I'm
not particularly concerned with what gothic music style everybody is
listening to at the moment, Rather, I want to offer some thoughts on the
future of gothic music styles.
I
can understand why gothic people want gothic music style which they can
dance at a nightclub - dancing is the point of a nightclub, after all.
But what people want to dance to is not the new stuff (not all of which
is undanceable), but rather Gothic`s Greatest Hits (tm) or music that
sounds a lot like gothic greatest hits. And I find this somewhat
disturbing, since it's my view that this strain of gothic music - gothic
rock in the finest Mick Mercer tradition--is coming perilously close to
the end of its tether, if it has not already reached it. I honestly
don't see that much more can be done in this line that is interesting
and creative.
What are the available options for gothic music styles right now? They seem to me to be the following:
Gothic rock music styles:
The usual suspects are to be found here--SOM, the Mission, Bauhaus,
Christian Death, Rosetta Stone, Switchblade Symphony , and so on. Even
after factoring in my indifference to rock music in general, this strain
strikes me as remarkably inbred.
Gothic-industrial hybrids music styles:
I'm not entirely satisfied with this term, but I can't think of a
better term at the moment. I'm thinking of bands like Die Form, Das Ich,
Rosetta Stone's latest, and so on. I used to think that this could be a
creative strain, but now I'm not so sure. Part of the problem here is
that the industrial music that gets drawn on here is industrial dance
music style. That's good for getting gothic people out on the dance
floor, but I don't see that it leads to interesting music
Ethereal gothic music styles:
This drops out rather neatly into the 4AD-type stuff and the
Projekt-type stuff. I happen to like this kind of gothic music style
more than any other kind. It also strikes me as the type of gothic music
that is most open to creative possibilities. A problem, though, is that
it's starting to be perceived, not entirely incorrectly, as inbred and
stagnan. Another problem is that, insofar as the gothic music that is
popular is the gothic music style that can be danced to, it's unlikely
to be played.
Gothic folk music styles:This
is another makeshift term. I'm thinking of the World Serpent roster and
related stuff. I happen to like this stuff a lot as well. It seems to
suffer from the same problems.
So
where do you all see gothic music heading? Are we going to keep getting
more and more copycat gothic rock bands? Are we all going to go
industrial? Or what?
I
understand that in Europe clubs tend to cater to one or another of the
types above, so that one can choose what gothic music styles one goes to
hear. That's not the case in the United States - if it were, perhaps I
would feel better about the future of gothic music.