What was going on in music in the '80s?

Music sucks.

^ Spock's Beard 'The Light' was released in '95 - 18 years on, it sounds like a recent release. Yet some of the early 90's albums suffered from an 80's hangover, particularly concerning drum sounds (ELP's 'Black Moon', Hawkwind's 'Electric Tepee' etc.)

NotAProghead wrote: And in any decade there is always a lot of garbage in the undeground.

Dean wrote: A Certain Ratio, All About Eve, Alien Sex Fiend, Altered Images, The Associates, Toni Basil, The Books, Bauhaus, Cabaret Voltaire, Colourbox, Cowboys International, Chrome, Anne Clark, Classix Nouveaux, Cocteau Twins, Comsat Angels, The Creatures, The Cure, Dalek I Love You, Dali's Car, Danielle Dax, The Dream Academy, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Europeans, The Explorers, Fad Gadget, The Fields of The Nephilim, Fiction Factory, The Fixx, John Foxx, Ultravox!, Gentlemen Without Weapons, Girls At Our Best!, Nina Hagen, Head Of David, The Icicleworks, The Immaculate Fools, Japan, The JAMM's/Timelords/KLF, Kissing the Pink, Annabel Lamb, Magazine, The Lover Speaks, Love and Rockets, Modern English, Modern Man, The Monochrome Set, New Model Army, The Passage, Peter and The Testtube Babies, The Pop Group, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Psychedelic Furs, The Punishment of Luxury, Random Hold, Rikki and The Last Days of The Earth, The Scars, Shelleyan Orphan, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Skinny Puppy, The Slits, Slow Children, The Sound, Spliff, Swans, Talk Talk, The Teardrop Explodes, This Moral Coil, Toyah, Tuxedomoon, Virgin Dance, Victorian Parents, Wire, The Waterboys, The Wonder Stuff, XTC, Xmal Deutschland and the Clan of Zymox

Edited by Svetonio - September 14 2013 at 00:40

Guldbamsen wrote: Dean wrote: The relationship between electronic and minimalism is mostly coincidental, the use of sequencers and loops naturally gives way to repetition, but not in the way that minimalism uses repetition. Both can be seen as Repetitive Music, but different and unrelated branches. Electronic music is far from minimalism and far from minimalistic in my experience, though of course there are electronic artists who are also minimalists, and while some of them acknowledge people like Reich and Riley, most do not. Pretty much sums up what I was about to post.  The electronic artists, at least the early ones, did have a fair few minimalistic qualities to their output, but especially the German and French branchings explored new grounds through repetition, that perhaps mimic what most people would refer to as minimalism, yet the focus is another one altogether imho. Whereas the 'real' minimalism came from classical musicians such as Eric Satie and later got adopted by folks inside the classical sphere, most of the electronic wave of musicians came from untrained explorers of sound. Froese came from the guitar, whereas Schulze approached his music from a drummer's stool. I think this facet shines through in the music, and electronic, as in fully electronic music, became as a consequence of this, obscure and abstract in a way that the minimalistic pioneers could never do - and vice versa.

Interesting perspective.

I thought Karlheinz Stockhausen was like the most importance influence outside popular music on the German prog electronic artists with Morton, Reich, Riley, Varese etc. also having a prominent role. (JM Jarre and Vangelis's stuff being based in more traditional orchestral music) I know for sure that Schulze's been heavily inspired by modern classical since the beginning, very much including Steve Reich and others, but his output is also way more overtly neoclassical than TDs or KW so I'm cautious not to use him as an example too much. Even then, it still turns out to be more complex than I imagined, again because I'm kind of under-educated about the history of both genres as well as advanced music theory.

Perhaps I should mention I've met quite a few who insist that Jarre/Schulze/TD/etc. isn't "real" electronic music because it's either too closely rooted in prior musical traditions including 20th century classical and progressive/psychedelic rock, or too technologically primitive.

Svetonio wrote: Dean wrote: A Certain Ratio, All About Eve, Alien Sex Fiend, Altered Images, The Associates, Toni Basil, The Books, Bauhaus, Cabaret Voltaire, Colourbox, Cowboys International, Chrome, Anne Clark, Classix Nouveaux, Cocteau Twins, Comsat Angels, The Creatures, The Cure, Dalek I Love You, Dali's Car, Danielle Dax, The Dream Academy, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Europeans, The Explorers, Fad Gadget, The Fields of The Nephilim, Fiction Factory, The Fixx, John Foxx, Ultravox!, Gentlemen Without Weapons, Girls At Our Best!, Nina Hagen, Head Of David, The Icicleworks, The Immaculate Fools, Japan, The JAMM's/Timelords/KLF, Kissing the Pink, Annabel Lamb, Magazine, The Lover Speaks, Love and Rockets, Modern English, Modern Man, The Monochrome Set, New Model Army, The Passage, Peter and The Testtube Babies, The Pop Group, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Psychedelic Furs, The Punishment of Luxury, Random Hold, Rikki and The Last Days of The Earth, The Scars, Shelleyan Orphan, Siouxsie and The Banshees, Skinny Puppy, The Slits, Slow Children, The Sound, Spliff, Swans, Talk Talk, The Teardrop Explodes, This Moral Coil, Toyah, Tuxedomoon, Virgin Dance, Victorian Parents, Wire, The Waterboys, The Wonder Stuff, XTC, Xmal Deutschland and the Clan of Zymox I really don't belong here! You don't mentioned one and only pop band that I loved in 80s

Edited by Dean - September 14 2013 at 05:29

Svetonio wrote: Yeah, but now I'm feel more sad and alone..  Among the 80s bands you mentioned in your previous list there is not Material

Dean wrote: Aye, my list is far from definative ...

mongofa wrote: Deceit!

Dean wrote: It is a confusing world of electronic music, electroacoustic music, acousmatic music, musique concrète, elektronische musik, experimental music and good old fashoned avant garde - those who make proclamations of what is real electronic music and what is not are far braver than I.

Yeah. That's why elsewhere on the forums I threw out a request for recommendations of books about the history of electronic music from the 1960s/1970s until now.

On the proper discussion subject of this thread: It just occurred to me that Captain Beefheart released two of his best LPs, Doc at the Radar Station and Ice Cream for Crow during that decade. Not bad when it's remembered as something of a desert for progressive music. I think it helped that some of the more eccentric punk bands of the era mentioned him as an inspiration quite often.

Yeah, Zappa and Beefheart were probably the original generation avant/prog/psych-rock musicians who did best both artistically and commercially in the 1980s.

I still think the genres the decade was best for were not just punk and its derived genres like post-punk/new wave and hardcore but also metal, hip-hop and the first wave of industrial/noise as someone else mentioned. Likewise, it's the decade where electronic music really broke into the mainstream though for the most part that's the result of synthesizers becoming affordable and more user-friendly.

It's probably relevant that most of the developments I mentioned above started already in the late 1970s, though, but I'm not sure exactly how.