Progressive, innovative and unconventional Music
By STiFU, December 14, 2010 in Off-Topic
We've had threads about the best movies and games, so let's talk music now, shall we?
I am always on the hunt for creative and innovative music and I thought this community is of such high intellect ( ), that there must be people around here listening to some sort of progressive music... I'll just start with some of my personal favorites. Whether or not you consider them progressive is up to you. Of course you can post about any artist you like...
Everybody of us probably knows Nine Inch Nails from the soundtracks of the ID software games. Pretty cool stuff. I especially like the song "Just Like You Imagined".
When it comes down to guitar music, I also value Progressive Metal very much, e.g. Dream Theater ("Endless Sacrifice") and Liquid Tension Experiment("Freedom of Speech"). Those guys wrote some true masterpieces, some of which nearly an hour long.
I am also a big sucker for electronic music though. My newest addiction is rather of the rougher, but slow kind: The Band Broken Note. Those guys have a very unique sound, combining elements from Drum&Bass and Dubstep. As I said, they are a bit rough, but very creative in some way. But I guess, in order to see that, one hast to like such music. The first seven entries in their playlist on myspace are very good.
And there is of course still the probably most creative and innovative genre in electronic music: IDM. One of its representatives is called Landau("Independence" and "You Are Commodity"). Especially the first song of those two always takes me on a trip...
Aprilsister 0
Yes, I don't consider NIN progressive at all.
Yes, while I haven't given them an entirely thorough chance, I consider Dream Theater as to progressive music as Ratt is to Black Sabbath.
Yes, I am going to check out Broken Note on your recommendation.
But I will not be visiting Broken Note's "myspace" page... now, in at least 2 ways, that's not very progressive of them at all... is it?
Edited December 15, 2010 by Aprilsister
I am stuck in 60s/70s/80s rock and will probably remain there until my dying day.
@Aprilsister: You forgot to post bands that you consider progressive... I am very interested in that actually, seeing that you don't say Dream Theater is progressive, on the background that all of its bandmembers have studied music, so they must do something right. There are really many songs by them with time signatures that are not the traditional four-four or six-eight meter and that alone is quite the accomplishment and then they also start jumping between time signatures in the middle of a song. Did you ever play something like a nine-eight meter. I can't do it. Especially not on the drumset. Aside from that, they write songs in the weirdest tonalities... But well, as I said, one may consider progressive what he or she wants.
Regarging NIN, granted most of their stuff is relatively simple rock/industrial, but a small number of their songs is very progressive, I believe. One of them is the song I just referenced. I am actually gonna go hear it right now.
Hehe, well that's cool too. When it comes to old music, I am more of a 30s/40s/50s guy.
ocn 0
Interests:audio visual storyteller.
I really, really, really like Arena. Their music is extremely soothing for both soul and intellect.
Where are the REAL brits?! The one's we have are just brit-ish.
Please always post a song recommendation of your referenced bands, so that people can directly dive into hearing.
Sorry. Here's an all time favourite:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVari01DAIs
Trickster 5
Yeah, NIN were progressive when Quake was released, but they´re not considered progressive yet. Like almost every "progressive" band, they work on their style until it gets obsolete.
Back in eighties/nineties, i was immersed into progressive music, but i considered Skinny Puppy to be most progressive of all electronica.
Recommendations: Cult (from "The Process"), Pro-Test ("Greater Wrong Of The Right")
They "invented" their EBM at early nineties, long before NIN, only Depeche Mode was there at the time...
Most valuable fact is, they lyrics has "attitude" (check "VIVIsect VI" for example)
For progrock, i too don´t see nothing about rock bands being progressive... but now i am mostly into world music anyways... so my recommendations goes to Hedningarna (swedish electro/folk)
Recommendations: albums "Hippjokk" and "Tra"
another progressive folk band... polski band "Zywiolak" (they call them FolkMetal, but not so true, as i don´t like any metal :-)), only one album though "Nowa Ex-Tradycja"
That's why they called it a day and started a new band: "How to destroy angels". You can legally download the whole album like you did with the latest NIN stuff. It's worth a listen if you're are into the experimental electronic NIN compositions.
eh eh .... Trickster, what about bands the time before like Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzenden Neubauten, Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, DAF etc. which had been a huge inspiration to said bands? ...
But I agree Mode and Skinny had been very innovative in the 80's and much more influential to the recent electronic underground music. And Skinny Puppy's live show is still not for the musically faint of heart.
... but now i am mostly into world music anyways... so my recommendations goes to Hedningarna (swedish electro/folk)
... it is a step further the woodsie path of traditional nordish folk, but if you like pagan folk music I recommand to check the tunes of Wardruna.
If your question had been about art rock STiFU you might like to have a listen into Archive. Check
for a start.
But let me be heretic:
How do you define "progressive" these days ??
Is there anything that hasn't been done in music before ?
Nice to see some good taste on this board....
Edited December 15, 2010 by fllood
Sweet, thanks for all those recommendations. I'll give them a deep listening session later or tomorrow. I am especially looking forward to "How to destroy angels" and I am really curious how that art rock sounds.
I guess the only things that haven't been done are those that depend on technological advancement, e.g. synthesizers. I know for a fact, that the sound of Broken Note simply wasn't possible 10 years ago.
But to me "progressive" is rather a descriptive term for ambitious and demanding (both for musician and listener) music. Music that for example requires theoretical background knowledge in order to be able to fully appreciate and enjoy it. Many people simply don't realize what art and beauty can lie beyond the harmonic (or disharmonic) facade of a song.
Now try to look behind the harmonic facade of a modern pop song and what do you see? Right, some half-naked dude dancing and singing as if his balls were cut-off...
Midnight 14
I don't care much for labelling something progressive, as if anything preceding it is somehow stale. Experimental is a term I prefer, but that's really just a semantic argument so I'll leave it at that.
Progressive or not, I'd love to know what people think of this song. This is an unreleased (leaked) version from the Mars Volta album 'Frances The Mute' that was later split into 5 separate tracks because otherwise the album (originally only consisting of 5 songs) would have been classified as an EP. I love that I can listen to a 32 minute long song and never get bored of it.
pusianka 70
The Beatles- band of all time.
Song recomendation... I guess you write "The Beatles" in YouTube, start with the first option on the list and end on the last one (on last page...).
demagogue 1034
Location:Tokyo
Interests:international law, cognitive science, piano/guitar
I think music categories ultimately come down to the attitude of the artist and the people listening to it, or the attitude they're trying to evoke in the way they compose it. If a piece is trying to point to its own sophistication or complexity as a challenge to the listener, in distinction to the conventional suburban pop songs of the time, then I think you could label it as progressive. That's what you see, e.g., in the ProgRock of the 70s. Something you want to call complex if you're into it and pretentious if you're not. It has as much to do with a distaste for saccharine pop songs and the numb people who listen to it, trying *not* to sound like that but challenge their little world.
Now if you wanted to get into *real* sophistication, complexity, and challenge in music, of course then you'd listen to jazz! You want to listen to some contemporary jazz composers that are pushing musical and compositional boundaries, listen to Brad Mehldau (
, or A Night Away @3:00, with Pat Metheny) or Hiromi Uehara (
, with Fuze, lol at the top comment on ProgRock).
Arcturus 626
Interests:modeling and animation
Do you know Arcturus?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXBs0SNjX5w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBzVeWgyrDw
Oh yes. Abey Road is my favourite rock album and it's quite progressive too.
It's only a model... /// My channel on YouTube
Baal 117
Hero Mapper
Arcturus are great.
And I would recommend this to everyone who is into metal:
Enslaved - Ethica Odini: http://www.youtube.c...feature=related
Noisycricket 15
Location:Maintenance corridor 6A110B Butcher Bay
Music is so subjective, thats why I wish we had a music volume slider in TDM and probably explains why AAA developers have put music volume sliders in 100% of the 50ish games i've played except for Doom 3, which has no music outside of cutscenes...
Softer leathery shoe footstep sound set for stone
Music is so subjective, thats why I wish we had a music volume slider in TDM
There is one. And now (with 1.03) it even works!
And now (with 1.03) it even works!
demagogue that is really good news!
I see an ambient slider, but no music volume slider and it doesn't do anything for me while i've been beta testing. Bummer.
What "music" are you talking about then? Are you talking about in-game ambients or the menu music? The ambient slider should work for at least location-based in-game ambients; we've already tested that it works.
By music, i mean the "ambient music". Anything thats not of the "world" your in. In games [read: AAA games, the ones you buy in the store...], its sometimes subject to a dedicated "ambient music volume" slider, but its ALWAYS subject to a "music volume" slider. This, im sure, is for people like myself who want to get "into" the game "world" as much as possible and aren't so impressed by cheap theatrics[my opinion].
Well like I said the ambient slider should work for location ambients starting with 1.03 (did you mean it wasn't working for you in beta-testing 1.03? That's a problem if true; which FM didn't work?). The only thing it wouldn't work on is a normal speaker. Mappers are supposed to use "music speakers" for ambients in this situation, just so the volume is controlled by the ambient slider, but maybe some mappers just use normal speakers anyway.
What exactly do you guys mean by progressive music? Like a new sound or is it like ambient like music?
I am just gonna go ahead and quote myself here, to show you what progressive music is to me. But I guess there are also other definitions.
I stumbled over a song called
on youtube today, which consists only of samples taken from the original disney movie "Alice in wonderland" (at least the description of the video says so). I'd probably classify the song as experimental chillout house. I quite like it. Maybe not the perfect example for progressive music, but the artist definitely is creative.