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whats a genre?

by J.M.V.D. Kieft

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1.
driven crazy 03:00
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2005 02:45
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alter ego 04:24
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what to do? 03:22
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fast slow 05:50
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libretto 04:03
21.

about

this is a faux-epic rock opera, examining the evolution of popular music genres, and the mind set of a hipster\hippie named Mathew...something
if you listen to it in the form of singles- you will leave disappointed,
if you listen to it as a "faux-epic rock opera"- you will leave confused as if you just watched a mindsrew movie and you will feel the urge to write death threats to me urging me to give it a happy ending causing me to retaliate by releasing end of evangellion
if you listen to it expecting it to be an "epic" rock opera -you will leave both confused and disappointed,
if you listen expecting to hear songs within the genres of music I tagged the album with- you will be sucked into the alternate universe that I come from, with no way to escape
if you listen expecting none of the songs to fit into the genres I tagged the album with- you will be judged and be disappointed
if you listen expecting to hear the song styles on the "artwork"
lol jokes on you. you fell for it, ha ha
if you listen expecting to hear each song being in a different genre-you will leave feeling meh? because i'm only pointing it out now because I want it to have a title,

this storyline takes place in an alternate reality and is therefore non-canon to the main series,
if that previous statement confuses you here is a vocabulary list to look up in order to be more familiar with the setting:
vis-a-vis, ergo, Concordantly, instrumentality, proselytism, schadenfreude, pandeism, proxy, ego, id, Serial Escalation, uncanny valley, monad, solipsism, libertarian socialism, tymbre, anachronism,
pseudonym, tempo, devolution,

instead of exploring different genres as the main concept, this actually tells the story of a person who went crazy and died,
this was written in a really stagnate period of my life and took a longer time because of that, I was originally going to release this under an alter ego pseudonym, but I decided i'm always me no matter who I am, the first name would have been Mathew, but I couldn't decide what the last name would have been, I was leaning towards leurker or key,

MY ACTUAL STYLE OF MUSIC is heavily rooted in early rock and roll from the 50s and 60s, I grew up listening to everything from the platters and buddy holly to Jimi Hendrix and Marvin Gaye, and I also like to flirt with heavy metal, I basically hybridize the basic format with anything I feel like mixing it with, I love to attempt to play in various styles and mix various styles, my older stuff is more mixed with folk rock, metalcore, and grunge but I kind of filtered out most of that replacing it with electro Miami bass, early industrial and post-punk\new wave\dark wave, the meaning behind the title is I obviously don't know what a genre is because I cant stay in one, I BARELY KNOW WHAT A SONG IS! the ACTUAL styles of music i'm attempting here are: psychobilly, death metal, power metal, habanera, tango, stoner\doom metal glam metal, disco, soul, funk, glam rock, trip hop, breakbeat, dubstep, opera, crust punk, synthpop, mercybeat, ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub, dancehall, deathrock, post-punk, anime\J-pop, prog rock, pop-punk, do wop, noise rock, Latin freestyle, rap, groove metal, bebop, 2 step garage, generic pop rock, djent, post-grunge, ebm, and industrial mindscrewery.....and I get every one of them wrong, according to "tv tropes . org " i play "neoclassical punk zydeco rockabilly" which really just means i put a bunch of genres in a blender and hit frappe, but i also play genre roullette first and im trying to be a genre buster.
MY GOAL IN LIFE IS TO BE THE CREATOR OF A NEW GENRE OF MUSIC, and stating that i predict\command\ordain that i will be or am is my main mantra in life that i put in front of other stuff like... girls, money, a job, food. etc,


IF THIS WERE A STORYLINE it would be about a self indulgent musician goes crazy and records an album while fighting with his producer and he ponders about music: what is a genre of music? what is the devils music? what is race music? what is normal music? what are the unintended consequences of music? what is the worst kind of music? why does he think so? what makes people complain about music? what makes something rock music? what makes something jazz music? what makes something self indulgent? what makes something creepy or cheesy or misogynistic? why don't people mix together dubstep, opera and noise rock? ..... then he dies and overthrows the devil with his anime style guitar based finishing move, setting up an anarcho communist republic where god's love is distributed equally..... or maybe hes just a crazy person and thinks he did but was really just watching a clockwork orange on tv with his producer and and complaining about how rock music used to be cool but now its not, .....and also he thinks that the grey aliens are the angels from the bible and vice versa




the reason it is so crazy is because of the breakdown of genres, and the attempts to be "meta", Mathew is posting the question whats a genre and he gets no answer back, and his music is just a mish mash of what ever he into or what he feels he should do, and he does analyze genres, for instance there is a breakdown of what he thinks is normal for mass consumption on the radio, its negative, there is an analysis of power ballads and the change in rock music that occurred from conception through the loudness wars and into the modern radio ballad, and its also negative, and finally there is a run through of jamacan pop as it started fast and slowed down, the emotional response is ambiguous, there is an experimentation of tymbre which results in the song what to do being three separate genres , there is plenty of genre mixing, but I always do that, yet im also in my own little kitchen sink musical world, so in a way all of my albums should be called whats a genre, and that epically long named album I put out,


one of the interesting things about this album is I tagged with real tags by rounding up to the nearest genre otherwise it would have been gothadelic slutwave\slutcore, and even though I am stating that I don't know what a genre is, it has 5 1/2 "rock" rock songs, which is a high ratio for me

liner notes
josef vandekieft- guitar, bass, vocals
Mathew leurker- keyboards, samples, production
jedd marone-drums
ewan Ivanhoe- producer engineer
satan unemployed archangel- satanophone on devils music
jesus ben Miriam -subliminal messages
zara thustra- subliminal messages
nylarhotep- subliminal messages
Aphrodite\venus\Ishtar\freyja - subliminal messages
Nietzsche- - subliminal messages
thor- subliminal messages
Cernunnos- disapproval
Mikhail Bakunin- subliminal messages
collective spirits of all dead rockstars- disaproval
hideako anno- subliminal messages
yhwh\allah- "nothing" and\or "everything" [based on what you believe]
Monty python- subliminal messages
Stanly Kubrick-subliminal messages

OKAY JOKING ASIDE the concept behind the name "what's a genre?" is my distaste for genre music where it doesn't matter what artist you listen to as long as they get the sound right therefore it creates a situation of originality being seen as poseurism and creativity is thrown aside, where in the 60s every band had its own sound, Motown is not an exception to this as the session players were a continuously used group calling themselves the funk brothers so it still counts as a band with its own unique sound, sure in "electronica" -"every song has to sound a certain way otherwise we give it a new name" makes sense since each producer is working with the same technology and its used primarily for dancing, so you need a repetitive beat, and everyone used the same samples for the drums, I can see how variation when it comes to raving can be looked down upon, but even punk which is supposed to be basically a form of Dadaism in rock music to protest against pretension has its own pretensions and has spawned a million genres of music. I am genuinely interested in what makes a genre, because of production and public opinion many styles come into existence and change and disappear, and change their names while names of genres overlap and are used to refer to different styles, names of genres have become umbrella terms, and I find it interesting how a simple change in timbre or tempo or subject matter warrants a new name for derivative styles, I also noticed how since the 60s there has been a degeneration in tempo in certain scenes like hip hop, rnb, and Jamaican music, ska slows down though many different styles ending with dance hall and dub being the slowest variants, and rnb music does the same thing while retaining its name for the most part, Motown, the Philadelphia sound, and new jack swing are all related to each other but sound very different from each other, but at the same time genres that allow for more experimentation can have infinite personal styles under the same umbrella term, I especially liked growing up the more eclectic bands like the beatles, pink Floyd, led zeppelin, queen, the doors, and the cure whom can have an album of songs by the same artist each with its own specific vibe. I cant hold a candle to that type of music but I like to pretend to. I would much rather do so than have to play the same thing over and over, like how def leppard playing live are basically going to play an hour of ballads even though they are a rock band with some good 80s pop rock songs as well as some earlier stuff that borders on heavy metal [especially for the time since it was still developing] heavy metal is an interesting example as well. the way I heard based on my research is that the term was used to apply to the sound of the distorted guitars and loudness of the band during the mid to late 60s that were playing what today would just be considered bluesy or psychedelic classic rock, and modern metal music has too many subgenres and strangely defiant fans that form rivalries. also I hate power ballads, not because their all bad but because they like to pretend to be the in thing for any rock band to be allowed to play. but If I had a choice I would remove all the ballads from rock albums, and if they had to be replaced, replace them with anything, how about rap songs? that would be hilarious, imagine an alternate reality where rap songs were the thing for rock bands to play to get on the radio instead of power ballads, so earlier mentioned band def leppard would have their big selling album hysteria have electro funk songs instead of love bites etc.., while retaining all the rock songs. I would laugh too much to take it seriously, but the people from that universe would do the same hearing our version of the band playing ballads. my main point I think ballad rock should be considered its own genre and be segregated from hard rock. after all going to see a band for their ballads and hearing them play hard rock music is just as bad and either way gives you whiplash. the way I like to attempt to cause musical whiplash.
another thing about musical genres that's very important is fan perception. if you want a certain band to belong to the genre you like while calling out another band for not being in the genre. go ahead i'm not stopping you. but when you ask the actual band what genre they think they belong to the result is usually something funny like all the metal bands you liked calling themselves hardcore punk while all your least favorite fake metal bands calling themselves rock and roll and all the bands you think are playing in a new genre are thinking of themselves as unique and disliking the labels that were coined to describe them and disliking all the bands in the genre that are copying them. I find it very snobbish and convoluted and geeky. like listening to someone trying to figure out the 60 year storyline of a comic book with different writers each story arc. and each writer has his own idea as to which story arcs are real and which ones are from an alternate universe
perception is so weird because its all subjective, and some people are color blind when it comes to music. I tried to discern the difference between the many subgenres of drum n bass and I rather than not appreciating the artists painstaking effort to keep true to a specific sound fascistically, I just felt bad for them, they all sounded the same and thought they were something special, but there was no originality and the skill level is hard to discern since its all samples. it really doesn't matter to me whether an artist is paying liquid funk or drill and bass since to me their just playing a weird post-disco remix of ahmen brother by the Winstons. that's right I said disco. disco refers to discotech were they play dance music, its dance music. disco never died it just changed its name and evolved and mutated and branched off. the reason people claim they hated disco was because it was using mostly synthetic music with out much musicianship. but when it disappeared it was replaced with entirely synthetic music. and in Europe the continued to use the term disco for their take on club music.[I love synthy dance club music no matter what its called] Europe is just weird that way. when a genre of music in America is considered over, Europe not only is still into it but they take the music to its next logical step and then beyond until when its sent back to the Americas they think its something new. and America is weird in that they have a.d.d and need to move quickly from style to style in any medium. as opposed to historically in music, the classical era lasted around a century or two with even less variety in the music. since they had banned certain key signatures as evil and weren't aware of music concrete or modern philosophies on music such as john cages take on it. with all this historical variety going on where we have more variety than ever before just contemporarily plus we have history at the tips of our fingers it really makes me lose faith in humanity when people just listen to lowest common denominator music like rappers who copy each other and recycle everything especially timbres. 97-04 was probably the height of my disdain for hip hop music. which includes both rap and rnb. and I especially dislike modern rock for pretty much the same reasons. speaking of American attention span for music, when will modern rap, and post-grunge ballad rock go the way of disco, new wave, glam metal, grunge, nu metal, and Miami bass [and go away] I've been looking forward to the next thing but it really isn't here . the ONLY genre of music I have REAL DISDAIN for would be choral swing, all that cheesy theme music to black and white movies type of stuff. and school quires of any age are pretty tedious as well. there is just something so contrived about that classic pop type of thing that makes bubble gum seem edgy

I think at this point in time the current popular [7\13] styles of music are: a trance\electro house derivative style that people stand around to instead of dancing.I initially found boring but is growing on me, the post-crunk hip hop style is more dance hall and gettotech leaning with some more electro and either witch house and\or trillwave elements, I find it more catchier than crunk which I hated and the rock style is sort of a bunch of small factions of dying genres with more retro rockers than usual, when most people think of rock music its typically of the "90s grunge- -post-grunge,--nu-metal" variety with where the top string is tuned to make thick power chords that can move fluidly but are usually sustained instead. I don't like any of the choruses in the songs,

I've tried testing my own limits when it comes to making music and I kind of feel im going through my weirdo music period and I may change later. I have a real hard time figuring myself out since I genre jump so much and I mix stuff together. im a jack of all trades and a master of none. and that is the genre of music I play: jack of all trades music. i'll never sit still and i'll never get the time to perfect one the way genre musicians do. but certain styles of music are easy and luckily usually the most fun. the reasoning for the tags I used are mostly because I was listening to that type of music at the time mostly because that was the mood I was in, I also borrowed ideas from them, but i'm too eclectic to be part of those scenes. I think of my attempts at being minscrew this is my favorite, also for the song libretto I asked a friend what genre real or imagined he would like as a request and he said he liked the result, it was supposed to be a dubstep noise rock opera, but I told him when I sent it to him I felt it came out more like a crust punk sludge metal electro\electro opera {yes their are multiple genres called electro. its part of my new philosophy. multiple genres can have the same name, like how genres can have parallel evolved duplicates with a different name, or have multiple names themselves}

music I was listening to while I was writing the songs:
tom leher, Christian death, the cure, 45 grave, the cult, siouxsie and the banshees,theatre of ice, the cramps, tsol, lord of acid, lana del rey, paramore, fallout boy, Bruno mars, major lazer, Tequileiras do Funk, juicy j, 2 live crew, nicki minaj, gravediggas, getoboys, ritualz, the damned, love and rockets, lacuna coil, rob zombie, marilyn manson, ghost bc, black Sabbath, the 4 tops, the winery dogs, xmal Deutschland, Depeche mode, blue oyster cult, sir lord Baltimore, iron butterfly, nazareth, deep purple, hawkwind, motorhead, vanilla fudge, rush, pinkFloyd, judas priest,,u2, metallica, diamond head, mountain, cream, oingo boingo, st vitus, ozric tentacles, the algorithm, throbbing gristle, lady gaga, black eye peas, digital underground, yes, beastie boys , random aggrotech and dubstep mixes on youtube, lisa lisa and the cult jam, joan jett, pat benatar, labousche, technotronic,, bobby brown, tka, stevie b, Shannon, daft punk, robbin thicke, megadrive chiptunes , cbsfm and q104.3, occasionally hot97 and z100, quiet riot, ratt, loudness, dokken, kings x,Elton john, kc and the sunshine band, scratch acid, the jesus lizard, ClariS, RAMM, gilbert and Sullivan as parodied by the animaniacs,, theme songs to anime shows, kanye west, the grateful dead, miles Davis, Charlie parker, j.s. bach

credits

released July 25, 2013

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about

J.M.V.D. Kieft New York, New York

records music from his home with "amature" production, has musical A.D.D and must jump from genre to genre but grew up listening to mostly pop music from the 60s, 80s, and early 90s, , has studied privately with instructors on guitar playing and has occassionally attempted to play various other instruments, I compensate for my "xtra lo fi-ness" with weirdness ... more

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