New directions in music part 23

I'm often on the lookout for new kinds of music. It seems to me that (apart from particularly esoteric and often unlistenable music) there is no new direction obvious at the moment. In the past 100 years Western popular music has taken on many new forms from (not in any particular order) Jazz, Blues, Rock and Roll, 60's pop, Rock, Prog Rock, Punk, New Romantic, New Wave, Heavy Metal, Thrash, Death Metal, Electronic and Dance, to miss out many others. Each new scene has something unique to it, but more recently the advances in technology have opened a new world of innovation.

In my view most of the newest forms of electronic music are still very rhythm-based. I'm very fond of electronic music, however I wonder what the new direction will be.

It could be said that Aphex Twin resides at the extremes of modern music (e.g. see this), however it's really only pushing the boundaries of rhythm. I love Aphex Twin's work and rate him very highly, however I wonder whether the next phase in popular musical development will be to move away from rhythm all together.

Take Imogen Heap's song Hide And Seek (hopefully still here). Whilst having some semblance of rhythm (it's very difficult to be completely arrhythmic) it is constructed solely of electronically-altered voice noises.

I can foresee a new movement based on sounds capes (I know that other artists like Sigur Ros and before them Slowdive and many, many other artists before them, have meddled with this, but always with traditional instruments, chord progressions, and time signatures).

I'm sure that I am genuinely ignorant of some artists who are already producing this kind of electronic sound scape, however it's not reached the popular consciousness yet (Enya notwithstanding!!) and certainly can't be said to be a movement as such.

Perhaps a combination of styles not yet combined might be a way forward, e.g. Prog Rock and Punk, or 60's pop and electronic ambient sound scape.

Either way I wish someone would hurry up and do it instead of churning out the dross that habituates the popular music scene at the moment!

(I would do it myself, but I probably don't have the talent and anyway, I'm too busy making databases)