Poly Phonic Moog?

[Subtronik]

No worries, it's these damn internets that cause all of the confusion!

[Christopher Winkels]

That damned internet!

FWIW, I think there was a massive pile of poo when it came to synth music in the '80s too. One need only listen to Johnny Hates Jazz to know what I'm talking about. I think there was just such a high volume of output that it's easy to find a large number of gems.

[T7]

I think that because the '90s were so guitar-centric (particularly in the first half) there simply were fewer people making music with synthesizers and the lack of volume was reflected in the relative dearth of quality.

Where did you spend the '90s? With the exception of the mainstream and the grunge thing, the '90s where hardly guitar centirc.

One of the driving forces behind many an electronic music artist in the '90s was a deliberate departure from guitar. It wasn't until the beginning of the '00s that some less talented electronic music acts jumped on the guitar band wagon and started adding guitar samples to dance music.

Lest we forget too, there wasn't really much good gear released in the '90s (again, this is in comparison to the decades that preceeded and succeeded it - no lists, please). The number of boutique manufacturers was a fraction 15 years ago of what it is today. Dave Smith and Tom Oberheim weren't doing anything synth related (unless you could the MSR-2, which came and went without a ripple, or the Wavestation, which was a good idea hiding behind crap execution), and Bob Moog was pretty much only building theremins and dabbling at the peripheries of synthdom. Instead you either had to go sniffing around for vintage gear or console yourself with a matte black box from the Big Three in Japan, whose offerings were pretty much all variations of sample playback or FM and largely devoid of knobular goodness (yes, yes, I'm aware of the JD-800. One swallow does not a Spring make)

LOL. Absolutely ridiculous statements. '90s Electronic music artists were using gear mostly produced in the '80s cause it was cheap in late '80s/early '90s. Think: TB303; TR606 TR808, and TR909; SH101, Juno 106 and on and on. DX7 was also popular.

Have you actually listened to artists from the '90s like Photek, Orbital, Aphex Twin, Autechre or Plaid? I can't imagine you have.

[Christopher Winkels]

Where did you spend the '90s? With the exception of the mainstream and the grunge thing, the '90s where hardly guitar centirc.

Your argument is self-defeating. The mainstream by definition is the majority of what's both widely available, widely publicized and widely consumed. If the mainstream was guitar-centric then that just reinforces my point that the '90s was not a decade kind to devotees of synthesizer-based music. And grunge cast a huge shadow that pretty much pushed all other genres (with the exception of rap and country) off the media radar screen for several years in the early '90s. So you've in effect agreed with me by claiming the mainstream was dominated by guitars in the '90s.

Have you actually listened to artists from the '90s like Photek, Orbital, Aphex Twin, Autechre or Plaid? I can't imagine you have.

Once again, you assume to know more about me than you actually do.
Once again, you're incorrect and it does your argument no favours.

I have all those bands (except Plaid) bought, paid for, listened to on CD, and later transferred onto my iPod. This is clearly the behaviour of some '80s-obsessed person with no interest in the '90s whatsoever, right? I also happen to have other '90s standbys like The Orb, Daft Punk, Air, KLF, Mr Oizo, Boards Of Canada, and dozens of others too in my collection. I just don't find them nearly as inspiring or interesting as the earlier examples I cited. Is there a reason why this notion causes you such distress that my opinions need to be challenged with such vehemence? Do you operate under the misapprehension that because I think it was a substandard decade for electronic music in general that I'm concurrently claiming there's nothing from that period worth listening to? If so, that assumption would be patently incorrect.

Please try to read my posts a bit more closely in the spirit they were intended in the future. I think I've flogged this deceased equine enough. Last word's yours.

[T7]

Where did you spend the '90s? With the exception of the mainstream and the grunge thing, the '90s where hardly guitar centirc.

Your argument is self-defeating. The mainstream by definition is the majority of what's both widely available, widely publicized and widely consumed. If the mainstream was guitar-centric then that just reinforces my point that the '90s was not a decade kind to devotees of synthesizer-based music. And grunge cast a huge shadow that pretty much pushed all other genres (with the exception of rap and country) off the media radar screen for several years in the early '90s. So you've in effect agreed with me by claiming the mainstream was dominated by guitars in the '90s.

Have you actually listened to artists from the '90s like Photek, Orbital, Aphex Twin, Autechre or Plaid? I can't imagine you have.

Once again, you assume to know more about me than you actually do.
Once again, you're incorrect and it does your argument no favours.

I have all those bands (except Plaid) bought, paid for, listened to on CD, and later transferred onto my iPod. This is clearly the behaviour of some '80s-obsessed person with no interest in the '90s whatsoever, right? I also happen to have other '90s standbys like The Orb, Daft Punk, Air, KLF, Mr Oizo, Boards Of Canada, and dozens of others too in my collection. I just don't find them nearly as inspiring or interesting as the earlier examples I cited. Is there a reason why this notion causes you such distress that my opinions need to be challenged with such vehemence? Do you operate under the misapprehension that because I think it was a substandard decade for electronic music in general that I'm concurrently claiming there's nothing from that period worth listening to? If so, that assumption would be patently incorrect.

Please try to read my posts a bit more closely in the spirit they were intended in the future. I think I've flogged this deceased equine enough. Last word's yours.

Actually no, I wasn't agreeing with you. I did read through your posts, you made quite a few statements about electronic music in the '90s which are simply wrong.

[CTRLSHFT]

electronic music in the united states in general has never truly taken off in any large sort of scale. popular music has been predominately rock/country in every decade going back to the 50s.

pop in the 80s definitely was more synth oriented then ever before, mainly because it became more widely available/affordable for the first time, but the inclusion of increasingly more and more technology in every day lives I suspect had a lot to do with it too.

then in the 90s-early 2000s it expanded into listener-friendly house music finding it's way on the radio (ace of bass, culture beat, for example), as well as more obscure facets of electronic music (nin,beck,radiohead) who have managed to break the mold of what is considered necessary for popular status, but these are typically one-shots that never quite hit their peak again after the golden album falls into the background noise. for nin, it was downward spiral, for beck probably odelay. radiohead is probably the most anomalous of all as they were predominantly rock up until kid a but afterwards they managed to retail a lot of their fan base and even still get some radio play.

anywho, the point is that 80s, 90s whatever, unless we're talking about european billboards, guitar-music has been and still is the drive for american popular music, no question. rnb/hiphop is starting to take a big piece of that action now, but up until the mid 90s that wasn't the case at all.

[T7]

electronic music in the united states in general has never truly taken off in any large sort of scale. popular music has been predominately rock/country in every decade going back to the 50s.

pop in the 80s definitely was more synth oriented then ever before, mainly because it became more widely available/affordable for the first time, but the inclusion of increasingly more and more technology in every day lives I suspect had a lot to do with it too.

then in the 90s-early 2000s it expanded into listener-friendly house music finding it's way on the radio (ace of bass, culture beat, for example), as well as more obscure facets of electronic music (nin,beck,radiohead) who have managed to break the mold of what is considered necessary for popular status, but these are typically one-shots that never quite hit their peak again after the golden album falls into the background noise. for nin, it was downward spiral, for beck probably odelay. radiohead is probably the most anomalous of all as they were predominantly rock up until kid a but afterwards they managed to retail a lot of their fan base and even still get some radio play.

anywho, the point is that 80s, 90s whatever, unless we're talking about european billboards, guitar-music has been and still is the drive for american popular music, no question. rnb/hiphop is starting to take a big piece of that action now, but up until the mid 90s that wasn't the case at all.

My comments and my view of electronic music artists in the '90s is in no way dictated by their place on the top 40 charts or their country of origin. Who gives a toss about that crap unless they're a sheep?

[HB3]

Well gee, you wouldn't be calling ctrlshft a "sheep," would you?

[Subtronik]

Let's get back to the original point:

A Polyphonic Moog!

That would be so sweet