Words
Photo by Adrienne Claire Darnell
Selected Works:
Non-Fiction:
“Riding The Chillwave In The Year Of Indiebore” @ Ohmpark (7/1/10)
Six months ago, I wrote off the chillwave hype as just a passing fad, but as this year has progressed, I’ve realized the phenomenon is much more than a anomalous blip. I don’t find the music encompassing chillwave particularly impressive, though some of it is very nice when I’m in the right mood, but in terms of discerning the current state of music, chillwave turns out to be pretty damn fascinating.
First of all, the nature of the genre is rather unique. Typically in the history of pop music, genres emerge either from a single artist inventing a new style and others copycatting, or due to various people in one geographic location or scene co-inventing an aesthetic together. With chillwave, various artists in completely different locations having no ties to one another coincidentally developed respective sounds that were similar enough to be grouped together by people observing them on the Internet. Certainly these artists have some common bonds in terms of influences, but for an entire genre to come into existence and predominance this quickly from this sort of origin is previously unheard of and it marks the beginning of a new, “post-blog” era in music.
“Don’t Blame The Hipsters, or Why Atlanta Pwns Omaha” @ Ohmpark (3/4/09)
Last week’s cover story for Creative Loafing was entitled Damn hipsters: Is Atlanta falling prey to its indie cachet? I’m about to quote half that article so get ready. The thesis may seem hard to get at between the product placement tie-ins and glaring contradictions, but the argument goes like this:
“Other cities have had cohesive music scenes shape a large part of their identity…But Atlanta seems to lack the sense of cohesion around which a defining scene can be built…Atlanta hasn’t typically lent itself to being easily packaged and sold. The various music scenes here, like the lay of the land, are a tangled mass of inroads woven together without rhyme or reason.”
Now someone like me may read that and think, yeah, that’s pretty awesome isn’t it? Our city is too unique and diverse to get tied down to a single adjective. But, Creative Loafing sees this as a bad thing. In fact, it is the single biggest problem for the Atlanta scene to them. This isn’t the first time they have railed on this subject, and this isn’t the first time I’ve strongly disagreed. So let’s break this down:
Fiction:
Coming soon…
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