rather, i actually want to describe this as post-rock in the original sense, and suggest it's kind of futuristic sounding, and not in this goofy "we're the jetsons" retro-futuristic kind of way. i don't think that anybody projecting the end of live instrumentation is thinking clearly, as it kind of misses the plot around music being something that people enjoy doing to express themselves. we'd be kind of defaulting on our humanity. i don't expect that to happen...
it may be technically true that you can trace the synthesizer work on the record to wendy carlos or delia derbyshire or morton subotnick or something, but nobody actually made music that sounded like that in the 60s or 70s because the gear was kind of hard to gain access to. you couldn't just walk into a store and buy a synthesizer until something like 1985. check the dates on those classic analog synths, they didn't exist in the 60s or 70s. those earliest junos were from 1983, i think. people forget that. what people actually had access to were moogs and mellotrons in the recording spaces, unless they were rich arts school grads like tony banks or richard wright and could buy one from the studios or manufacturers directly. there were something like 20 mellotrons in existence in the entire world in 1970.
so, you might imagine that something like this existed at the time, but it actually couldn't exist until the 90s when the technology became accessible to normal people, and the closest thing i'm aware of to it existing at the time was stuff like the experimental reaches of sonic youth (and the other things that jim o'rourke did). you might have heard it in a movie, where the producers had access to expensive gear. you wouldn't have seen it in a club.
so, i think it's actually rather forward thinking to project the idea of organic and electronic instrumentation interacting in a small club or cabaret style space as a means of jazzy expression; it hasn't happened yet, even if you think it has. i think it's entirely plausible that you could walk into a watering hole in 2073 and see some musicians playing something that sounds vaguely like this, in a way that is contemporary to 2073 and culturally relevant to the people alive at the time. that's more plausible than walking into the same space to come face to face with robots performing music via ai, certainly.
there's not a lot of spaces left to try and carve out a novel sound in this genre, but this does actually manage to do it, even if you don't actually realize it, and i'm taking note of it on that level - this is contemporary electronic music with a bit of a 60s shtick to it, it's not retro or regurgitated music from a bygone era. it makes sense for me to draw attention to the effects work, then, as it's the central part of the record. this would not be worth taking note of, otherwise.
and, i would be excited to hear more forward-looking music that attempts to combine electronic sound effects and organic percussion.
vision.
creation.
newsun...
