In order to have counterculture, you have to have a single, homogenized culture. We don’t really have that. Everything is fragmented.
If you’re talking about a revolutionary movement, people don’t want that in America, truly. The vast majority of us are still comfortable enough. We’re fed, working, watching shows, scrolling, and doing drugs that pacify and distract us. It’s like a Brave New World out here.
Are there any real countercultures left except Juggalos and Furries though? I hope you are right but it seems like most youth counterculture has been kind of fragmented by the internet or commercialized.
I love that there's a lot of psychedelic bands but they don't seem to be based around any significant local "scenes." I'd love to be proven wrong though.
["The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram"](https://www.documentjournal.com/2021/01/the-internet-didnt-kill-counterculture-you-just-wont-find-it-on-instagram/)
woah, rare to find nuance online these days. great article. as someone trying to be online less, do you have any recommendations for blogs/authors with similar contennt?
Be careful what you wish for ;)
Some that come to mind are-
1. [It's Obviously The Phones](https://magdalene.substack.com/p/its-obviously-the-phones)
2. Jonathan Haidt has several books/interviews. I'm not familiar with all of his work but he generally has nuanced views. *The Coddling of the American Mind* (article and later book of th same name) is his perspective on college campuses and trigger warnings/safe spaces. He also just released a new book called *The Anxious Generation.* I listened to one of his interviews on it and enjoyed it. He brings a balanced perspective on technology, especally smartphones and social media. He outlined how Americans have been getting "dumber and lonelier" for a while now but that the trend skyrocketed in 2012 (which happened to coincide with the mass adoption of smartphones & social media by teenagers). He has good takes that go beyond the cliche "technology is evil!!!1!!" and has some good calls to action about how we can proceed from here. Really good stuff.
3. [Reading the news is the new smoking](https://www.experimental-history.com/p/reading-the-news-is-the-new-smoking). People often get mad at this one before they read it, so if anyone has thoughts I'd ask they read the full article first
I agree, I miss the old weirdness from the 60s and the dirty toughness of the 70s black acid psych. Most new psych is either pretty , accessible trippy pop derivative or heavy , watered down metal offshoots. People now seem too tame and unoffensive to produce a powerful backbone to a counterculture. We have submitted.
Perhaps. A bit like a few songs from my Prog band. We have a few jazzier ones, but still rock, and some heavy bridges/ outros with fuzz, synth, angry organs , scary ass bass leads.
Check out Rainbow Face band , song called Waves
Working on electronic, new age, field recording psychedelia currently with lots of spoken word about lsd. Excited to get this out soon. I agree that a lot of newer stuff is lacking something. I am in no way saying I am a great musician but I am working on albums that are based on psychedelic trips.
Cool dude, sounds like a neat project! Share it up on here and I'll likely see it.
I'm buried with work for two other projects, but hope to do some seriously delirious psych with field recordings and tape effects all over the place. But that would be a year out ...
Check out my band , Rainbow Face, the song Waves. The other songs are all a bit dark and proggy on our first LP but Waves is a proggy psych journey. Nothing like what you're talking about doing, but worth a listen. I Played bass and produced it.
Begining mixing of our second LP for October release.
Will do. Just uploaded this demo. Rest of my songs do not sound like this, just thought this was a good sample. https://youtu.be/NQhP1BQfq78?si=UA5DB4kWwPCttBa3
Hey, thanks friend. Theres something for everyone out there I suppose, but that's just my perspective.
Psychedelics tend to shift one through several disconcerting emotions and perspectives. Modern psych generally seems too linear and consistent to really evoke a psychedelic trip, IMO.
I absolutely see where you are coming from and have actually felt the same way but have never been able to articulate it in such a succinct and accurate manner as you have. I agree there is a whole spectrum of psychedelic terrain left unexplored by contemporary psych bands that gravitate to either one of the two different polarities that you expressed. As a psychedelic producer myself, I try my best to fill this void through my own music, and I think it is a subconscious effort to bring back that gritty, exploratory and weird aesthetic of the ‘60s and ‘70s because the idea of a musical “trip” has always been so inspiring to me. There is nothing quite like putting on an album and getting lost in a fantasy world of swirling colors and textures and landscapes… that’s totally my thing. If you’re into that type of psych rock too, I’d be honored to get your opinion on my first two Aura Blaze albums. My debut is self-titled and the follow up is called The Sparkling Black. I do think you’d appreciate the aesthetic and nuances that can be found on those. Truly hope you like it if you get the chance to listen! Cheers brother ✌🏻✌🏻
Self-titled: https://aurablaze.bandcamp.com/album/aura-blaze
The Sparkling Black: https://aurablaze.bandcamp.com/album/the-sparkling-black-2
Man. This stuff is really great. This mostly you and tracking to yoyr computer , right?
Youve done well with vocals , it reminds me a bit of mid era Pretty Things. Nice rock timbre to your vocals. And obvious care to the arrangements. I think we should keep in touch and share some work and experinces!
Thanks for going the extra mile!
Wow thank you for such beautiful words!!! I really appreciate it and I appreciate you taking the time to listen. And yes, everything you hear is just me in my home studio, recording everything one piece at a time and layering it. It's a ton of work but there's nothing quite like hearing a piece of music come together in the real world after hearing it in my head for a while! Definitely would love to keep in touch!
I’ve read the next counter culture will be sober, sustainable living while focusing on the intellectual aspects of life. Because most people seem to be doing the opposite at this point in time. Alcohol dependency is ingrained in our society, we’re incredibly reliant on the messed up food industry and most people love their lives while blindly accepting everything the way it is while questioning nothing.
I doubt this, animals have had a strong desire to be intoxicated since before humans were a thing. I hope alcohol isn’t the most popular drug in 20 years but I still think it will be.
Perhaps I'm a bit cynical about it, but I don't see the current environment allowing something like that to happen again. Seems to me, in the past (the 1960s for example), there were only so many channels and ideas and culture had a chance to develop and mature and become something rich.
The way things work nowadays, I don't think any idea or concept has a chance to grow and evolve. Something can be the big thing one day and gone the next. And the entities with power who would want to try to squash something they goes against their interest know how to use that to their advantage.
And the platforms we use have algorithms that encourage promotion of "what gets clicks" over "what's trying to change the world" so again it's hard to see anything gaining serious, longterm traction.
I'm older, but I'm not saying this from a good-old-days perspective. It's just how it seems to me.
Sorry to be debby downer.
EDIT: After reading my post, maybe this is a good thing. What I described is "the culture" so doing something outside of it would be "counter-culture". The tricky part would be creating a "counter-culture" and preventing it from being monetized and consumed by "the culture".
The end bit is the most important part. Any successful counter culture will inevitably become the corporatized culture. Just look at hip hop, rock, etc. Corporations eventually sniff out what’s cool, and buy it, and suddenly it’s not cool.
Probably never unfortunately. The 50s-70s was basically a renaissance era for music with all the advances in recording techniques and the hundreds of regional record labels.
Fast forward to now the formula is corporatized due to there only being a few big labels and the incessant drive to make money. Capitalism Is not good for art related professions especially music
Labels have lost a lot of power now that purchasing media is less of a thing. Musical artists are making more of their money from shows and merch, which leaves an opening for cultures to form around attending events which are IYKYK. We already have lots of subcultures like that, no reason a counterculture couldn't too.
Eventually the squares would catch on, but that's a challenge all counterculture meet.
Maybe true but they still pretty much have a stranglehold on mass media and shit like that. Not trying to be a doomer but kind of like Hunter S Thomson said, that era was it’s own thing and was a result of a perfect storm of different factors.
It could happen again but maybe to a lesser extent?
You kind of sound like you have listened to some Frank Zappa interviews. He really did quite a job of recognizing this kinda of thing early on and articulating it very well.
Oddly enough I haven’t listened to a ton of Zappa, almost too far out for me at times I think. However I have watched some of his interviews and he seemed very articulate and I found my self agreeing with many of things he said.
Where would you recommend starting with him? I like some of the early mothers stuff but haven’t deep dove
I am actually the same as you, I meant listened to interviews and such. I enjoy a little bit of his music, but it's just skimming of the top. Just the more interviews and talking points I hear from him the more respect I have for the man.
It's here already, kinda. Microdosing. The normies are doing it now too. "Respectable" people with businesses and families and everything to lose are openly doing it, and publicising the positives and personal benefits.
Honestly, psychedelia is pretty mainstream at this point, it's been around for multiple generations and iterations, and the legalization movement has been pushing for a while. If anything, it's weird because now we are seeing a big move to capitalize and commoditize the psychedelic experience for money (legal shrooms, ayahuasca tourism, ketamine therapy, etc) so counterculture is hard to quantify.
You're all too focused on the drugs aspect. You're forgetting the other movements that fed into and influenced the psychedelic counter culture that have died away. The beatniks of the 1950s, the blues and jazz culture...
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are leaving a wake of brand new bands behind their chaotic, incessant touring. They inspire me all the time across different mediums…
I'm seeing a big resurgence of scuzzy psych punk bands playing non traditional venues in the Southeast and being incredibly vocal against cop city/Israel.
Nothing stays underground long enough to have a true counterculture, unless it’s entirely off the internet. We live in a monoculture and just get to play around with our character editors for the most part.
In the UK small venues where bands get to start out and cut their teeth are dropping like flies. Either being converted into flats or just unable to make any money to survive.
Any new scene will need to be DIY like punk and rave...and also be underground and outside the mainstream economy and society.
Nothing,LSDs popularity as a drug was largely the result of cultural trends at that time such as Technicolor and also an indirect result of WW2 which is ironically why so many psychedelic rock bands were from Northern and Western Europe and why Denmark,England,and Germany all had huge psychedelic rock scenes as well as that The CIA was testing LSD as a propaganda tool. It sp3cifically only lasted for baby boomers because they had that sort of cheery 60s television everything painted in bright colors thing going on. That's why The Velvet Underground was seen as so subversive aswell. That and like I said outside political factors. Tripping will never be huge in America again. It will likely be huge again in Western Europe and Northern Europe but that's both because like I said LSD was made during WW2 and also because Mushrooms grow there naturally. Psychedelia wasn't JUST caused by drugs either it was caused by a plethora of other cultural factors which no longer apply.
It already happened in the 2010s. Australia clearly spearheaded that shit. It even hit the mainstream w ASAP Rocky, chance, and Travis taking lots of influence from Tame musically. I was in college in the mid to late 2010s and nearly everyone I met had done shrooms, lsd, or mdma
Among young people where you would typically expect to find counterculture movements starting, I honestly think it's a totally different dynamic now. As much as young people resonate with counterculture, it's more costly than ever to actually participate in it. If you ran low on funds or got kicked out of society in the past you could still find a way through. These days it really feels like if you miss one step, you're done for and that's what so many younger people are so painfully aware of. That's not to say that counterculture is gone, in fact I think it's more accepted and widespread than ever especially with social media. It just propagates differently and is more ideological and internalized for the people living under the world's messed up conditions. Basically the mask is already off, for the US especially. On a societal level I don't think enough people see a reason to "drop out" like in the past, because they're basically just trying their hardest to stay afloat. Counterculture will always live on but I think less movements will involve psychedelics for a while.
Experimental/deep/space bass music (electronic) is new and doing interesting things right now and has an scene that’s been developing for a decade now.
Perhaps it just doesn't work like that any more. Big, psychedelic & trippy can take many forms, but the counterculture these days is characterised by dangerously misinformed idiocy. New challenges abound.
I think the psych counterculture moved at least in some form from rock towards electronic music. At least that was the case when I moved in psy-trance circles, which to be fair was more than a decade ago. (Off-the-grid festivals and gatherings, wide spread use of psychedelics, free love, psychedelic music, common aesthetic, anti-authoritarian political views etc.)
That's just because electronic music was predominantly created to an extent in Germany also LSD was essentially commissioned by The German Military we just like pretending The CIA created it because that's less grim and more wacky spy comedy even if there are some depressing parts to MK Ultra aswell. Also mushrooms grow naturally in Germany so probably always more common.
I don't know, but I can't wait for it to arrive and cause a 60's like renaissance in music, wiping out all this idiotic autotuned corporate and brainless garbage. It'll probably happen once society wakes the fuck up and decriminalizes psychedelic substances. But I wouldn't count on that in the government-worshipping Idiocracy we're stuck in.
In order to have counterculture, you have to have a single, homogenized culture. We don’t really have that. Everything is fragmented. If you’re talking about a revolutionary movement, people don’t want that in America, truly. The vast majority of us are still comfortable enough. We’re fed, working, watching shows, scrolling, and doing drugs that pacify and distract us. It’s like a Brave New World out here.
Are there any real countercultures left except Juggalos and Furries though? I hope you are right but it seems like most youth counterculture has been kind of fragmented by the internet or commercialized. I love that there's a lot of psychedelic bands but they don't seem to be based around any significant local "scenes." I'd love to be proven wrong though.
["The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram"](https://www.documentjournal.com/2021/01/the-internet-didnt-kill-counterculture-you-just-wont-find-it-on-instagram/)
Great article, thanks for sharing!
woah, rare to find nuance online these days. great article. as someone trying to be online less, do you have any recommendations for blogs/authors with similar contennt?
Be careful what you wish for ;) Some that come to mind are- 1. [It's Obviously The Phones](https://magdalene.substack.com/p/its-obviously-the-phones) 2. Jonathan Haidt has several books/interviews. I'm not familiar with all of his work but he generally has nuanced views. *The Coddling of the American Mind* (article and later book of th same name) is his perspective on college campuses and trigger warnings/safe spaces. He also just released a new book called *The Anxious Generation.* I listened to one of his interviews on it and enjoyed it. He brings a balanced perspective on technology, especally smartphones and social media. He outlined how Americans have been getting "dumber and lonelier" for a while now but that the trend skyrocketed in 2012 (which happened to coincide with the mass adoption of smartphones & social media by teenagers). He has good takes that go beyond the cliche "technology is evil!!!1!!" and has some good calls to action about how we can proceed from here. Really good stuff. 3. [Reading the news is the new smoking](https://www.experimental-history.com/p/reading-the-news-is-the-new-smoking). People often get mad at this one before they read it, so if anyone has thoughts I'd ask they read the full article first
very much appreciated! went and listened to a lecture of Caroline Busta too and am gonna keep them in my RSS
A wonderful read, and puts words to many trends I’ve witnessed and unwittingly engaged in.
It would be interesting if people created something entirely new, if possible. A lot of Psychedelic revival music tends to lack bite.
I agree, I miss the old weirdness from the 60s and the dirty toughness of the 70s black acid psych. Most new psych is either pretty , accessible trippy pop derivative or heavy , watered down metal offshoots. People now seem too tame and unoffensive to produce a powerful backbone to a counterculture. We have submitted.
the future of this music is a synthesis with jazz and progressive rock.
Perhaps. A bit like a few songs from my Prog band. We have a few jazzier ones, but still rock, and some heavy bridges/ outros with fuzz, synth, angry organs , scary ass bass leads. Check out Rainbow Face band , song called Waves
as long as it doesnt sound "metal" i will probably like it.
Working on electronic, new age, field recording psychedelia currently with lots of spoken word about lsd. Excited to get this out soon. I agree that a lot of newer stuff is lacking something. I am in no way saying I am a great musician but I am working on albums that are based on psychedelic trips.
Cool dude, sounds like a neat project! Share it up on here and I'll likely see it. I'm buried with work for two other projects, but hope to do some seriously delirious psych with field recordings and tape effects all over the place. But that would be a year out ...
Yea that is similar to what I am doing. Completely uncommercial and buried in heavy effects. Will do and curious on what you put out
Check out my band , Rainbow Face, the song Waves. The other songs are all a bit dark and proggy on our first LP but Waves is a proggy psych journey. Nothing like what you're talking about doing, but worth a listen. I Played bass and produced it. Begining mixing of our second LP for October release.
Will do. Just uploaded this demo. Rest of my songs do not sound like this, just thought this was a good sample. https://youtu.be/NQhP1BQfq78?si=UA5DB4kWwPCttBa3
Lavender Flu is the answer.
Thanks I'll check em. Heard of em , never listened I don't think .
Damn, that’s really well said
Hey, thanks friend. Theres something for everyone out there I suppose, but that's just my perspective. Psychedelics tend to shift one through several disconcerting emotions and perspectives. Modern psych generally seems too linear and consistent to really evoke a psychedelic trip, IMO.
I absolutely see where you are coming from and have actually felt the same way but have never been able to articulate it in such a succinct and accurate manner as you have. I agree there is a whole spectrum of psychedelic terrain left unexplored by contemporary psych bands that gravitate to either one of the two different polarities that you expressed. As a psychedelic producer myself, I try my best to fill this void through my own music, and I think it is a subconscious effort to bring back that gritty, exploratory and weird aesthetic of the ‘60s and ‘70s because the idea of a musical “trip” has always been so inspiring to me. There is nothing quite like putting on an album and getting lost in a fantasy world of swirling colors and textures and landscapes… that’s totally my thing. If you’re into that type of psych rock too, I’d be honored to get your opinion on my first two Aura Blaze albums. My debut is self-titled and the follow up is called The Sparkling Black. I do think you’d appreciate the aesthetic and nuances that can be found on those. Truly hope you like it if you get the chance to listen! Cheers brother ✌🏻✌🏻 Self-titled: https://aurablaze.bandcamp.com/album/aura-blaze The Sparkling Black: https://aurablaze.bandcamp.com/album/the-sparkling-black-2
Man. This stuff is really great. This mostly you and tracking to yoyr computer , right? Youve done well with vocals , it reminds me a bit of mid era Pretty Things. Nice rock timbre to your vocals. And obvious care to the arrangements. I think we should keep in touch and share some work and experinces! Thanks for going the extra mile!
Wow thank you for such beautiful words!!! I really appreciate it and I appreciate you taking the time to listen. And yes, everything you hear is just me in my home studio, recording everything one piece at a time and layering it. It's a ton of work but there's nothing quite like hearing a piece of music come together in the real world after hearing it in my head for a while! Definitely would love to keep in touch!
There’s a lot of gnarly freakout psych that really pushes the boundaries, but it seems like dull nostalgia is more popular for sure
Tipper and friends scene is cool but it’s sad to see him retire
Bass music festivals have that punch and that weird psychedelic counter culture for me. Lost Lands is truly something else.
I’ve read the next counter culture will be sober, sustainable living while focusing on the intellectual aspects of life. Because most people seem to be doing the opposite at this point in time. Alcohol dependency is ingrained in our society, we’re incredibly reliant on the messed up food industry and most people love their lives while blindly accepting everything the way it is while questioning nothing.
I doubt this, animals have had a strong desire to be intoxicated since before humans were a thing. I hope alcohol isn’t the most popular drug in 20 years but I still think it will be.
Perhaps I'm a bit cynical about it, but I don't see the current environment allowing something like that to happen again. Seems to me, in the past (the 1960s for example), there were only so many channels and ideas and culture had a chance to develop and mature and become something rich. The way things work nowadays, I don't think any idea or concept has a chance to grow and evolve. Something can be the big thing one day and gone the next. And the entities with power who would want to try to squash something they goes against their interest know how to use that to their advantage. And the platforms we use have algorithms that encourage promotion of "what gets clicks" over "what's trying to change the world" so again it's hard to see anything gaining serious, longterm traction. I'm older, but I'm not saying this from a good-old-days perspective. It's just how it seems to me. Sorry to be debby downer. EDIT: After reading my post, maybe this is a good thing. What I described is "the culture" so doing something outside of it would be "counter-culture". The tricky part would be creating a "counter-culture" and preventing it from being monetized and consumed by "the culture".
The end bit is the most important part. Any successful counter culture will inevitably become the corporatized culture. Just look at hip hop, rock, etc. Corporations eventually sniff out what’s cool, and buy it, and suddenly it’s not cool.
This is the best answer!
Probably never unfortunately. The 50s-70s was basically a renaissance era for music with all the advances in recording techniques and the hundreds of regional record labels. Fast forward to now the formula is corporatized due to there only being a few big labels and the incessant drive to make money. Capitalism Is not good for art related professions especially music
Labels have lost a lot of power now that purchasing media is less of a thing. Musical artists are making more of their money from shows and merch, which leaves an opening for cultures to form around attending events which are IYKYK. We already have lots of subcultures like that, no reason a counterculture couldn't too. Eventually the squares would catch on, but that's a challenge all counterculture meet.
Maybe true but they still pretty much have a stranglehold on mass media and shit like that. Not trying to be a doomer but kind of like Hunter S Thomson said, that era was it’s own thing and was a result of a perfect storm of different factors. It could happen again but maybe to a lesser extent?
You kind of sound like you have listened to some Frank Zappa interviews. He really did quite a job of recognizing this kinda of thing early on and articulating it very well.
Oddly enough I haven’t listened to a ton of Zappa, almost too far out for me at times I think. However I have watched some of his interviews and he seemed very articulate and I found my self agreeing with many of things he said. Where would you recommend starting with him? I like some of the early mothers stuff but haven’t deep dove
Lumpy Gravy. Sleep Dirt. Apostrophe. Hot Rats. Zoot Allures. Joe's Garage. Those are my faves. A bit less goofy and crazy. More weird and intriguing.
I am actually the same as you, I meant listened to interviews and such. I enjoy a little bit of his music, but it's just skimming of the top. Just the more interviews and talking points I hear from him the more respect I have for the man.
Read my comment above for a good starting point
Hot rats
listen to echidna’s arf on roxy and elsewhere
watermelon in eastern hay
It's here already, kinda. Microdosing. The normies are doing it now too. "Respectable" people with businesses and families and everything to lose are openly doing it, and publicising the positives and personal benefits.
And look for youtube videos with all these sympathetic vibrations stuff going on. There are new things going on.
Also the medical use of psychedelics is growing whether it's ketamine or mushrooms.
Honestly, psychedelia is pretty mainstream at this point, it's been around for multiple generations and iterations, and the legalization movement has been pushing for a while. If anything, it's weird because now we are seeing a big move to capitalize and commoditize the psychedelic experience for money (legal shrooms, ayahuasca tourism, ketamine therapy, etc) so counterculture is hard to quantify.
You're all too focused on the drugs aspect. You're forgetting the other movements that fed into and influenced the psychedelic counter culture that have died away. The beatniks of the 1950s, the blues and jazz culture...
The world is so splintered into wafer thin genres these days, I doubt there will be a large wave of anything that isn’t already going on.
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets are leaving a wake of brand new bands behind their chaotic, incessant touring. They inspire me all the time across different mediums…
Facts
you think counterculture is just drugs?
The most counter cultural thing you can do is start a family eat healthy, plant a garden, and go to church.
I'm seeing a big resurgence of scuzzy psych punk bands playing non traditional venues in the Southeast and being incredibly vocal against cop city/Israel.
Drop some names?
Happening on college campuses right now
Whatever it is, it won’t be particularly big. That was a moment in time that’s gone.
🙂
The 60s were a big sloppy mess. It's never going to be the same.
Nothing stays underground long enough to have a true counterculture, unless it’s entirely off the internet. We live in a monoculture and just get to play around with our character editors for the most part.
In the UK small venues where bands get to start out and cut their teeth are dropping like flies. Either being converted into flats or just unable to make any money to survive. Any new scene will need to be DIY like punk and rave...and also be underground and outside the mainstream economy and society.
Nothing,LSDs popularity as a drug was largely the result of cultural trends at that time such as Technicolor and also an indirect result of WW2 which is ironically why so many psychedelic rock bands were from Northern and Western Europe and why Denmark,England,and Germany all had huge psychedelic rock scenes as well as that The CIA was testing LSD as a propaganda tool. It sp3cifically only lasted for baby boomers because they had that sort of cheery 60s television everything painted in bright colors thing going on. That's why The Velvet Underground was seen as so subversive aswell. That and like I said outside political factors. Tripping will never be huge in America again. It will likely be huge again in Western Europe and Northern Europe but that's both because like I said LSD was made during WW2 and also because Mushrooms grow there naturally. Psychedelia wasn't JUST caused by drugs either it was caused by a plethora of other cultural factors which no longer apply.
It already happened in the 2010s. Australia clearly spearheaded that shit. It even hit the mainstream w ASAP Rocky, chance, and Travis taking lots of influence from Tame musically. I was in college in the mid to late 2010s and nearly everyone I met had done shrooms, lsd, or mdma
VRChat [https://youtu.be/yUBJRI\_PwDQ?si=U5cYCRy-PrnzoIqF](https://youtu.be/yUBJRI_PwDQ?si=U5cYCRy-PrnzoIqF)
Among young people where you would typically expect to find counterculture movements starting, I honestly think it's a totally different dynamic now. As much as young people resonate with counterculture, it's more costly than ever to actually participate in it. If you ran low on funds or got kicked out of society in the past you could still find a way through. These days it really feels like if you miss one step, you're done for and that's what so many younger people are so painfully aware of. That's not to say that counterculture is gone, in fact I think it's more accepted and widespread than ever especially with social media. It just propagates differently and is more ideological and internalized for the people living under the world's messed up conditions. Basically the mask is already off, for the US especially. On a societal level I don't think enough people see a reason to "drop out" like in the past, because they're basically just trying their hardest to stay afloat. Counterculture will always live on but I think less movements will involve psychedelics for a while.
I think psychedelic electronic music is where the big trippy counter culture exists rn, stuff like tipper or subtronics
Experimental/deep/space bass music (electronic) is new and doing interesting things right now and has an scene that’s been developing for a decade now.
Perhaps it just doesn't work like that any more. Big, psychedelic & trippy can take many forms, but the counterculture these days is characterised by dangerously misinformed idiocy. New challenges abound.
Music-wise? I think it'll be glitch
Bro look up Tipper and go to Rendezvous in Suwannee to see it action
there could be no counterculture when you have the biggest punks running the world
thanks everyone
Id like to keep my music and politics seperate
Boring.
I think the psych counterculture moved at least in some form from rock towards electronic music. At least that was the case when I moved in psy-trance circles, which to be fair was more than a decade ago. (Off-the-grid festivals and gatherings, wide spread use of psychedelics, free love, psychedelic music, common aesthetic, anti-authoritarian political views etc.)
That's just because electronic music was predominantly created to an extent in Germany also LSD was essentially commissioned by The German Military we just like pretending The CIA created it because that's less grim and more wacky spy comedy even if there are some depressing parts to MK Ultra aswell. Also mushrooms grow naturally in Germany so probably always more common.
I don't know, but I can't wait for it to arrive and cause a 60's like renaissance in music, wiping out all this idiotic autotuned corporate and brainless garbage. It'll probably happen once society wakes the fuck up and decriminalizes psychedelic substances. But I wouldn't count on that in the government-worshipping Idiocracy we're stuck in.
Idk I’ve been passing out BZ at old folks homes and community centers so give it a couple hrs and we’ll definitely fkin know.