definitions

[Wil Welsh]

elheme> What's the differences between future pop synthpop freezepop blh blah blah
elheme> or is it realy not that much?

Here's my take on it.

Future is just ebm or aggression with all of the anger processing and
complexity stripped away.  It is all club style 4/4 with 32 and
sometimes 16 beat phrases typically with rigid breaks formatted for club
dj's to beatmix smoothly with.  The vocals typically have no processing
and the singers can usually sing pretty well.  Most modern future
uses pretty expensive synths, like the access virus to achieve their
sounds. Most of the synth sounds used are of the less intrusive nature.
There are also a lot of the more muted synth sounds nearly borrowed from
the 90's pop-trance and progressive techno culture. Examples would be
like vnv nation , Apoptygma Berzerk last 2 or 3 albums, Rotersand, T.O.Y., and
Revolution By Night.. 

Freezepop is a band not a genre.  They are pretty much a tongue in cheek
synthpop act.  They are fun.

Synthpop has many faces.  Its been around for a while and has seen some
changes over the years.  early 80's synthpop was more synth and less pop
with acts that have less popular appeal than a car crash.  Some also
attained pop appeal, but I don't know that purists of the genre from
that time would care for the pop acts.  Towards the late 1980's you had
acts like boytronic, information society, and pet shop boys reformulate
things to be what the name says and go more pop with synths. Nowadays,
the genre seems a bit more rigidly defined to me by pretty much 90% of
the stuff on the "A Different Drum" record label. If you've heard one or
two acts on the label, you will know the modern synthpop sound.  Good
examples would be Kamera, Neuropa, Echo Image, Leiahdorus, and Wave in
Head. There has also been a decent bit of genre merging and morphing
with ebm and futurepop as of late causing some confusion and much
delightful funkiness. Acts like colony 5, Syrian, Droom, and Iris all
walk multiple genre lines IMO.  

My favorite synthpop & closely related acts right now are Spray, The
Echoing Green, Syrian, and System22.  Lots of s's :)

-- 
Wil Welsh <Vort3xxX at earthlink.net>
-"Living in an electric state."