“If you hold up a dime to the sky, you cover up the view of billions of stars.
0 Comments
With Flume’s new album, Skin, almost out, I thought it’d be a good time to talk about electronic music. If you aren’t already a Flume fan, I’d highly recommend doing a little listening. He’s an Australian electronic artist. He made some great tracks with Chet Faker (a fellow Australian artist) and his last album was released in 2012, so the building hype for Skin is understandable. He recently uploaded a preview to Soundcloud, as well as two new (fantastic) songs.
One of the things that makes electronic music so popular is how diverse and across-the-board it can be. You may associate the phrase “electronic music” with Skrillex, or you may associate it with Brian Eno. These artists both can be referred to as electronic, but they’re at two opposing ends of a spectrum. The main similarity between the two is that they use similar methods to create their music. Electronic music has been around for much longer than it seems. The theremin is often thought of as one of the first electronic instruments-- it’s controlled with an antenna and looks like something you’d put on top of your TV. This instrument was invented in 1928, and was used in the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” Still, many credit the 80s with the birth of flashy electronic music, but modern electronic music has definitely deviated from this style. Of course, electronic dance music is still alive and well, but a subgenre of introspective and intimate electronic music is almost overshadowing flashy music. Odesza, Washington’s own representative electronic band, have been highly successful making music that . They’ve been making music since they met in college (Western Washington University!) and in a recent interviews with NPR and Rolling Stone, Odesza have talked about electronic music’s evolution away from standard, showy EDM and to a more “palatable” type of song. “Electronic” isn’t really a good name for a genre. It only really describes how these artists make their music, but there is such a huge diversity in electronic styles isn’t conveyed in the term “electronic.” As you wait for Flume to finally drop his new album, check out this playlist of essential electronic artists/songs, new and old: https://soundcloud.com/driftwood-magazine/sets/january-edition P.S. If you are a student and you’re looking to display your music on Driftwood, contact us under submissions! We can post your Soundcloud link, a sound file, or we can upload it using our Soundcloud account. |
Column AuthorsMolly Galloway |