MALE GAZE in video

I've blogged on this many times; just added a fresh look, using Guns n' Roses, Miley Cyrus and Avicii videos as examples, here.

EDMs US success + Dubstep globalisation

The post title is an attempt to put in a few words one of the core themes of Simon Reynolds' (author of key books on music today such as Retromania) lengthy MusicGuardian feature (from the still superb Friday supplement, if you do buy the physical paper!), How Rave music conquered America.
Just as there was a long gap between punk going mainstream here and then in the US, rave also took around 15 years to hit big in the US. Reynolds breaks down a number of factors in this, from the impact of smoking bans changing drug consumption patterns to a death at a festival ironically publicising the existence of large-scale rave (EDM as its been relabelled in the US) live scene.
Above all, he notes how social media, including YouTube, Facebook + Twitter, have enabled UK scenes that once might have briefly enjoyed some cult, ultra-cool following in New York or the west coast to become mainstream in the US. BBC Radio 1 can, in our globalised, online age, greatly influence music culture in the US and beyond, as this excerpt suggests:

Best points to a September 2006 Radio One show by Mary Ann Hobbs as a critical moment in dubstep's dissemination through North America. "Dubstep Warz was this session where she had all the key DJs on the scene playing tracks, but more importantly talking about the music and the culture. It really painted a picture of what dubstep meant. That show was traded throughout the Internet, to the point where it's almost a cliche to say that it influenced you. Hobbs also talked about Dubstepforum in that broadcast. At that point it had a few hundred users. But subsequently it just grew and grew until it now has a million."
The internet helped to obliterate the time-lag that always used to hamper the US outposts of UK-based scenes like jungle. Because of the dubplate system, whereby the leading British drum & bass DJs played the latest sounds months before their official release, by the time American deejays got hold of the tracks as expensive imports, the UK scene was already six months into the future. But dubstep, as the first fully networked dance scene, is globally synchronized: sound-files are traded more freely and new tracks gets edited out of DJ mixes on pirate radio and posted as YouTube by fans.

I post this not just to reinforce yet again the key point about the impact of digitisation (the article also makes the point that dance is no different from other music forms these days in that artists make most of their income from live performances, not CD/recorded music sales, citing figures for the likes of Skrillex), but also as a potential audience for an artist relaunched through a new music video for a back catalogue track can be non-UK ... and through social media you have the opportunity to research and evidence the potential without travelling anywhere!

GENRE/AUD/NEW MEDIA: Pomo/Hybridity: the Re:Generation project

Here's a project that puts hybridity at the centre, bringing togther 5 DJs with a range of genres (eg dubstep's Skrillex with classic rock band The Doors):

Visit the website at http://www.regenerationmusicproject.com/

You should swiftly notice the Hyundai branding; music + vids are increasingly used for branding exercises which are much more subtle than straight ads. The brand message is that Hyundai is cutting edge, defies barriers and categories; is timeless.

Here's how the Music Guardian reported the story:

Skrillex to reopen the Doors

Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek says the divisive dubstep star will work with the band as part of a new music documentary

• Sean Michaels
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 October 2011 10.55 BST
• Article history



Break on through … Skrillex teams up with the Doors




The "most hated man in dubstep" is helping to reopen the Doors. Skrillex will produce "the first new Doors track of the 21st century", according to keyboardist Ray Manzarek, as part of a new documentary.
"Basically, it's a variation on Milestones by Miles Davis," Manzarek told Rolling Stone magazine. "If I do say so myself, sounds fucking great, hot as hell." Forty years after the death of Jim Morrison, Manzarek returned to the studio with Robby Krieger and John Densmore. The Doors had been assigned to work with Skrillex, real name Sonny Moore, as part of the forthcoming documentary RE:GENERATION. "[Sonny] plays his beat, all he had to do was play the one thing," Manzarek said. "I listened to it and I said, 'Holy shit, that's strong.'"
RE:GENERATION is directed by Amir Bar-Lev, who helmed 2007's My Kid Could Paint That and a 2010 documentary on Pat Tillman. Produced in association with the Grammys, it unites artists with unexpected producers: Crystal Method recorded with Martha Reeves, Erykah Badu with Mark Ronson, while Nas and DJ Premier teamed up with the Berklee College of Music Orchestra.
Not every team-up went smoothly. Eectronic act Pretty Lights were sent to Nashville to work with country artists LeAnn Rimes and Ralph Stanley. "When Ralph showed up, I tried to tell him what I wanted to do and his response was, 'I think we'll just do it my way,'" said Pretty Lights' Derek Vincent Smith.
RE:GENERATION will be released to coincide with the 2012 Grammy awards on 12 February.