Gangleri – musicreviews

Music reviews can be found in this section. On the index page you find the most recent reviews and you can navigate by “style”/”category”, the “browse” option (band and label) that I added to many reviews and of course the search and archive functions. For people not familiar with the terms that I use, there is a ‘Wiki’ below.

Dictionary

The gravity point is this section is music from a part of the “gothic scene” that consists of several music styles (with different subscenes). “The gothic scene” is an umbrella term for a far-reaching musical current that sprang from the 80′ies gothic and wave bands (The Cure, The Sisters Of Mercy, Siouxy and the Banshees, etc.), synthypop (Soft Cell and the like) and industrial (Einstürzende Neubauten, Krafwerk). There are many many styles of music often with its own dresscode and most people will only listen to a few kinds of “gothic”, but at festivals such as the yearly “Wave Gotik Treffen” in Leipzig, most of them come together. As the music develops, the audience gets older, new people join the scene, etc. styles differ, elements from other scenes (metal, “spooky core”, etc.) dripple in (or the other way around, just look at Rammstein and Marilyn Manson), dresscodes change and new terms are invented to describe the sounds of bands. Even in the limited subscene that I ‘move around in’ myself, there is a staggering amount of terms, that I will try to give you an idea of here.

abstract : like the term says, this sounds pretty weird
ambient : a term used for monotous, minimalistic music, close to soundscapes (see there)
ambient noise : a form of noise (see there) but in a more ambient (see there) sound. I use this term myself to better describe certain projects
antipop : a term that is used since the early new millenium to describe relatively poppy music from the industrial (see there) corner, but it will not sound very poppy to a ‘normal’ audience. I have combined this term with “angstpop”, which is a term referring to the “industrial disco” sound of the Galakthorrö label.
atmospheric : the term says it
bombastic : music that uses a lot of orchestrations and/or hard drumming
chamber music : another term of my own. Real instruments make a somewhat classical sound, usually as part of the sound of a band
dance : danceble influences to keep these bands from ‘real techno’ (see there) projects
dark ambient : a dark form of ambient (see there)
dark industrial : industrial (see there), but more ambient (see there), but too industrial to be ambient
darkwave : an old term that was probably invented because some bands developed another sound than the wave bands of the 80′ies, but still similar to it in a way
electro : one of the danceble forms of “gothic”, raw, dark and with a lot of distortion
experimental : weird even for people in the scene
folk : contrary to neofolk (see there) more tradionally of sound
gothic : see above, I use this as an umbrella term, but also to refer to bands with a ‘traditional sound’
gothic rock : the best known form of gothic (see there)
heavenly voices : somewhere around 1990 there were bands with a very orchestral/neoclassical (see there) sound with a female vocalist. After the label Hyperium compiled such band on the compilation “heavenly voices” this became a description of that sound
industrial : both an umbrella term for a large part of the gothic scene, the part that stayed closest to the electronic sound of Einstürzende Neubauten, Kraftwerk, etc. with its repetative “industrial” feeling, but also for individual bands with that sound. That is to say: “the industrial scene” does not necessarily refer to bands with the same sound, but an “industrial band” DOES
martial : halfway the 1990′ies a more military sound became employed, heroic music, sampled speeches and references to conservative politics. Therefor this music style is controversial
medieval : this term is self-explaining
military pop : in the beginning the martial (see there) was mostly industrial (see there) and bombastic (see there), but then there came bands that sounded more poppy (see there) but keeping their martial sound. Therefor the term military pop arose somewhere around the changing of the millenium
modern classical : classical music in a new jacket
neo classical : classical music in a new jacked, but then mostly coming from electronic devices
neofolk : a term that was invented to describe the band Death In June somewhere in the 1980′ies. Death In June used only an accoustic guitar and voice and sometimes another instrument. The sound is not very “folky”, but the term was there. Nowadays “neofolk” has many forms, from minimalistic to having more electronic, industrial (see there) or martial (see there) influences
noise : extreme electronic music completely built of highly distorted sounds and often distorted vocals often with no structure or rhythm. There are several varieties from relatively tranquil (see ambient noise) to even more extreme (see power electronics).
non music : a hardly used term to describe exactly what it says
orchestral : sampled classical music is used to create new music
poppy : a relatively accessible sound some bands started to employ since the change of the millenium
power electronics : probably the most extreme form of music. Contrary to noise (see there) that often has no rhythm, power electronics uses extremely loud industrial (see there) rhythms to give their sound even more extremety
rhythmical industrial : halfway the 1990′ies there were industrial (see there) projects that used their rhythms thus that their music became (more or less) danceable
ritual : ambient (see there) or soundscapes (see there) usually with an occultic undertone
soundscapes : soft ripples of stretched sounds, eerie atmospheres and often monotous and repetative sounds
spoken word : as the term says, a voice speaking text
synthpop : 1980′ies soft and danceable music with vocals. Nowadays (2008) a similar kind of music is popular under popmusic listeners under the term “electropop”
trance ambient : ambient (see there) with soft rhythical elements

techno music : a completely different scene that I also review cds from sometimes
- bigbeat : a term to describe bands that use similar beat structures as The Chemical Brothers (“chemical beats” is an older term). A flicker in the techno scene in the 1990′ies, hardly heard nowadays
- breakcore : there have been techno artists with a weird cut-up style that was applied to both samples, but also rhythm (see idm). Around 2005 a much much more extreme variety came that was termed breakcore
- digicore : in the early 1990′ies a few people started to make extreme techno music with looped samples of weird rhytms (jazz or drum & bass (see there)) and a thick punk attitude in the lyrics of the screamed vocals. A label was founded Digital Hardcore Recordings and the music was tagged “digital hardcore”. Because similar music was also made outside the small scene around DHR, I prefer the term digicore
- drum & bass : an almost died-out form of techno music with ‘difficult’ rhythms, but because they are constantly repeated, the music remains danceable. The style had a high fly from 1995 to 2005 (or so), but had to make place for other kinds of music
- idm : “intelligent dance music”, one of the many term for a form of hard-to-describe techno. In the early 1990′ies musical pioneers such as Autechre and Squarepusher created a sound that nobody knew how to describe. When other people started doing similar things, a whole range of terms came in use and quickly in disuse. “Cuts and clicks”, “dub”, “electronica”, “abstract techno” and later “intelligent dance music”. Idm is usually the more tranquil variant of this ‘difficult’ music, if the sound gets harder, the term breakcore (see there) is more often used since it was coined a few years ago
- speedcore : the early 1990′ies again, gave birth to a rather extreme form of techno in the Netherlands. Massive but regular beats at an ever raising speed (260 beats per minute, can you dance to that?) grew rapidly in popularity and thus becoming the largest subculture in the Netherlands. When the music hit the big audience and commercial versions such as “happy hardcore” popped up, the “gabber” scene died. From the ash even more extreme forms rose that didn’t appeal to such a big audience as “gabber” and these forms came from the “gabber” scene itself (then you get “terror”, “darkcore” or speedcore) or from just-not-the-”gabber”-scene and then we had tekno (see there)
- techno : as a term within the umbrella term, I use techno to describe the now very popular 4×4 beat projects with a quite minilistic sound
- tekno : as described under speedcore, tekno rose from the ashes of the gabber scene, but with a lot of influence from people who had not been involved in the gabber scene. Tekno is very extreme dancemusic that is often close to breakcore (see there) but with much more regular beats, making the sound more danceable. The intensity of this music is hard to describe, but if you ever heard the harder forms of “gabber”/”hardcore”, you have the lowest intensity on the tekno scale