shadowplay wrote:
Interesting, for me it's pretty simple; Punk in itself was never that interesting to me, what was interesting is how it enabled and encouraged artists though it's aftershocks. I guess that over the years Post Punk has become a style but to me it's more about the aftermath of the punk explosion (hell even the 'influences' were influenced; like say Dieter Moebius). It's one of my things, I've literally thousands and thousands of records that you could chuck in this genre but they aren't generally hidebound by guitar/bass/drums. To me Monoton are Post Punk, Chris and Cosey are Post Punk, lowland Minimal Wave groups are post punk, Monte Cazazza is Post Punk, Cabaret Voltaire are Post Punk, Fad Gadget is Post Punk, Robert Rental & Thomas Leer are Post Punk, Malaria! are Post Punk. It's a broad church, at least the way I look at it and being of an age that I bought records in period my instinct is perhaps contrary to some of the people who didn't. Genre is pretty fluid sometimes but I always go on instinct and maybe experience.
I couldn't agree more.
I've always shied away from the linear paradigm of punk then post-punk. Rather, I've described post-punk as (1) taking its cue from disco, reggae, electronic music, and free jazz, along with Afrobeat, French pop, and Krautrock, whereas punk took its cue from early "rock 'n roll" and (2) art created by those freed from the strictures of "rock" by punk's Year Zero mentality. To me, Throbbing Gristle is post-punk as are Young Marble Giants and the Pop Group.
I think the very fluidity of the post-punk genre is what distinguishes it from punk. As with all adjectives/descriptors used by music critics today, I think it has lost all meaning other than as a critics shorthand for "this music reminds me of (insert genre name)."
shadowplay wrote:
I think somewhere along the way from the early 80's the electronic side and the 'band' side somehow drifted apart in the popular conciousness but in period I certainly never considered them something separate and I tunnelled right into the 'Futurist Chart' in Sounds as much as looked for the guitar side of things. It was all the same thing as far as I was/am concerned, fuck even though it's Disco Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder felt as much part of what was happening as Joy Division did, both carried that sense of otherness in the beauty in bleakness (Joy Division) and a sense of cold delirium in glamour.
Eno famously described 'I Feel Love' as the future of music to Bowie. To me too, the Donna Summer/Giorgio Moroder collaborations are a part of the same milieu. 'Love to Love You Baby' remains a celebration of the "cold delirium in glamour."
P