative structure of the film, rather than the actual visual nature of the movie (this is just my idea, and I could be wrong). I found his discussion on the narrative nature of cinema to be very interesting, as he doesn’t feel like it is conducive to it. Or maybe not that it’s not conducive to it, but that it should transcend storytelling to achieve other ends.

“These may be heretical opinions, but I don't think that cinema is a very good narrative medium. I think if you want to tell a story you should be a writer -- it's far more powerful. I think that cinema should be allowed to get on with other things.” He says that like music and painting have done before it, cinema also needs to explore other elements apart from the narrative. He even proposes that cinema needs to ‘dump’ narration altogether. He explains that there is and should be another purpose for cinema aside from just telling stories. He does however qualify this statement by saying, “I'm not against narrative, I enjoy storytelling. I do think that cinema has so much to offer outside the slavery of narrative.” I think his choice of words here are quite audacious: it’s slavery.

Enter the Ivory Tower conundrum: Greenaway says, “I would continue to push in that direction [away from the narrative], though John Cage suggested if you introduce more than 20 percent of novelty into any artwork, you're going to lose 80 percent of your audience. And I want to go on making movies, so -- without any sense of condescension or patronage -- we have to work at a certain pace, otherwise I'm going to disappear into the outer darkness and never make another movie. And I want to make mainstream movies. This might sound very strange, but I don't want to live in an ivory tower, I don't want to be an underground filmmaker. I want to make movies for the largest possible audience, but arrogantly I want to make them on my terms.” Herein lies the dilemma of every indie (or art-house) filmmaker (or musician, artist, etc) out there: How can you get your work to reach a lot of people (which is always the goal, because culture is shared after all) while protecting it from the agendas of those with the money and power (Hollywood, production companies, etc) to do so? I feel like this struggle for credibility and audience, and let’s face it—money—is one that may have no end. This problem of course is not unique to cinema, and exists in all realms of cultural production.

This brings me back to a little earlier in the discussion to the idea of the slavery of narratives. The Pillow Book, although highly stylized visually by integrating all different types of cutting edge technologies, is very much a narrative, and not only does it have a definite narrative structure, but it was in a sense adapted from a preceding text (although the film is set in the modern day and the stories are different). When confronted with this in an interview, Greenaway said, “One shouldn't start a discussion of this film by referring to a set text because the origins of the project are much deeper than that, and respond to, I suppose, my general sense of anxiety and disquiet about the cinema we've got after 100 years -- a cinema which is predicated on text. So whether your name is Spielberg or Scorsese or Godard, there's always a necessity to start with text and finish with image. I don't think that's particularly where we should organize an autonomous art form. That's why I think that, in a way, we haven't seen the cinema yet, all we've seen is 100 years of illustrated text.”

I think this is a very interesting point, and I will definitely keep my eye out for Greenaway’s next projects, and hopefully he will produce the breakthrough in cinema, not just ‘illustrated text’. Just to relate these ideas to my own very recent experience, I saw the second installment in the Twilight franchise: New Moon (along with 5,000 other screaming girls at the Georgetown theater), and I must say I was a bit disappointed. I will admit (for the purposes of this blog) to being part of this subculture of fanatics surrounding the franchise, and I found myself identifying (if only slightly) with Greenaway’s analysis of cinema as a poor medium for narratives. I felt as though (especially in the second installment) that the book was infinitely more satisfying in this respect than the highly anticipated film. You always hear that the ‘books are always better than the movies’ but on the flip side there is always a delight in seeing narratives take on a visual form. I guess I will conclude by saying that although it is very difficult for me to envision a world and cinema culture in which narratives are obsolete, I still welcome the prospect of a cinematic departure from the narrative into something new.

Steven Klein and Postphotography

Sonesson poses the question, "But is there really a world after photography?"

Many of today's emerging photographers have offered a response to this question, and Sonesson offers his own explanation as well:

"The postphotographic world can only exist in the same sense in which we have long lived in a world after painting: a world in which the meaning of painting has been modified by the advent of photography. But now the meaning of photography and painting alike are in the process of being thoroughly changed by the emergence of computer-pictures....But the computer may also be an instrument of creation: it is not only one of several possible means for mechanical reproduction, but it is also a means for digital production. And this is where we enter the domain of postphotography."

Enter Steven Klein:

On his website, he offers a response to the notion of these categories that can not be interpreted in isolation, and why there is a necessity to define them based on their predecessors:

"There is a desire to link photography with painting. My background is painting and I feel there is no connection between the two. It is as if the camera is linked to a sin, producing a bastard art form that we feel we must link to the past in order to give it credentials. I don't want those credentials. I have no need to apologize for photography."

Many of you may be familiar with his work in fashion photography, particularly in W magazine (which is where I first became acquainted with his work). I found an interesting article on his website that I thought captured the discussion quite nicely:

"For some time now photography has existed in an expanded field that includes fashion, advertising, music, cinema and virtually every other aspect of the culture we live and breath every day. And while there are those who denounce this as a contamination of its ability to report accurately on the world we live in, there are others for whom this very impurity is a saving aesthetic grace. Steven Klein might be one such photographer and X-STaTIC Pro=CeSS, his collaboration with Madonna, is just such a cross-fertilization of talent, medium and genre."

In my opinion, like every art form, and not even limited to art but life in general, things naturally evolve and change, and those who take advantage of this in the appropriate ways and contexts can benefit immensely. I thought Steven Klein was one photographer who was a great example of an artist who is delving into evolving techniques in his art and is not afraid to blend ideas and see what works. With that I will leave you with one last quote that illustrates his involvement with this:

"To this end many of the still images of X-STaTIC Pro=CeSS have been animated with CGI, just as the moving images are often edited in such a way that they appear to be composed of sequenced stills. In doing so he has created a strange hybrid that is neither one nor the other yet draws on both."

Photographical Context: Staged vs. Organic?

Cartier-Bresson’s ideas on photography are fascinating, and I found them very helpful in considering the work of some of the most notable contemporary photographers on the scene today (which depending on the context can be staged or not).

“Manufactured’ or staged photography does not concern me. And if I make a judgment, it can only be on a psychological or sociological level. There are those who take photographs arranged beforehand and those who go out to discover the image and seize it. For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which—in visual terms—questions and decides simultaneously. In order to ‘give a meaning’ to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames through the viewfinder….It is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.”

Would he consider Marla Rutherford’s work staged?

Q: How do you decide on an idea or setting for the portrait?

A: It depends what kind of subject matter I am photographing. Usually I chose the location first, then wrap the whole concept around it. With my latex and fetish work and my fine art work, generally I go for a desert kind of Blue Velvet David Lynch atmosphere—very surreal. The type of light that I use is already pretty strange, so I look for a location that fits that type of lighting, like bizarre rooms or a more Planet of the Apes type location where it's minimalist and looks like a desert or another planet.

or someone like... David LaChapelle

Initially distinguished by his campy fixation with white-trash culture, LaChapelle is also known for his groundbreaking use of computer manipulation and futuristic fashion shoots and for placing hollywood celebrities. His signature photography has become synonymous with wildly beautiful colorful sets, unexpected positioning of models and celebrities, all shot with subtle or overt humor. More than static portraits, his photos often appear as a still from a motion picture, with layers of plots ready to play out before our eyes.

In connecting LaChapelle to the hybrid nature of contemporary art, he is one photographer who has segued into other areas, starting with directing music videos, and onto films.

What about artists like Richard Prince, who make paintings to look like photographs?

I guess my point is that in today's world, it's all about context. Artists are aware of this as they are creating and disseminating images to the public, whether that is intended for the fine art world or for the masses.

Ubiquity of Manga

I sometimes feel I lack the right reference points to really understand the worlds of manga and anime and would not have considered myself to really subscribe to these categories. The more I read, the more I realized (especially in my younger years) how much of it I did consume, although off hand I didn't feel as though I did. Here are a few examples, mostly recollections from my youth, but I'll start with a more recent example:

The 'Ghost in the Shell' franchise follows a fictional counter-terrorist organization, set in a sort of cyberpunk world. The idea of cyberpunk itself is an interesting look at hybridity as it combines the high tech world of cybernetics and information technology and 'low life' especially in regards to 'punk' as those looking towards a change in social order. The setting as I am imagining it immediately reminded me of the film PUSH that came out in 2009. Although it is an American movie, it is set in Hong Kong (which of course is not Japan, but I feel that Hong Kong as a city has borrowed from manga, anime and elements of Japanese culture). The film, in my opinion, had a very hybrid-anime type feel, in terms of the way it was shot and the way in which it showcased the city as another character in the story.

On the topic of hybridity, I think that manga culture lends itself very well to the idea: Manga-->anime series--> films--> novels--> video games. This is a great segue to discuss Manga and Anime as a business. Clearly, over the years it has become a viable part of the world market, being that it is a billion dollar industry, extending its influence not only over Asia but to the West and beyond.

As a tween, I remember absolutely loving Sailor Moon (in fact, and I probably shouldn't be sharing this, but I still know the theme song). It definitely had that element of cute that Japanese pop culture is known for that I think is very appealing and easily marketed to the pre-teen age group anywhere, which is why it was so successful in the U.S.

I also remember spending my summers in Libya as a child and young teenager, and I remember my cousins all being obsessed with Captain Majid, which was clearly a Japanese import. In this globalized society, it is clear that Japanese pop culture has an element that makes it successful around the world, not just in Asia and youth culture in the states. Although soccer is a major staple in Arab pop and youth culture, the way it was done originally was as a video game [Captain Tsubasa (Famicon)] and then adapted into a television show. Its popularity was so immense in the Middle East that it was bootlegged and dubbed in Arabic.

This brings me to post-pop in the US and artists like Jeff Koons, and recording artists like Gwen Stefani who are clearly influenced by Japanese pop culture in their own work. We are consuming it at times without direct realization (although this is not the case with Stefani), it's become the dominant post pop art of our time...

The Space Between

I love John Seabrook's ideas on "nobrow" culture. It reminds me of the sort of tenants of a lot of postmodernist ideas, and of course of the pop art movement and into the post pop art movement of street art which redefines and reinterprets meanings, lines, boundaries, etc.

"The brand is the price of your admission to the subculture. The brand is neither quite marketing nor culture; it's the catalyst, the filament of platinum that makes culture and marketing combine."

Additionally, as defined by American culture: high and low brow--> intellectuality vs business

"In the United States, though, people needed highbrow-lowbrow distinctions to do the work that social hierarchy did in less egalitarian countries. Any fat cat could buy a mansion, but not everyone could cultivate a passionate interest in Arnold Schoenberg or John Cage."

"In Nobrow, the challenge that élite institutions such as the major museums face is how to bring commercial culture into the fold--how to keep their repertoire vibrant and solvent and relevant without undermining their moral authority, which used to be based, in part, on keeping the commercial culture out."

"In the changing rooms, which are tastefully designed, the fashion psychopath makes an appearance. Buy it, he whispers. Go ahead. Buy it. You know you want it. Then you can be part of that whole hip-hop thing happening down Broadway, while at the same time being secretly above it all. You'd spend two hundred dollars for a dress shirt, so why not a two-hundred-dollar T-shirt that you'll wear a lot more? It's anti-status as status, another important principle in Nobrow."

I loved that at the end of the day, his Jersey tomatoes from Dean & Deluca might as well have been from the 'low-brow' supermarket...

(This is especially comforting because I hate Dean & Deluca, and every day I walk by I just want to mess up all their perfectly placed produce, and break their duck eggs one by one. Ok, so maybe this is the bitterness talking, but seriously, I hate that place.)

All this talk of high and low and 'no' got me thinking of new ways to interpret or assign meaning to things...in this case, Street Art:

Fashion as Street Art

The Sartorialist : While this may not be what is conventionally seen as street art (graffiti, tagging, etc), The Sartorialist fashion blog takes snapshots (let's keep in mind that photography, and fashion photography are a part of the art world) of both unknown and well-known people on the street and has gained much notoriety in fashion by doing so. The idea of a blog like the Sartorialist as a type of street art may be a stretch as it is not a permanent fixture on the street as much of street art can be, but when I was thinking of this, it got me thinking of O’Doherty’s “Inside the White Cube”. These photographs are snapshots of street culture in multiple places and times that collectively serve as an artistic representation of that occurrence, in this case: fashion in the streets. So could this be classified as street art?

War-HOLLA Back!

The Dandy Warhols Album Cover

Whether or not you like Warhol, which I can't understand why you could dislike such an iconic force that essentially represents much of American culture in the 60s (which was probably one of the most creatively glamorous times in history), you can't deny the mark he has left not only on the art world, but on culture across all categories...

The Dandy Warhols and The Velvet Underground

Aside from the nod they give to Warhol in the name of their band, The Dandy Warhols riff on the album cover artwork Andy Warhol did for The Velvet Underground in their own album art. Interestingly enough, the band cites The Velvet Underground as one of their musical influences…a dose of postmodernism perhaps?

Lady Gaga

I am sure you are all thoroughly sick of my posts on Lady Gaga, and I have been told by colleagues that the idea of Lady Gaga being a force in art made them nauseous...but I don't care. I found a quote from her from some time ago that might respond to this notion in a very Warholian way...

She says, "The Fame [her album] is about how anyone can feel famous. Pop culture is art. It doesn’t make you cool to hate pop culture, so I embraced it and you hear it all over The Fame. But, it’s a sharable fame. I want to invite you all to the party. I want people to feel a part of this lifestyle."

She's inviting everyone to the party. If you're not sold on that point, keep in mind that there is a category called Performance Art, which clearly has her name stamped all over.

Around the globe...

Just to add to the discussion that Warhol is in fact an international icon, I just read an article that there are plans to open a Warhol museum in the United Arab Emirates. I find it interesting that the UAE, which is definitely more conservative than Western culture still sees the appeal in Warhol's work, which goes back to my original question...How can you really dislike Warhol? (just my opinion, of course!)