Welly, welly, well. As it turned out, Bassadelic.com has A WHOLE FUCKING LOT MORE hidden up it’s sleeves than anyone ever anticipated… Aside from being the head of an audio firm / electronic music blog, StrangeFlow (aka 5ifty$ix K… aka ME ….Will…) is also an author, and a time travel pioneer.
Yes, it’s true… A future article from Bassadelic was released today, and it’s from the lofty year of 2016. Yes, May 4th, 2016, to be exact. Aye! How is this possible? Never underestimate blogs, dear reader! The physics of such a time travelling apparatus have a lot to do with particle acceleration, the hyper-layer, fotons and futons… Needless to say, I do not currently wish to turn this article into a 3,100-paged text book on the exciting science (and weird sexual art) of time-travellery…
The point being, this here’s an article from exactly two years in the future. I chose today to release it, as, well, exactly two years in the future there is a lofty article about the state of music around the world being published. So, without further ado…
2016; the year in music…
Readers and viewers of holographic-auto-reading-super-robots, rejoice! Twas a great couple of years for electronic music!
So what made the end of 2014, the bulk of 2015, and the start of 2016 so beautiful? Well, if you will indulge a gentle cyborg such as myself, I would like to tell you…
The world economy got a lot better. Not perfect, but a hell of a lot better. Global warming is finally on the decline, country-EDM turned out to be a passing trend that died out a few months after it started, and Dewey DB won a nobel peace prize for his work in quantum physics!
Chicago juke, footwork, footwork jungle, and all forms of hardcore footwork breakcore madness continued to rise in popularity around the globe! 5ifty$ix K, obviously, turned out to be the top contender, releasing so many records that a new numerical / medal category had to be introduced; that of, ‘hyper-platinum.’ What a goddamn terrible and awesome hero that Will guy must be!! Hyper-platinum, eh? (Now who’s the fucking loser, internets?!) ….
Uh, yes, but aside from hyper-platinum selling recording-artist 5ifty$ix K, what else happened?
Artists like ‘Ruby my Dear,’ stole many a show, along with Venetian Snares, too. ‘Big Beat,’ – a term used to describe the music of artists such as Fatboy Slim, came back into vogue for a moment, with an incredible second wave that shocked the industry.
What about hip hop? Did hip hop die? Fuck no! It’s fucking hip hop, of course it’s still around! Hip hop leaned far away from the sounds of Drake and Kanye, getting fairly psychedelic and sample-heavy, taking on a pretty sizeable influence from mid-90s rap music. Ah, it was fun! Gritty, and yet modern… Almost jazzy, in some ways… Loopy and cutty as fuck, too… The sounds of Dilla became a big inspiration, as underground rap quickly became mainstream, as well as reinvigorating what it deemed, ‘Bad Wonky,’ or, better yet, ‘Gangsta Wonk.’
Speaking of gangsta, jazz music got gansta as FUCKING POSSIBLE. All those bland jazz stations really got their scrotums squeezed out and tied into a knot when Jazz Man B introduced his take on conventional jazz music, releasing an album that contained 4,100 re-interpretations of old jazz tunes! Apparently, a couple of years ago, Sony put the content from thousands of Blu-ray discs onto a cassette tape and this really opened the doors for hyper-prolific super-artists such as Jazz Man B. But to say that he ‘remixed’ those old tunes doesn’t quite do it justice. What Jazz Man B created was a new musical technique…
He pioneered a technology to take old songs, and automatically change the instruments used in those old tunes… Needless to say, it revolutionized EVERYTHING. People immediately had a field day, re-interpreting all sorts of music, from the Beatles to Jimi Hendrix (re-electrifying old Hendrix guitar improvisations into that weird electric-banjo/flute hybrid instrument, the, ‘banjalute,’) and this process created a new form of ‘mashup/sample’ technique called post-instrumentalising, or, to use the slang of 2015, “skrapping.”
Aside from skrapping the notes of old Johnny Cash songs and replacing them with battle-scratch sounds from Q-Bert, another interesting phenomenon took place…
Afrohouse became a definite force in popular dance music – with the sounds of kwaito, townhouse funk, and hiplife, and desert blues spreading all throughout the West. As well, Africa is on its way to becoming an economic power house, hosting several of its own ‘Silicon-Valley-style’ tech cities.
Another monumental step in music was one of feminism; in huge numbers, women got to the top of the charts like never before, as the gender gap in music quickly came to a close. Fed up with the overly-testosterone-drivin nonsense of brostep, many musicians began making music that, once again, didn’t suck. It VERY MUCH did not suck, in fact: it was awesome!!! Female MCs ‘conquered,’ hip hop on the charts, with the Hip Hop Billboard 100 charts owing 57 of it’s most popular contributions to women. As well, in 2015, at least half of the festival headliners were female. Ah, 2015 was a hell of a year for equality.
Also, gay marriage was made completely legal everywhere. And marijuana? Well, I don’t even have to tell you what happened to that :) :) :) :)
Aside from all that, I won’t get into much of the weirder political things that happened at the end of 2015, such as those aliens that communicated to us all through a series of high-frequency hyper-colors… Nor will I indulge you with the horror stories of hoverboards gone wrong, because I’m sure you’ve heard enough of all that bullshit by now… And what else can be said, at this point?
But one other interesting thing that happened in music, beyond what I’ve already told you, was a development in house music…
Obviously, as has been stated and thoroughly backed up on this blog, is the notion that house music can never truly die. Aside from Afrobeat and African house influences, ‘New Jersey Lean,’ or, ‘Lean House,’ came into vogue. Don’t want to dance to footwork? Wanna get too high and chill out? Just turn on some of that new-fangled ‘Lean House,’ or listen to some of StrangeFlow’s incredible series of ‘Acid Skrew,’ mixtapes…
Nootropics came out of the closet and into the mainstream, with many of this new and interesting family of drugs being banned… Because that’s what fucking always happens when the government figures out that people are, “having too much fun with something without paying the pharmaceutical companies, first.” Smart drugs such as aniracetam, or L-theanine, came under fire… But, seeing as they were actually not-that-bad, and, in many cases, quite healthy, people kept using them. Aniracetam actually increases cognitive communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain – a process that is associated with creativity… As well, aniracetam (or, ‘Annie,’ as it is often referred) always seemed to present in recording studios and music parties.
Online micro-payments became one of the more dominant financial forms of accessing artistic content online… For half a penny, you could play your favorite tunes from a variety of different sources, cutting out the middle man! Or, if that wasn’t good enough, you could always still pay for the album itself, or go to youtube and get it for free and settle with having to deal with all of those godawful pop-us… Like the one that advertises, ‘Tony’s Pizza,’ – have you seen that one? With the dude tossing the pizza around like a jackass? He’s probably a nice guy, but after seeing him ten million times when you’re just trying to listen to an Aphex Twin track, he gets really fucking irritating after a while. Ah well.
Kazakhstan (as well as a host of other third-world (or nearly-third world) countries) got online in increasing numbers, and were soon producing their own unique variations of existing electronic genres of music. Kazakhstan, specifically, gave the world, ‘Straddi,’ a new kind of music that makes dubstep look like cigarette butts shoved inside an old fucking pancake. Yea, really though, Straddi’s THAT fucking amazing.
Ah, and WHO could forget about szörnyek jövőism??? Monster culture from Hungary/Romania got big. In Hungary, there is a week-long holiday where people dress in elaborate monster costumes and get drunk and wander around the town, engaging in sexual acts and screaming away the bad spirits. Well, the holiday caught on in America and parts of the UK, and I’m sure I don’t have to go into too much detail on that, as I’m sure you’ve all heard about it at this point. Yes, dressing up as some of these very unique Eastern European monsters became popular for DJs, as well as metal bands. As well, Monster Dubz started popping up, and it was really fucking fun. szörnyek jövőism, for the win.
Yes, 2015 was truly the start of a golden era for rave culture, worldwide. ‘WorldPLUR,’ as it was called, became a holiday where the whole world raved out for an entire month. Which month was that? Ah, come on, you’re not completely living under a rock, are you? Unless you’re somehow reading this BEFORE 2016, you know exactly what month I’m talking about.
Also, for about a week, something called, ‘burger funk,’ got big for a minute, garnering 2 billion hits on that website that quickly destroyed Youtube… You know that website, don’t you? Swoopi something? Yea, that one… But that’s not worth going into, as this article has already given as detailed an account as fucking possible on everything that’s happened in the last year or two, and besides, my completely-biodegradable laptop needs to get some sun and recharge it’s 21-hour-battery, so I’m going to let you go… Thank you for reading!
Happy mixin’ !
-Will
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