It has become difficult to assign genres to artists. Andy Ulseth of Fair Oaks suggests that it’s time we stop trying. There is something beautiful about pulling elements from different genres. In Oak’s words, “This is why it’s so great that artists today are cross-breeding mediums.” Andy expresses excitement for genre free music in his blog below.
It’s long been a theory that all artists are like-minded. The painter becomes an architect becomes a candlestick maker. There are certain temperaments and attitudes that one must exhibit in order to willfully and strategically create something. Does it matter if it’s a novel, a pop song, or the new Jordans?
This is why it’s so great that artists today are cross-breeding mediums. You can not listen to Yeezus and ignore Kanye’s passion for starkly cold and rigid architecture that is as deeply knitted into the DNA of those tracks as the obvious sixties soul samples and Justin Vernon overdubs. The Hothian synth-lines and ice-pick scream-breaks are indicative of an appreciation of a pointedly asymmetrical, and structural brutalism. Is it a coincidence that West chose to debut the record’s first single by projecting its video onto the sides of architecturally significant buildings in major cities around the world.
Even the notion of a medium or a genre is more nebulous today than it ever has been. Are there any meaningful musical artists today whose works fall into one easily defined categorical section at Barnes and Noble? The answer to me is a pretty significant “No.”
When we were assembling the title track for our record “This Is The River,” we wanted to deconstruct its elements and stitch them back together in a way that felt flawed and chaotic in order to tell the story texturally. The verses of the climactic second movement are made up of one chugging chord, set against gang vocals and afro-beat drums. Weird shit. The idea was to capture the feeling of being slightly drunk with friends on a hidden riverbank beneath the shadows of a glowing metropolis in the middle of the night. I hoped to capture the thrill of delinquency, the intimidating/exciting monolithic-ism of urban life and infrastructure as a young adult…and of course, civic pride.
This is the most exciting thing about music today. And at the risk of seeming holier-than-thou, I hope everyone else is as excited as me. Let’s be Genre Free In Twenty Fourteen.
