Sounds of the future

HIGH NOTES

Once again, we meet that time of the year when everyone with any amount of authority over music seems to be in the process of pondering retrospectively over all that the music biz threw up in 2005. It's been a year of mega successes, major disappointments and some remarkable debut breakthroughs.

But a top 50 list is, if anything, purely subjective. So it might be best to leave it to your favourite search engine to serve you with the most comprehensive one that's on offer this time around.

Smack in the middle of yet another decade, it seems a good time to take stock of where the music, in its many splendours, is actually headed. We live in turbulent times and at the cost of committing cliché to paper, music like much other art is a direct reflection of all that's happening around us. Even so, I dare say that not me nor the most informed music historian, could have even the slightest inkling as to what music is going to be like five years' down.

So in effect, who's to say that in the next five years all of us are going to forget about the likes of U2 and Coldplay and focus on cartoon bands like Gorillaz whose witty trope is just as futuristic as it is contemporary.

But then again what with the globe's eye being skewed eastwards towards the likes of India and China, in every way, there's every likelihood that your next global chartbuster could be the Chinese Orchestra 12 Girl Band or something along the lines of the very eclectic Bluffmaster OST. As you can see, possibilities are quite endless and may get a little ridiculous if we don't stop here.

But unlike format and medium changes that plague music technology and have every technologist working overtime on the future of saving mega corps, there is really no telling where creative musical trends are headed. On the downside you have music labels and artist managements who stand at the helm of packaging and repackaging the works of some of our favorites so as to make up numbers.

But on the upside, the music industry the world over seems at its peak on the talent creation front. With marketing avenues growing and the internet making it possible for bands and independent labels to get their music across as quickly and cheaply to a relevant listener base, it's evident from some of the releases last year that musical styles are in an ever changing process and innovation is as much a part of the technology as it is part of the creative musical process.

As testimony to the increasing dynamism of the A&R world there's been a slew of artist over the last year that've straddled all sorts of styles and followed them through with extremely successful campaigns that have lead to the artists being established outside of their own spheres.

The Arcade Fire and Devendra Banhart, M.I.A to name but a few. Not to say that these are names to be associated with the music of the future. But a listen to each of their albums will tell you how one year in music can present music of such varying degrees.

As for rock music though some may carp on the downfall of rock since the passing of Lennon and the emptiness of hip hop music, the truth of the matter is that some of us are just looking in the wrong place. And if not that then we are definitely looking at things the wrong way.

To me, it seems nearly unbelievable that you can have the Chemical Brothers, Jack Johnson, Kanye West and Franz Ferdinand sharing the same space as an Anoushka Shankar, Korn and Kate Bush. Add to that the endless list of Best Ofs, Essential Hits and Collections your favorite Catalogue artists and what you have is a collection of music that is as varied as it is exhaustive.

And since that's just one music calendar that we are speaking about, to begin to think of what we can expect over the next five years is a little pointless. I like to think that there is some novelty in discovering new music and styles and part of loving the music is the joy of discovering it in the first place. And while we hope we hear less of U2, look forward to another Magic Numbers album and hope that there's no return from the Pussycat Dolls, the hottest albums to look forward to in 2010 are...let's not get there just yet!