The bluster is mostly for fun, but I was rather set off by this statement:

> there is simply no 21st century music to be had.

The appropriate response to "what is free jazz?" is "what isn't free jazz?" This is a joke, of course. Free jazz is crap; I like the old stuff. Same goes for prog rock. One cannot account for taste, after all.

Thanks for the Merzbow; I look forward to listening to it after the meeting I'm in. ;) But do note that Death Row is a record label, renowned for its production quality (wherein Dre would hire musicians to re-record backbeats that originated as lo-fi samples).

I must ask: do you look for new music? I do, daily, and I'm never unsatisfied. And, hell, I heard a sonata of Mozart just yesterday that I'd never heard before. So I'll say this: the back-catalog is so incredibly massive that one listener cannot hope to hear it all. It's much easier to be stuck in the past, than stuck in the present.

And I've been to several world metropolises, London included. A cohort of 70 high school students is a terribly small sample, whereever it may be situated. I didn't start really listening to music until my brother (a professional musician) departed for university.

edit: ah, hah. Merzbow is inspired by prog rock and free jazz. It's not bad; it's not my jam. Do your kids listen to it?

Nah my kids listen to stuff like this: https://youtu.be/XR9d4ESlpHY?si=57C9KOBVssCWtsbO

and this: https://youtu.be/NVjSycDJatc?si=9lIug-ay5ROvuNvt

and this: https://youtu.be/IYnuXnuaFNY?si=MGhr4dmfyfBQb0RU

and this: https://youtu.be/lKOGgH40d_0?si=iqIBytn3q2EhCdxG

and this: https://youtu.be/SLvFsP1izS4?si=x4kqT9a8foBmtvjn

Anyway, here's a couple recent faves from your neck of the woods, both born within a few years of the turn of the century:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT9OJE2mj4E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWme81uDHiw

My ears are closed

There is no crisis of innovation after all, you just don't want to hear it.

Listening to these two tracks I think the point stands that music is struggling to escape the patterns laid down for it in the 20th century. This music is new without being novel, ie it’s not unreasonable to think they couldn’t have been made and been functionally identical in the 90s, whereas they couldn’t have been made in the 50s.

You might dig these too, if you like those two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI8w-h-HCAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqnG_Ei35JE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BUzRO6J4gE The last one in particular by Joy Crookes isn’t from nowhere because it’s from South London, but it is weirdly from nowhen by being somehow contemporary with Amy Winehouse and Etta James. That’s what 21st century music is.