Lol at the fishfinger and dubstep remarks. Yeah, a lot of these newfangled genres seem to be grotesque chimaeras of two dead genres amputated and glued together to make a new creature by some musical Geoff Dahmer in his corporate attic. I think it’s the grotesqueness behind it that makes it underground.

Nah l’m just saying that for humour value. I personally don’t think it matters if a sound becomes commercialised – some of my fave tunes from the early 90s were commercial – they still had this feel that grabs you by the soul. I remember asking my old sister what acid house was, and she used to tell me that it’s where they just play anything. That’s not strictly true l guess, but l think there was a lot of samplemania and more to the point – they focused on whatever sounded good, using a small range of Roland instruments. I think rave was commercialised hardcore? And l think the main problem with commercial music was that it wasn’t very DJ-able by folk who wanted to trance crowds out, it was more suited to straightforward mixing that sent you shuttling between the bar and the dancefloor. I think that was because of the EQ settings and layout of the tunes too?

Yerrr, l was actually considering some kind of folk-based music. There was some Jewish Orthodox techno on Eurotrash or some program like that once. At the end of the documentary piece it revealed that the Rabbis were actually recovering heroin addicts and not real Rabbis. Ah well. It sounded good though.

The obvious problems are: how do you fuse accoustic sounds with electronic beats or vice-versa (would you even mix the two? The Eurotrash documentary used synth-based music l think) and also: folk music isn’t underground, or is it? Well..l suppose a lot of Irish Republican songs were underground and they could be considered folk music. And there’s the Chilean group Inti-illimani (named after a high mountain), they made some wicked guitar and panpipe-based music, some old traditional and some newer revolutionary, anti-Pinochet stuff.

“Early in their formation, the engineering students that were Inti-Illimani (pronounced “intee-E-gee-manee”) explored not only the music of their homeland of Chile, but also the native culture of Argentina, Peru, and surrounding countries. This research led to a 30-year career that’s produced a bounty of diverse music from Latin America and is why one hears everything from son folk to Andean pan flutes in the ensemble’s repertoire. Listeners unfamiliar with the eight-member group whose instrumentation includes such familiar tools as guitar and clarinet and such exotic ones as the quena (a reed flute) and rondador (reed pan flute) have an opportunity to taste the varied flavors of its breezy, romantic music. Over the years Inti have consistently penned sociopolitical lyrics addressing human rights with an undying optimism, an outgrowth in part of their exile from Chile in 1973. Whatever the history, this album provides a spirited and comprehensive introduction to a group of musicians who’ve created some of the most moving Latin music of the last 30 years.”

Yeah Moby’s changed now hasn’t he, l think he went into mixing trip hop with rock or something. I’m not clued up on modern music, l’m just assuming if something radically different were to happen, l’d have heard about it somehow, ya know like on the radio or whatever.

Do you ever get the feeling that a musical instrument is like a brain when on drugs, you know, simplified. Hallucinations are often geometry-based, similar to pure waveforms that synthesisers make as opposed to the more complex sounds of birds singing or cars revving up. Music is the drug, they say.

So, maybe a new musical instrument will be instrumental in change… or maybe just a type of sound, e.g. a new sound effect that really warps a basic saw wave or accoustic guitar signal. You know how the Juno hoover effect is basically the defining sound of hard dance, maybe there will have to be a new sound wave like that.

Anyone heard any interesting sound waves? Any cool sound effects that aren’t just posh reverbs etc?

Yer, l think there were deadly riots after Mozart’s first performance of The Magic Flute, but the classical music genre would never have that same effect these days. So, maybe it’s not really about genres, more about the people.

But then again, if Mozart suddenly played all this Gabba techno to the audience during that performance, maybe he’d have been pelted, so maybe musical genre is still important. I mean, what would be the point in new ways of transmitting music that bring it into the orbit of the common man, when all that anyone knows is madrigal music and sonnets, l mean, it’s not very rousing is it.

Whatever the style of music, the way the music makes your head react makes it more-ish to some ppl and those afficionados would want more of the same (y-axis) or more in the sense of progression of the style of the music (x-axis).

Dunno much about Northern soul, l’ve heard the original Tainted Love and also this song about a snake (let me in oh pretty woman). It sounds good, and l can’t see that ever disappearing. I think Ska and Northern Soul are a bit selective though don’t have that large tribal quality, or do they, and why would l want it to appeal to massive crowds anyway, l dunno! I’m not sure why tonal musical instruments even have to be involved, maybe l’m just not being open-minded enough.