Some body is obviously not up to snuff on their CP2020 history.

Damn straight.

And BTW, it's Req. Rhymes with wreck. It's tough to tell in this font, though.

With my luck it would be a bloody ABBA revival

Well, I don't know about the Sixth World at large, but Industrial tends to be prominent in my games because A) I'm a big rivethead, and B) a lot of it tends to be good background music for games. I don't say this to cheapen your point, I just feel it neccessary to throw out there that it's why *I* use it, and therefore shouldn't be taken as gospel.

I've done a lot of thinking about music trends in the Sixth World lately, and I've come up with a few things. It's next to impossible to kill a musical style once it exists, especially in such a subcultural, information based culture. Ergo, I find it easy to believe that all the classic stuff we know and love (of all kinds) is alive and well in Shadowrun - just among very small, specialized subcultures. Like the neo-flapper types you see occasionally today. Or the james-dean looking folks in Harajuku.

That being said, allow me to examine what *I* use for individual musical styles and then musical trends in general:

Rock: Rock keeps mutating just as it does now, with way too many styles to really count. However, musicians in my Shadowrun games *tend* to follow two main bents: minimalist, fuzzed out electrotrash with two, maybe three members (see: Lo/Rez from Idoru and The Faint) and the whole multiple guitars, drummers, bassists, etc thing - very jam band gone wrong, grown up in the barrens (implied how Shield Wall and Concrete Dreams sorta are).

Industrial: Following the growing gap between what industrial WAS and what it's becoming (Re: EBM), things just kept drifting apart. We're left in 2060 with class A) distortion, feedback, sampling, etc that's harmonically engineered but otherwise generally dissonant (See: Gridlock, Tarmvred, Alien Faktor for current-day examples), and B) angry dance music which comes in a variety of shapes and sizes, but is generally marked by a darker and more 'high speed' bent than general club music (See: VNV Nation, X Marks the Pedwalk, Funker Vogt, et al).

Techno: I haven't thought about techno other than it's peripheral genres, so I'm not saying anything.

The Others and General Music Trends: One of the things I figure I can bank on with shadowrun that no musical genre escapes is radical nationalization; a lot of musical styles are likely created overnight by someone with some kind of 'ethnic' music fusing it with something existing. For example: turkish electrotrash, yes? Sort of like wierd persian arrangement, but with the electrotrash sensibility. See Amon Tobin's "Proper Hoodage" for a reference to that kind of stuff. I've also found it's useful to describe what makes a particular bit unique, when GMing. For example, there was this all-decker carribean league Dub band people were dealing with at one point, and it was described as sounding like they were playing dub but only on glass instruments, underwater inside a reverberation bubble. Kinda like Children of the Bong gone strange and matrixy.

Just my two yen.

No offense taken and furthermore I'd tend to agree that industrial music, with its long, repetitive instrumental breaks is well-suited to being background music to a gaming session (regardless of the game's genre). My group uses a lot of techno-(insert suffix here) for the same reason.

Heck, a couple of weeks ago the Run Lola Run soundtrack was played (repeatedly) during a session of our Fantasy HERO campaign. Some might find this kind of highly processed--even antiseptic--electronica unsuitable for a fantasy game, but we felt it perfectly captured the mood of our frenzied escape from a ravenous pack of hellhounds. Sunday_Gamer and Nova can back me up on this

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Excellent point and well put; I don't see any reason for the contemporary confluence of genres, styles and instrumentations to stop or even slow down. However, "killing" a style is relative: many have argued that the mainstream co-opting of subcultural indices is tantamount to "killing" any kind of authenticity the original form possessed.

This brings me back to part of my original question: what about pop? And where does hiphop fit in? Given its current domination of the pop-cultural landscape(*), why is it totally ignored in Shadowrun?

(This is a rhetorical question, of course--the literary genre of cyberpunk was born conjoined to its stronger sibling: techno/industrial/"electronic" music. Plus, there's the whole assortment of racial & sexual priorities coded into the white guy's hobby of gaming...)

Anyway, is "pop music" in 2060 a slice & dice grab-bag of cultural, ethnic and stylistic influences with little rhyme and no reason? Not that that'd be a bad thing, mind you; I'm just curious as to what people think.

Nice.


(*) "Pop is hiphop." -- Justin Timberlake, Michael Jackson's heir-apparent, in interview.

Remind me not to buy that phone that doesn't block harmful frequencies. Guess the FCC got abolished.

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Ditto, I think this is really cool and creative. Spookymonster, what about thaumaturgical tunes? If there exists music for those with technologically-enhanced hearing, I wonder if physical adepts (or Awakened in general) have begun generating their own music, audible only to them.

"Playing the astral waves..." The press kits practically write themselves.

State of the Art:2063, Culture Shock, page 109, Coffin Clubbing.

I think Spookymonster's idea is a continuation of this idea really. Almost a "pop" performance version, visible to non Awakened. Sounds like a lawsuit from the DIMR waiting to happen though.

Here's my picks for the Oblivion music scene:

1. One Bullet by Infest. The Mid-Western trio know how to hit a sour spot and keep twisting. This dark album of post apocalyptic music will take you from extremes of excitement, horror, desperation, and death. The overriding sense of hopelessness lasts for hours after the pounding single, Breaking Through the Door has ended. The interactive album art, by Kagetenshi makes the 20 price tag seem insignificant.

2. Die Breeders Die by Unicide. This self depreciating band of admitted drug addicts uses ironic lyrics and black humor to illustrate our hypocrisies while keeping a freakishly fast beat. "Better Than Life (Death Is)" is a mainstay on Oblivion radio stations. The band's refusal to sign for BMG has hurt their ability to sell flesh records, but their 'Trix host is still running scans.

3. Born to Clog the Wheel by DNR (Do Not Resuscitate). A first attempt, this demo single popped up around Oblivion clubs on the 'Trix with huge fanfare. Nothing else has surfaced though. The loop is intricate but manages to worm into the ear.

4. 'Trix Burner by Counterpoint. Well the girls who hate everything have turned their unblinking eye upon the Matrix. No subject is taboo to these voluptuous vixens. One of the few mixed race bands, this foursome tours relentlessly. Their single "Jackout" will make you long for real flesh with hard hitting, sexy lyrics.

5. geek me by overrad. A Trans Oblivion band, overrad has made a name with thirty second ballads and thirty minute loops that seem simultaneously excruciatingly long and exceptionally short. "flatliner" strikes a balance between the Trans and Pop possibilities, but those with meat ears still won't appreciate much beyond the chorus - thankfully, that's all there is.

Just have one to add to such great list:

Axes to Battle: Nightfall in the Sixth World (April 2063, Mitsuhama Records); a quick, ear-destroying and menacing show of what trogs can make out of heavy-rock. Reverberations of classics like Concrete Dreams or Blind Guardian fill the whole album, forming a dark tribute to those that came before them.

Skuzzy and the Gonzos: Ain't Feeling Sorry For It! (December 2054, Aztechnology Audio); the classical biggest hit in their story, this album confirmed Skuzzy and the rest as the best troll thrash band in the Sixth World. Quick, tough lyrics for hard guitars, which bring alive the life in the streets.


As a general note, there does seem to be a lot of Thrash, Heavy Rock and similar movements in SR. Still, their lyrics seem to have more to do with which would be classical "protest" rap: gangs, street problems,... In fact, it ain't strange that many of such bands have close ties to the shadows (there's the Rocker archetype after all).

My math is a little rusty but doesn't that make two songs you added to the list?

Just for fun, I'll add my fictional SR band to the thread. Our group did some bodyguard work for a minor troll thrash metal band called the Four Trolls of the Apocolypse. They played such memorable classics as Frag, Drek, Fragging Drek, Frag that Drek, and Frag Your Drek Packed Hoop-hole. They were running with the idea that controversy sells.