Anthony Bourdain calls EDM "Douche-Dom"

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I am inclined to agree, but I admit I am just old. What component of "music" exists in EDM? It seems and sounds to me like fabricated noise. Machine blah, blah, blah. No talent required. Only requirement is electronic gadgetry, easily downloaded and executed.

Gives me a headache. I would rather watch EDM created on film, while listening to something more palatable to my ear.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/ ... m-20140424

This argument makes me very upset. People like Bourdain and Arcade Fire need to tone it down a bit with their criticism. While I agree that EDM is an unfortunate and annoying fad in the current state of electronic music (I do not care for a lot of these big-headed celebrity DJ's), it does not represent electronic music as a whole. It has been around for several decades, and the electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk have put on the greatest live show I have ever seen. Early artists of the Detroit techno scene created their music from buying secondhand synths, drum machines, and mixers from thrift shops. It's not just 'clicking a button on your computer'. A lot of electronic music is also very ambient and soothing. I much prefer that to obnoxious shredding guitar noises and wailing vocals any day.

Um... sure, you can generalize anything. We have genres for a reason, but this really won't sit well with a lot of members here, myself included. What I see is mostly irrelevant to my raver friends, however; nauseating disrespect for and ignorance of young people in the west is in epidemic proportion. If you want to finger ONE reason our economy hasn't rebounded next to India's & China's, look no further. Nobody with a mind so absolutely shut reads past a sentence of my resume. I took 6-7 years of piano lessons & theory as a kid, and I regularly help my friends with production, EQ & mixdown. - you can hear the music in music if you bother learning to make any.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

I also wonder why a food critic would go to such lengths to alienate a demographic. Oh right, he wants false authenticity; those recipes need to taste acoustic.

I didn't know talent was required to make people sitting in front of their televisions hungry.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

No; I'm working to collect terabytes of music. Why would I judge music by when it was made? The first synthesizer was invented in the 1940s'. I hear the same progressions in harpsichord compositions and EDM productions all the time. Don't call the people readying to run your entire country douchebags over music tastes when you simply haven't read into anything. This isn't a tone remotely appropriate on a forum full of kids dealing with precisely this brand of humbuggery on a daily basis, and they need to calm down a LOT more than I might.

Some of the most respected EDM producers are in their '40s or above. I rest my case.

edit: Quite a number of said kids MAKE electronica, so you should tone it down as well if you'd rather the moderators didn't come around.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

Seriously can you even tell me what an oscilloscope is?

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

Wow, this discussion really gets some people upset.

I personally love EDM, in all of its forms. I am aware that most of it is pretty terrible, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the occasional genius. My own experience with music software has shown me that it's not nearly as easy to make as the Old Guard would like me to believe it is.

It doesn't really bother me, because I've realized that most music in general isn't all that good, no matter what the genre. Good art of any type is hard to make, but today's laptop composers can generate and distribute crap far more efficiently than yesterday's lame garage band. I think that's why EDM gets such a bad rep, because its composers aren't required to be good to be heard.

It doesn't really surprise me that Bourdain has dismissed it entirely. He's always come off as a bit of a snob to me. I suppose he's entitled to his opinion just as much as I am, though.

Ah, but just as easily as I can stumble across compositions entirely lacking in theory and grounding, I can line up & scroll through millions of beautiful pieces. I'm not upset that people think there are disingenuous people in music, of course there are; I simply find an outright lack of reciprocity in respect between my generation and the elderly. Respect demanded for one particular art form above another demeans all art it touches.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

I disagree. Some electronic music is terrible but some of it can be really good. I went through a phase where I listened to a lot of dubstep, drum n bass, jungle and house music- then one day it ceased to be fun for me, i started to find clubs really irritating and I didn't want to listen to ANYTHING electronic. So I went back to my punk rock and metal roots. I don't mind EDM in small doses but it's not my thing anymore.

When I was in highschool in the late 90's, actually after years of playing guitar and trying to start various projects with bands, the electronic bug really bit me and I was falling hard for dark drum n bass as well as some of the harder sides of four-on-the-floor like acid techno, hard trance, fusions between the two, etc..

A lot of what was getting played at raves by dj's worth their salt carried an incredibly intense emotional core. Quite often that core finds itself explored in a kind of audio circumambulation through the loop itself and slow permutations. Drum n bass might be easier for people to get into because the beats change, some tracks have constant change and glitch in that regard, and you can string everything from classical and jazz to rnb, hip hop, industrial, and all kinds of risotified future organic Aliens-movie type Geiger stuff onto it - ie. the emotional depth of exposition can be nearly endless.

In late highschool I did run into those people often who'd just bash techno and anything electronic all day and say you pushed a button a machine and the song wrote itself. I don't really take such criticisms as being worth much. A lot of the same people seem to enjoy this effect as well - above ground is generally cheesy/clubby/buzzy/shallow stuff in accordance with most people's tastes, that's usually what these people are complaining about and it's as if they have missing time if something got played to the contrary. People find what they want to find and if one wants to look at electronic as purely kitch trendy drivel that people only listen to because its popular - they'll keep finding things that edify that belief.

I've found inecredibly intense emotional experience and depth of subconscious exploration in the stuff I've listened to and even though I'm picky about what sides of the electronic genres I follow I can always find good stuff if I look hard enough.

Someone once told me electronic just sounds like robot choir and robot voices singing over each other. Lol, what's to prevent a person from hearing guitar as metal or wood voices singing over each other? It's just perspective and IMHO largely personal choice when people opt for hangups on one genre's instrumentation or another's.

I've liked EDM for a while. It gets a bad rep because a lot of people compare it to sh***y pop songs and spazzy dubstep (like a lot of Skrillex tracks).

A lot of it is soothing and well made, and it's very difficult to duplicate a sound style created by a well-developed DJ with a lot of experience working with the EDM programs. If you listen to them often enough, you can pick out an artist based on how the song sounds (such as deadmau5 utilizing a lot of rhythm, Justice's use of bass to make melodies, Lindsey Stirling's use of her violin being complemented by the rest of the EDM music, etc.).

It's a lot like drawing. People have their own interpretations and experiences with this medium, and there are going to be people who like or hate it. But you need to realize that it takes a lot more than pushing a button to produce music, digital or not.

I've found that there is some electronic music I like. I thought I didn't like any of it but it turned out that I' was just focusing on the stuff I didn't like. I just don't like 'hard' or 'acid' anything, drum n bass, dubstep or even ambient - even though they are the more technically accomplished ends of dance music (like the jazz or prog or electronic music.)

I like most pre-90s electronic music, like Italo-disco and synthpop; it's actually some of my favourite music. I find the advent of MDMA and strong cannabis with the THC content turned right up had an effect on electronic music which produced the type of sounds that aren't really my sort of thing. As the 80s electronic scene gets more ravey towards the end of the decade, I go off it.

I do like some of the more recent chiptunes and IDM, though.

Electronic Dance Music is great and takes lots of talent. It's every bit as complicated as making math rock or anything.

In fact punk rock started out as something more focused on self expression than talent.
And I think that something like this is very talented and amazing and much more so than a lot of rock music.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtbXlFOjIR8[/youtube]

I love EDM. Well, that encompasses about as many genres of music as rock music does. But I like a lot of electronic music genres. Most particularly hardcore techno and hardstyle. I wish making electronic music is easily. I'm trying to get good with Ableton Live and it's every bit as hard as learning to become good at a guitar or another instrument. If not more so. I'm sad that there are people who are still biased towards electronic music.

Technology is moving forward, and electronic music is the future. And it requires every bit as much talent as rock music or other genres of music.

I like it, but I can see why others may not. Taste in music is a very subjective thing, so I'm not going to criticize him for his remarks. I will admit though, I'm a bit biased, as I am a fan of Anthony Bourdain, and I do look up to him somewhat. He's the smooth, globe-trotting, intellectual badass I only wish I could be.