Body: When I look at song tags, I periodically chance upon genres ending with "core" (e.g. metalcore, nerdcore, beatcore, etc.). It never made sense to me and since none of the music that I listened to ever ended with "core", I just never bothered to look into it. But since the Last.fm entry for The Antlers listed "slowcore" as one of its first tags (after the wholly descriptive tags of "indie" and "indie rock"), I guess I had to finally look it up.
So it seems that the inclusion of "core" at the end of those genres doesn't signify any commonality between them nor does it necessarily describe anything about the genre itself. The only genre for which the inclusion of "core" in its name made any sense was "metalcore", apparently a combination of "extreme metal and hardcore punk" (wiki). Ok, that's fine. But for other genres, like "nerdcore" (nerdy hip-hop) and "beatcore" (doesn't even look like there's even a vague consensus on this one), "core" just seems to ... be there. Maybe there's more to the story but let's revisit that some other time.
Regarding "slowcore", the genre itself became popular in the 90's and developed out of opposition to the grunge genre that so-characterized that decade, well, for me anyway. Slowcore is marked by instrumental minimalism, a slower tempo, and generally somber lyrics. As grunge phased out of the limelight after the mid-90s, so, apparently, did slowcore. But it's not like the musical community as a whole all decided to completely abandon the characteristics of that genre for the rest of existence. Invariably, some music will incorporate aspects reminiscent of that style and I guess it'd still be a useful general descriptor in that sense.
Anyway, all that aside, just heard this song from /r/postrock that's helping me get back into my preferred mellow state and wanted to share it here.
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