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Speaking of the VAMP though:And of course, some music to chill to . . . D quality; classical crossover FTW
I wanted to like that piece on principle for the reason you mentioned below. It's also against my religion to discourage your enthusiasm for Lindsey Stirling, but if she wants to do dance floor moves that are not sui generic, I wish she'd collaborate with DJ Hidden, Enduser or even Bob Rifo (who's so hellbent on pretending to be a beat-mapped noise guitarist that people forget he's trained as a classical musician).
Unfortunately, the track she's playing to could have been recorded in the '80s and whoever is calling it dubstep should be relieved of their command. That's a generic three-chord pad that could have come from any hoary Paul van Dyk or even Trevor Horn production and the drums are a straight two and four from the days when syncopation was illegal -- it doesn't matter that there's an eighth note triplet on the fourth quarter note of every fourth bar. That has nothing to do with dubstep, nor do the rhythms she's playing over the track.
Not that I've been paying attention to dubstep since 2009, but it would be nice if she'd actually collaborate with someone like Distance or Clubroot or even that Chavian master of kitsch, Caspa, with his resonance-filter-happy basslines that all sound like a baritone stutterer trying to pronounce the word
what. Working with any of those people would take her out of her comfort zone and change her approach to soloing.
I tend to call classical/electronic tracks
hybrids when they're successful. I don't expect anyone else to adopt the term, but it helps to explain the higher level of integration between the two styles which I find most interesting.
Older attempts at what I call hybrid include Murcof's albums (esp.
Martes and
Mexico), practically anything by Akira Rabelais,
utp_ by Sakamoto and Alva Noto (with full orchestration for strings),
1-bit symphony by Tristan Perrich (especially if you buy the album in the format of a mini-synth
shaped like a CD),
Timber by Michael Gordon (acoustic percussion mimicking dub techno whether they know it or not), etc. Anyone remember
Ki-Oku, the album DJ Krush recorded with trumpeter Toshinori Kondo? Very, very old, but at least it pushed the boundaries of the instrumentalist. You might also listen to
Eleventh Hour, the Arditti String Quartet's performances of compositions by Fred Frith. We had to interview Frith last week and that gentleman knows how to orchestrate. Someone else who knows what he's doing: Matthew Herbert, who's trained as an arranger in addition to being an excellent engineer, house producer and DJ.
Two examples of hybrids that didn't work: Someone else's generic orchestrations of IDM tracks by Aphex Twin, and
The Bells, a fully symphonic album of classics by Jeff Mills, who's on deck throughout -- orchestrated by a hack who unfortunately didn't understand Mills' style at all.
