Aug 12, 2010

This is not a brave new world: it's just another house group


I could cope with "skweee" and its stripped-down aquafunk that leaned heavy on the pitch wheel.

It was a stupid name for a genre, but then again so is "new rave" and, for that matter, "rock". Chairs rock. Weebles rock. Boats rock. The one thing long-haired leathered-up guitar gods do not do is "rock".

But now we're supposed to believe there's a new genre called "brave".

Axwell of top ten chart ticklers Swedish House Mafia said in a Newsbeat interview recently (and repeated again on the news today): "It's a new genre we made up, we're calling it 'brave'. It's not rave: it's a little bit more ballsy than that, so that's why it's called 'brave'."

More ballsy than rave? More ballsy than Altern8 and their chemical attack masks? More ballsy than the KLF firing machine gun blanks into a crowd (pictured)? More ballsy than the skipload of wrong-uns I used to trough down my neck at Tribal Gathering?

Crikes, that paragraph made me look old. In the Swedish House bloke's defence, he does add the comment: "We thought of that five minutes ago. We like it a lot."

But no, it's rubbish. Yeah, our pop band's sexy, so we're going mash sexy and pop to bring you "sop". Yeah, our rock band's crazy, it's crazy rock so we're going to call it "cock".

Swedish House Mafia, your argument fell down the moment you wedged your genre into your name. This is not a brave new world: it's just another house group, albeit with a neat single that sounds better without the annoying vocals.

Although I've still quite a fondness for randomNumber's self-proclaimed genre "Northern wrongbeat", anyone who invents their own genre is mostly a "toffist".

Oh, I'm sorry, did I not mention that? I've invented a new genre of idiot: "toss-faced egotist". Toffists of the world unite!

3 comments:

Fil said...

Weebles don't rock. Weebles wobble (but they don't fall down).

Swiss James said...

I like your thinking, and reckon Pop-Rap (stand up Ludacris) should be rechristened Pap.

Fat Roland said...

Fil - you make a good technical point about Weebles, although I suspect wobbling is a form of rocking; an unsteady sub-set closer to trembling but not quite the full lurch.

James - Ludacris, the mysogynist ideologically-bankrupt useless rapping sell-out, is the purest form of pap. The clue's in the name. The Princeton dictionary defines "ludicrous" as "absurd, incongruous, inviting ridicule." I'm happy to oblige!