Glitch

this mighty interesting genre was the manifestation of what was right about electronic music for me in the early 00's . completely free of all convention, very organic despite the coldness, elegant and smart. i've had a couple of hdd wipeouts since then and got swayed from electronic music to american psych stuff and kinda neglected the glitch thing.

i realize now that the thing looks almost dead save for fennez and tim hecker and maybe a couple more, lost all the hype it had..even pitchfork raved about the german glitch dudes back then, and its strange cause that genre framework had seemingly limitless potential.

maybe im just not tuned to the right wave but i don't remember anything interesting and glitchy happening in the last 5 years besides tim hecker.

prove me wrong watmms, show some good recent glitch if it actually exists..

a couple reasons why glitch is dying

- computers and electronic entertainment are so high level now that when they glitch out they usually just freeze or turn off. With the rise of digital devices and of course while analog was still popular glitching was a fascinating thing to behold.

- people have too much access to audio tools that can do literally anything they can imagine. The more tools and power available inevitably the less creative and envelope pushing artists will be.

Frank Bretschnider's stuff is pretty cool (tho I wasn't too into the last album) and check out Atom TM

Liedgut

Why does it seem like it's dead?

Because it is.

VHS HEAD

  On 1/25/2011 at 11:08 PM, eugene said:

maybe im just not tuned to the right wave but i don't remember anything interesting and glitchy happening in the last 5 years

the aesthetics of any music subgenre always have the potential of turning into a simple production technique, from lo-fi rock to chopped and screwed music, and that seems like what happened to glitch. glitch as a genre really worked for its time - up until '05 or so. but it seems like an aesthetic, glitch was assimilated into the musical fray of production techniques. IMO, the whole new sincerity movement in music is a good culprit—there just isn't a lot of public response to seemingly-soulless glitch music anymore.

yeah think that shit over

inb4 beariksson

  On 1/25/2011 at 11:11 PM, Awepittance said:

a couple reasons why glitch is dying

 

- computers and electronic entertainment are so high level now that when they glitch out they usually just freeze or turn off. With the rise of digital devices and of course while analog was still popular glitching was a fascinating thing to behold.

i think this is what i meant when i said glitch worked for it's time—there was definitely a pretty exponential growth in music technology at the time, and from that point, it became more stabilized and standardized. i still think popular culture in general has an influence on its waning popularity too though.

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

this killed glitch

he helped

but glitch was an old lady, she didn't have many years left in her anyway.

Well on the hiphop end of the spectrum it seems as there was a gradual shift across the last decade from glitched-out instrumentals to wonky beats.

*strokes beard*

glitchwonk

fuck how did i forget about james blake

  On 1/26/2011 at 6:44 AM, xxx said:

Glitch lives...just not in the way it did in the early 00's and nor should it. That was a moment in time. There are folks doing it much better than BT as well. Check a few of my favorites, all within the past 5 years and all feature a "glitch" ethic at the forefront imo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI0AiFG5dXY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWEP9iJZgmg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA-lOywYGic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0MWfJE3ejI

WATMM's own righteous resident hautlle

Alternatively, let a Sony VAIO laptop get loaded with registry errors and too many tasks and you'll have all the glitch you'll ever care for

That's some nice tracks there.

I like the sutemos stuff, but have to admit the Intelligent Toys Comps have gone downhill since no. 3.

well, Glitch as a genre (?) is dead but some of the best artists of that era are puting out stunning pieces at the moment.

Fennesz (hmmm...everything!!)

http://soundcloud.com/studio-irisarri/sets/w-fennesz)

Alva Noto (loads of great releases)

Mika Vainio (loads of fantastic releases)

Pita (everything actually)

Hecker & Haswell (Blackest ever black)

Oval - O

its just than the glitchers sound has evolved into something wider & better than the strictly glitch palette

Glitch isn't dead! i love glitch. therefore it is alive! :)

  On 1/26/2011 at 11:29 AM, k h o v said:

its just than the glitchers sound has evolved into something wider & better than the strictly glitch palette

yeah, it's gotten into everything! like a virus. it's even seeped into the mainstream.

I probably fall into the "broader use of glitch" camp.

Check out my EP Boundaries Destroyed, I like glitchy beats with nice pads and melodies, abstract grit paired with flowing beauty. I like the contrast it provides.

edit: LOL, fucking xxx, repping me! Thanks man ! He posted the same track I was gonna put up the youtube of. But yeah, check it if you want :sup:

it just became very easy to create so many people including myself started to use it cover up boring parts in their arrangement so it became a synonym for lazy productions while this use of glitch is still very fresh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RupupZb4Wy4

there are many connections to other creations where fx is just used for the sake of it or to upgrade boring production. for example in movies or when you have a look at cheap photoshop works where crappy source material is post-produced with generic filters. once you understand how the generic effect works you are no longer fooled by it and the crappy source becomes obvious

Kero

  On 1/26/2011 at 3:22 PM, o00o said:

it just became very easy to create so many people including myself started to use it cover up boring parts in their arrangement so it became a synonym for lazy productions while this use of glitch is still very fresh:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RupupZb4Wy4

 

there are many connections to other creations where fx is just used for the sake of it or to upgrade boring production. for example in movies or when you have a look at cheap photoshop works where crappy source material is post-produced with generic filters. once you understand how the generic effect works you are no longer fooled by it and the crappy source becomes obvious

I think a big reason glitch died off is because every kiddie could suddenly download DBlueGlitch/a few other plugins and just have it all done for them without any skill or thought. Just click play and there it is. That can only get you so far though. I might use some of those plugins, but there is a ton of thought/selection and hand editing before the result is heard by anyone. So, yes there are people that use it to cover up lack of ideas/skill, but there are people trying to do interesting things too -- Just like anything else pretty much.

I think it's a combination of people with no talent using automated vst glitch effects, and other people trying too hard to be weird & forgetting to make good music (not that I don't like non-musical noise sometimes, but only in very small doses).

is the newest oval album good? i previewed it on bleep and it didn't grab me, but i guess snippets dont do justice to that kind of music.

i still listen to 94diskont all the time, love that album.

I read an interview with Alva Noto and he was saying stuff along the lines that the aesthetics of glitch were harder now because laptops no longer crashed and went weird when you pushed them too far

as there was a point when the software was doing more than the hardware could handle, quite commonly, and it produced weird results

but now with the extra computing power you no longer get that disjunct.

Mark Fell - UL8.