for something we're doing at university at the moment, I need to find something that defies being classified in a genre, not nessecarily genre-less, maybe something which brings aspects of certain genres together, seeing as this is all subjective a little explanation as to how it defies classification

The works of Luke Vibert:

As Wagon Christ, he's done funky hip-hop inspired stuff.
He's done a collaboration with BJ Cole, a jazz musician.
He's released proper acid techno.
He's released compilations of 70's filler music
As Plug, he's released drum'n'bass.

Unfortunately, all the individual bits are easily genre-ised. Very versatile chap, he is.



How about Phillip Glass? He's pretty frickin extraordinary.

Or something bonkers and abstract - Autechre's Grantz Graf (you can get it from bleep.com for a small fee, or probably from a less reputable P2P site for signifcantly less).

Mike Patton.

He's wiggled his fingers in most every single musical genre pie.

Oh, how I love thee, Patton.

Not until he releases a folkcore acid skiffle record he hasn't. I await it with bated breath.

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The obvious answer is 'Walk this way' but there are many others. The whole 'nu-metal' genre is basically a mix of hip-hop and metal.

There's not really any such thing as a new genre, only things that haven't been classified yet.

Clouddead could be hip-hop, could be west-coast rap, or could be trip-hop... Or several other things. Genre is meaningless really, which is, I suspect, the lesson that your tutors are trying to teach.

How about Rhapsody in Blue - which brings elements of jazz and romantic to a single piece?

I think the term he used was something along the lines of "theoretical minefield" I can't say for sure, it was early in the morning, there was something about genres, meta-genres and sub-genres, it's all very subjective (i do love that word, I hope it means what I think it means)

Is a pop music a meta genre encompassing everything from metal to emo, which would be genre's and sub-genre's being thrash or death metal, or, could you class Dance as a meta-genre having things like trance or house? then you have sub-genre's like funky house and acid trance? there are no pre-defined standards when it comes to it.

Recently I've been listening to Nightwish a lot and thinking about it, sure it's got very heavy metal influences, but there are other influences there, at least some of them are classically trained, people instinctivly group them with metal or some sub-genre there of (I think moop put it as Symphonic Metal) but what stops it being some metally sub-genre of classical?

I realise that's a bad example, Metal is evidently the primary influence in most of their songs, but I think it get the point across. I don't he's going for right and wrong, he just wants to see that we've researched it and put thought into our arguments....I really hate academics sometimes

Edit: Incidently, this seems much more like Musical cultures than synthesis to me....

How about Mr Bungle? I've not listened to much of their stuff (It's not very listenable to my ears), but from what I have heard, I challenge anyone to try to pigeon hole it.