2010 is shaping up to be a friggin awesome year for music

DreamThrall

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LOADS of new releases!

Out now:

Frightened Rabbit - The Winter of Mixed Drinks (a couple free songs streaming on their Myspace page)

Spoon - Transference

Rogue Wave - Permalight (entire album streaming for free on Pandora)

Aloha - Home Acres (entire album streaming for free on Spinner)

Ted Leo & the Pharmacists - Brutalist Bricks

Announced:
Band of Horses - Infinite Arms

Arcade Fire - not yet titled

Belle and Sebastian (maybe?) - not yet titled

I'm sure there's more I'm missing... will add more later maybe
 
next week is the release of an age among them by rinoa which i have on preorder and couldn't be more excited about. in a months time of so the new 65daysofstatic, we were exploding anyway hits the shelves so i'm eagerly awaiting a vinyl order for that. they are my most anticipated right now, with manatees and palehorse also recording and mixing new releases for later in the year. whoever said the UK metal scene is rubbish hasn't a ****ing clue what they are talking about.
 
every year is a good year for music, i keep missing so much though, and when it comes time for it you still have to pick your favorites
 
Possible Darkstar full-length.

Possible Burial material.

New Flying Lotus album.

Possible Spor full-length, same with Noisia.

yeah.
 
Waiting for new Venetian Snares and Flashbulb.

Maybe Orange Dust?
 
Are you shitting me, knut? So 1995 was as good a year as 1975 for music? You don't deserve to live. There will never be another 1970s. There will never be music that good again.
 
Are you shitting me, knut? So 1995 was as good a year as 1975 for music? You don't deserve to live. There will never be another 1970s. There will never be music that good again.

who mentioned 1995? who mentioned the 1970s? you're pretty ignorant if you think there can't be a good year of music just because you have preferences to the 1970's. i have favourite records from the 1980's, that doesn't mean i'm going to say that 2009 was a bad year for music. that's just bullshit. why won't there be music that good again? well, that's bullshit too as that isn't up for you to decide nor to state as fact. if a year had music released that you enjoy, it should be a good year.

it sounds like you need to get out from underneath a rock and find some new music to listen to.

thank **** there won't be a 1970's again. best foot forward, let's not ****ing repeat ourselves for the good of what people will call ''the old days''. time for change.
 
It could be any year, doesn't have to be the years I mentioned. "Every year is a good year for music." You agreed with this.
 
im looking forward to the new mgmt and black keys albums. other than that im really not excited about anything yet.
 
It could be any year, doesn't have to be the years I mentioned. "Every year is a good year for music." You agreed with this.

well, i didn't really - i said ''nope'' to your ''this is absolutely wrong'' statement which could be interpreted in any number of ways, but for the arguments sake i'll agree with it now as i do actually believe that every year is a good year for music, yeah. it'd be silly to say otherwise, what with the fact that you cannot of heard all of a years worth of musical output to judge it bad. somewhere in there will be something you enjoy, that's a stone-cold guarantee. there will be stuff you dislike, too, no doubt about it, but with so much music available to you year after year, you're gonna find something you like. you just got to dig, go outside of your usual sources, look in places you wouldn't usually, go out on whims, try something new...
 
I'm waiting to see how the new album from the band formerly known as Oasis turns out.
 
well, i didn't really - i said ''nope'' to your ''this is absolutely wrong'' statement which could be interpreted in any number of ways, but for the arguments sake i'll agree with it now as i do actually believe that every year is a good year for music, yeah. it'd be silly to say otherwise, what with the fact that you cannot of heard all of a years worth of musical output to judge it bad. somewhere in there will be something you enjoy, that's a stone-cold guarantee. there will be stuff you dislike, too, no doubt about it, but with so much music available to you year after year, you're gonna find something you like. you just got to dig, go outside of your usual sources, look in places you wouldn't usually, go out on whims, try something new...

I have a lot of respect for your taste in music, don't get me wrong. But I think you are speaking rashly. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

If your really think the 70's weren't that good and glad they are over, then you can't really say that every year is a good year for music. You've just discounted an entire decade on a whim. Not only that, but I don't think we are going to agree on much if you didn't like the 70's. Rush, Pink Floyd...

Also, don't get me wrong when I imply there were bad years when it comes to music. I'm not saying that there weren't any good songs for the entire year. But a couple good songs don't make a good year for music IMO - I would consider that a bad year.

A good year, IMO, is like 6 epic albums (something like 60 songs - pretty common in the 70's), not a simply a few good songs.
 
I have problems with people claiming past decades have had better music.

There's really no comparison for several reasons.

First, I'm willing to bet there was just as much shitty music in past decades. Of course we don't know unless we were alive at the time because only the good stuff has survived this long.

Second, it's become progressively easier for bands to record music and get it out to the masses. Just in the last 15 years bands have been able to use CDRs, and more recently the internet to reach fans. This of course means any idiot with a computer and plague us with their horrible music.

Of course the mainstream music industry has changed as well - so if you want to say *mainstream* music has gone downhill, that may have some creedence... but even that's subject to my previous arguments.
 
I have a lot of respect for your taste in music, don't get me wrong. But I think you are speaking rashly. Say what you mean and mean what you say.

If your really think the 70's weren't that good and glad they are over, then you can't really say that every year is a good year for music. You've just discounted an entire decade on a whim. Not only that, but I don't think we are going to agree on much if you didn't like the 70's. Rush, Pink Floyd...

Also, don't get me wrong when I imply there were bad years when it comes to music. I'm not saying that there weren't any good songs for the entire year. But a couple good songs don't make a good year for music IMO - I would consider that a bad year.

A good year, IMO, is like 6 epic albums (something like 60 songs - pretty common in the 70's), not a simply a few good songs.

but i didn't say the 1970's were a bad year for music. i said thank god there isn't going to be another 1970's all over again as that would be history repeating itself and there is no need for that. that decade of music has been, it's now decades for something new.

i don't want to generalize on what you might be saying, but your argument sounds like many i've heard before - people who are far too enveloped in what the general public and media have had to say about ''classics'' from back then and are using it as some sort of staple as what music should be. don't get me wrong, i like pink floyd a helluva lot, but when it comes to preferring what music i want to enjoy more, the fact that they did so much for music and had so much of a reputation from back then isn't going to factor into any of it. what *is* an ''epic'' album? this year alone i've heard 10/20 new albums and i've already throught 2010 to be a ridiculously good year for music, better than any i've heard before, but then i always say that because i'm always on the look for stuff to listen to.

if you live a life in music constantly remembering on what was, then nothing is going to sound good to you anymore and thats a crying shame.
 
New Radiohead, new Justice, new Gorillaz, new MGMT.

Possible new Arctic Monkeys, possible new Arcade Fire.

Should be pretty fantastic. Will be tough to beat 2009 though, imho one of the best years in music this decade. EDIT: Suppose that should be last decade. Hence I can quite confidently say, 2010 will be the best year for music this decade so far.
 
Possible Darkstar full-length.

Possible Burial material.

New Flying Lotus album.

Possible Spor full-length, same with Noisia.

yeah.

I'm seeing flying lotus in like... 2 hours.... no idea what the **** they are tho :(
 
Oh you lucky ****ing bastard. God damn! I hope you like him. You might not, though.
 
I think The Devin Townsend Project's two other albums (Deconstruction + one I forgot the name of) are coming out fairly soon.

Man I saw Devin live yesterday. Holy shit.

New Deftones too, right?
 
& lets not forget the alleged new Slipknot album. It's gonna be sweet!
 
Oh you lucky ****ing bastard. God damn! I hope you like him. You might not, though.

Ummm, They where ok I guess. Just seemed far to slow to really dance too... most people just seemed to stand and watch.

Ended up spending most of the night in the other room where the music was faster ;) Feel bad tho that your obv a massive fan and didnt get to go wile I went and didnt really enjoy it that much :p
 
Are you shitting me, knut? So 1995 was as good a year as 1975 for music? You don't deserve to live. There will never be another 1970s. There will never be music that good again.

you sound like my ****ing dad.
Time to move to a assisted living care center.
 
Personally I can't wait for the new John Butler and As I Lay Dying albums.
 
But the 70s
has no drum machines.
Also,
you're a tool if you think the gear makes the musician. Or the music.
 
Not sure about all of these...

in the year 2010... new albums will come from...

Them Crooked Vultures. Dave Grohl apparently has said it will be even more powerful than the first. Holy s**t.

The Strokes. Hopefully sometime around September.

Coheed and Cambria. Not a huge fan, but will definitely give it a listen.

Stone Temple Pilots. Supposedly has a 60's feel to it in places. I'm excited.

Tom Petty. Apparently is going for some bluesy-type things, which is awesome.
 
I'm not sure what the point of that youtube link to a Casio PT-1 demo was all about, but you could probably get some pretty RAWR AGGRO CHIPTUNEZ OUTTA THAT SHIT FOCK YA.
 
I gotta stop posting in this thread while I'm intoxicated. I'm not really sure if I want to argue this. First, it's not going to make me very popular here. And if you don't like earlier music, well, that's matter of taste, and there's no point in arguing.

I've been generalizing for the sake of keeping the argument simple. (70's vs. 80's) But I've listened to hundreds of thousands of songs, so even when generalizing, I'm quite aware of all the vast majority of various styles and changes in music over the years.

Also, I need to make clear that I love music from all eras from 60's to present day.

For God's sake, I love 8-Bit music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8Qb1ErRZRQ

But there are many reasons why I think earlier music was technically and aesthetically better.

I want to mostly stick with facts instead of opinions, so first I'll cover the aesthetics:

As much as I love thousands of songs from the mid 80s and beyond,

[Take a quick look at this list of VH-1's 100 Greatest 80's songs]

I really like some of these songs, but I really wouldn't want to listen to them more than once or twice a year.

While there are infinite possibilities for sounds when it comes to digital instruments, they lacked pleasing aesthetics and variance - the sounds themselves - particularly in early digital instruments - were very repetitive and didn't sound like the instruments they were mimicking. I don't know - they are like fake plants, for example.

overdubbing: (putting sound tracks on an song after it had been recorded), and overdubbing vocals for vocal artists to sing with themselves


Late 60s - early 80s Musicians:

I believe they were more talented (better practiced, in reality)
were generally more inspired (this is a general opinion)
better lyrics
more cohesive as a group
had better instruments
more variance (maybe Viper or theotherguy could help me prove this)
used better musical composition
sounded good live - could cut the album on the first couple takes
didn't use as much (or any) doctoring/overdubbing

One thing I noticed, not exclusively (but nearly so) in earlier music was that if there was a chorus, the vocal artists sang it for every part. It's obvious because you can notice the slight nuances of variation. This reduces repetition and for me at least, this improves the aesthetics tremendously.


Modern music:

-harmonizers / auto-tune (digitally altered voice tuning)
-proliferation of synthesized instruments - most notable when it comes to drums
-proliferation of overdubbing
-cut and paste melodies and rhythms - looping one good recording of chorus/guitar segment, etc. (repetitive) For example, the chorus or keyboard melody that repeats 20 times in a song is actually just one recording.

pretty much all of this can be shown in a popular song from the 90s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbXiECmCZ94


While digital audio from DAT and the compact disc (1982) brought about cleaner recordings, other things changed.
In the 1960s, some guitarists began exploring a wider range of tonal effects by distorting the sound of the instrument. To do this, they increased the gain, or volume, of the preamplifier, which produced a "fuzzy" sound. This effect is called "clipping" by sound engineers, because when viewed with an oscilloscope, the wave forms of a distorted signal appear to have had their peaks "clipped" off. This was not actually a new development in the instrument, but rather a shift of aesthetics. This sound was not generally recognized previously as desirable. In the 1960s, the tonal palette of the electric guitar was further modified by introducing an effects box in its signal path. Traditionally built in a small metal chassis with an on/off foot switch, such "stomp boxes" have become an important part of the electric guitar tone in many genres.
In the 1970s, as effects pedals proliferated, their sounds were combined with tube distortion at lower, more controlled volumes by using power attenuators such as Tom Scholz' Power Soak as well as re-amplified dummy loads such as Eddie Van Halen's use of a variac, power resistor, post-power-tube effects, and a final solid-state amp driving the guitar speakers. A variac is one approach to power-supply based power attenuation, to make the sound of power-tube distortion more practically available.
By the 1980s and 1990s, digital and software effects became capable of replicating the analog effects used in the past. These new digital effects attempted to model the sound produced by analog effects and tube amps, to varying degrees of quality. There are many free guitar effects computer programs for computers that can be downloaded via the Internet. Now, computers with sound cards can be used as digital guitar effects processors. Although digital and software effects offer many advantages, many guitarists still use analog effects. [yay]
In 2002, Gibson announced the first digital guitar, which performs analog-to-digital conversion internally. The resulting digital signal is delivered over a standard Ethernet cable, eliminating cable-induced line noise. The guitar also provides independent signal processing for each individual string. Also, in 2003 amp maker Line 6 released the Variax guitar. It differs in some fundamental ways from conventional solid-body electrics. For example it uses piezoelectric pickups instead of the conventional electromagnetic ones, and has an on-board computer capable of modifying the sound of the guitar to model the sound of many instruments.
Thankfully, synthesized instruments have come A LONG WAY since the early 80s. Still, the other things I pointed out can often be found (even more so now) - particularly cut/paste segments.
 
Those flaws in modern music don't apply to every modern band though. There are still those acts of our time that really take pride and passion of their work inside the studio and then create something even more special out on stage. But as technology grows, bands need to learn how to use it, its about going with the times. Songs back in the 60s/70s which were highly successful then wouldn't get anywhere in today's music, which is why the argument is pointless because its comparing two completely different music periods, almost like comparing modern music to the classical composers period of 1800s.

Music changes and progresses and artists, if they want to be successful, go with that change, use the technology available to them. But that doesn't mean the music looses its soul. I mean take bands like Radiohead, Muse, Placebo, Tool. All produced albums that sounded as if they were done live, capture the moment type albums, and gone on to produce amazing live shows with those albums behind them. And well at the end of the day it does just come down to taste anyway.
 
Those flaws in modern music don't apply to every modern band though.

I never said all of them. That's the clarification I made. It's impossible to be specific when grouping hundreds of thousands of songs. I'm talking about generally; a majority VS. little or none.


EDIT: Didn't see your edit.
Songs back in the 60s/70s which were highly successful then wouldn't get anywhere in today's music, which is why the argument is pointless because its comparing two completely different music periods
I don't know if that's true. Some of my favorite new bands have a sound like some of the classics. Take much of the modern music I listen to for example:

Dinosaur Jr
Dinosaur Jr. is considered to be an alternative rock band; however the band's musical style, compared to its underground contemporaries in the 1980s, differed in several ways. This included the influence of classic rock on the band's music, their use of feedback, extreme volume and the loud-quiet dynamic, and frontman Mascis' droning vocals.
Mascis listened to classic rock artists such as the Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys, elements of which were incorporated into Dinosaur Jr's sound.[25] In addition, Mascis was also a fan of many punk and hardcore bands such as The Birthday Party, and has frequently noted Nick Cave as an influence. Dinosaur Jr's members also combined elements of hardcore punk and noise rock in their songs, which often featured a large amount of feedback, distortion and extreme volume.[26] When the master tape of You're Living All Over Me arrived at SST, the label's production manager noticed the level on the tape was so high it was distorting; however, Mascis confirmed it was the way he wanted the album to sound.[27] To accentuate their use of volume, the band employed and popularised the quiet-loud change of dynamic in many of its songs, a technique that would be later popularised by Pixies, Nirvana and alternative rock in general during the 1990s.
Similar to Mascis's guitar work, Barlow's bass lines, with its alternating heavily distorted, fast chords and pulverizing lows, draw heavily from both his hardcore past and is influenced by musicians such as Lemmy from Motörhead and Johnny Ramone.
He attributed his "whiny low-key drawl", the opposite of the hardcore punk "bark",[4] to artists such as John Fogerty and Mick Jagger.[30] His style also resembled Neil Young's, but Mascis disputed this, and later commented: "That got annoying, being compared all the time"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLIPTOUH51I

The Black Angels (you can't tell me this doesn't sound late 60s/early 70s)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qNgi28Truw
By the way, Shift. Have you any demos or something? I remember I loved that one song of yours.


EDIT: Another favorite new band of mine - an example of [what is most likely] modern technology with a supremely classic sound (now with triple the distortion)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Aad16yI6D8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRUqpgg-8Ps
 
Keep in mind, the music your describing of today is mostly just what the top 40 radio plays, but the music from the earlier days you describe is what has lasted and survived on classic radio.

Go listen to some top 40 radio from the 70's. It's not as impressive as, say, Led Zeppelin, who the music media despised at first because they were just too f**king amazing.
 
I never said all of them. That's the clarification I made. It's impossible to be specific when grouping hundreds of thousands of songs. I'm talking about generally; a majority VS. little or none.

Time is what separates the wheat from the chaff. Your favoritism towards older generations of music is helped by the annals of history weeding out all the shit and mediocrity that surrounded most notable acts during their eras. It's certainly safe to say we don't make music the way we used to any more. However, to say it was technically better back in the day? I'm tempted to argue otherwise, but I won't indulge myself. I think it's a bit narrow to see different musical eras as owning particular techniques and methods. They're all a part of a growing repertoire of tools available to any artist. A lot of people use old analogue instruments and effects alongside DSP and software kits.

I also don't think repetition - which you characterize as part of modern music - is a bad thing. We can't have nothing but endlessly dynamic rock ballads and whatnot. Minimalism has had a huge impact on modern music for a reason.
 
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