New shoegaze being made entirely without analog instruments

[Heartbreaker_Esq]

I was just reading this article on Stereogum about the explosion of shoegaze and slowcore music among Gen Z and on TikTok, which was fascinating. But these couple of passages struck me as something the denizens of TDPRI would have...some feelings about.

Jane, quannnic, and flyingfish — through the latter’s transparent use of midi instruments, which is out of necessity since he doesn’t play guitar, but yields artistic results — are playing with sounds that are quite novel within the Western shoegaze lineage, but are already well-established in the East Asian shoegaze scene. The influence of Korean one-man shoegaze auteur Parannoul is particularly heavy. His cult-adored 2021 debut, To See The Next Part Of The Dream, uses only midi instruments — and vocals recorded on a Galaxy S5 smartphone! — to unleash a downpour of lo-fi shoegaze that’s both caustic and brittle, panoramic and intimate. Pay close attention to the clipping low-end of Parannoul’s computerized sound, and you’ll notice the same artificial rumble in quannnic, Jane, and flyingfish’s work.

Beyond their sonic influence, what Parannoul and mikgazer have done is show a new generation of ‘gazers that analog instruments aren’t needed to make shoegaze, which could either be viewed as a novel evolution or a polarizing regression. Clearly, as the popularity of Wisp and flyingfish’s music has demonstrated, young listeners don’t care if their shoegaze was made with “authentic” instruments. Even sign crushes motorist poo-poos slowcore’s conventional rockism by using digital plugins instead of real-life pedals, and records his guitar directly into a free DAW called Waveform.

So what say you folks? How much are you using midi instruments? And how far do you go in that direction before you start to feel like you aren't making "real" music? Or does none of that "authenticity" stuff matter, and it's just back to the adage "if it sounds good it is good"?

 

[Blrfl]

This happens anytime somebody comes up with new instruments (or anything else, really). Some of those using the old stuff need to gatekeep to feel good about themselves.

"Not real music."

"Not real photography."

"Not real cooking."

"Not real fishing."

"Not real woodworking."

"Not real archery."

The list goes on and on and on.

 

[Whatizitman]

I use MIDI for drum sounds. That's pretty much it. But I'm a 53 year old GenXer. So shoegaze to me means layers and layers of amps and/or effects. MIDI just makes making drum tracks easier and cheaper than real drums. I can mic my amps in my house ok without any sound proofing. And only need one mic.

My question is what "instruments" are they using? MIDI by itself is has no sound. It has to be sequenced to trigger sound samples. Are they just using modeled amp/effect sounds? No different than most music made today. Just digital shoegaze. But if they're making different and/or experimental sounds, then it would be different thing (than what I'm used to). But really, labels matter not, IMO.

 

[Peegoo]

Back when graphics programs started to get pretty good, many traditional Art Teests raised a hue and cry about "real" art becoming polluted by this whipper-snapper technology.

Meh.

Get
Over
It

Experiment!

Evolution and revolution are actual things. If you're not innovating, all you're doing is repeating yourself.

 

[Lawdawg]

I'll need to listen to more of the young shoegaze bands to see what I think, but in general the "real instruments vs. electronic/midi instruments" is boring and irrelevant to my experience with music. It's an old debate, folks said the same thing about early electronic bands like Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode, and I didn't care then and don't care now.

 

[Heartbreaker_Esq]

Pleasantly surprised by the comments so far! Not that I'm a big user of virtual instruments myself, other than drums. But I don't care how other people get their sounds, as long as I like the sounds.

 

[Lawdawg]

Pleasantly surprised by the comments so far! Not that I'm a big user of virtual instruments myself, other than drums. But I don't care how other people get their sounds, as long as I like the sounds.

I guess the TDPRI members responding to a shoegaze thread aren't very representative of the TDPRI community at large.

Being an old school shoegaze fan, I have noticed the resurgence of the genre over the last 10-15 years and have been thrilled to see it come back. I saw Slowdive a few months ago and half the crowd was old Gen-Xers like me and half the crowd were in their late teens and early 20s. My daughter and I were listening to some of her Spotify playlists driving to school and out of the blue a bunch of Cocteau Twins tracks popped up. Just my long-winded way of saying don't listen to the old TDPRI geezers, the kids are alright!

 

[Heartbreaker_Esq]

I guess the TDPRI members responding to a shoegaze thread aren't very representative of the TDPRI community at large.

Being an old school shoegaze fan, I have noticed the resurgence of the genre over the last 10-15 years and have been thrilled to see it come back. I saw Slowdive a few months ago and half the crowd was old Gen-Xers like me and half the crowd were in their late teens and early 20s. My daughter and I were listening to some of her Spotify playlists driving to school and out of the blue a bunch of Cocteau Twins tracks popped up. Just my long-winded way of saying don't listen to the old TDPRI geezers, the kids are alright!

That's a good point. The thread topic would tend to skew the responses. I'm actually not a shoegaze guy myself. I mean, there's stuff that gets labeled shoegaze that I enjoy (Wednesday, Alvvays, Wishy), but the artists that are considered core to the genre don't really do much for me personally.

But in general I agree - the kids are alright. The mere fact that dense, slow, not particularly hooky or catchy songs are lighting up Gen Z is a refutation of the idea that "the youth" is only interested in hyper, sugary, short-attention-span bursts of fluff.

 

[Lawdawg]

I'm actually not a shoegaze guy myself. I mean, there's stuff that gets labeled shoegaze that I enjoy (Wednesday, Alvvays, Wishy), but the artists that are considered core to the genre don't really do much for me personally.

Those are three of my favorite bands of the last 5 years! Music genre definitions are nebulous at best, and even in its first incarnation in the late 80s - early 90s 'shoegaze' was difficult to pigeonhole. What I like about some of the new bands being loosely described as shoegaze (like Wednesday, Deerhunter, or Alvvays) is how they marry the wall-of-noise sonics of traditional shoegaze to strong lyric/melody driven songs.

 

[bendercaster]

I use midi drum loops and midi to sequence organ/keyboard/synth parts (even trumpet parts once). On of my favorite tricks is to double the bass with a piano or synth. I'm better at writing the music out and then editing the velocity than I am at actually playing key instruments, and digital instruments sound so much better than they use to sound, in my opinion.

 

[monkeybanana]

that's not a bad song but the compression bugs the heck out of me

 

[Heartbreaker_Esq]

that's not a bad song but the compression bugs the heck out of me

Which one? There were a bunch mentioned in the article.

EDIT: I just realized the only song posted on the thread is the one in my signature, so you may be referring to that one. In which case, I can only say: fair enough!

 

[Linderflomann]

Shoegaze isn't blues. The main shoegaze artists were always using whatever tech they could get their hands on and pushing it beyond its limits. Of course the new shoegaze bands are going to be doing the same.

 

[colchar]

I was just reading this article on Stereogum about the explosion of shoegaze and slowcore music among Gen Z and on TikTok

I couldn't possibly care less about either of them, so don't care what they do or do not use.

 

[colchar]

This happens anytime somebody comes up with new instruments (or anything else, really). Some of those using the old stuff need to gatekeep to feel good about themselves.

"Not real music."

"Not real photography."

"Not real cooking."

"Not real fishing."

"Not real woodworking."

"Not real archery."

The list goes on and on and on.

What a load of tripe.

It has nothing to do with gatekeeping, and everything to do with not giving a damn what people do in genres we couldn't care less about.

I don't expect traditional jazz players to care about Nu-Metal, so why do you think we should all care about this?

 

[Manual Slim]

Not caring about it and saying it's not real music aren't the same, are they? They seem different to me, at least.

 

[Highway 49]

Yes, it’s completely cool that people use the latest available technology to do their thing… and it’s cool that some people bring older technology in too.
It’s so exciting to see. I’ve played at a couple of Electronic Music Open Mics this year and it’s a complete mishmash of all sorts of different technologies and ideas - such great music and sounds made with things with lots of wires and flashing lights - and sometimes people even plugged their electric guitars into it all

 

[SixStringSlinger]

"All this machinery making modern music
Can still be open-hearted
Not so coldly charted, it's really just a question of your honesty
Yeah, your honesty
One likes to believe in the freedom of music."

Or something.

I think the real acid test is in th result and not the means/method. It all requires choices, work and non-innate knowledge.

 

[Peegoo]

I tend to think of this non-analog stuff as more coolwave/vaporwave/etc., than "shoegaze."

It's better suited to creating an auditory...aroma...as a sort of background thing to enhance a total experience, rather than as a performance sort of presentation wherein the audience pays attention to the execution of the music.

Shoegaze has a decidedly depressing aspect to the sound, and the drug of choice of the audience demographic would be downers. There are no expressive solos; it's certainly not uplifting, high-energy stuff.

 

[Blrfl]

What a load of tripe.

It has nothing to do with gatekeeping, and everything to do with not giving a damn what people do in genres we couldn't care less about.

It's not so tripe-y when you understand that the question posed in the first post didn't ask anything about genres you don't care about. The question was about what is and isn't "real" music. Shoegaze was a vehicle for asking the question; it could just as easily have been any other genre.

One artist telling another, "the noises I make are real music because I do X and the noises you make aren't because you don't do X," is gatekeeping. "You used a maj7 chord in a heavy metal ballad so you don't don't get to be in my snooty, exclusive club. Neener, neener!"