what are some of your favorite "combinations"/"crossovers" or "subversions" of genre cliches within a song? theres so many. for some bands, every song is genre-blending (like reggae-rock with sublime or classical-rock with GYBE or rap-rock with rage against the machine); for some bands, genre is hard to identify (fantomas, neurosis); some bands are in their own zone and dont seem to be caught up in genre stuff (slint); some stuff involves sampling/interpolation from other genres (rap beats, negativland); some artists cover bands from another genre (the clash cover of "police and thieves"); some artists constantly focus on subverting genre cliches (mike patton); theres all the punk-metal hybrids (sepultura, crossover thrash bands, metalcore, dillinger escape plan); theres entire genres that are really just combinations of other genres (jazz-fusion).

so, artists have flipped genre forms in all sorts of ways. what do you think are the most interesting cases of this?

i love the mariachi horns in johnny cash's "ring of fire"

recently ive been listening to bill laswell, a frequent collaborator of PIL's jah wobble... he has tons of good tracks that fuse one genre with another (usually, reggae is one of the genres)

I'm going to have to dwell on this for a moment, good topic though. I just came up with a new crossover genre which I am starting a band to support... doom dub. Like Neurosis vs Mad Professor. I will post MP3s when I get my shit together.

Seefeel is one of the definitive quality "crossover bands" of the last twenty years.

tortoise makes great hard to categorize music, they're way different than other bands from the post--rock bucket. when i saw them live they sounded surprisngly close to king crimson at times.
post-prog-rock, fuck yeah.

Well obviously Funk-Metal-Rap. Is there a better combo? Limp Bizkit? HELLO!?!

There are too many examples in sample-based rap production to list (though Public Enemy probably deserves particular mention for some of their stuff, which gets to be like music-concrete beatmaking at points) and too many bands devoted to particular crossovers (i.e. Funkadelic, Tom Waits).

The NOLA-funeral-jazz horn section on Radiohead's "Life In A Glass House" is an excellent violation of expectations.

TV On The Radio doing an a cappella doo-wop "Mr. Grieves." Their entire catalog would qualify in some sense, but this one is a particularly obvious crossover.

Two Sage Francis songs: "Sealion," which has that indie-folk-meets-hip-hop thing and somehow works, and "Jah Didn't Kill Johnny" which is a sort of awkward-bedroom-country song about to collapse into a rap battle.

If you don't know Tinariwen, you should.

Boombats wrote:I just came up with a new crossover genre which I am starting a band to support... doom dub.

This is a good idea for a crossover genre.

Two of them that come to mind are John Zorn and Mr. Bungle.

I love it when elements of jazz sort of creep into rock, crazy rock compositions, like Rumah Sakit and obviously stuff like Don Cab.

Boris are doing a good job of being original with a bunch of genres that already exist, taking old stuff and making it sound fresh. Sometimes they fail in my opinion but I almost respect them more for that. But yeah, every song is another avenue.

Excel

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