Just thinking as I also would welcome people who could recommend me tracks of this theme for a playlist I’m making.
As even in the early 2000s many people claimed everything in rock, indie and guitar music had been done before: the Strokes were just a copy of 1977 New York punk, Franz Ferdinand were just a tribute band to 1979 British post-punk, the Darkness were living in 1986 etc. You had Radiohead who did genuinely seem to try to reinvent the wheel if not always achieve it but they seemed an exception to the norm. Maybe the best innovation was in hip-hop especially over here with how grime exploded, but even some of those subgenres seem to have hit brick walls and run out of steam, especially trap. I guess with any fanbase getting middle-aged and wistfully looking back to younger, happier times it will happen, but in dance music, the big wave of acid house/rave nostalgia is a pretty weird thing when it was originally a genre and subculture so obsessed with the future and “retro” being a swear word. So can anyone help? What is the most original music made in the last two (almost) decades? If you post Rebecca Black - Friday, I’ll block you permanently
Burial might be a good shout. Although dubstep was built upon the foundations of garage so what really counts as original is up for debate… But in terms of sounding ‘new’ and then inspiring a bunch of imitators it’s gotta be up there.
Everything is a case of gradual evolution or mixing existing styles really. I guess the best criteria for ‘new’ would be when you can point to one artist/album as being the blueprint for a genre.
TBF I’ll still be singing the chorus of Four Star Hotel as I have ever since I discovered your fine band in autumn, usually singing this in the middle of my local Tesco at volume quite audible to the store’s core audience of terrified pensioners.
Reckon the most original music right now is that which uses the collabaritive possibilities of the internet. So, say Superorganism or something? Also liked Beck’s thing of releasing an album as printed music and getting people to post their own recordings up online.
Boring serious answer alert, first person that springs to mind is Scott Walker. His later stuff sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard, just a completely different approach to what music can be. Bjork and Kate Bush always seem like they’re striving to do something new as well, but I don’t know enough by them really. Loads of classical people push the boundaries, Nautilus by Anna Meredith sounds like alien music to me, her whole album is great tbh, there’ll be some others.
The “J Dilla” sound, with the heavy, drunken inconsistent beats as featured on Flying Lotus and many parts of To Pimp a Butterfly. This has lived on into a lot of modern, vaguely hip-hop influenced music.
TPAB is also a great shout: due to its incredible storytelling, such as use of accents and dialects and different styles for almost every track which fits an overall narrative in a way.
My second would be the bands like Car Bomb and Dillinger Escape Plan, taking the rhythmic complexity of avant-garde jazz and mixing it with glitch, hardcore punk, thrash, djent and melody to create something different.
