Liminal Ambient: Gen Z's Answer to LoFi

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you to make between $5 to $10,000 per now before we get into it this video is not sponsored by teu or anybody however I do have an affiliate link so if you do want to sign up for teu through we're going to react to reaction videos also breaking new details in the deadly school shooting in Madison the city's police chief basically we're just going to use all three of these oscillators and this is going to be kind of our main in the landscape of hypers specific microniche Tik Tok playlist core type which there is absolutely

no shortage of nowadays thanks to a bunch of definitely real artists posting definitely real music to your favorite playlists and not a bunch of AI Tech grifter Bros siphoning money off an Ry microscopic music royalty streaming pool there's been one micr Trend in particular that I have found myself absolutely fascinated by it doesn't really have an official name but I suppose if I had to give it one for say a algorithm friendly title for a video essay about music culture on YouTube it would be Lial ambient and I am almost certain this is something you've

come across through your adventures on the worldwide web now I'm not trying to be my way to the top of observing things that younger people are doing and then making generally agreeable opinion videos about how older things were better but I was born in the the year of Our Lord 1993 and I think that gives me some particularly unique insight into the subject I want to talk to you about here today because I was born on that all too critical zillennial cusp or at least almost and that means I grew up in an era right

before social media ruined and infested every aspect of Our Lives this means I now have the benefits of wisdom age and back pain and that also means I can sit here making pretentious video essays on YouTube about music culture while making meta jokes about holding a tiny microphone and unflattering lighting directly in the shot in order to appear casual and relatable instead of admitting that everything we do is just a performative effort for our Newfound algorithmic gods in this late stage big Tech capitalist hellscape that we call Modern existence And subscribe my channel prero anyways

I'm sure you've heard this sound before some Eerie affected natural soundscapes or hiss and noise an expansive stirring pad sound a low bass drone and those slow pensive melodic [Music] moments and that is exactly the style I'm talking about here but what exactly makes this genre different because isn't this just ambient I mean realistically isn't this just like future garage but without the drums well yeah kind of maybe but damn it if I'm not going to a video essay my way into opposing the idea that I think it's actually something a little bit more interesting

I think the thing that separates linal ambient from other ambient music genres is the fact that it aims to capture one very specific feeling and I think it's actually a feeling that's best defined by one of my favorite books and that would be anima or the Nostalgia for a time that you've never experienced and that is the idea I want to explore in this video I think that what Alan watt speeches are to mid- Millennial liquid drum and bass mixes these brooding resp spaces and pads and ruminating Melodies are to Modern core core edits I

think the thing that's so interesting about this Niche is that it's an entire genre of music dedicated to capturing and curating one highly specific mood that itself doesn't really have a meaning it's just more of a feeling and it's a feeling that apparently no shortage of people experience because if you look across different platforms like Reddit Spotify Tik Tok YouTube Instagram or just about anywhere else you're bound to find a subculture around this somewhere and it's almost always paired with the exact same types of Lial imagery and Aesthetics against these wavering soundscapes and listless repetitive

Melodies In recent years artists like Billy ish Kenzie Olivia Rodrigo Phineas and basically anyone else vying for that newly 20-some Market have established this Neo minimalist athetic of course we can trace this genre's Origins back to things like ambient and experimental music movements and getting into the more contemporary versions of these things with modern forms of ambient music like future garage and lowii Hip Hop and all that we start to Branch off the river into the little micro niches that emerged and I think there was one Micro Niche in particular that really gave this thing

life and it's the big three words slowe and [Music] Reverb I'm sure you've seen no shortage of these edits across your feeds and your no doubt highly curated playlists and at this point the edit format has also become some kind of metat Trope this edit format relies on slowing the tempo of a song and thus lowering the pitch and then bathing it in a digital wash of dreamy Reverb resulting in a uniquely melancholic atmosphere out of even the most uplifting and Poppy songs while this edit format has rightfully become a bit of a meme I

think it is actually trying to hint at something a little bit deeper than just a surface level feeling I think what it's wrestling with is that Whisper of an idea we all have now and again that somewhere between this apathetic sense of introspection and an almost nihilistic urge to disappear where dream core takes the form of some kind of nostalgic look back on the Techno optimism of the early 2000s Lial ambient looks down the barrel of a generation exhausted of information overload it's a look into that fallacy of the fantasy of ignorance brought on by

an earlier and more primitive technological and social media [Music] era I think this Lial ambient Trend goes beyond this though and dives into our fascination with the idea of music as part of an altered conscious experience and it being something greater than just music at surface value it's music as an experience that heavily plays into our fascination with the idea of nostalgia in the digital age I think it's a generational attempt at capturing the sometimes unspoken and sometimes more abject sense of techn dumer ism it's the idea that we are more connected and informed than

ever and yet equal parts are greater more divided by these same platforms and tools that seek to connect us I I think the appeal of this genre is pretty clear-cut and with it Catching Fire across major social platforms and with music distribution falling largely into the hands of Independent Artists nowadays it's easy to see why there has been a bandwagon movement of artists cramming to create this specific sound in the hopes of getting noticed among a sea of releases catering to such a hyp specific mood thanks to the democratization of music production by way of

technology and easily accessible information effectively lowering the bar of Entry to just above the floor of Hell many aspiring producers who want to join in on that bandwagon also quickly find themselves creating music that is perfectly acceptable and on Trend with the aid of sample services and free or lowcost Daws and music production software I would argue that it was all of this that so neatly set the stage for an attempt to grasp at the meaning behind these emerging Neo minimalist Trends we've seen in music and maybe even to some extent the late 2010s fascination

with dark r B that we saw but I don't think anything would quite pour gasoline on the spark of an idea here quite like the backrooms and I'm sure you don't need me to stand here and explain the back rooms to you and postulate on their significance but it's my video damn it so here we go the back rooms absolutely exploded from a few corners of the internet to the mainstream and brought forward a new genre of existential musing not so much focused on the horror of discovery of something that's not meant to be or

rather the fear of something that ultimately may be lurking but rather the horror of finding yourself somewhere you're not meant to be it's a distinct feeling that's equal parts unsettling and comforting it's in a way I think a submission to the French idea of Lael deit or the call of the Void it's that uncomfortable and almost innate desire to disappear these things in combination are what ultimately provide that unequivocal feeling that I guess we can only really describe as somewhere between disorientation and capitulation that is so neatly reflected in the visual aesthetic of the back

rooms and other linal imagery there are certainly more than a few tropes within the genre of linal ambient the distorted echoing soundscapes which maybe try to capture the feeling of being in a large empty space staticky noise Scapes that add a subtle layer of dis quiet uncertainty and minimalist Melodies usually coming in an arpeggiated pattern that seems to reflect the calming and equally unnerving mood that the genre sets out to cast I would absolutely not be doing my due diligence in this video blabbing on and on about all this without taking a quick sidebar to

discuss the one track that is arguably not only responsible for this genre becoming such a thing but also all of the things within it that have turned it into something pretty stagnant and formulaic snowfall on January 14th 2022 the track written by oneart and Reni was released on the Dreamscape YouTube channel and fairly quickly after found traction as a viral hit on Tik Tok accumulating millions of posts and easily over a billion streams across all platforms this song's repetitive and calming nature combined with an almost childlike and amateur quality I think so effortlessly encapsulates what

the whole Lial ambient thing is about it's almost an ideal Sonic representation of the melancholic Rose tinted feeling of being suspended between reality and something else that the genre calls home this song's incredibly viral success played a significant role in popularizing Lial ambient and naturally its popularity led to a NeverEnding wave of imitations and sound Al likes with many artists apparently looking to produce these tracks in a fairly desperate attempt to find their own verality in an Ever more competitive independent music Market that feels dominated by the need to find a fleeting moment in the

sun on just a single app this one track led to not only ambient taste maker channels and labels switching up their priorities and expectations but also to innumerable artists grinding away at a nearly identical Sonic formula instead of explor ing their own more unique artistic voices which I think has effectively Frozen the genre in place from evolving when it comes to the main Outlet sharing it it's an annoying but not uncommon feedback loop that I'm sure fans artists and labels alike are pretty familiar with one thing takes off and becomes Super Ultra Mega viral usually

on Tik Tok so then the labels and taste makers want more of that thing because they want the ticktockers to pay attention to their outlets and the ticktockers want to use the trending sound of the moment to get more attention for their Tik toks so all the artists then pivot to making the exact same thing over and over and over and over that sounds as familiar as possible in order to attract the attention of labels and curators who then want the attention of ticktockers and everyone else so then it all just becomes this amorphous blob

some of it works some of it doesn't and eventually everyone gets bored and moves on to the new thing and the interesting thing with that is a lot of the artists who are making the old thing immediately pivot to making the new thing or just stop making making music entirely because they were never really in it to express anything within themselves with any sort of artistic interest or Integrity with what they identified with within that genre or that sound they were just in it to desperately baby bird for a little hit of attention in the

algorithm and the interesting thing with whatever the new thing is is it's often not something all that different it's just someone going against the grain enough and that's all it takes to stand out in a sea of everyone doing the exact same goddamn thing so you know maybe there's something to that for artists looking to move forward in the music industry maybe whatever no drums no drums I've never heard drums in ainal music song I've never heard drums in a song that said there are other sub forms of it that now seem to be emerging

which seem to be a new permutation of the genre of sorts by recombining its roots in slowed and Reverb mixes often in these playlists that explore these permutations you'll find things like minimalist piano compositions set over dark soundscapes slowed guitar performances with heavy lowii Aesthetics applied emulating the quirks of lfi mediums and even vocal heavy pieces that seem to be led by more of either a voice against an ambient soundscape or simply filtered choirs bathed in Reverb and lowii effects in a strange and fascinating way I feel like this is one of very few examples

we have of a genre of music that has emerged from a set of artists and producers who are interested in exploring the idea of Music being better served as part of a larger experience rather than just as music on its own and maybe that's whether they consciously acknowledge it or [Music] not recent Generations are almost entirely defined by this constant sense of existential anxiety uncertainty and males accompan by their desires and dreams that seem to become more and more impossible in a world where climate change political turmoil and economic uncertainty fall at ends with the

often Centric subjects of mental health and individualism I think that the emergence of this micro genre across these social platforms aims to satiate some kind of need to express these shared anxieties and desires as a subgenre in the greater cloud of playlist core you can find this style of music spreading like wildfire on on YouTube background music channels Tik Tok aesthetic edits and Spotify playlists designed to tickle that brain Rod addled mind that can't stop 2 a.m. Doom scrolling in a really fascinating way I feel like this micro genre only works and only emerged because

it was so right alongside the rise of the core cor aesthetic and all of this seems to be a generational commentary on what feels like postmodern life and a desire for escape ISM it's something that is so unambiguously at ends with this overproduced and over edited landscape of modern influencer culture and contemporary music artists that it seems to grasp at the idea of what it means to be existentially antithetical to this newfound social media landscape where everything is so highly curated and engineered to be as Bland and inclusive and inoffensive as possible to just so

temporarily appeal to the largest portion of a Target demographic before life moves on and you stand there once again lost in it all not sure where you're supposed to catch up it's this Nostalgia for this earlier and simpler digital age and it's this musing on this idea of what it means to be in the in between that I think ultimately provides a pretty unique if not pretty unsettling look of the newly 20-some demographic experiencing that early to mid 20s quarter life breakdown that we all experience of the grand existential question of I was supposed to

be grown but where do I fit in as a niche genre now seeming to emerge into a relatively speaking mainstream breakthrough that is dominating ambient music curator playlists and the increasing fervor and fascination with the back rooms I think that this movement may start to define the next wave of ambient music as a whole I think this is pretty easy to observe with maybe Trent resar and attakus ross' work being the most widely known example of these Lial Moody soundscapes and I don't think this idea is going to go away anytime soon because we've seen

similar Trends emerging in the indie film and game spaces with maybe Skinnamarink being the most popular example and with something like an a24 back rooms movie on the way I don't think that this is something that's about to die down and I think if anything it's something that's about to become even more popular as the trend hits its peak as with all things in the world of music genres though inevitably once it becomes popular enough it's going to be expected to adhere to a pretty rigorous set of standards and Aesthetics and this is something I've

observed myself with future garage which was one of my favorite genres of music to listen to it got so popular that eventually it became the most generic and predictable set of patterns with artists releasing effectively the same track over and over with the exact same patterns and tempos and things like that and then anyone knew who wanted to produce that genre would just end up going on the same music piracy sites downloading the exact same sample packs that everyone else was using producing more of the exact same thing this playlis ification problem is something I've

explored at length in another video and I think it's something that's just a fact of life when a genre of music becomes popular enough because once it tries to reach the front of that all to desirable fyp that's typically about the time that things are over as well with the emerging world and Hell Cape of Music AI generators since AI is particularly good at observing Trends and easily repeatable patterns and quirks and motifs within musical ideas I have no doubt that that's going to pose a pretty significant challenge for the future of Lial ambient music

unless artists are able to break out of the expectations that will no doubt be set upon them by music curators playlist curators and the audiences who find this genre appealing but that's a problem I want to explore in a rant in a different video [Music] as with all things though the unfortunate byproduct to recreate and emulate whatever the trend is of the moment results in that thing becoming somewhat of a simulacrum of the idea it represented in the first place but maybe the point of linal ambient isn't to find the meaning of anything maybe it's

just about having somewhere to feel what's within the music or maybe it's just about finding somewhere to exist somewhere in between hey there end of the video you knew this was coming I know I'll keep it short videos like this big big pain in the ass to make I'm just one person and I have to do them all myself if you enjoyed the video and you want more videos like it and to support my ability to make more free instrument libraries for everybody you can become a patron with the link right down there that's it

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