Posted June 14, 200619 yr Indie (culture) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Indie, an abbreviation of independent, is a term regarding a trend seen in music, film, business and subculture originating in the late 20th Century. The most general definition of the word is to be independent from the mainstream. Today, the word is most often associated with the underground youth subculture which is defined by its associated music, fashion, behavior and beliefs. Overview [Indie culture is an avant-garde lifestyle which follows underground social trends with which is considered to consciously deviate from the mainstream of society and culture. One common belief in indie culture is anti-conformity. The major influence for the indie culture came out of the support and interest of independent music groups, associated with the do-it-yourself approach to the arts. This continues as many followers of the indie culture today are still often associated with the local independent art and music scenes, especially college radio. Since its origin sometime in the 1980's, the indie culture saw an increased amount of youth follow the beliefs and trends of culture, and like many underground cultures before it, the indie culture ultimately expanded to become part of mainstream youth culture, thus amounting to the very status that it initially rejected. Music As a main influence on the indie culture, indie music became a driving catalyst which was shaped by many indie artists and music scenes. The Seattle music scene became one such setting during the the early 1990s, when bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and The Screaming Trees had immense success. Bands such as Pixies and Sonic Youth, who were not given as much mainstream credibility up to this point, found themselves adored by new fans, assemblying a strong indie following. New York City, notably Williamsburg, Brooklyn, also became a major scene for indie rock music with such bands as The Walkmen, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, They Might Be Giants and The Strokes. Los Angeles' indie scene rides the wave of gentrification through Eastside neighborhoods like Koreatown, Silverlake, and Echo Park, which have given rise to such bands as Moving Units, Autolux, Shiny Toy Guns, and Giant Drag. Film Like the indie music scene, independent films are an art form produced without the funding, and thus adjustment, from a major movie studio, which thus allows appreciative fans to discover purer or more avant-garde qualities within the movies. Example of indie films: Sex, Lies and Videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989) Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1991) B) Naked (film) (Mike Leigh, 1993) Clerks (Kevin Smith, 1994) B) Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994) B) Bottle Rocket (Wes Anderson, 1996) Cube (Vincenzo Natali, 1997) The Doom Generation (Gregg Araki, 1994) Chuck & Buck (Miguel Arteta, 2000) Night On Earth (Jim Jarmusch), 1991) Primer (Shane Carruth), 2005) L.I.E. (Michael Cuesta), 2001) Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly), 2001) B) El Mariachi (Robert Rodriguez), 1992) B) :yahoo: :cheer: The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola), 1999) :wub: :yahoo: :cheer: Garden State (Zach Braff), 2004) :yahoo: :wub: :cheer: Fashion Common trends within the indie culture include band t-shirts and vintage clothing, with brand label clothing completely rejected as an example of mainstream culture. Recent status In the last decade, the indie culture has had many major cross-overs with other former underground youth subcultures, including Alternative, Artsy, Emo, Grungers and Mods, however many indie followers are offended that such links are made between the indie subculture and some of those listed above.
June 14, 200619 yr Author Lo-fi music From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Lo-fi music is a musical genre which uses lo-fi recording practices. The aim is to sound authentic, rather than over-produced. Many lo-fi artists use inexpensive cassette tape recorders for their music. Lo-fi's roots date back to The Beach Boys (the Smiley Smile album), The Beatles and Buddy Holly (Holly recorded some songs in a converted garage). As a genre, lo-fi is mainly associated with recordings from the 1980s onwards, when cassette technology such as Tascam's four-track Portastudio became widely available. Prime early exponents included Daniel Johnston, Beat Happening and the label K Records, and the New Zealand music scene around the Tall Dwarfs and Flying Nun Records. Lo-fi found a wider audience with the success of Beck, Sebadoh, Pavement, Eric's Trip, and Elliott Smith. Often lo-fi artists will record on old or poor recording equipment, originally out of financial necessity but now mainly due to the unique aural qualities available from the technologies. Many artists associated with the lo-fi movement, such as Bill Callahan or Bob Log III, have frequently rejected the use of finer recording equipment, trying to keep their sound raw instead, whereas others such as Guided By Voices and The Mountain Goats slowly moved to using professional studios. Lo-fi techniques are espoused by some genres outside the indie rock rock world, particularly by black metal artists, where the very low-quality of the recording has become almost a desirable quality, said by fans to convey a rawness and depth of feeling otherwise unattainable. Some fans deliberately seek out extremely lo-fi concert bootlegs, such as the infamous Dawn Of The Black Hearts, which are of such low quality as to defy normal conceptions of music. DIY Punk is also well noted for its trend toward lo-fi sound, produced for the most part on inexpensive four-track machines such as the Tascam, and copied from tape to tape on home recording equipment, degrading the quality still further. In DIY Punk lo-fi is prized mainly because it indicates a rejection of the values of commercialism. In addition to aesthetic motivations, many bands and artists have produced lo-fi recordings for financial reasons. The use of time and equipment in a recording studio can be prohibitively expensive for artists in the early stages of their career, though in recent years digital recording techniques and equipment have put studio-quality recording within the reach of more people, at least in the Western / European countries where the "indie" aesthetic originates.
June 14, 200619 yr Author http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/NMEC86.jpg Taken literally, C86 was simply a cassette available through mail-order from the (British) New Musical Express in 1986 (hence ©assette 86) and a belated follow up to C81, a more diverse collection of new bands, released by NME in 1981 in conjunction with the label Rough Trade. However, over time it came to represent a movement within the British indie scene, often derided for its twee or "cuteness", jangly guitars and the bowl haircuts of its singers and male fans. Many of the bands now referred to as being 'C86' were left off the compilation, such as The June Brides and Biff Bang Pow!. Some later became associated with the sound but had yet to emerge such as Talulah Gosh, Razorcuts or the BMX Bandits who in 1989 released an album called C86. Furthermore, the compilation, despite its reputation, had a much harder punkier shambling sound that was completely at odds with the Byrdsy guitars and fey melodies of what came to be known as 'C86' bands. In his book Time Travel, pop historian Jon Savage traced the origins of C86 and Twee pop to the Velvet Underground's eponymous third album. Simon Reynolds talking about the political/cultural aspect of the scene referred to a "revolt into childhood". Perhaps a more obvious influence was the pop side of post punk rock: bands such as The Television Personalities, the Swell Maps and The Dolly Mixture. However, C86 was also rooted in the Scottish post-punk scene of the early 1980s especially guitar bands on the independent Postcard label such as Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and Josef K although those bands soul/funk/disco influences were usually forgotten. Other influences were the DIY punk ethic represented by fanzines such as The Legend!, Are you Scared to get Happy? and Hungry Beat! who often featured flexis of bands who then became associated with C86. The movement continued to hold sway into the 1990s with many of the riot grrl bands citing C86 as an influence and finally reached a commercial peak with the success of Belle and Sebastian. Bob Stanley; a Melody Maker journalist in the late 1980s and band member of Saint Etienne claimed in a 2006 interview that C86 represented the "beginning of indie music". He recalled that "It's hard to remember how underground guitar music and fanzines were in the mid 80s; DIY ethics and any residual punk attitudes were in isolated pockets around the country and the C86 comp and gigs brought them together in an explosion of new groups". In 2004 the Rough Trade Shops compilation Indiepop Vol 1 effectively documented the history of the sound acknowledging that it pre- and post-dated 1986 and labels such as Matinee and websites like Indiepages continue to be influenced by C86. The appeal of the sound was confirmed in 2005 when several of the bands associated with the movement including The Wedding Present, The Loft , and The Wolfhounds reformed. In the summer of 2006 London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, who staged a week of gigs in 1986 which featured every act on the tape, plan to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the compilation with a series of evenings curated by C86 acts
June 14, 200619 yr Author Shoegazing From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Shoegazing is a style of alternative rock that emerged in the southern United Kingdom in the late 1980s. Isn't Anything by My Bloody Valentine, released in 1988 (see 1988 in music) is said to have defined the sound, athough this is increasingly disputed by artists of the genre who claimed a closer identification with the more hypnotic, rhythm based bands like Angelhead and Loop. Technical definitions Shoegazing is characterised by a self-deprecating, introspective, non-confrontational feel. Generally employed are distortion and the fuzzbox, droning riffs and a Phil Spector-esque wall of sound from the noisy guitars. Another way to describe the guitar effects would be "lead-guitarlessness", typically with two distorted rhythm guitars interweaving together and giving an exceptionally muddied sound. Although lead guitar riffs were often present, they were not the central focus of most shoegazing songs. Vocals typically are subdued in volume and tone, but underneath the layers of guitars is often a strong sense of melody. While the genres which influenced shoegazing often used drum machines, shoegazing more often features live drumming. Chapterhouse utilised both samples and live drumming, while drummers such as Chris Cooper of Pale Saints and the late Chris Acland of Lush often displayed complex drum patterns. The name was coined by the New Musical Express, noting the tendency of the bands' guitarists to stare at their feet (or their effects pedals), seemingly deep in concentration, while playing. Some fans will argue another story, that shoegazing music was originally made with the intention of being listened to while taking heroin,[citation needed] and that the name refers to a passage from the book Naked Lunch. Melody Maker preferred the more staid term The Scene That Celebrates Itself, referring to the habit which the bands had of attending gigs of other shoegazing bands, often in Camden. The key record labels associated with the genre were Creation Records (My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive) and 4AD. Influences The Velvet Underground was often cited as a major influence on the genre, as it had been on the earlier C86 movement. Many of the bands eschewed the punk era altogether, although punk-era bands such as The Cramps, Pere Ubu and The Birthday Party proved influential in some cases, especially with the forerunners of the genre. However, artists such as The Jesus and Mary Chain and especially the Cocteau Twins and Spacemen 3 (and later Spiritualized) gave birth to the genre directly rather than through oblique influences. Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life traces shoegazing to a Dinosaur Jr tour of the United Kingdom. While not generally classified as a shoegazing band, Dinosaur Jr did share a tendency to blend poppy melody with loud guitars. Early Boo Radleys tracks were firmly modelled on the first two Dinosaur albums. "The scene that celebrates itself" The first stirrings of recognition came when indie writer Steve Lamacq referred to Ride in a review for the NME as "The House of Love with chainsaws". In the US the music is sometimes now referred to as "dream pop". The genre label was quite often misapplied. Key bands such as Ride, Chapterhouse and Slowdive emerged from the Thames Valley and as such Swervedriver found themselves labelled 'shoegazers' on account of their own (coincidental) Thames Valley origins - despite their more pronounced Hüsker Dü stylings. Curve were once described as "the exact point where shoegazer meets goth" and the genre did overlap with others to some extent. It was certainly the case that bands such as Blur, on occasion, adopted elements of shoegazing ('She's So High' for instance) on a purely commercial basis. The careers of Thousand Yard Stare and Revolver were caught up in a general backlash which affected the scene. In spite of this, bands like Chapterhouse, Ride and Slowdive ("the My Bloody Valentine Creation can afford" went one wry review) did leave behind several albums that on reflection have stood the test of time as indicative of 90s British indie. Post movement directions Slowdive eventually became the alt.country-leaning Mojave 3, while other shoegazing bands either split, or moved in other directions. Andy Bell of Ride, for example, later joined Oasis after his own Britpop project Hurricane #1 faltered. Several former members of shoegazing bands later moved towards post-rock and even trip hop. Nugaze and current trends [color=#663300]After the initial first wave of bands whose careers petered out in the early 1990s, or moved in different directions, a number of bands such as Bethany Curve and Brian Jonestown Massacre were able to take inspiration from these groups and pursue new audiences. In recent years the NME has recently pointed out the shoegazing influence in a number of up and coming bands, which it has called "nu-gazing". Bands of this nature include Televise, Alcian Blue, A Place To Bury Strangers, Air Formation, Scarling., Autolux, Amusement Parks on Fire, Skywave, The Radio Dept, Mahogany, Readymade, Los Sonidos Distantes, Joy Zipper, M83, Ulrich Schnauss, Oppressed by the Line, Heroes of Switzerland, Experimental Aircraft and Engineers, and most recently Serena Maneesh. The genre is very strong within its own ranks, much alluding to the ideal "the scene that celebrates itself." Clubs such as Club AC30 and Club Violaine, along with the support of such labels as The Gaia Project and Bella Union are supporting more and more dream-pop and shoegaze bands. There are many holdouts of devoted players and listeners on both sides of the Atlantic, and a strong following in South America The first two albums by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are influenced by shoegazing. There is another thread of shoegazer-influenced music, that maintains the emphasis of texture (through the use of guitar effects pedals and digital signal processing) but departs, to some degree, from the rock structures and full band instrumentation of shoegazer music. Also, there are little to no vocal elements. This “post-shoegaze†glitch and experimental electronic music has achieved some critical praise, especially the more recent releases by Fennesz and Tim Hecker. The duo Belong released an album in 2006 that also falls into this category. Also aspects of flying saucer attack, main, lovesliescrushing see voirshn, and third eye foundation, explored this territory as well in the mid 90's. Often using the digital studio of a computer, these artists focus a lot of attention on creating space and atmosphere. The Max/MSP software program is one tool that allows for guitar signals to be processed for the creation of music that is characterized as much by its textural aspects as its melodies, if not more so. The outcome tends to be compositions ranging from ambient stretches of droning tones, distorted walls of sound, and reverb-laden atmospherics. What separates this from other strands of glitch or noise compositions and places it in the realm of shoegaze are the inclusion of melodies that call to mind pop and rock music. The genre, though derided to some extent by the music press at the time, has left something of a legacy, as the new crop of bands demonstrates. The last album by My Bloody Valentine, Loveless, released in 1991 is critically acclaimed to be the landmark album of shoegazing, with Ride's first album Nowhere seen as a close contender..[/color]
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