Weird music genres

We’ve decided to describe musical genres which you may haven’t suspect exist. Furthermore, some of them are the ones you’ve never heard about, even by accident. Let’s get to know what hip-hop fans have in common with Star Wars fans and why you may be imprisoned because of some songs.

Lowercase

American sound and visual designer Steve Roden accidentally created a minimalistic-ambient genre which was called "lowercase". In his album "The Forms Of Paper", as it’s predictable because of the name, Roden was experimenting with the paper: cut it off, carved or touched it and recorded the coming out sounds to edit them later with filters and effects. Although Roden states that his activity in lowercase genre has begun in 80’s already the real popularity came to Roden only in 2002, when press’ attention was attracted by lowercase-Sound compilation. The compositions of such musicians as Gal, The Beige Channel, Matt Shoemaker and others were included in it. The Roden’s performance "Bell Is The Truth", created for an exhibition in Saarbrücken, Germany, is a good example of how beautiful and charming may lowercase genre be. In the total darkness Roden has tied the lamps to the ceiling and accurately collided them to hear the weird belling sounds.

In general the idea of lowercase is in performing the minimalistic melodies by using the surrounding subjects.

Black MIDI

Black MIDI genre is a bright example of YouTube-scene. The musicians of this genre, if they can be considered such, mix different MIDI-melodies which are situated in the form of notes one beside another on the one score of the virtual piano. As the result, thousands of sounds merge into one cacophonic monster.

As other genres born on YouTube, Black MIDI unites a big number of compositors around itself. Their videos get millions of views on the video hosting. Sometimes the artists make remixes using their colleagues’ works, creating maximally quick and overloaded with notes compositions.

Shirasagi Yukki @ Kuro Yuki Gohan who’d created the first track in this style in 2009 is considered the creator of Black MIDI. Back then it was downloaded to the Japanese videosite Nico Nico Douga. Now his composition, based on the OST to the Touchou Project game, looks primitive. But at the same time his another track "Necrofantasia 0.95 Billion" sounds as if all music from computer soft cracks was mixed up and switched on an unbelievably high speed.

Simpsonwave

It’s not that we wanted to write about different internet-waves but simpsonwave is the obscure subgenre of a microgenre and that’s the reason to list it. Simpsonwave appeared in 2016. It combines video fragments from the Simpsons which are additionally styled with vaporwave aesthetics: pastel colors, chess-ornamented floor, ancient Greece sculptures, Windows 95 screensavers and other borrowings from the cyber-esthetics of 90’s.

This genre was created by 19-years old Lucien Hughes from Britain, who made different gluings of Simpsons series fragments. He shared it to the Paper magazine that he was interested in nostalgia feeling about the first Simpsons’ seasons and vaporwave esthetics which were the reason to unite these two things. He published own first videos in the Facebook group called "Simpsons Shitposting".

Simpsonwave cannot be taken as a serious genre but some tracks of it are not bad. 

Dark reggae

Reggae can hardly be called the cheerful music in general. There are lyrics about unlucky destiny of different nations hidden behind the major chords, about the native land searching and the desire to reach the metaphoric warmth to get through the monochrome grayness of routine days.

The band which represented this genre appeared in 1987 in Kaliningrad, RSFSR and it was called Комитет Охраны Тепла (ed. Eng. – The Warmth Safeguard Committee"). Its leader Oldie (Serhii Bilousov) refused to follow Russian rock conception still saving the opportunity to sing in Russian. He loved reggae and spent fantastically much money on Bob Marley recordings. That is why he was ready to dedicate himself to this Jamaica musical genre.

Although, there was nothing kind or delightful in music of this band. The major chords became minor while the texts were fully dedicated to the political crisis of the country and existential crisis of the soul. Also in 1987 Kaliningrad philharmonic was accused of fascism when Oldie sang on the scene of it "На ваше светлое завтра я давно положил" (ed. Eng. – "I don’t give a shit about your bright tomorrow since far ago").

There were bands with the music alike along with the Committee: Маленькая Банановая Рыба (Little Banana Fish), Учитель ботаники (Botany Teacher) and Школьное солнце (School Sun).

Twee

This music genre was created by hipsters and for hipsters. Its name comes from incorrect childish pronunciation of the word "sweet". If you like the movies of Wes Anderson, the bicycles with the fixed gear, "Junona" movie, Etsy, and kittens then twee is for you. If these things are not in your field of interests, you must be out of trends.

Twee is the kind of indie-pop. Boys and girls sing the kinds songs about friendship and love, playing minimalistic melodies on guitar, ukulele, and baby-synths. There are quite many musicians who play twee, for example The Field Mice, The Lucksmiths, The Softies and others. In Ukraine twee is represented by KRUTЬ, Pur:Pur, Brunettes Shoot Blondes.

To better demonstrate you this style we’ve chosen the track from "Adventure Time" cartoon.

Nerdcore 

Nerdcore — is a hip-hop genre which is based on the stereotypes about "nerds" and "geeks". Many nerdy artists share their lo-fi songs on the internet where they praise "Big Bang Theory" series, "Star Wars", "Lord of Rings", fantasy, sci-fi, and modern technologies.

Music does not play a big role in this genre as the texts are the most important thing. They serve the goal to narrate about something only so-called club members will understand. For example, the lyrics may tell the difference between comics about Luke Skywalker adventures and the plot of cinematic franchise.

MC Frontalot is one of the outstanding nerdcore artists, who’s got the songs like "Good Old Clyde", that is written in the format of comic ode to Clyde Stubblefield who sells the "Funky Drummer" drum-samples.

There are other performers who play nerdcore, like Bad Credit, Mega Ran, MC Lars, Dual Core, Sammus and Monzy.

Zeuhl

Prog-rock lovers are rather conservative. Their gods Emerson, Lake and Palmer or Yes must be loved or you seem to be totally far from the real geniality understanding. But true "proggers" come below to zeuhl subgenre which appeared in France in 1969. This term may be translated as celestial from the fictional Kobaïan language that was made up by Magma band drummer. The best description given to zeuhl genre was given by the writer and avant-garde musician Dominique Leone:

"…zeuhl sounds like, well, about what you'd expect an alien rock opera to sound like: massed, chanted choral motifs, martial, repetitive percussion, sudden bursts of explosive improv and just as unexpected lapses into eerie, minimalist trance-rock."

The music is really cosmic. The feeling of supernatural creeps into you during the listening, as if you are among strange creatures on the distant from the Earth planet. The bands that play zeuhl are Eider Stellaire, Kultivator, Potemkine, Eskaton, Koenji Hyakkei, Pseu and Weidorje.

Italian Occult Psychedelia

Cinematography fans are used to remember soundtracks from Italian horror movies of 80-90’s. The last ones contained the elements of rather different musical genres: rock, metal, ambient, noise, industrial, etc. That’s why music critics decided to label all these experiments, moans and wheezing sounds by the melodic background as one separate genre – Italian occult psychedelia.

The bright exampler of such is Goblin band that has written the main theme to "Suspiria" of Dario Argento.

Narcocorrido

This musical genre is really dangerous. It glorifies drug-lords and the crimes connected. This genre is forbidden to be publicly listened to or performed. You can know about narco-cartels history from those narcocorrido songs’ lyrics. Musicians played this genre for the first time back in 70’s and in 90’s narcocorrido has already became mass.

An interesting fact is that the song topics were picked by artists from the news agenda. The more often TV-anchorperson mentioned some definite criminal group, the more often those events were mentioned in the musical compositions. But was important not to overdo your art as there were about 12 musicians of this genre killed during the period of 2006-2008. They say those musicians were killed because some criminal sphere representatives took offence knowing the lyrics meaning or thought there was not enough mentioning of them.

You can check out the parody of this genre in "Breaking Bad" series.

In general we tried to choose the weirdest genres from all possible among music ones. It is still hard to find the representatives of such aforementioned on the Ukrainian scene as sometimes those genres appeared in the result of a coincidence in some certain regions. But their existence proves how diverse may the music be.

Main photo by Daria Rem from Pexels