Word: sonics
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...more than a dance album. Although tracks like "B My Dog" and "Wardance (Never Trust a Hippie)" have dancefloor potential, these songs are often far too erratic and cerebral to liven up your next party. In the tradition popularized by Richard James of Aphex Twin, DJ Silver charts his sonic terrain with analog synths sighing and chirping over energetic beats. And although lacking James's technical brilliance or devilish imagination (DJ Silver remains faithful to standard house and breakbeat rhythms), DJ Silver's music is much more accessible. For people whose only exposure to electronic music is in clubs...
...most-fun software I saw came from a small Madison, Wis., shop called Sonic Foundry. Sonic's new line of sound-editing programs lets you create amazing music, even if you have a tin ear. I tried Sonic's Acid Rock ($49.95), which comes with more than 500 sound clips. You can listen to any clip by simply selecting it; when you find a sound you like, slap it onto a track in the editing room. Lay down a bass line, add percussion and instrumentation--the software will even resolve the key so that everything harmonizes. What...
...mostly abandoned hip-hop. His new sound draws largely from older, traditional styles: pure folk, blues and, on the spirited song Tropicalia, bossa nova. The energy of Beck's hip-hop/folk experimentation is missed here; this is a ruminative album that's more about quiet revelation than sonic revolution. In fact, Beck delivers almost every song in a drained drone; Mutations would have been better had it been a little livelier...
Proclaiming this new sonic intensity, the Cardigans opened with a searing interpretation of their new song "Paralyzed." Like debris from the factory of the next millennium, the song burst with a rumbling electronic landscape and apocalyptic guitar chords. Other songs, like the guitar-driven "Erase/Rewind" and the ethereal "Higher," were transformed by this ominous aesthetic into manifestoes of the dark, as Persson's voice became barbed and deceptive. Even "Lovefool," the classic, buoyant paean to romantic masochism, was edged with rougher guitars and a surprising growl from Persson, pronouncing the deeper power dynamics that were unexpressed in the original recording...
...many jazz musicians found themselves marginalized by rock and soul. Then in 1970 Miles Davis received the first gold record of his life, for Bitches Brew, a sonic eye opener that experimented with electric instruments and rock and funk rhythms--a strange, primal, remarkable album. Soon, however, a whole generation of musicians was squandering its talents on increasingly vapid (though profitable) jazz-rock hybrids that came to be called fusion. Known today as smooth jazz, or as "that crap they play when Regis and Kathie Lee go to commercial," fusion continues to thrive; it even has its own Billboard chart...