01:17 Nov 27 2009
Times Read: 702
A few weeks back, Channel got a hand written letter, and in the age of e-mail, testing and Twitter, this was a wonderful thing to see. But the letter brought up an interesting question.
Even thought I'm planning on dealing with this question on air, I thought that i could go into more detail here.
Here's the question:
"How come goth music takes two roads, the over-electronic techno route or the Sarah Brightman/Andrew Lloyd Webber frame of mind."
As a music genre, goth or darkwave is one of the most inclusive styles of music. As to what direction a band or artist will go depends on what and who they are influenced by. (And sometimes, if you listen closely, you can hear the background of a band.)
What I have personally seen is bands that are part of the dark scene use types of music that most people wouldn't think would work or blend well until it's presented to them.
Most people in the goth seen are familiar with the artist Gary Numan and many people in the music industry and music historians call him the father of techno. (Personally, I find this concept debatable, but I'm not going to tangent.) But if you listen to his early work, it's far more punk than electro. Yes there is an element of dark electro there not not near as much as it has now. And if you pick up one of the more resent albums of his you can hear the influence of when he worked with Fear Factory a few years back. so he has changed the way that he sounds over the course of his musical career because of finding new types of music out there.
The band SMP is a good example of how this genre melding works. Although they are categorized as industrial, they use a lot of very obvious elements of punk and hip-hop. Their vocalist can flow just as powerfully as any rapper free-styling. It was the music that they were listening to that created the sound they now have.
Even a band such as Nightwish is blending of influences. They have created a sound that is a meld of gothic metal and opera.
The most extreme mixing of types of music in the dark wave scene that i have come across the Bay Area band IDIC. They have mixed industrial with hip-hop, jazz, metal and even opera (other than the obvious influence of Star Trek with the name.).
I think the point that I'm making with the examples of these bands and artists is that each band is impacted by they music that thy listen to and the idea behind goth of welcoming all.
As for why all of these different types of music or subsets are part of goth and industrial are all part of the same scene or over all genre is more of a cultural thing, at least it is from what I have seen in the gothic/industrial subculture. At some point in time, the rivetheads (industrial fans), romantic-goths, electro-goths, cyberpunks, deathrockers and other people that revel in the darker side of life figured out that there is more power in numbers. "I wear all black and like dark things and music, you wear all black and like dar things and music, why don't we just hang out together?" You can even see metal-heads, people into classical music, show tunes and swing melding into the goth scene and impacting the evolution of the music.
Now that I really think about it, goth is a musical melting pot or a tossed salad.
COMMENTS
-