theo parrish s/d

destroy: moodymann.

Well, from what I hear, outside of Detroit his stuff can be a little hard to come by. I'm spoiled. I can go to a local record store here (Record Time) and pick up the majority of his 12"s and, if the timing's right, his way-limited mix CD-Rs. As a DJ, he's not always technically perfect, but his track selection and strange EQing make him my favorite.

That being said, I highly recommend the following:
-FIRST FLOOR: album on Peacfrog, available on CD. Great place to start.
-PARALLEL DIMENSIONS: album on Sound Signature (his label). Also available on CD, but I have the vinyl.
-"Summertime Is Here" 12" on Sound Signature. Closer to astral jazz than house in a lot of ways.
-"Sawala Seyale/I Can Take It" 12" on Sound Signature: Great Afrohouse b/w his take on Recloose's "I Can't Take It"
-"Solitary Flight/Dellwood II" 12" on Sound Signature: Just released. "Solitary Flight" features a great piano line and killer violin. Orchestral house.
-ECLECTIC AESTHETIC Vol. 1 & 2: great mix set CD-R that encompasses Fela, Bob Marley, Prince, Liaisons Dangereuses, deep house, disco and soul.
-THESE DAYS & TIMES Vol. 1 & 2: Another mix CD-R. Vol. 1 starts with more current stuff and moves into classic disco and soul on Vol. 2
-the rest of the 12"s on Sound Signature!

If you can't find his stuff in stores near you, try Record Time (http://www.recordtime.com), Forced Exposure or Bent Crayon.

Since his stuff can be hard to find, I'd be willing to make CD-Rs of the CDs I have to trade. Just email me.

Jess, how can say "destroy moodymann"?

loved the jill scott mix, sun ra one less so

Methods of Movement? Haven't come across this one, either. There's a good discography here: http://twoplayer.net/theo/

Where are you, Zemko? I'm surprised to hear an HMV would have it! The mix CD-Rs generally run about $15 from the stores here, and about $17 elsewhere (also saw some at Amoeba in San Fran).

????????????

Anyway, I like the "I Can Take It" 12", and most of the other Sound Signature stuff but oh is it hard and/or expensive to find. Thanks for the offer of trade Jeff, and does anyone have some of the 12 inches dubbed to cd and want to trade?

I think I have most of the mix cd's. You could usually get them from FE when they were released but you had to act fast. I'd be willing to burn copies for anyone interested. Just drop me a line.

Destroy: Theo Parrish mix CD manufacturer. The top of mine literally peeled off after a year!

I hope that you answer me someday, because is really difficult find in spain people who love and understand theo parrish concept, as a dj as a producer.

Enjoy da good fucking shit.

i have been listening to nothing but parrish mix cd's for the last couple of days.

Jess, I remember you bagging on SILENCE IN THE SECRET GARDEN a bit when that came out, maybe that was it. I'm biased, I hold KDJ second only to Theo in house music production.

PS: Andrés will never get enough love.

Summertime Is Here
Solitary Flight
Heal Yourself and Move
Ebonics
Melt
Walking Thru the Sky
Lake Shore Drive
Orchestra Hall
Dan Ryan
When the Morning Comes

Andy, what is this Rotating Assembly album of which you speak?

"I wish all the Theo Parrish releases weren't so nebulous and expensive"

Ha, for once I have a leg up on all y'all grime/gutter garage white label collectors, shit I can't get ahold of in my local shops! The Record Time stores in the Detroit suburbs always have Theo's stuff, and for very afforable prices. Maybe it's no so bad here after all!

Really digging the Harmonie Park 12" as well.

Didn't the last Moodymann come out like 6 months ago??

Thanks for the tip, Andy. I'm surprised I didn't notice this on my last trip to Record Time. I don't stop in there very often (every couple months usually), but I was just there maybe 3 weeks ago and didn't see it.

p.s. Mullygrubber is my hero for hooking me up with Burzum and a bunch of Brazilian stuff in exchange for my Theo and Moodymann and Danielle Dax stuff.

Well, there's that Marvin Gaye remix, better known as Major Moments of Instant Insanity.

I just paid through the nose for the 2-cd Three Chairs album, but it is stunning.

the Eclectic aesthetic (ugh, horrible name) mixes are pretty darn good too.

is this the same thing as that triple-vinyl set that was recently released?

Instant insanity (the 9/11 track, sirens, interviewees, Marvin Gaye)
Patterns indangerous
Richey on seven
Next message (the only dud, a ten-minute trawl through answering machine messages)
Muffled memories
Good kiss

My opinion, killer, with the exception noted above.

The first disc is the same as the vinyl.

that should have said ... these two pieces of genius ...

part one: http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=38202
and part two: http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?what=R&obid=12779

(that's very high praise in my values system)

He's also playing in Boston on 9/11. I have no idea what to expect.

There was one amazing tune at around 90 BPM or so that had a vocal sample "I'm gonna put on my dancing shoes and go out." Does anyone know it? It sounded a lot like the Jill Scott remix, but with male vocals.

i bought it for a friend a couple of weeks ago so think it has been repressed. the biggest record of the last few months for me, no contest.

THE RINK

so rad

at gramaphone they said this was sold out and they're waiting for a repressing :-(

Most recent favorite on is "They Say." Still loving this.

"a slow lurching shuffley house groove replete with out of time massively swung hi hats and a guy singing "we're going downstairs, we're going downstairs" or something for like 15 minutes."

YO did anyone ever get an id on this?

You should try to ask here r1o:

http://www.djhistory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18983

Sorry I can't help

Theo Parrish!

s: the two 'Essential Selections' 12"s with Marcellus Pittman !!!

Yes, do search them. I've been particularly enjoying "Equality of Patience" off volume two recently.

theo is the man, i have nearly everything he's ever done. my favorite underrated thing he did is this:

http://www.discogs.com/release/114976

this is really good. i'd never heard the origial 'falling up' before getting it!

thee local shoppe had a copy of 'sound sculptures vol 1' last time i was in. wonder if it'll still be there next time. that 'synthetic flemm' track is siiiick.

"Synthetic Flemm", "Soul Control", "They Say", and "The Rink" are ALL sick but in different ways. I'd recommend getting it as soon as possible. Thanks for the recommendation on that Skooby Laposky pipecock. I'm checking it out on Emusic now.

the original is nicer than the CC remix

"the original is nicer than the CC remix

-- moonship journey to baja"

assuming youre talking about falling up, i agree wholeheartedly. i was one of those people hammering on the original off the beatdown comp years before the rmxes. i liked the C2 rmx when it dropped, but it was not stellar enough to stand up to the repeated plays that it got. now i want to buy that double pack just to get the original on a full sided pressing! the technasia rmxes were embarassingly bad, too. ick.

Yeah, I wish that release was just the original and the CC remix cause I heard the Chateau Flight Remix and it just seemed kinda pointless.

Anybody know anything about this: http://www.discogs.com/release/1114923. I want it right now.

"Anybody know anything about this: http://www.discogs.com/release/1114923. I want it right now.

-- matt2"

yeah i need to get that one myself, i really liked the Duminie 12" on sound signature, some nice sounds on that joint......

Holy shit! Look at the expanded version of Sound Sculptures, Vol. 1:

http://www.ustem.org/dopejams/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=37&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=2479&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=33

Hideous link, I hope it works. I can not wait.

And it looks like it's going to contain the "Goin Downstairs" track folks were talking about upthread. Again, very excited about this.

^^^
Why I didn't include the original release in my '07 year-end poll ballots/lists (as with Newwworldaquarium's Dead Bears).

Ah, so you knew this was coming in expanded form? I heard that a cd version was coming but I didn't expect this. Someone on his myspace already did the tell-me-it-isn't-so about there being tracks on the cd that weren't released on vinyl.

the vinyl that is out is called "volume 1" and the pic on that page is of the vinyl cover (you can see the vinyl catalogue numbers). its possible the CD contains all of what could be "volume 2" on a later vinyl release, that seems to be the way he does things (like with the First Floor LP/CD). the 3 chairs album on CD has tracks on it that did not come out on wax, though none of them was as good as that in the basement jam. i NEED that shit on wax.

Yeah, I can't imagine that one not showing up on vinyl at some point. I'll bet you might be onto something with the Vol 2 bit.

More an educated hunch (as noted by pipecock, it tends to be his MO with diff't formats), matt2.

looking forward to this appearing on my year end list again...

http://www.discogs.com/release/955865

C1 Twisted Friskie Biscuits

did he retitle this track or remove it altogether?

A question: is the sound on the Ugly Edits bootlegs OK? Presumably they were just mastered from the original white labels, rather than a proper master so I'm thinking not. They're much cheaper, though!

the original ugly edits sound kinda poopy as theyre just recordings of records chopped and sampled into low bit rate samplers. boots of them sound even poopier. if you can get the OGs, get them.

So are any of the Ugly Edits currently available from places like Forced Exposure (these: http://www.forcedexposure.com/labels/sound.signature.html) "legitimate"? How can one really tell? For instance, this one (http://www.discogs.com/release/123113) is obviously one of the bootlegs, but are the ones with the spray painted catalog numbers the real thing?

"but are the ones with the spray painted catalog numbers the real thing?

-- matt2"

yes, those ones are real. the first batch of 1-5 did not have spraypainted numbers on them, i have 4 and 5 as straight up white labels and i know 1-3 came that way as well. then from 6 on, they did the spray paint for all of them, as well as the second batches of 1-5 (which is where i got my originals of #1-3). afaik, none of them have been repressed in at least 3 years now.

Thanks for the info pipecock. I've got downloads of most all of them, and just haven't made myself pay the $17+ per 12" for the vinyl yet. I wanted to make sure get the real ones when I did.

what are you guys even talking about? it's not like TP paid for those samples and I wouldn't be surprised if random people reissued it seeing how easy & lucrative it can be. I like some of those OK but the whole thing was kinda sordid from the start.

i only have 7 and 10 i think? maybe its not ten. which one has 'journey to the light'?

what are you guys even talking about? it's not like TP paid for those samples

I think the questions were just meant to be about sound quality, not sampling & bootleg ethics

i.e. if you buy a boot of a boot does it sound like shit

"what are you guys even talking about? it's not like TP paid for those samples and I wouldn't be surprised if random people reissued it seeing how easy & lucrative it can be. I like some of those OK but the whole thing was kinda sordid from the start.

-- blunt"

well, no matter what the legal aspects are, the original Ugly Edits were relatively bad sounding. the bootlegs of them (recorded from vinyl) sound even worse. and people try to pimp them off as originals, which means you are paying more for a worse product.

anyway, why does your irritation extend only to the Ugly Edits? nearly all of the early KDJ and Sound Signature records are basically illegal disco edits, they just have a color label on them. who cares? bootleg edits are part of the culture, deal with it.

illegal edits are the unsung heroes (well, maybe not anymore) of dance music. i'm no theo parrish scholar, but some of my favorite things by him are the underground cd-r dj mixes he did. the edits are like condensed versions of those.

blunt, I understand what you're saying, but that's why I said "legitimate". Cause I had heard before that the bootlegs (of these already rough sounding bootleg-ish edits) had even worse sound quality.

those mixes are the bawm. yeah I think the ugly edits are vastly overpriced. the early kdj/ss releases are generally too rearranged to be considered edits, in a typical or reverent sense IMO, they're often stripped to bare loops of a disco break.

xpost I'm not really worried about the sound of those records, as you guys can tell by now. crank that mutha up & eq the hell out of it!

my favorite ugly edits are the wonky ones a la d.byrd loop/"got a match?" dialogue etc

I've had the 2xCD version for five days now, and I'm pretty much ready to go ahead and declare it a masterpiece. He definitely made it to be listened to as an album, shortening and mixing together many of the previously released tracks and with interludes/bridges all over the album. And while I absolutely want the new tracks to be released on vinyl, I'm glad that he released all of this as essentially two mixed cds. Of the new stuff, I have to say that "Black Music (I Love You)", "Love Triumphant" (this one may easily become an all-time favorite), "Sundown Town", and "The Interplanetary Gangster Edit". Incredible release.

Um, this part:

Of the new stuff, I have to say that "Black Music (I Love You)", "Love Triumphant" (this one may easily become an all-time favorite), "Sundown Town", and "The Interplanetary Gangster Edit".

Should be:

Of the new stuff, I have to say that "Black Music (I Love You)", "Love Triumphant" (this one may easily become an all-time favorite), "Sundown Town", and "The Interplanetary Gangster Edit" really stand out.

i saw him out two weekends ago, the last hour or so of his set was just straight theo productions, new and old. he really is an exceptional dj, even if his mixing can be pretty iffy

Yes I agree. I've only seen him dj once, but spotless mixing is really not the point (neither in his dj sets nor his productions actually). He has an incredible way of making you move, though.

"a slow lurching shuffley house groove replete with out of time massively swung hi hats and a guy singing "we're going downstairs, we're going downstairs" or something for like 15 minutes."

assuming you figured this out by now?

my question is: why should i care? is this when theo jumps the shark?

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y83/unclebutta/TheoHuxtablemessedupshirtCosbyShow.jpg

alright, alright! i jumped, ok?

"assuming you figured this out by now?

my question is: why should i care? is this when theo jumps the shark?

-- moonship journey to baja"

what are you talking about?

we're going downstairs? who cares?

I'm as dedicated to Theo as one can be and I have to agree with vahid on this one. I'm pretty certain I wish "Goin Downstairs," "Stomp Yo Feet," and maybe even "The Interplanetary Gangster Edit" were all dubs. In each of these, I feel like the vocals distract from what the track is doing and don't really add anything of interest (to me). Still really like the album, but I realized yesterday that I want those three to not have the vocal stuff going on. That is decidedly not the case with "They Say" and "Soul Control" however.

so the CD labeled "CD 1" contains the tracks labeled "CD 2" in the booklet, and vice versa

does that make mine collectible?

Nah, I think they're all like the vahid. Discogs mentions it and mine's that way too.

wow, i don't know what to say about that but that "going downstairs" track is completely bananas. i think it was Rick Wilhite who dropped it at DEMF last year, it was one of the highlights of the festival. at the time, i didn't know who it was that did it, it was only when the CD came out that i finally could ID it. it is a dancefloor monster.

Don't get me wrong, I still love the track just not the vocals.

finally got my fancy stereo unpacked and set up after moving, had the first chance to listen to the new album in an, uh, acoustically favorable setting (ie not on an ipod, car stereo or boombox) ... and fuck, it's goooood.

"love triumphant" is incredible, but i couldn't even *hear* the african percussion until now. definitely a devil-in-the-details type of track.

wow @ "cry freedom" speech in "sundown town"

Yeah, "Love Triumphant" has definitely ascended to the upper echelon of Theo tracks in short order. Still loving the album as a whole.

Just in case interested parties haven't seen this, here's another potentially controversial statement from Theo: http://www.moodmat.com/?p=977

Pipecock's blog has some discussion here:
http://infinitestatemachine.com/2008/07/14/interesting-interview-with-theo-parrish/

Dissensus has some discussion here:
http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=7992

"The curtain that supposedly hides all this is the bullshit illusion that dance music has no race, no gender, that its about the celebration of some sort of utopian concept. This mere notion wasn’t even circulated until some white folks were made to feel uncomfortable at a party they had no business being at, and came face to face with the fact that this music like all other music is originated on african/black experience, and that perhaps they were very much like every other Elvis and Eminem that ever came or went, That perhaps they too, are tourists, but they still want to be superstar-dj-such-and-such."

I love Theo like crazy but really dude WTF

"this music, like all other music, is originated on african / black experience" - whatever dude.

No one on ILX really believes this, right?

Ronan weighs in: http://ronanfitzgerald.net/houseisafeeling/2008/07/15/theo-parrish-interview/

If Assholes Could Fly This Place Would Be An Airport

nice work ronan

i do enjoy theo's pts about using afros on album covers and sending bitten work to the artists you bite from as a 'tribute' tho

Ronan, do you write for White Guilt Monthly?

Not to derail this fine thread about Theo and his music, but really, reading that, I didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for you.

The only climbdown from all this relativism is that I think a black person really does have more of a right to comment on cultural appropriation or discrimination than a white person

What about a white Jew? How about a white homosexual?

why are you even reading this thread

I don't feel guilty about being white, just a bit cautious about commenting on what a black person should think about how they are treated by white people.

I know that raises issues of sitting on the fence, I don't like either position to be honest.

What do you think about the Theo piece Mr Airport? It's pretty easy to criticise in this without setting out a stall.

I love Theo (though not feeling the new one as much as some folks here) despite his dumb ass opinions. I ain't mad at him. House music needs shit disturbers. I'm glad he's expressing himself, at the very least.

really the question is why the fuck would anyone want to appropriate anything from Jews?

as a homo, i sometimes get a little miffed that people have no fcking clue about the real roots of a lot of disco and house music, but as long as those performing it do-- dude from Hercules and Love Affair has done interview with BUTT magazine, for example-- i can't care less.

that said, i agree with theo about a lot of what he says.

House music needs shit disturbers. I'm glad he's expressing himself, at the very least.

people keep saying this, and maybe it's true, but the so called shit disturbers in dance music almost always end up just backing up dumb negative opinions instead of dumb positive ones.

why can't we have a few genuine contrarians who come out and combine diametrically opposite views and genuinely challenge people....in techno a "shit disturber" seems to be any one of the 100 producers a year who does some bitchy interview about the genre du jour, OR A GUY FROM DETROIT.

sounds like one paranoid ass motherfucker that got baited by theakston into putting some dumb generalizations on the record

who is theakston anyways? if you're gonna do a "one question interview" aka give him a good rope you should at least insert a byline.

i think that the UR guys are shit disturbers to the max, and though they certainly have similar talking points to theo's, they're much more positive and inclusive.

I totally disagree.....I think it's a stuck record.

what's more....these guys ARE the status quo! they are the shit! (no negative aspersions intended)

Once they get it ready to put out, they’ll use pictures of little black children, and black women with afros- things they never could be, and never have been -on their cover art to help complete the illusion of having a truly down, soulful product to offer the market. Sometimes they’ll outright sample YOUR song, and copy your drumpattern, send it to a magazine and some adjective limited writer will say the copy sounds ’so-and-so esque’, never making that artist stand on their own, letting the thief who made it ride on the back of original artists.

so, who's this? i think definitely trus'me, but who else?

who is theakston anyways? if you're gonna do a "one question interview" aka give him a good rope you should at least insert a byline.

Some random dude who used to be Carl Craig's right-hand man at Planet E and helped establish both the DEMF and Ghostly.

oh i just read ronan's piece, good point, renders my question sort of moot

(BTW: "Theakston" = anagram for Totes Khan, his birth name.)

by the way, anyone else totally agree with pipecock's recent post about how much Planet-E has completely declined into major suck territoy?

really the question is why the fuck would anyone want to appropriate anything from Jews?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Berlin

okay, Irving Berlin aside?

by the way, anyone else totally agree with pipecock's recent post about how much Planet-E has completely declined into major suck territoy?

-- the table is the table

yeah, what the hell's with all of this new euro crap. bring back the real detroit shit, like, uh, ibex and jason hogans.

stick your neck out and blast the 4 or 5 planet e releases a year

why is he putting out euro-leaning tech-house when he could be putting out records by common factor, agent x and e-dancer?

"world hold on" (c2 remix #4)

really the question is why the fuck would anyone want to appropriate anything from Jews?

???

"yeah, what the hell's with all of this new euro crap. bring back the real detroit shit, like, uh, ibex and jason hogans.

-- moonship journey to baja"

the jason hogans records are not my favorite, but those Ibex records are both the hotness. Tony Ollivera is the shit, a highly underrated producer. his records on his own Dynamite Soul label are no joke either, neither are the DJ Genesis records he put out. i actually have a post about the new Ibex 12" he put out a few months back in the pipeline at ISM, that shit flew way under everyone's radar yet still manages to be better than almost every other techno record this year.

go ahead and keep clowning on shit you don't know about. the only one wearing a red nose and big floppy shoes is you.

"why is he putting out euro-leaning tech-house when he could be putting out records by common factor, agent x and e-dancer?

-- moonship journey to baja"

again showing your lack of knowledge. i just played that Agent X record on friday night, it is one of the best dancefloor Planet E's not by carl or recloose. of course Agent X is Mike Clark, only one of the best deejays on the planet and one of the people behind the Beatdown Sounds comps. he has only been putting out excellent records since 1992, you should probably clown on him and go buy Martin Buttrich records instead. the common factor records on Planet E are very nice as well, never been a fan of Saunderson's E Dancer project but i wouldnt call the records bad by any means.

"oh i just read ronan's piece, good point, renders my question sort of moot

-- moonship journey to baja"

does it? Ronan is laughable. i love quotes like this:

"In fact I’m imagining some hippy-dippy 90s strawman when I hear it suggested that white people eulogise about how race doesn’t matter in dance music."

i have seen THIS EXACT ARGUMENT only about 100 times on this message board alone.

"And why is racial militancy so much more a part of dance music discourse than sexual militancy? Wouldn’t it be quite easy to construct similar arguments about gay people in the music industry? About the theft of disco?"

this is another good one. disco music came from gay people listening to mostly black and mostly straight soul music. there were some gay artists initially, but that really changed as the dynamics of the audience listening to the music changed. regardless, i dont know anyone who doesn't acknowledge the gayness in dance music in the US even if the gay crowd has largely moved on to different stuff. in fact, the gayness was probably the largest factor in disco's "death" in mainstream culture here. it is not like the apparent secret that dance music is black, since it is widely known and appreciated probably due to the obvious gayness of the poppy disco artists.

"Above and beyond all of that, I can’t help but feel that there are much more serious issues of prejudice in the wider world than in the world of techno. Okay, so that’s easy for me to say, I’m not a black techno musician. And sure, making the world a better place is less about making prioritised lists of goals and more about a series of them being achieved in tandem, but still. Is the music industry really the first place you think of when you think of injustice? Of racial injustice?"

gee, i wonder why it doesnt matter to you, Ronan. could it be because you get paid to write about white artists for dance publications owned by white people and marketed to white audiences? it IS completely meaningless to you, you are part of the problem.

"In the end, like other Parrish interviews, the piece is so very scriptural, so biblical."

the only scripture is this: "and god said Ronan is a fucking moron". end of story.

"Beyond that, as soon as a white person begins to talk about or agree too keenly with the idea of white people “stealing” music of black origin, you must ask what right a white person has to define such a theft? Isn’t that once again seizing the controls?"

seriously, how does this guy get taken seriously by anyone? how does he get PAID to write about dance music? this boggles the mind. i think my 6 year old understands more about how not to be an asshole than he does.

"I wonder which race invented the idea of cultural appropriation in the first place. If you know the answer, please tell me."

coming from a white person, i love it. love it love it love it.

disco music came from gay people listening to mostly black and mostly straight soul music.

no, THIS is a great one!

blaming gays for the death of disco!

'the gay crowd' moved on, naturally - because the straight crowd continues to rep for 'real dance music' and couldn't POSSIBLY have shifted the boundaries of 'dance music' to fit their worldview of what that actually means

for better or worse (in the morning is a pretty decent track) that agent x ep sounds like a david guetta (or other generic french filterhouse) tune. i was listening to it a lot right after i graduated college, along with a lot of crydamoure records and similar sounding stuff.

you're right about disco's death, pipecock-- ie, this country's horrific homophobia, especially amidst the beginnings of AIDS, was a-raging-- but disco was definitely and pretty defiantly gay well until after the Disco Inferno incident, and well into when house music started piping out of clubs in Chicago.

and disco's death is more a timely thing-- more appropriate would be 'disco's decline in popularity.'

i love his claim to the straight origins of dance music though ... as if the gay clubs that essentially created disco as a dj form were somehow allllll full of white gays appropriating the sounds of straight blacks

and deej, he is right, he just doesn't talk about the reasons for it. which are mainly AIDS, the shutting down of various super-star US clubs due to various issues, and the arrivial of a little thing called house music.

any implication that 'the gay crowd' (L.O.L.) has 'moved on' from dance music = pipecock has never actually spent any time in chicago whatsoever

yeah, that is a bit off-- it was pretty much full of italians, latinos and blacks spinning to mostly-mixed audiences. and by mixed, we're talking economically, racially, sexually, etc.

never been a fan of Saunderson's E Dancer project but i wouldnt call the records bad by any means

ha ha, why not, will you lose your detroit patriot status?

or if he meant 'moved on' simply from disco ... also inaccurate

to be fair, deej, it is just his scene and his generalization about that scene-- techno is pretty much dead to gay people in the US, at least from what i've seen and experienced first hand. progressive house, shitty club house, hip-house and then disco reign.

"shitty club house"

" in fact, the gayness was probably the largest factor in disco's "death""

yeah, dude. unless you've had to experience the Stud then i'd stfu.

just quoting from someone's argument doesn't rebut it, vahid.

are you going to check my gay clubbing credentials?

stop and think

breathe and stop

no i'm not. but the music that i've heard at most strictly "gay" clubs is fucking horrific. exceptions being Aunt Charlies and The Gangway, but that's only because Bus Station John is the man.

ok, so you don't like US progressive house.

or danny tenaglia. big deal.

"disco music came from gay people listening to mostly black and mostly straight soul music.

no, THIS is a great one!

-- deej"

uh, it is true. have you heard of philadelphia soul? i mean, the early disco deejays were playing almost entirely straight black soul music, read "Love Saves the Day" for a pretty excellent recap of that time period since you obviously havent been paying any attention.

"'the gay crowd' moved on, naturally - because the straight crowd continues to rep for 'real dance music' and couldn't POSSIBLY have shifted the boundaries of 'dance music' to fit their worldview of what that actually means

-- deej"

say what? popular gay culture moved on from disco music, i do not see how this can be argued.

"for better or worse (in the morning is a pretty decent track) that agent x ep sounds like a david guetta (or other generic french filterhouse) tune. i was listening to it a lot right after i graduated college, along with a lot of crydamoure records and similar sounding stuff.

-- moonship journey to baja"

the french didn't invent filtered disco loops. has the timeline here really become that twisted? i know you have heard Chicago house before!

"you're right about disco's death, pipecock-- ie, this country's horrific homophobia, especially amidst the beginnings of AIDS, was a-raging-- but disco was definitely and pretty defiantly gay well until after the Disco Inferno incident, and well into when house music started piping out of clubs in Chicago.

and disco's death is more a timely thing-- more appropriate would be 'disco's decline in popularity.'

-- the table is the table"

that is why i phrased it as "gayness was probably the largest factor in disco's "death" in mainstream culture here". obviously i don't believe that disco died, and i am aware of what happened in the underground culture. most people are not so their knowledge of disco can be summed up as such. disco's gayness was more offensive than it's blackness, at least it was more socially acceptable at the time to be openly homophobic.

"i love his claim to the straight origins of dance music though ... as if the gay clubs that essentially created disco as a dj form were somehow allllll full of white gays appropriating the sounds of straight blacks

-- deej"

who said they were appropriating anything? they danced to the music because they felt it in their soul. that doesnt stop the artists who released the music from being straight in the beginning.

"any implication that 'the gay crowd' (L.O.L.) has 'moved on' from dance music = pipecock has never actually spent any time in chicago whatsoever

-- deej"

unless you try to count crappy trancey nonsense as house, techno, or disco, then the popular gay culture is just not as closely associated with that music as it was from 1975-199something. blame raving, blame whatever you want. in cities like New York or Chicago black and gay people are still down with that music, but it is not SOLELY their domain as it once was. i dont know how you can argue that unless it has been 20+ years since you have been to a gay club.

OK, i'll bite, pipecock. who invented filter loops? DJ sneak?

"to be fair, deej, it is just his scene and his generalization about that scene-- techno is pretty much dead to gay people in the US, at least from what i've seen and experienced first hand. progressive house, shitty club house, hip-house and then disco reign.

-- the table is the table"

exactly.

did paperclip people invent filter loops?

see, pipecock's last comment there is what i was trying to say, vahid. the majority of gay clubs play such garbage that i get tard tingles when i pay my $40 cover to watch a bunch of gym-monkeys try to out-queen each other.

"world hold on" (c2 remix #4)

"OK, i'll bite, pipecock. who invented filter loops? DJ sneak?

-- moonship journey to baja"

i mean, disco loops are tracable back to the 80's in Chicago, i honestly couldn't tell you who made the first one but Daft Punk jacked it from Chicago in general, though obviously their production was a little less clean and polished than the French shit that blew up charts.

i dunno, man. you guys are really transparent. maybe nobody pays you for your music writing because 90% of the stuff you say is just an attempt to fluff up the music you happen to play and to talk shit about the music that other people happen to play.

uh, it is true. have you heard of philadelphia soul? i mean, the early disco deejays were playing almost entirely straight black soul music, read "Love Saves the Day" for a pretty excellent recap of that time period since you obviously havent been paying any attention.

ive read it. im asking you about the audience for the dance music that was disco, and the rise of club culture. yeah obviously it came out of soul music that was commonly performed by straight ppl - i dont know why youd think that was even in dispute - but the genesis of 'disco music' and its aesthetic is not solely inherited from the aesthetics of straight early 70s soul ... a lot of shit came into the style in between harold melvin and it leaving and becoming house and electro and whatever else in the early 80s ... im not talking about how the artists themselves identified, im talking about aesthetics and the engine behind the music, which was one part early 70s philly soul but also plenty of showtunes and kitsch and (other cliche shorthands for gay aesthetics that im probably being somewhat offensively reductive about) that are just as much about what makes disco 'disco' as straight black dudes w/ a four on the floor kick.

say what? popular gay culture moved on from disco music, i do not see how this can be argued.

...only in the sense that all cultures 'moved on' from disco music

unless you try to count crappy trancey nonsense as house, techno, or disco, then the popular gay culture is just not as closely associated with that music as it was from 1975-199something. blame raving, blame whatever you want. in cities like New York or Chicago black and gay people are still down with that music, but it is not SOLELY their domain as it once was. i dont know how you can argue that unless it has been 20+ years since you have been to a gay club.

if by this you mean that gay ppl are a diverse group who listen to a variety of styles of music, then yes i agree

xpost

like, it always spirals inward toward your music collection, and your podcasts, and the house parties you DJ at. guess what - you guys don't have a monopoly on meaningful engagement with music, nor are you the first people to own records + tables (and maybe even a crate!) in the history of the world.

which was one part early 70s philly soul but also plenty of showtunes and kitsch and (other cliche shorthands for gay aesthetics that im probably being somewhat offensively reductive about) that are just as much about what makes disco 'disco' as straight black dudes w/ a four on the floor kick.

or maybe the most obvious example here is THE DJ coming out of gay club culture, thus EDITS and extended breakdowns and all that shit that makes up current dance music ... black & italian dudes spinning for gay black dudes???

i mean, disco loops are tracable back to the 80's in Chicago, i honestly couldn't tell you who made the first one but Daft Punk jacked it from Chicago in general, though obviously their production was a little less clean and polished than the French shit that blew up charts.

-- pipecock

yeah, but it doesn't change the fact that mike clark's "in the morning" sounds as commercial and polished as any cassius or dj falcon track. i mean, what do you make of that, and the fact that geography aside, clark and planet e put that record out around the peak of the international filter-house boom, and not in 80's chicago?

xp to pipecock/self - point being its supremely reductive to imply that gays were just an incidental audience for 'black culture' and maybe things are a little bit more complex

the funny part is i agreed w/ a few of your criticisms of ronan, if not the obnoxious way in which u phrased them, but you happened to sound just as stupid and reductive if not moreso in your dismissal of, you know, nuance and complication

i dunno, it's like talking to geir. it's like a game of twister that you play with your brain. you're going to pick which things you like: 80s chicago house, 90s detroit techno, "underground" disco (but not the bee gees), theo parrish. and then you try to build an intellectual position where you stick a hand or a foot in which each one, but don't touch anything else, no matter how convoluted that makes your stance.

vahid, i'm pretty open to a lot of things in the world of dance music. i just have never liked progressive house, except for that one Sasha and Digweed mix i bought when i was 14 after watching Groove. pretty much everything else in that subgenre, i find rather garbagey. but to say that all i do is look inward is fucking wrong, and you know it, so seriously shut up.

story i quoted in the bobbins thread:

KEVIN STARKE: "There was this one story that I always talk about. I would go on Saturday nights when Armando played at the Warehouse. I would go down there to watch him play and talk to him, just find out information on records. He'd always show me records when I didn't know what it was.

"Saturday night at the Warehouse was primarily a black night. There weren't too many white guys. But I remember this - he looked at me one night, and said, 'Watch this. This is the record I'm going to play and mess these guys up.' And he showed me the record: 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' by Nirvana. I'm thinking, oh, they're never going to dance to this. They're going to get pissed!

"These people lost their minds. People went fucking nuts. That guitar riff - people were dancing all crazy. That's when I kind of looked at it like, okay, never say you can only play this kind of music at this kind of a club. Never say this type of people only like this type of music. You never know. Once you've got the crowd, they're yours."

i used to go clubbing five nights a week, when i was closer to 25 than to 30 (actually i'm 31). and because in california the clubbing scene in general and the gay clubbing scene are pretty tightly knit, i've been to my fair share of progressive house scenes. there was one particularly big one, i forget the name of the dj, but she's pretty famous, a very butch lesbian. the only track i recognized all night was basemenet jaxx's "fly life", which was pitched up like +8. i think it might have been a laidback luke edit or something like that. did i like it? no, not really, but not enough to get very snobby about it. it was a weird sort of music, but only a few steps removed from robert armani or dj funk, both of whom i enjoy a lot.

i dunno, maybe i'm too old to get "tard tingles" over people liking music i don't like. maybe it means i like detroit techno less than you do, i dunno.

take my best of 07 list, which i would edit qquite a bit in hindsight, but:

1. Jichael Mackson / Wasn’t Me EP (Musique Risquee)
2. Brendon Moeller / Jazz Space EP (Third Ear Recordings)
3. Echospace / “The Coldest Season Part 2” 12″ (Modern Love)
4. Kiki & Sasse / “Belvedere” 12″ (Moodmusic)
5. dOP / Between the Blues EP (Circus Company)
6. Substance & Vainqueur / “Libration/Resonance” 12″ (Scion Versions)
7. Nomadico / The Nomadico EP (Underground Resistance)
8. Pom Pom / Pom Pom 29 EP (Pom Pom)
9. Breakage / “Clarendon/The Shroud” 12″ (Digital Soundboy Recording Co.)
10. Len Faki / “Work/Odyssee I” 12″ (Podium)

Detroit techno, new-era British jungle, dub techno, live instrument house music, european minimal and tech-house.

i ain't no one-minded slouch, is all i'm saying. i don't like being called that sort of thing.

i'm not even going to look at that list because i don't really judge people on their musical taste.

these conversations are just like conversations i used to have with trance DJs in the late 90s, except instead of talking about "soul" and "grit" and stuff they talk about "emotion" and "vibes". they talk about techno the same way you guys talk about the banging house they play in gay clubs.

i have to say i'm pretty wary of arguments that work equally well when you keep the propositions the same but swap or substitute the subjects. i think the greeks had a word for that ... rhetoric? is that it?

considering the fact that you called pipecock and me inward-looking slouches, you defintiely do judge people based on what you perceive to be their taste in music.

and yes, it is all personal. but i have a goddamn right to hate mainstream gay club culture and the music that is played there.

this is a serious poster, who listens to serious music

oh fuck you deej. if i had enough money i'd be chillin in baltimore at whartscape this weekend, wearing silly clothes and getting naked and taking mushrooms all the time. not serious.

"i dunno, man. you guys are really transparent. maybe nobody pays you for your music writing because 90% of the stuff you say is just an attempt to fluff up the music you happen to play and to talk shit about the music that other people happen to play.

-- moonship journey to baja"

i approach my music writing not from the standpoint of a "critic" which to be honest i find quite worthless, especially in something that is as functional as dance music. i approach it as someone who participates in the culture that i write about and nothing more or less. i just say the things that my friends and i talk about, not as music critics but as people who live dance music.

"ive read it. im asking you about the audience for the dance music that was disco, and the rise of club culture. yeah obviously it came out of soul music that was commonly performed by straight ppl - i dont know why youd think that was even in dispute - but the genesis of 'disco music' and its aesthetic is not solely inherited from the aesthetics of straight early 70s soul ... a lot of shit came into the style in between harold melvin and it leaving and becoming house and electro and whatever else in the early 80s ... im not talking about how the artists themselves identified, im talking about aesthetics and the engine behind the music, which was one part early 70s philly soul but also plenty of showtunes and kitsch and (other cliche shorthands for gay aesthetics that im probably being somewhat offensively reductive about) that are just as much about what makes disco 'disco' as straight black dudes w/ a four on the floor kick."

i wouldn't disagree with any of that, only that the initial influence was black music. in fact, you can see in that book certain disco deejays lamenting when the music became too "white" and moved out to Fire Island and similar rich white spots.

"...only in the sense that all cultures 'moved on' from disco music"

not necessarily, i think that black culture stayed pretty attatched to it through sampling in hiphop and house as well as dancing to it in house and "classics" sets. you can still play that music to a black crowd and people remember it and feel it, i am not so sure that the same can be said for gay culture on the whole.

"if by this you mean that gay ppl are a diverse group who listen to a variety of styles of music, then yes i agree

-- deej"

that is fine, it is just a change from when it was mainstream for gay culture to be one with house/disco/techno culture.

"like, it always spirals inward toward your music collection, and your podcasts, and the house parties you DJ at. guess what - you guys don't have a monopoly on meaningful engagement with music, nor are you the first people to own records + tables (and maybe even a crate!) in the history of the world.

-- moonship journey to baja"

never have i said that i do. i do claim to represent a culture that i take part in, one that is what remains of the original house and techno culture. it is not something culturally removed as well as removed in time, as it may be for other people such as Ronan.

"or maybe the most obvious example here is THE DJ coming out of gay club culture, thus EDITS and extended breakdowns and all that shit that makes up current dance music ... black & italian dudes spinning for gay black dudes???"

sure that is a good argument. the deejay was obviously of utmost importance, and that could certainly be a way in which their influence was felt from the beginning. but the tools they worked with were still black and straight! i would never try to take anything away from the importance of gay culture to dance music!

"xp to pipecock/self - point being its supremely reductive to imply that gays were just an incidental audience for 'black culture' and maybe things are a little bit more complex"

never did i say that they were incidental. it was just a later development of their scene that the artists actually making the music changed to more closely reflect the people dancing to it.

"the funny part is i agreed w/ a few of your criticisms of ronan, if not the obnoxious way in which u phrased them, but you happened to sound just as stupid and reductive if not moreso in your dismissal of, you know, nuance and complication

-- deej"

i feel like much of any of my arguemnts are about nuance.

"i dunno, it's like talking to geir. it's like a game of twister that you play with your brain. you're going to pick which things you like: 80s chicago house, 90s detroit techno, "underground" disco (but not the bee gees), theo parrish. and then you try to build an intellectual position where you stick a hand or a foot in which each one, but don't touch anything else, no matter how convoluted that makes your stance.

-- moonship journey to baja"

the things i talk about in relation to dance music are all very obviously connected, you can follow a timeline showing their relation in time and space. i am not against French filter house, i just recognize that it was not their invention. i am also not against the bee gees, but they were not in and of the disco scene nor the soul scene that came before it. they may have had some good songs, but they were derivative of cultures that they were not from.

^^ hear that, ronan? you're removed from the culture that pipecock represents ... just like the bee gees!

;_;

it was DJ irene i was thinking of. i'm not sure i'd call anybody a gym monkey but i'd say things were getting sorta primitive on the dance floor that night.

http://www.cooljunkie.com/interviews/images/interviews/dj/irene_lg.jpg

would kick it with

"yeah, but it doesn't change the fact that mike clark's "in the morning" sounds as commercial and polished as any cassius or dj falcon track. i mean, what do you make of that, and the fact that geography aside, clark and planet e put that record out around the peak of the international filter-house boom, and not in 80's chicago?

-- moonship journey to baja"

i think that by listening to mike's deejay sets or the records that he makes, it is pretty obvious who would have been influencing him when he made the track. i have heard him play any number of chicago jams, never heard him drop a Daft Punk joint though. not that he wouldn't, but for him to put out a record influenced by music that was also influencing other music at the time isn't that strange when he was all about it for years before. i mean "I Can't Kick This Feeling When It Hits" isn't much different from a filter disco song, i am sure you're not gonna say kenny was copying Daft Punk and not Chicago.

Sorry, but I'm still confused about" "really the question is why the fuck would anyone want to appropriate anything from Jews?"

"^^ hear that, ronan? you're removed from the culture that pipecock represents ... just like the bee gees!

-- moonship journey to baja"

if Ronan was only good part of the time he could be the beegees of techno, but he isn't.

psst: "i'm your conscience"

i don't think you can compare "i can't kick this feeling with it hits" to "in the morning", they sound very different.

"in the morning" is basically just the loop of the chaka khan (?) song with some added hats. which is great, that's what a lot of great filter loop tracks do. nothing particularly amazing.

"ICKTFWIH" loops the chic sample at the beginning for a bit, but then rapidly degrades it basic-channel style down to the heavily filter "gonna do gonna do gonna do" loop until it turns it into a soft drone. then he introduces whole new beat sample on top of it and lets that beat ride for a while over the drone. the whole thing is so much hazier and more textured than the mike clark track. i would say the first time i heard it, well after i was acquainted with filter house, was one of those OMG brain-melting moments you have maybe once a year or so.

maybe i'll listen to both RIGHT NOW and let you know if i change my mind, though.

either which way, the point is that both guys were being influenced by the same people Daft Punk were. much of the french filter house thing was Daft Punk ripoffs, or tunes by guys who were also listening to the same records! so no matter what, none of them was really rocking an original style, you have to look to Chicago for that.

one of the reasons Daft Punk will always get a pass from me is the track "Teachers". if only all european artists were so transparent with tier influences i think there would be less of the overall problem that Theo was talking about!

so anyway i was making a point that it's hard to say "planet e fell off because they're following scene trends ..." when really they've been doing that since day one.

which you didn't say in your blog but you said elsewhere on ILX in reference to the buttrich and lazy fat people and saunderson remix EPs

"so anyway i was making a point that it's hard to say "planet e fell off because they're following scene trends ..." when really they've been doing that since day one.

-- moonship journey to baja"

i wouldnt say they have been "following trends since day 1", but they have included many different sub genres that have since died off (broken beat, that glitchy todd sines record, etc). the difference is that it was never such a huge amount of releases all in a row with nothing else interesting inbetween. a record here and there that is like that, even a bad one (which i wouldnt say the agent x, todd sines, or broken beat type jams were), is not big news.

the earliest planet e release were american pressings of popular european dance trends (ie the eevo lute, a.r.t. and quadrant releases)

"the earliest planet e release were american pressings of popular european dance trends (ie the eevo lute, a.r.t. and quadrant releases)

-- moonship journey to baja"

all of which were influenced by Detroit music and were not widely available here. and again, that wasn't all the releases nor were they all in a row with nothing else to show for it.

i think that's all they released in 90-93, except one 69 and one PCP release.

anyway, i actually like the recent watson / buttrich / ripperton releases so i'm not going to be able to meet you on your big point that the 2007/2008 release schedule has been all boring stuff in a row

"i think that's all they released in 90-93, except one 69 and one PCP release.

anyway, i actually like the recent watson / buttrich / ripperton releases so i'm not going to be able to meet you on your big point that the 2007/2008 release schedule has been all boring stuff in a row

-- moonship journey to baja"

http://www.discogs.com/release/33015

http://www.discogs.com/release/4236

http://www.discogs.com/release/8854

http://www.discogs.com/release/4235

as well as this entire sublabel for Naomi Daniels records:

http://www.discogs.com/label/I+Ner+Zon+Sounds

so 3 out of 9 were records that were still good despite being european. that is only 1/3, and when you consider that he was still releasing his own music on Transmat, R&S, and ART instead of only on his own like he does now, it goes to show the much better balance the label had even then.

all I'm saying is personal insults are used here as an excuse not to engage with some of the points I made.

what's more interesting to me is that I, I think like Vahid, feel uneasy about people really vehemently hating on "dumb trance" or "cheesy house" or whatever.

I mean....shouldn't dance music retain vulgarity or a certain lack of credibility?

I don't go out and listen to that music but I'm not a better person because of that, and I like that there is a culture where people do I think.

Otherwise what's left.....message board piety?

And to open that up a bit, would you really be happy Tom, if the artists you like "got their dues"?

What would you be posting about here? Or elsewhere?

If there was no shitty minimal, no morons like myself, what would your music taste be then?

Once somebody "gets their dues" isn't that just when you read about them in the broadsheets or something? And nobody cares anymore....

One final thing on the vulgarity...do you think people who don't like any house or techno hear the subtlety and the differences we do here? Some of them probably think it's all shitty dance music. I still feel Theo Parrish shares more with David Guetta than he does with any non-dance artist.....just for that reason.

gee, i wonder why it doesnt matter to you, Ronan. could it be because you get paid to write about white artists for dance publications owned by white people and marketed to white audiences? it IS completely meaningless to you, you are part of the problem.

and just to bite...for whatever reason, and descend into the record collection game...probably one of the nicest responses I ever got to an article was last time I interviewed a Detroit artist...a guy who was guarded to begin with then emailed me afterwards to say he really enjoyed it.

people aren't this partisan, nobody is, outside of the inner walls of the brain

^^ it was eminem wasn't it

jack white!

I don't go out and listen to that music but I'm not a better person because of that, and I like that there is a culture where people do I think. don't think

fixed

people are supposed to think in nightclubs???

i like to party to dumb shit as much as the next guy, ronan, but that is not cheesey contemporary gay progressive house jams or super trancey stuff. that stuff is pretty empty-sounding to me, and i won't give it the time of day.

and you know what, yeah, i do think people should think a bit when they're in a nightclub. of course, the priority is getting the high from whatever you want to get the high from (the music, thealcohol, the e, etc) and dancing your face off, but a little bit of thought and consideration would actually be totally welcome to most dance-floors, imho.

I'm not saying it should be some spazzed out experience, I just don't know why the need to judge people.

http://img.world-gay-sex.com/st/thumbs/022/0876330425.jpg

admittedly, i'm a pretty judgmental queer, but it really is the fact that mainstream gay club culture is vomitous, ronan, at least in the us.

regular club culture? totally fine, if not for businessmen not dancing whilst getting shitfaced at VIP tables...them i can do without, but everything/one else is gravy.

table it seems like your beef is with gay culture, not with trance music as such

oh no i hate trance music too. it is my major turn-off in another person re: that il thread. if someone tells me they love trance, i actually tend to think of them as an idiot and stop paying any attention to them. prgressive house i give more credit to, but that is because some of the older progressive stuff is quite good. 99% of all trance i've ever heard is garbage.

but yeah, you're probably right.

And to open that up a bit, would you really be happy Tom, if the artists you like "got their dues"?

As somebody who is nominally on the pro-detroit side of the argument I think that most of 'us' would be happy just to have a weekly place we could go and listen to the music we like with large-ish, enthusiastic, knowledgable crowds, and to be booked to DJ music we like once in a while and to see the DJs we like booked in our towns as well. Instead, the last few times I've gone to see a DJ I was excited for, it's been in an empty club, meanwhile clubs playing the latest minimal jams are packed to the rafters (ok this is overexaggerating). I think you can see where at least a little bitterness creeps in. I still don't think that being all militant and confrontational about it is the way to go, but I definately understand where they are coming from and where you could get pretty angry about the situation pretty fast.

This is probably a pretty U.S. perspective that maybe the Europeans (where I assume there is a lot more outlet for 'true detroit or whatever' music, but maybe I'm wrong about that) don't see as clearly.

rockist is the rockist

dahnceist?

Which city are you in sous les paves?

Yeah, take for example a couple years ago. Sure, the WMC is a stupid shitfest, but when Loco Dice, Steve Bug and those dudes were spinning, everyone was clawing to get it. When Derrick May, Stacy Pullen, Lee Burridge and Kevin Saunderson were spinning, there were about...oh, 40 people there? And they all still fucking had it, were pulling all sorts of crazy shit on the decks.

The only refuge I have from new minimal and tech-house stuff is disco nights, which are wildly popular here.

i dont know about loco dice or steve bug even coming through chicago. i saw matthew dear in chi once and it attracted fewer people than theo parrish. im not sure that there really is, nationally, a larger audience for tech house than classic stuff

but maybe this is also a chicago/detroit house/techno divide

i, too, would much rather see loco dice and steve bug dj than kevin saunderson!

that is what makes us different, rio. okay, steve bug v. saunderson would be hard. loco dice? meh.

I'm in San Diego. Two or three years ago some friends and I put on a pretty great techno night (IMO) and were drawing like 80 - 150 people once a month to a pretty cozy venue but the owner switched it to a prog/electro-house/breaks *gag/double-gag/triple-gag* night which promptly started drawing 300+ easy. I really can't blame the dude for doing it but I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me a little bitter for a minute. To bring it back on topic, this is the landscape you have to keep in mind when you hear detroit cats talk about how they feel marginalized or whatever.

^^ was this at kadan

and do you know tylero?

it was at honeybee hive and that is me

hi dere

breaks have a long and storied history in southern california, wouldn't take it personal. also, is that the one w/ the girl DJs? red sonya and skutech and gang? are you sure it's not just that they're better at using myspace or something?

oh yeah that is fully it, which is why I don't let the bitterness totally overtake me (introspection, admitting your own faults yo) but it did creep in. anyway sonya and sku are probably putting on the best night for house in town right now (other than the west-coast style bar dynamite night) but they book female dj's only so a lot of us are out of luck on that one. anyway this is going pretty far afield now...

the success of club nights relies on a lot of other variables though too ... what neighborhood you're in, the amount and effectiveness of promotion, the competition, the relative success of competing nights, etc

tyler - i am back in town (permanently) - hope to see you soon

I mainly listen to older things like Don Cherry and Steve Reich but I'd love to see people like Kevin Saunderson and Loco Dice! Well I've seen Kevin and he was very good but I've yet to see Loco Dice play out

"all I'm saying is personal insults are used here as an excuse not to engage with some of the points I made."

i guess that depends on the definition of the word "points".

"what's more interesting to me is that I, I think like Vahid, feel uneasy about people really vehemently hating on "dumb trance" or "cheesy house" or whatever.

I mean....shouldn't dance music retain vulgarity or a certain lack of credibility?"

no. i can't imagine why you would think so.

"I don't go out and listen to that music but I'm not a better person because of that, and I like that there is a culture where people do I think."

good for you!

"Otherwise what's left.....message board piety?"

or maybe just good music.

"And to open that up a bit, would you really be happy Tom, if the artists you like 'got their dues'?"

well let's see, i write about it obsessively for my own blog, other sites and blogs, and on message boards. nah, i dont think that would make me happy.

"What would you be posting about here? Or elsewhere?"

i would post about the same things i like posting about now: good music. it would be a relief to not have to constantly be bombarded with people who don't know shit bigging up trendy music with no past and no future. i can think of nothing better!

"If there was no shitty minimal, no morons like myself, what would your music taste be then?"

my music taste would be the same as when banging techno was popular, then "microhouse", then electroclash, then mnml, then whatever comes next.

"Once somebody 'gets their dues' isn't that just when you read about them in the broadsheets or something? And nobody cares anymore...."

no, YOU don't care any more. which is your problem entirely. i do not care less about the music of people like Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk, John Coltrane, the Beatles, Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, the Talking Heads, Bob Marley, etc because they get their propers. in fact it makes me very happy that they are all respected outside of their own genres simply because they made great records.

ideally, people like Derrick May, Carl Craig, Mr. Fingers, Theo Parrish, etc. would be in peoples' consciousness just the same way those other artists are. does that turn you off because it is not "techno" enough or something? i would love for those guys to be touchstones for people who make music in all genres just like those artists, it could only lead to more interesting music being out there. instead, they don't even get respect from 90% of dance music fans who are way more interested in Richie Hawtin and Ricardo Villalobos or whomever else is cool this week.

"One final thing on the vulgarity...do you think people who don't like any house or techno hear the subtlety and the differences we do here? Some of them probably think it's all shitty dance music. I still feel Theo Parrish shares more with David Guetta than he does with any non-dance artist.....just for that reason."

again with your "hearing" the subtlety. why don't you try FEELING the difference between theo and that guy, and then feeling the similarity between theo and al green or sun ra.

people who think that all dance music sounds "the same" are worthless to consider anyway. worrying about what they think is a waste of time. just because people don't know how to listen to dance music (another parallel with jazz, really) doesn't mean that their opinion counts.

"and just to bite...for whatever reason, and descend into the record collection game...probably one of the nicest responses I ever got to an article was last time I interviewed a Detroit artist...a guy who was guarded to begin with then emailed me afterwards to say he really enjoyed it.

-- Ronan"

good for you! why don't you ban me from commenting on your blog. oh wait, you've already done that.

"As somebody who is nominally on the pro-detroit side of the argument I think that most of 'us' would be happy just to have a weekly place we could go and listen to the music we like with large-ish, enthusiastic, knowledgable crowds, and to be booked to DJ music we like once in a while and to see the DJs we like booked in our towns as well. Instead, the last few times I've gone to see a DJ I was excited for, it's been in an empty club, meanwhile clubs playing the latest minimal jams are packed to the rafters (ok this is overexaggerating). I think you can see where at least a little bitterness creeps in."

the problem is that people only have a good time when their feelings are reciprocated by bloggers, music journalists, etc who are all pushing the "new best thing ever". when things break outside of what they are told to be good, they react with complete and total indifference if not disdain. this is about the conditioning of people to expect nothing but nonsense. these things you speak of are just symptoms of the larger problem.

"I still don't think that being all militant and confrontational about it is the way to go, but I definately understand where they are coming from and where you could get pretty angry about the situation pretty fast."

if being confrontational isn't the way to go, what is? people are not committed to this music enough to go out of their way to learn about it on their own. the only way is for people to break through the deafening roar of the newest hype, and that doesn't happen by playing nice.

"This is probably a pretty U.S. perspective that maybe the Europeans (where I assume there is a lot more outlet for 'true detroit or whatever' music, but maybe I'm wrong about that) don't see as clearly.

-- sous les paves"

even in Europe where the US guys may or may not get a lot of love, compare it to the hype of Berlin or Frankfurt (a few years ago) or wherever else and you still see wild inequality in terms of who gets coverage, props, etc. it may be better than it is in the US, but it is still very unbalanced.

UGLY EDITS 10
Almost as good as Achilles Last Stand on Presence

I mean....shouldn't dance music retain vulgarity or a certain lack of credibility?"

no. i can't imagine why you would think so.

YES. If the world were comprised entirely of purist pipcock clones it would be a very dull place.

"YES. If the world were comprised entirely of purist pipcock clones it would be a very dull place.

-- sam500"

i love that i am the purist yet my musical interests and deejay sets span such a huge variety of genres that it is ridiculous. i just dont understand that point of view, it doesnt make any fucking sense whatsoever. how can i be a purist if i play nothing in a pure manner?????????????

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

exactly!

because insisting on rejecting vulgarity and obsession with 'credibility' is borrrrrrring

what happened to this thread

not entirely sure

anyway I'm on record here saying essentially what TP said. all this is a reason and motive to make things better and pay dues to who's owed them. but if y'all just wanted to have a bitchfest, have at it

also can someone pls book this DJ in the bay area kthxbai

TP that is. although I'm available too

TP doesn't come out that much. i want to see him too blunt!

ive seen tp once and he blew out the sound system at sonotheque, which has one of the best rigs (almost always poorly utilized) in the city

he plays so often in london, think he must have family here or something

blew out the sound system

this was a bad thing, btw

I need to go downstairs...SS 030 come hither.

from where i sit, calling house music utopian comes from feeling/experiencing the music, not some need to insert a philosophy or to explain that feeling away. it is amazing to me how much language fails sometimes. but really this thread was so much better when everyone was enthusing about theo parrish.

it's a search and destroy, we're allowed to say bad things about theo as well. for example, "saga of resistance" was as hamfisted a sun ra tribute as any other.

I am going to be uncharacteristically blunt, even by my usual standards, because I feel confident saying that theo doesn't get sun range. sure, theo may "feel" sun range, but that's no big feat. after all, I'm sure kenny g "feels" john Coltrane, just as ronan might "feel" underground resistance and vanilla ice might "feel" public enemy. but i'm certain that just as a white man from Ireland cannot truly understand the soul of a black man from Detroit, so too cannot a black man from Detroit truly understand the egypto-Saturnian soul of a man like sun ra.

and this is theft. I hate it when people release a track that sounds like it was produced, mixed and pressed by a deaf sloth, on single-sided vinyl- then re-release it years later. talk about turning shit into gold/laughing all the way to the bank.

xpost LOL

in fact, seeing as my wife is Egyptian (unlike sun ra), and her father is from alexandria, and thus (unlike sun ra) a true pharoanic African, and I myself am (unlike sun ra) a real-life Ra, that is, a father of pharoahs, I call bullshit on sun ra.

"if someone tells me they love trance, i actually tend to think of them as an idiot and stop paying any attention to them."

-- the table is the table

but what about tiesto?!?!? and PvD?!?!? they are so groundbreaking!!!!!

You know, i realised, there is only James Pennington and Toni Iordache. Other music fills in the gaps. But i like the gaps too

house music is ... transmolecularized ...

house music is.....good!

Still not as bad as the Dissensus thread. Must try harder.

"and this is theft. I hate it when people release a track that sounds like it was produced, mixed and pressed by a deaf sloth, on single-sided vinyl- then re-release it years later. talk about turning shit into gold/laughing all the way to the bank.

xpost LOL

-- blunt"

you must be nuts, that track is the jam.

it must be - theo parrish released it!

"it must be - theo parrish released it!

-- deej"

he has released a few stinkers: "Dreamer's Blue (Acid Guitar Version)", "Walking Thru The Sky (Liberation Mix)" (both with the same guy on guitar, maybe it is his fault??), and a few of the tracks on the Rotating Assembly album. really, i wish more people were as consistent as him, and as willing to try different ideas.

Do u guys like the Heath Brothers?

no really and it's the same with "When The Morning Comes", except that's a jam and I'll take the time to try and get the sound system to spout something that makes sense to dancers on this one.

i have found that the more fucked up the Theo record sounds, the better the dancefloor reaction. 1987 EP crushes it, as does WTMC and TMATWB.

or Let My Children Hear Music?

^ serious music:D

"if being confrontational isn't the way to go, what is? people are not committed to this music enough to go out of their way to learn about it on their own. the only way is for people to break through the deafening roar of the newest hype, and that doesn't happen by playing nice."

Clearly the only solution to this 'problem' is forceful, obnoxiously holier-than-thou indoctrination.

house is a feeling

of superiority

Clearly the only solution to this 'problem' is forceful, obnoxiously holier-than-thou indoctrination.

-- glynsync,

exactly. i can't stand that kind of attitude.

arguing on messageboards is saving the universe from shame

nothing in the world is better than a great night and a great floor, and imo, the music is only responsible for switching it from great to 'uhhh' when something just stinks up the fucking room. these things are usually mash-ups.

i don't know a lot about dance music or techno or house. trance is kind of too fast for me. i could probably 'get' it and enjoy it though. i love disco, pretty much all of it i hear: "underground," "cheesy/gay," "mainstream." i honestly haven't heard any theo parrish, sorry. :( the few revival disco nights i've been to in l.a. have been fun but a little hit-or-miss: too reserved/cool, too many clumsy beardos, (too much like pipecock ha!) that is until everyone gets drunk enough and/or the floor becomes crowded enough that it's all off the hook.

house nights are the most fun though, even though i don't actively seek it out for 'listening time.' that's my loss. i don't know what kind of house they usually play, but it's fun as hell to dance to, and the floor is racially mixed, which is a breath of fresh air (i probably go to all the wrong clubs).

all of this is totally off-topic, sorry.

house is a feeling

-- haitch, Friday, July 18, 2008 1:09 AM

of superiority

-- haitch, Friday, July 18, 2008 1:09 AM

i LOL'd for real

i have found that the more fucked up the Theo record sounds, the better the dancefloor reaction. 1987 EP crushes it

Agreed, I love that record. I also love the fact that he made it on his uncle's casio keyboard and a kawai drum machine when he was 14. The best part is that the distortion comes from a short in the wire that he jiggled when he wanted the sound to change. That is fucking brilliant.

I am loving the ilx hand wringing the last few days. I check in once or twice a day with a bucket of popcorn and some jujubes to see what happened. It's better than the movies.

blunt, can i borrow "deaf sloth" as the name for a record label? it's too good to let evaporate. :)

listening to the new theo mix on rbma that he did for sonar and its weird. he mixes james brown into savage project and then gets into post-punk disco and then latin music ??? i have not been to witness to theo's sets but is he usually that eclectic ? i hate that term but you know what i mean.

yes, sometimes

check it: http://www.allphon.com/tracklisting/theo.php

wow, that's a wealth of knowledge right there. thanks for that link. i need to catch up on this guy's sets, the tracklistings look great.

it's not as nice as the old twoplayer theo shrine (RIP) but it'll do in a pinch

IIRC you can look at twoplayer.net and forcefield (amazing arnold) on the internet archive but the formatting never looks quite right.

"yes, sometimes

-- moonship journey to baja"

when he is at his best, IMO. some of his more "house" sets are very nice as well, but he can string together some wildly divergent records better than just about anybody out there that i can think of.

this is up for debate but i always think of "these days & times" 1 and 2, listened to back-to-back, as the quintessential theo mix.

if you want a straight house set "contemporhythms" is great. i think i mentioned it upthread, maybe?

"this is up for debate but i always think of "these days & times" 1 and 2, listened to back-to-back, as the quintessential theo mix."

that is a good one. "eclectic aesthetic" is another great 2 parter, along with the "live @ demf" ones.

"if you want a straight house set "contemporhythms" is great. i think i mentioned it upthread, maybe?

-- moonship journey to baja"

what is funny to me about that mix is that is it probably one of the most straightforward house sets, but it still has a bunch of disco and jazz stuff in it. for another good mostly house one, his set with rick wilhite is pretty much classic.

I really dislike the casual hate directed towards gay clubbing on ILM.

Not every club has to have some musicologist-approved manifesto cum playlist. Sometimes it's really fucking nice to be at a club and not know the name of the anonymous diva house track playing, or "worse still" get down to a sped up gay house version of Sugababes' "About You Now" (this is choice, people who know, get on it). And not really care either way because you're busy trying to catch the eye of the really cute guy dancing five meters away who has a wicked shy smile.

Yeah, lots of gay clubbing involves clubbing for reasons that aren't strictly to do with a reflective pledge of allegiance to the black detroit continuum or even the greatness of Villalobos or whatever. Lots of gay clubbing is about cruising for sex, or taking drugs, or getting shitfaced with friends, or being able to sing and dance along to camp pop hits, or just to lose yourself in a crowd of likeminded people.

None of these things is a constant defining feature of what I look for when I want to go out and dance, and gay clubbing forms a minority (although still substantial) component of my clubbing. But I've clubbed for all of the above reasons at one stage or another (and some of them heaps and heaps of times); people who think they're illegitimate reasons distracting from a proper appreciation of quality music just have the wrong attitude towards social behaviour and really should stay in their bedrooms.

True, I could wish that gay clubbing was a bit more dynamic musically. The Freemasons have done a marvelous job this past two years but they've become a bit of a crutch for DJs. Something like Joey Negro's "Make A Move On Me" should be just a standard track in quality-terms rather than a stand-out. But then some of the most impressive nights out from a musical perspective have been at gay clubs: DJs who have a perfect ear for the just right mixture of schlock and cheese, or (conversely) DJs who have been keen to reconnect contemporary gay clubbing with some of the feel of Chicago house - though usually the result is closer to second wave (Green Velvet/Cajual/Radikal Fear) than first wave; or some of the finest (because sly and sexy) deep house and vocal garage nights i've been to. And one of the biggest dancefloor revelations I've had in the past few years was hearing the Freemasons remix of Beyonce's "Ring The Alarm" for the first time on New Years Eve at a rather unassuming gay bar.

Usually, the best dance music scenes are those where musical and non-musical factors converge, where people are too intent on having fun to become furrow-browed amateur musicologists, but the music is just too good for them not to take notice of it and want to follow where it's going. What we can call (for want of a better term) the German house continuum of this decade was great for as long as it was too restless and too populist to really care about questions of lineage, purity and manifestos. The reemergence of these questions in the past twelve months is to mind a direct consequence of the crisis of direction besetting the scene.

Undoubtedly no stern producer's manifesto could endorse something as silly (and brilliant) as the Freeform Reform mix of Freeform Five's "Strangest Things" - one of the best of 2004's run of preposterous electro-house anthems. A manifesto just wouldn't have made sense and wouldn't have been necessary at that point. But then, "Strangest Things" is much closer to gay club music than anything that'd usually get talked about on this thread. Ironically, Ewan Manifesto Pearson's greatest achievement remains his most gay club moment - his remix of Freeform Five's "Perspex Sex", a record that has more in common with Mousse T than it does with the Belleville Three.

All of which is why I have rather fashionably shifted my allegiance to UK funky house this year - a music that has and needs no manifesto; a music that is undoubtedly enjoyed by most of its audience as just great club music to soundtrack their drinking, partying, drug-taking and cruising (albeit of a straight variety); but also a music that is so good that it's impossible not to drop everything in a frenzied search for the identity of that one great track.

people who think ... just have the wrong attitude towards social behaviour and really should stay in their bedrooms

tim i agree with you 100% on that post but you have to remember this is the internet

"Lots of gay clubbing is about cruising for sex, or taking drugs, or getting shitfaced with friends, or being able to sing and dance along to camp pop hits, or just to lose yourself in a crowd of likeminded people.

-- Tim F"

good for it, i care as much about that as i do straight clubs based on the same principles: not at all. there are an innumerable number of clubs of all types that play terrible music to people who don't give a shit, they are are equally worthless.

on what criteria

"tim i agree with you 100% on that post but you have to remember this is the internet"

Yes, well, if I had to make one criticism of Phil's Pitchfork column, it would be that it appears to take at face value what people on the internet say about dance music culture (although Phil avoids endorsing the notion that ILM's current handwringing is justified).

But re pipecock's most recent post, I agree with Ronan on this general point: a dance music crit discourse that defines 90% of how people actually use and engage with dance music as "worthless" is ultimately a self-hating discourse, basically trying to destroy dance music qua dance music. I.e. it's rockist in the mark s sense of the work "rockist" (the ideas about music it pushes ultimately undermining everything good about the music it purportedly seeks to defend).

Wine tasting doesn't derive it's legitimacy from outright dismissing the worth of every person who goes to the pub after work. I'm not sure why techno-tasting requires such a last-canon-standing fortress mentality.

This is not to say that the public is always right, or that the populist move is always the correct one, or that elitist attitudes are by definition incorrect. But I do believe that any kind of useful aesthetic position has to be engaged in some sort of critical dialogue with populism, even if it's a strained, convoluted or tenuous dialogue. The public isn't always right (if only because the public is always in contradiction with itself, often many times over) but they're always onto something, even if they have difficulty articulating what that is.

I can't agree with people who would choose to devote themselves to (say) Kitsune over Liebe*Detail or Planet E (to leave people's continental preferences aside), but I recognise that they're onto something when they feel some connection to a scene which still notionally believes in fun and pop hooks (the problem with Kitsune stuff is more in the execution than the idea: rather than fun and pop hooks you get "fun" and "pop hooks". They get it right more often than they appear to from the outside though). It's not coincidental that this scene really began to gather steam in 2006, just as the drive towards tastefulness kicked into gear again in house and techno.

Outright dismissing the decisions of entire audiences and scenes means you miss out on the phronesis (practical wisdom) that any scene can impart at least in small portions. I could never identify as a gay clubber but I think the insight that gay clubbing has given me is pretty invaluable, and it ultimately changes the way I approach all dance music.

By the way, I reckon the San Sebastian Planet E 12 inch is pretty fabulous - one of my favourite dance tracks of the year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el_LVfoDC-I

sadly, this is even more absurd.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJJTVcSEp-s

Tim F for president

ha ha that is awesome. i would totally hang out with tiesto. he reminds me of a really smarmy grad student i know who is apparently like america's greatest kant expert under 30 or something like that.

he is from germany and he looks just like tiesto

it's rockist in the mark s sense of the work "rockist"

did you ever read the mark s thing about slash fiction?

if so, what do you think about this (warning, links to big PDF file) frank broughton-penned piece of fanfic about junior vasquez, gay black clubbers and the sound factory?

No I didn't! I'm sure it was good. he touched on vaguely related issues in his punk piece which I loved.

Will check that out! I am totally in favour of slash fiction.

My proudest moment as a music critic was when some slash fiction writer dedicated her story about Pete Wentz and the singer from P!ATD to one of my reviews.

"I'm not sure why techno-tasting requires such a last-canon-standing fortress mentality."

you are the keymaster. i am the gatekeeper.

Pipecock gets to be the Stay Puft marshmellow man.

that might have been the same piece. it was ostensibly about lester bangs, but had a big digression on slash fic. "thirty years of 'orrible noize"?

rise and sprawl of horrible noise

important reading for people who hate horrible progressive house

Tim F, I can't get into it heavily right now, but really, my hatred of most gay club music and gay clubs generally is not inspired by homophobia. Just dislike of the sound.

thoughtful argument

condescending post ^^^

sympathetic self awareness^^

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v204/day465/Soulstrut/megaeyeroll.gif

dope gif^^^

ban deej

"Tim F, I can't get into it heavily right now, but really, my hatred of most gay club music and gay clubs generally is not inspired by homophobia."

I didn't think it was. Okay I'm getting way off topic, but anyway:

I can understand why lots of gay guys are keen to distance themselves from what they consider to be the shallower or more myopic aspects of mainstream gay male culture. But I think in doing so they're often too quick to assume that they understand mainstream gay culture in all its depth and complexity (or, rather, its apparent lack thereof) merely by virtue of their being gay. As if, being into mainstream gay culture is the default position for any gay guy, and correspondingly one's distance from that scene is prima facie evidence of a certain level of critical discernment.

Whereas gay guys being into Kylie or progressive house (anyway most gay clubs actually don't play progressive house, this is a misnomer - in my experience gay clubs are more likely to play Freemasons-style vocal house, "club" mixes of pop hits, original versions of pop hits, hard house and electro-house before they are likely to play progressive house) is often a lot like any adult being into populist music: frequently they come from a prior position of rejection and have to "learn" to like this stuff.

Here's something interesting that the clever Angus Gordon wrote recently:

"...I still have a soft spot for the original SAW Kylie (note to younger readers: by SAW I mean not the torture porn franchise but "Stock Aitken and Waterman", ask your mum and dad), the Kylie who was more or less strictly for The Gays, the Kylie I saw perform at Mardi Gras (the only time I ever went, actually). In any case, "Better the Devil You Know" has always been my favourite Kylie song so in the end it was the only possible choice.

I thought then, and still do, that the music is quite striking, especially the harmony. Listening to sequence of contortions required to shift the key from the B flat major of the verse to the distant D flat major of the chorus ("a hundred times or more-ore-ore-ore!") you're struck by how weird SAW could actually be at times. No I'm not going to push some "they were more avant-garde than Stockhausen!" line, but for anyone who thinks they made paint-by-numbers pop this is a corrective. There's an even weirder example in "What Do I Have to Do", another song from the Rhythm of Love album that marks the high point of the Kylie/SAW collaboration.

I've also always found Kylie the most enjoyable to listen to of all the female singers with undeniably weak voices. She seems to find a way of putting her limited instrument to the best possible use, and this song is certainly an example of that.

Mostly, though, this one's about memories, my first tentative forays into gay life (in Adelaide! the glamorous Mars Bar! but still!), my learning not to be embarrassed by cheesiness. It occurs to me that the latter is a subtext in the whole "rockism" debate, there's an association for me at least between anti-pop sentiment and the closet. I wonder whether that's why some gay men become such ardent popists. It certainly always made me sceptical of the young gay men I would meet (they were often my students and would expound this point of view earnestly in their essays) who thought that their interest in indie music was some act of guerilla resistance against hegemonic gay culture. I quite liked hegemonic gay culture because of what it rescued me from, and I still do. And of course I still love Kylie."

ask your mum and dad - hate it when journos write this.

I think some kids might've been into Kylie, as well as the gays.

Both of yr points are correct.

lol don't EVER ban deej

As if, being into mainstream gay culture is the default position for any gay guy, and correspondingly one's distance from that scene is prima facie evidence of a certain level of critical discernment.

Thank you thank you thank you for articulating something I've been mulling over a lot recently.

As if, being into mainstream gay culture is the default position for any gay guy person, and correspondingly one's distance from that scene is prima facie evidence of a certain level of critical discernment.

Well exactly!

if there are really two sides to this debate (and i don't think there are because it's just not that simple), it seems like they could be characterized as "gatekeeping militancy" and "the militancy of being reasonable" (just as radical!). i think the truth is somewhere in the grey area and it's dependent on your own personal experience.

I think you're right about this debate tricky, but what a dispiriting opposition!

In some ways pipecock is the "truth" of nu-rockism - if the general critical position of, say, dissensus, pursues its gatekeeper mentality to its logical end it ends up with pipecock (the recent detroit techno thread on dissensus was interesting precisely for this reason).

I'm not sure why anti-reasonable militancy should have to be about gatekeeping.

Simon Reynolds talks a lot about how music fandom should be unreasonable, should be something like a religious experience that inspires you to be a musical preacherman (hence dividing the world into right and wrong, as pipecock does). But this particular notion of "preacherman" evokes the image of someone on the outside rather than the inside of the gate: it means iconoclasm on behalf of the future, devising new truths that have not been uttered etc. etc. Whereas the sort of gatekeeping that is being advocated here is totally institutionalized, however underpaid some artists from Detroit may be.

And this is the problem about gatekeeping per se: it's not about ripping it up and starting again, it's about defending the city from the barbarian hordes. It is always ultimately conservative and critically regressive.

If "the truth is somewhere in the middle" (i.e. not entirely on the side of "the militancy of being reasonable"), it's because the musical religious experience imparts a truth that cannot be generalized, a truth that often does not yet have an explanatory entry in the glossary of reasonable music crit. Ultimately the "militancy of being reasonable" reterritorialises these truths, can absorb and then reproduce (say) a reasoned (and of course reasonable) argument as to why Theo Parrish is important.

Gatekeeping militancy is what is left of the religious fervour when its truths have been reterritorialised. It is surplus militancy with no viable function except to continually assert whatever unreasonable notions it may have had that could not really be defended (the militancy of being reasonable can prosecute all its original reasonable decisions), or to wax nostalgic about the time when its fervour meant something.

(in political terms, obsessing over the lack of dues paid to detroit techno artists is akin to focusing obsessively on the "spirt of Paris 1968" - certainly useful and interesting and worth thinking about, but relatively limited in its capacity to serve as a basis for contemporary political positions or lines of inquiry)

(to be fair, my argument is kinda Bad-Hegelian in that I'm considering the usefulness of non-reasonable positions as being their potential contribution to reasonable debate - so I'm stacking the odds in my favour a bit here)

i agree that it's dispiriting and it seems like there can be reterritorializing criticism as well as reterritorializing music. the latter is unreasonable per reynold's definition (if i understand it properly), but it's fair because it is based on a kind of pure fandom. and if we're stacking the odds then i am going to vote for the meta/future every time at least until i find something more engaging. it is interesting that reasonable and unreasonable can coexist somewhat harmoniously though it reads like a paradox. and it seems that a lot of the time it is the case that the rhetoric around gatekeeping has less to do with music and more to do with the culture around music (and even american culture writ large -- did you see this?) so my binary doesn't seem to be correct although i am glad it sparked some insightful prose from you.

" it seems like there can be reterritorializing criticism as well as reterritorializing music. the latter is unreasonable per reynold's definition (if i understand it properly), but it's fair because it is based on a kind of pure fandom. and if we're stacking the odds then i am going to vote for the meta/future every time at least until i find something more engaging. it is interesting that reasonable and unreasonable can coexist somewhat harmoniously though it reads like a paradox."

Okay now I'm not sure if I follow! Do you mean music can be reterritorializing insofar as it shores up a bulwark of tradition around something previously radical (or perhaps rather it establishes rules and regulations around something previously lawless/undefined?)... Like, um, the notion of "detroit techno classicism" comes into existence at the precise moment that there are 2nd gen producers making "classic" detroit techno - music as fandom as music crit essentially.

Re stacking the odds: I sort of meant that any attempt to rationally schematize the relationship between the reasonable and the unreasonable in thinking about music is impliedly importing reasonability as one of its standards. The problem with trying to move beyond using the "militancy of being reasonable" as the final arbiter is that if, as you say, "it's dependent on your own personal experience", then it becomes hard to distinguish between admirable religious fervour and "opinions4u".

Conversely, the other thing I was thinking though is that what i might call future-faith (which i want to vote for too) only retains its power and attraction if we think of it as a response to a divine vision or visitation - in fact the term reynolds uses which is even more appropriate than my substitute "preacherman" is prophet - which implies both some kind of miraculous experience (touched by God) and a kind of shutting down of one's own subjectivity - the prophet does not merely see the future, they speak with the voice of the future. Put music into the role of the divine here, and the prophet should be someone whose entire thinking about music is scrambled by the experience of the music they are advocating on behalf of (like a Saul --> Paul transformation).

Whereas what passes for faith-based criticism most of the time (by which I mean pipecock etc, not Christian Music Monthly) reads more like (conservative) theological criticism wherein the truth was always already known. This kind of music fandom may be fervent ("x is genius, y is fake" etc.) but it never sounds surprised... every permutation of good and bad in music can be interpreted in such a way as to affirm the beauty of God's plan as set down in canon law. i.e. more simply put it finds its role model in sermonizing.

I think any music crit which adopts the master/slave dialectic as its starting point is ultimately not going to reveal much of interest. I can appreciate that future-faith almost necessarily involves a certain partiality, but that partiality should be a form of devoted conviction that renders everything else irrelevant, rather than a relational arrangement where by X derives its value from not being Y.

e.g. advocates of Detroit techno are at their least interesting when the advocacy seems to boil down to the circular argument "this is great because European dance music is awful." A partiality that extends from a hatred of other stuff is unconvincing to me because it suggests that the qualities of the good stuff were somehow insufficient to be considered persuasive - the use of the stick inevitably suggests that carrot was not enough.

"And it seems that a lot of the time it is the case that the rhetoric around gatekeeping has less to do with music and more to do with the culture around music (and even american culture writ large -- did you see this?)"

Yeah it's been all over the news here as well - pretty much any news w/r/t to the US election is considered news in Australia.

The broader point you're making is absolutely spot on, I think.

"Do you mean music can be reterritorializing insofar as it shores up a bulwark of tradition around something previously radical (or perhaps rather it establishes rules and regulations around something previously lawless/undefined?)"

kind of. the example i immediately come up with is dfa reterritorializing chicago or nyc house (i mean how exactly did indie transition to house? and what does this mean w/r/t contemporary house (the "real" thing). i said pretty much the same thing about dj t, too). there's also edit culture or contemporary house via trance. it's not just the shoring up, but the literal change in (reterritorializing, maybe i am using the word incorrectly) tradition. i think this is one of the things that bugs the gatekeepers insofar as it steps on (is unfaithful to) the original tradition/culture. changing of the guard and whatnot. if you see what's popular as inferior yet it gets all the props, it is just going to fuel the ire.

"music as fandom as music crit essentially"

yes.

and i think detroit techno was classic from the beginning. :D

"The problem with trying to move beyond using the "militancy of being reasonable" as the final arbiter is that if, as you say, "it's dependent on your own personal experience", then it becomes hard to distinguish between admirable religious fervour and "opinions4u"."

"personal experience" is really quite a bit of shorthand, isn't it?

i.e., when i say that, i am being lazy.

"kind of. the example i immediately come up with is dfa reterritorializing chicago or nyc house (i mean how exactly did indie transition to house? and what does this mean w/r/t contemporary house (the "real" thing). i said pretty much the same thing about dj t, too). there's also edit culture or contemporary house via trance. it's not just the shoring up, but the literal change in (reterritorializing, maybe i am using the word incorrectly) tradition. i think this is one of the things that bugs the gatekeepers insofar as it steps on (is unfaithful to) the original tradition/culture. changing of the guard and whatnot. if you see what's popular as inferior yet it gets all the props, it is just going to fuel the ire."

Okay, I get you now. I guess the problem is this is all perspectival - for me DFA doesn't really reterritorialize anything that hadn't already been reterritorialized, but I guess for many listeners he makes disco/house/etc. explicable perhaps for the first time. I was thinking more along the lines of Faze Action or Danny Wang - absolutely in front of the pack and under-recognized in terms of setting the agenda for the revival of (non-charting) disco, but - for those very reasons - also crucial steps in the setting of the agenda (and impliedly the establishment of limits and boundaries) regarding what was to be revived. They reterritorialized disco insofar as they reintroduced it into dance music discourse as something that belonged there. Whereas DFA perhaps reterritorialized disco for rock music discourse. The process of transformation is smaller for Faze Action/Danny Wang if only because disco and dance music already existed in a clear family relationship, whereas things get more complicated for rock. (These questions get quite complex though: do DFA really change disco or house in ways that are unprecedented? What does DJ T do that hasn't already been done by 808 State, New Order, even Technotronic? And what was left of Chicago house to reterritorialize by the time his first album came out?)

But of course Faze Action and Danny Wang aren't disliked by the gatekeepers by and large whereas DFA probably would be. What are the factors?

- possiby race/nationality/locality: though not really here - Faze Action are white and English aren't they. But perhaps Danny Wang has a higher standing yet again for these reasons. I will guess now that perhaps Faze Action therefore are more reliant on rating well on the following factors in order to maintain their good rep.

- timing: not only in the sense that these guys were all among the first to revive certain aspects of disco, but that often they beat the gatekeepers to it - in many cases would have been the gateway by which the eventual-gatekeepers gained access to the city. DFA - and particularly their fans - seem like johnny come latelys by comparison. They arrive after the gate has already been shut, locked and bolted.

- adherence to tradition: this is an interesting one. These two producers certainly are much more traditional in their relationship to disco than DFA, and would rate as fairly traditionalist generally I'd say. But what about Moodymann/Theo Parrish? On the basis of their records I don't think these guys can really be described as "traditionalist" in the strict sense - they're bringing too many new ideas and techniques to the table. Certainly they seem to be part of some kind of traditionalist context or tradition (in the specific sense of the term), a vibe which emanates from what they say in interviews, what they play in DJ sets, and in certain (not obviously non-cynical) production choices such (particularly their love of lo-fi). There's a certain leap of faith that's required to say that these guys are traditionalists: someone like pipecock wouldn't claim that Theo adheres to tradition, but he would probably claim that the tradition is continued and carried forward in Theo, that something of the tradition inheres in his music. The hard part is pinning down exactly what it is that inheres. Pipecock might say "soul" here, or talk about a jazz sensibility. That seems too vague and mystical to me: I think he is actually getting at something that is there in the music but he's using the wrong language or critical apparatus to describe it.

- acknowledgment of the tradition: this one is very slippery in that it doesn't really matter how much lipservice DFA pay to old disco (never mind that the James Murphy/Pat Mahoney Fabric mix was one of the best of its type) their success alone and implication within rock music and rock discourse will make them seem ungrateful or just ignorant of the lineage from which they partake. Perhaps what is required is a certain musical humility w/r/t to your own position within the tradition - in a certain sense what Theo Parrish and Moodymann do can feel self-consciously "small", like they want to live within certain moments of old disco/soul/funk records, to expand on the stories those records told.

- paying of dues: lack of recognition/fortune always implies that the artist is doing this for the "right" reasons. But this one is a bit circular because there are millions of producers who rate well on it, so it can only come into play when a significant proportion of the other factors are present and correct.

"i.e., when i say that, i am being lazy."

Well yes and no - I don't think anyone here would agree on what components of personal experience "count". So it's a bit like Theo saying some white producers are worthwhile - it's a structurally-required laziness to paper over an area of thought that is very difficult to work out.

"for me DFA doesn't really reterritorialize anything that hadn't already been reterritorialized, but I guess for many listeners he makes disco/house/etc. explicable perhaps for the first time."

he played daft punk to all the rock kids. i think i pick dfa because it's so explicit in the lyrics already, but you are right it is not really new.

i remember hearing daniel wang's album for the first time and it was a serious case of "what the fuck is this? who is this guy?!" because it was so out of place at the time and this was already far later than all of his singles. i bought the cd the next day. i think disco has always been around in underground club culture even in the 90s.

so there's a difference between pop and what i would call underground.

"do DFA really change disco or house in ways that are unprecedented?"

no, in fact it's kind of regressive, going backward to move forward.

i will respond to the rest of your post later.

did you get my email btw?

The only problem with your flowery writing is that pipecock, myself and a lot of other folks you are theorizing about actually rate a lot of the stuff on DFA.

Who are these gate keepers? We are proles in fly over states, there are no gate keepers. Who is going to tell me what the cool shit is in Texas? What ever I do is the cool shit in Texas, it is a vacuum.

hes talking about discourse dude. isnt that the same as a woman saying they are immune from supporting some sexist notions simply from the fact that they are not the empowered member according to the patriarchy or whatever

and I am saying that this isn't how the thought process actually works in the group of people that he is trying to box in with this discourse.

and again, so who are these gate keepers?

Um, it's the internet mike. It doesn't matter which state you're in or what your role is there, as long as on here you can set yourself up as someone who knows shit about music and which music is good and which is bad and which belongs to the tradition and which does not.

Pipecock is pretty much the best example of a gatekeeper ever. Virtually his entire internet persona consists of castigating everyone for not following the true way. You're less of a fit, and certainly less of a fit than you used to be circa 2001. I remember threads from back then where we clashed on this issue a lot, and you were fairly insistent on the link between the quality of a techno producer's work and their connection to/expression of authentic black urban experience. There was one thread in particular on this that I tried to find a couple of weeks ago but couldn't.

"i remember hearing daniel wang's album for the first time and it was a serious case of "what the fuck is this? who is this guy?!" because it was so out of place at the time and this was already far later than all of his singles. i bought the cd the next day. i think disco has always been around in underground club culture even in the 90s."

Yeah absolutely. Wang seems like a pivotal figure in terms of rearticulating what disco means in dance discourse today (although he was doing this a decade ago) as opposed to what it meant for a David Morales or a Masters At Work or a DJ Sneak.

"no, in fact it's kind of regressive, going backward to move forward."

Right. It's so tempting to think about these issues in a linear fashion even after the linearity has broken down. LCD Soundsystem draw from a whole host of points of tension b/w dance and rock, not just disco-punk but also "cosmic", UK post-acid house dance rock (New Order, Primal Scream etc), balearic, Daft Punk. So if they're reterritorializing stuff it's not like they're taking stuff that was outside the borders of rock discourse and making it palatable for the first time; rather, it's like they're drawn precisely to those points where such battles have been fought in the past. They are in effect reproducing past moments of deterritoralization/reterritorialization, albeit then filtered through their overall persona.

Um, it's the internet mike. It doesn't matter which state you're in or what your role is there, as long as on here you can set yourself up as someone who knows shit about music and which music is good and which is bad and which belongs to the tradition and which does not.

The only problem with this is that no one actually does this. Electronic music blogs are a joke, nobody with a decent ear takes them seriously. It is like a million Ronan Fitgeralds trying to convince you that bad music is not bad music. Most people I know just go the record store and play through stacks of vinyl to find new music.

There are no gate keepers for the older guys. At best you can recommend something that I hadn't heard of, but you can't tell me it's cool. I can figure that out for myself and so can the people I respect. I know the types who fall for blog hype and they are usually insecure males 18-25. They want to be down with the hot new shit but they can't actually figure out what that is on their own.

Pipecock is pretty much the best example of a gatekeeper ever. Virtually his entire internet persona consists of castigating everyone for not following the true way. You're less of a fit, and certainly less of a fit than you used to be circa 2001. I remember threads from back then where we clashed on this issue a lot, and you were fairly insistent on the link between the quality of a techno producer's work and their connection to/expression of authentic black urban experience. There was one thread in particular on this that I tried to find a couple of weeks ago but couldn't.

Really Pipecock's persona is making people smile because he says the things they have been thinking the whole time. He is actually saying that crap music is crap. It is refreshing to hear someone say exactly what you have been thinking for years. He has a golden ear but doesn't know how to explain why something isn't good.

As far as authentic black expression goes, the more your Tutti Fruti sounds like Little Richard and the less it sounds like Pat Boone the better your record is.

Right. It's so tempting to think about these issues in a linear fashion even after the linearity has broken down. LCD Soundsystem draw from a whole host of points of tension b/w dance and rock, not just disco-punk but also "cosmic", UK post-acid house dance rock (New Order, Primal Scream etc), balearic, Daft Punk. So if they're reterritorializing stuff it's not like they're taking stuff that was outside the borders of rock discourse and making it palatable for the first time; rather, it's like they're drawn precisely to those points where such battles have been fought in the past. They are in effect reproducing past moments of deterritoralization/reterritorialization, albeit then filtered through their overall persona.

Or you could just say they are rock dudes who listen to records and smoke dope and knick a few bits here and there when they make their own records.

"It is refreshing to hear someone say exactly what you have been thinking for years. He has a golden ear but doesn't know how to explain why something isn't good."

I agree that Pipecock has good taste in music by and large. Perhaps the difference between you and me though is that when it comes to talking about music (rather than, you know, just listening to it), I'm much more interested in and impressed by people who know how to explain why something is or isn't good than by people with a "golden ear".

Reading people who share my general opinion on something but explain it in a totally ridiculous way doesn't make me smile, it makes me doubt myself - at least until I work out where they've gone wrong. If you're saying that, despite being totally unable to explain himself, pipecock nonetheless says "exactly what you have been thinking", shouldn't that give you cause to wonder just how well-formed your own opinions are?

"The only problem with your flowery writing is that pipecock, myself and a lot of other folks you are theorizing about actually rate a lot of the stuff on DFA."

i am glad you said this because i meant to say it earlier (yet another reason why i should avoid ilm at work). it really does change the whole discussion and believe or not, that's one of the reasons i brought them up. and another thing with dfa is that it is unfair to label the label strictly as indie with the mo'wax connection and all. this is the problem with too many concurrent thoughts.

and yes, the writing is flowery, but i prefer flowery writing because it is fun and because it beats "it's good".

"What does DJ T do that hasn't already been done by 808 State, New Order, even Technotronic? And what was left of Chicago house to reterritorialize by the time his first album came out?"

well, the difference is time and though i rate his album, i remember at the time thinking that it was a copy of a copy of a copy, but also simultaneously that it felt new *at that time* (signaling a kind of reorientation at work, maybe in my own listening habits though i do think there was something bigger afoot). i definitely got the sense of over-recycling which is troublesome, but there is also a sense of reverence and respect for the form and a kind of pure functionalism. it is hard to unpack or a kind of tightrope to walk and i think this is probably why talk shifted to "sound design" then because that seems to be the angle (consciously or not) being pursued in a quest for some kind of ideal form. (a silly idea, but not if you allow the tradition of kraftwerk to seep in)

i was listening to the benjamin brun and move d album earlier and thinking along similar lines. yes, it's exemplary and it sounds amazing but it still feels like a bit of a rehash (it is still one of my favorites from this year). and then there is something like newworldaquarium's lp which is exemplary, respectful of the form, sounds amazing, but also shimmers with some kind of otherworldliness and yes, soul. how's that for flowery? (at least i'm not writing poetry)

tbh im not as invested in following the discourse around this shit as a lot of you guys but the sound design is what really stuck out to me about that stuff irrespective of my (lack of) knowledge of the referentialism/rehashing/whatever else going on

not sure how much im adding to the discussion here but i really do think thats what that stuff is 'about' rather than it being, like, 'well theres not much else to say ...'

Pipecock's value is that if he strongly recommends a records there is about a 60% chance that it is going to be something that I am strongly interested in. I don't care about his ideas about the records, I know that I am going to like the music on the records. I am a big boy, I can find my own reasons to like things.

You are an excellent writer but I always wind up scratching my head when I follow through on any of your recommendations. I enjoy reading the posts but I don't look to you for anything other a person with interesting viewpoints on music that do not intersect with my tastes at all.

As far as well formed opinions go, I am more concerned with the content of the record than I am about how well I can talk about it. Music is a language as well. I care about what is being said on the records.

i agree with that. sometimes it's about form which is ultimately a bit empty/emptied out, but in terms of minimalism that is a huge gaping paradox which is part of the pleasure of getting into it. xpost

"Or you could just say they are rock dudes who listen to records and smoke dope and knick a few bits here and there when they make their own records."

Was going to say re this: you could just say that, absolutely. And for the most part I don't sit around worrying about how records reterritorialize and deterritorialize eachother. It becomes an issue at the point when people start raising concerns about the ownership of certain sounds, ideas, techniques (and I mean "ownership" in the loose sense - basically any time people start talking about real vs fake, soulful vs soulless, this issue comes up). I'm impressed that tricky in particular seems keen to engage with these ideas and try to wrest something from them (and from gatekeeper militancy generally) that retains some kind of truth. My kneejerk response normally would be to dismiss the question of realness as misguided, which I don't think is right actually.

"but I don't look to you for anything other a person with interesting viewpoints on music that do not intersect with my tastes at all."

And fair enough - it almost works the same way in the other direction (I think I do follow up on your recommendations sometimes but mostly because something you said or someone else said made me feel more confident that I might like it than I otherwise would be. e.g. it was your comments on Deep Space that made me hang out for the reissue...).

But you're better at describing the why/how of music than pipecock. I imagine that his posts are enjoyable for you in the same way that Lex's more blithe (and blunt) posts are enjoyable for me - on the one hand I basically agree with (most of) them, and on the other hand I envy the way he can inhabit those positions more extremely and self-confidently than I could. And all the while I can see how Lex simultaneously irritates the hell out of anyone who doesn't agree.

"As far as well formed opinions go, I am more concerned with the content of the record than I am about how well I can talk about it. Music is a language as well. I care about what is being said on the records."

On one level of course I agree with this. On another I don't think there's a clear line between how a record sounds and how we talk (that is to say, think) about it.

The soul vs sound design question provides a good example of this. We can reconstruct a position from Tricky's last few posts the proposition that records with good sound design but no "soul" ultimately sound "empty". This is I think a metaphorical criticism: it's based on the notion that the soul fills and enlivens the human body - hence the phrase "hollow man". A dance track that focuses on sound design alone is purely functional, in the same way that a living body with no soul would be. (tricky doesn't have to be consciously drawing this connection for it to get carried along like a stowaway hiding in the terms he's using)

So on the one hand Tricky's potential criticism of DJ T etc. is based on an intellectual projection of soul/body dualisms onto electronic music. And on the other hand I expect that when he describes a piece of music as "empty" he really hears it that way, it's the first word that pops into his head to describe the sensation of the experience and his instinctive reaction. It's not merely an ex facto explanation, because the soul/body dualism interposes itself between the music and yr ears. This is why a really compelling or novel explanation of why a piece of music is good or bad can totally change your (well, certainly my) perception of it - it's providing a new interpretative tool for direct engagement with the music.

I agree with tricky on the DJ T album which i didn't click with, despite loving a lot of his prior work. There is a qualitative difference there that makes the purposeless sound-design-ness of the album an issue for the music where it wasn't before. And "empty" is a good word for my experience of it.

There was a utopian vacuousness to the Get Physical 2nd Anniversary Mix - music so perfect sounding that it couldn't really be about anything, couldn't really express anything beyond its own formal perfection. But the vacuousness I'm talking about is very specific, very narrow, rather than an expression of some general soullessness characteristic of European dance music (e.g. I wouldn't characterize the music's contemporaries - say, Tiefschwarz or Black Strobe - as vacuous).

And yeah it was retro but not in any terribly specific way - italo, disco, electro-house, tech-house and Chicago house all kind of get referenced together in a very seamless, blended manner. And this fit the utopian vacuousness: it wasn't trying to return to any particular point in history but rather evoke the feel of history itself grinding to a halt. It really helped that when I first heard the mix I had no idea who M.A.N.D.Y., DJ T etc. were... Even the anonymity of the names were perfect. This was music that had no backstory.

But then with the DJ T album the referencing had narrowed to Chicago house revivalism, and by virtue of it being a single artist album, there was a sense of a more focused and personified aesthetic. At that point, that perfect anonymity starts to break down, because the music does sound like it's in dialogue with a particular moment of history - the remaining air of anonymity (the purposeless sound-design-ness) passes into contradiction with the very singular sense of time and place that the more specific revivalism conjures up. Or, to put it another way, what tricky describes as the music's quest for "ideal form" becomes complicated and roadblocked by the embeddedness of its content.

I also think that the same dynamic explains why so many people find the current deep house revivalism troubling - whereas minimal circa 2005-2006 has its share of haters, it is not (I don't think) due to some sort of form/content quandary.

Although the difference perhaps is that there was already a lot of deep house throughout the nineties that I think could be described as coming close to "pure form".

"And on the other hand I expect that when he describes a piece of music as "empty" he really hears it that way, it's the first word that pops into his head to describe the sensation of the experience and his instinctive reaction."

yes, that's pretty much it. after so many years of tracks that are just drum machine + samples + fx (calcified form) the question then becomes: what is the musician bringing to the table that makes it less calcified (content-wise as mt says)? and then how big is the change? i think we all like to have our jaws dropped by a new twist on form via content. it is also the case that there are exceptional tracks which do not do anything new via content or form and that is where the metaphors go to die. i think those kinds of tracks are actually either the most difficult to create (you can practically hear the sweat) or the ones that arise from deep knowledge and intuition. (i know when i am mixing, the best mixes come effortlessly always and they are rare! there was no thinking involved...)

and my take is metaphorical because you can swim in empty minimalism if you let the current take you away. that is what makes it still exciting for me, but it is dangerous because of the sloughing off of personal experience (as described above) that has to occur in order to describe that experience in a condensed meaningful way.

assuming it needs to be described at all. :D

MASTURBATION

jack your body

It's time to jack.

sorry guys, but this is abysmal

obligatory youtube link

^^^ cf. contemporary cassy tracks

interesting comments at that link. too bad it's not actually a video.

xpost.

ronan hits nail on head. can we please stop talking about 'territorializing' dance music now?

wtf is ur guys problem

those are good posts by tim and if you really dont want to be a part of the discussion you can, you know, not read the fucking thread, or not respond

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/julesw/ebayimages/dj_sammy_sunlight_pcd.jpg

please let's end it with a flame war. ha, xpost.

the second you hate on tiesto or whomever you are staking out territory whether you like it or not.

I like Tim's posts, what I don't like is people pretending to agree when there are chasmic differences in their position, or people not calling out blatant anti-subjective bullshit, but surprise surprise on ILM lately.

Just as an interesting ILM discussion starter, every record I like is good music and everything else is exactly the same, as is everyone who likes it.

Let's mull over that and give it the 100 posts it seems to deserve.

sry whatever ilm usually sucks i forgot, but lets keep talking about 'territorializing' dance music because its about six thousand times better than boringly hating on tiesto or whoever

j/k lets just be grouchy

do you have any reason to be grouchy?

"Just as an interesting ILM discussion starter, every record I like is good music and everything else is exactly the same, as is everyone who likes it."

it is not that simple and you know it!

no sorry it is that simple...you aren't the one having to apparently represent every single "BAD MUSIC" on planet fucking earth....so go ahead and happily agree

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JhZU5a72HJA

i'm not happily agreeing. both positions are polarizing which is what tim and i were getting at.

what's the other "position"

accepting subjectivity is not a position, it's just existence, logic.

the other ("gatekeeping") position is also subjective. it just uses different tactics and language to describe itself.

i will say this though. a virtuoso ear hears like a gold medal swimmer swims.

the original attempt to search and destroy theo parrish upthread is way more woeful than the recent unrelated discussion, honestly

i will say this though. a virtuoso ear hears like a gold medal swimmer swims.

oh just fucking die

the sooner ilx dance threads get some europeans who actually have a club scene the better, the only "virtuoso ears" I know are the ones on the fucking internet.

^^ i think the above is quite fucking true. if you're denying it, why isn't everybody as good a dj as villalobos or theo parrish? some things are beyond subjectivity.

who says everybody isn't as "good" a dj as them? people here might think villalobos is a shit dj, plenty of people do.

nothing is beyond subjectivity.

who says everybody isn't as "good" a dj as them?

there's nothing to stop you, apart from the fact it's patently absurd. the extent you can take subjectivity seriously does have limits... plenty of people think the daily mail is a great, well written newspaper. it doesn't make them right.

no, saying there is some scientific "good" or "bad" about a cultural product is patently absurd. prove to me the exact unchangeable elements of theo parrish, or of villalobos, or of the daily mail......they don't exist in any fixed state and nobody consumes the same product when they listen/read, even the same person doesn't hear the same record twice.

the meaning of "virtuoso ear" changes with the times and the technology, but the necessity of its existence never goes away.

not everything is discourse.

when did i say there was something scientifically 'good' about them? i'm not trying to force anything down anyone's throat here. i'm glad i can tell the difference between a villalobos set and a mara trax set. i don't think anyone else's existence is particularly impoverished by the fact that they can't, though.

and if you honestly believe the world of music would be the same, and equally enjoyable, with no theo parrish and all benny benassi then more power to you.

when u say that something's beyond subjectivity, you better be prepared to defend it objectively

lol resolved your screen name is appropriate

c-post so what does virtuoso ear mean now? and why does your definition mean more than anyone elses? and why does any definition override any other one? and how is there any meaningful unchangeable definition at all?

x-post resolved, if I did that'd be my opinion, and I'd have a right to it. you're now resorting to "but we all think", yeah well some people don't and I'm never going to say someone else is "wrong" cos it's bullshit.

he sooner ilx dance threads get some europeans who actually have a club scene the better

really, ronan? this makes me want to yank your teeth out.

no, i'm not saying anyone else is 'wrong', ronan. it's dance music. who gives that much of a fuck? all i'm saying is -- i can tell. and i'm sure you can, too.

I can tell what? I can tell my own taste, nothing more nothing less. And my own taste is worth no more than anyone elses.

It's a fucking disgrace that people are arguing against this.

I can tell my own taste, nothing more nothing less.

perhaps you should quit djing then

anyone on this thread who can read minds please reveal the secret

And my own taste is worth no more than anyone elses.

Ronan, you're taking this to such a level that even having one's own taste and championing one's own taste is tantamount to snobbery.

No I'm not. Saying why you like things and championing them is fine.

Thinking somehow one music can be "proven" to be better than another is insane.

ronan got his feelings hurt.

but the only person who's waving this 'proven by science' crap about is you, ronan. all i'm saying is, i wouldn't respect the musical opinion of anyone who failed to see any merit in the djing and selection of theo parrish. they'd be free to ignore my musical opinion, too, but then we're effectively existing in entirely different worlds.

Yes, true. But more complex? More rhythmically interesting? More emotionally stirring? More derivative?

xpost to ronan

Mike lost his feelings circa 2002.

x-post that's not what you're saying resolved, or at least that's not how you began.

Yes, true. But more complex? More rhythmically interesting? More emotionally stirring? More derivative?

all matters of opinion....can't be proven, just expressed.

There are certain aspects of dance tracks that can be qualified objectively, is all I am saying. This does not necessarily make one thing better than the next, it just exposes a difference.

Sorry, you're fucking wrong, dude.

well ronan, i'm not trying to have an argument here, and i'm certainly not angry. only you are. within my world (subjective!!), saying all djs are as good as theo parrish and villalobos is patently absurd. and there are obviously no limits to subjectivity, per se. but there ARE limits to the people whose opinions you choose to even register.

i'm wrong. it is not that the meaning changes, but how it is applied given the current state of technology and music and evolved perception (a prodigal musician probably hears things differently today than his or her counterpart did 100 years ago). i am thinking of studio rats. the engineers everyone wants to do their records because they hear things other people simply don't have the facility to hear.

many xposts.

When you dudes are done fighting can you help me find my feelings on the internet? It seems I lost them somewhere around 2002.

this is weird, you guys are listening to ronan but youre not listening to yourselves

in ronan's world, the doodle i drew while i was talking to my boss on the phone today is just as good as a monet

You take something by Hieroglyphic Being (or whomever) and set it up next to something by Tiesto, any fucking moron who knows shit about notation and rhythm structure is going to hear that Hieroglyphic Being is more rhythmically complex.

hey max, how about you don't bother posting again until you have an actual opinion of your own

Sorry, you're fucking wrong, dude

your argument in a nutshell.

saying all djs are as good as theo parrish and villalobos is patently absurd

what if I think all djs are shit? what if I think every dj is good? what if I've never heard either of them dj? what if I've heard one of them 10 times? what if I hate german minimal? what if I hate all dance music?

I've actually completely lost faith in Ronan as a critic because of this thread. It makes me sad.

YOU;RE NOT EVEN ARGUING ANYTHING!! You're simply posing hypotheticals and baiting us.

ronan: i'm speaking in the context of someone who actually enjoys consuming contemporary, 'underground' dance music. most people don't give a shit about tiesto, let alone theo fucking parrish. stop being ridiculous.

anyway, enough.

When you dudes are done fighting can you help me find my feelings on the internet? It seems I lost them somewhere around 2002.

just search for mike taylor, you were great before becoming the robert van winkle to pipecock's eminem.

x-post to table I came to ILM cos it was full of critics who would argue that anything was good, you never could say something was definitively shit without somebody smart contradicting you. why did you come here? and I am firmly arguing something....I'm showing the ludicrousness of your positions by the vast amount of potential differing opinions.

how can there be facts when there are hundreds of opinions about music?

resolved youre kind of a dick, arent you?

heres what you said:

some things are beyond subjectivity.

-- resolved, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:26 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

the extent you can take subjectivity seriously does have limits... plenty of people think the daily mail is a great, well written newspaper. it doesn't make them right.

-- resolved, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:30 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

so, if im reading you right, subjectivity 'has limits'--there are certain statements that are unquestionably factual, such as, for example, "the daily mail is a shitty, poorly-written newspaper." that isnt an 'opinion,' its a fact. it goes beyond subjectivity, making it 'objectively' true. right? im not saying anything that youre not implying in your own posts.

then you go and say this:

when did i say there was something scientifically 'good' about them? i'm not trying to force anything down anyone's throat here.

-- resolved, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:34 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

and im like, uh, what? if youre going to say that subjectivity has a certain set of limits (and hey, maybe it does!) at least be honest with yourself! if there are objectively true facts, why not try to articulate why theyre true?

how can there be facts when there are hundreds of opinions about music?

That is the problem with your argument, Ronan.

i'm speaking in the context of someone who actually enjoys consuming contemporary, 'underground' dance music

so you're saying people who loosely agree with you loosely agree with you.

x-post table the difference is we have science to prove other facts, but loosely I have no problem with that strikethrough.

if someone can prove to me why one artist is better than another, as in, with an equation or mathematics, with no value judgements, with something that is inarguable and incontrivertible.....then would LOVE to hear this.

Music is an art form in which the medium is sound organized in time. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture.

THESE ARE FACTS

max, i suppose when i'm posting on an internet messageboard i'm not a case in a court of law. there are massive holes in my 'argument'. i don't really care. i was, after all, responding to someone in a patently pissy mood saying 'oh just fucking die' to the poster who has probably added the most of interest to the entire thread.

you guys understand youre all being geir in this argument right?

No table they're classical standards. You think the average classical musicians all leap to the defence of Theo Parrish or Ricardo Villalobos?

Many would say they are unmusical bullshit.

what is the equation of a good record, or of a bad one? people can't even express their own personal specific taste in mathematical or scientific or empirical terms, LET ALONE vast swathes of the taste of others or music itself.

good music i dance. no good music i not dance

the table is the table is one of the worst posters ever

tell us more about how you discovered the real spirit of dance music at oberlin

jesus, the craven ass licking on here

"people can't even express their own personal specific taste in mathematical or scientific or empirical terms, LET ALONE vast swathes of the taste of others or music itself."

if you disagree with the existence of something that can't be proved empirically than i just feel sorry for you.

lol im just joshing, but its more fun to just go into ad hominems

Has anybody heard the single sided ugly edit of Under Pressure? That shit is my jam!

how can there be facts when there are hundreds of opinions about music

-- the table is the table, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:00 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

liking ricardo villalobos is not a fact

rather, you liking him may be a fact, but that opinion is not in itself a fact

haha

"people can't even express their own personal specific taste in mathematical or scientific or empirical terms, LET ALONE vast swathes of the taste of others or music itself."

if you disagree with the existence of something that can't be proved empirically than i just feel sorry for you.

don't necessarily disagree with its existence....just can't put my finger on it. how could I, how could anyone? let alone as confidently as some purport to.

x-post my haha was@mike, credit where it's due, you cantankerous old bollocks.

Classical definitions, Ronan, that have brought music to its present state, whether the music be reacting against or in line with those definitions. To simply toss them off is ignorant.

That and there are tons of classical musicians who love shit like Villalobos. A composition teacher of mine thought he was great.

why are you a 'journalist' and not a physicist

deej, i wasn't arguing for or against villalobos there.

I never tossed them off, I simply said they are not empirical laws.

And of course there are lots of classical musicians who love him. Just as there are lots who hate him, have never heard him, listen to rap music, like sugar on their breakfast cereal, think society is in the gutter, don't believe in global warming.....

x-post I wish I was a physicist quite often, I'm just not good at it!

xxpost to ronan, pot calling kettle. it wants its handle back.

anyway, i apologise for framing my original point in such stern terms. i was reacting against someone else's being unreasonable. let's just leave it as this: i'm glad discernment exists. even if it's not exactly the same for everyone.

x-post i'm going to allow that!

any fucking moron who knows shit about notation and rhythm structure is going to hear that Hieroglyphic Being is more rhythmically complex.

But why does this make it better?

arguments about radicual subjectivity have no actual end, and no point.

well ronan, i'm not trying to have an argument here, and i'm certainly not angry. only you are. within my world (subjective!!), saying all djs are as good as theo parrish and villalobos is patently absurd. and there are obviously no limits to subjectivity, per se. but there ARE limits to the people whose opinions you choose to even register.

-- resolved, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 4:51 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

the cult of parrish and villalobos is unbearable

would rather bump dj pharris legends of house mix than either
suck it

i don't really care, deej. get back to freestyling over wearemonster

oh i agree, i wasnt suggesting that. i just wondered why rhythmically complex was important. with there being thousands of records more rhythmically complex than Our Day Will Come, yet only a hundred or so that could be described as better than Our Day Will Come

TP, i wasn't arguing about something more rhythmically complex being better than something that isn't. i was arguing that there are most definitely objective ways of defining certain aspects of music, especially when comparing one music (or track) to another.

that, and Ronan, pitch is actually a fact-- though perceived pitch is most certainly not a fact (environmental factors, etc).

sure and notes are a fact etc.....but what someone thinks of them is always an opinion

i dont understand your point. ronan is wrong to like certain artists because there are common perceptions between people regarding characteristics of some recordings

xp

i quit. but for real guys:

http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g91/sophraves/874658934_l.gif

why do you think trees is saying ronan is wrong about anything? as i understand it he's saying there are objective ways of judging a piece of music which, in theory, enable you to make a value judgement on it. nothing is entirely objective, least of all the interpretation of scientific results!

i'd be happy if for the purposes of all ilm threads from now on we just assumed i didn't like any music whatsoever....maybe I'll just change my login.

resolved otm in fairness. not much to do with music taste anymore.

I dont think ktbwould be hard to tell ronan under a different login.

All facts are facts. However when facts are brought to a table, someone somewhere decided which facts to bring to the table.

And which to leave behind.

I hope their judgement in deciding which facts to bring was a good judgement!

why do you think trees is saying ronan is wrong about anything? as i understand it he's saying there are objective ways of judging a piece of music which, in theory, enable you to make a value judgement on it. nothing is entirely objective, least of all the interpretation of scientific results!

-- resolved, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 5:28 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

... arent you making his argument now?

I've actually completely lost faith in Ronan as a critic because of this thread. It makes me sad.

-- the table is the table, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 4:54 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

why???

Or "it would be", posting from an iPhone in a moving car is the bomb.

resolved, of course nothing is entirely objective, but the radical subjectivism that ronan has been pouring forth is just patently absurd to me.

everyone has an asshole and an opinion.

people base their opinions on many different factors, some of which might have to do with objective facts and some which might not.

the earth keeps spinning.

are you implying that ronan is ignoring some objective facts when drawing conclusions?

give specific examples

no deej, i'm not 'making his argument', i just have reading comprehension, something which you apparently lack. and if ronan wants to be your friend, he'll be your friend. calm down.

and Ronan, I actually do respect you and your taste in music. I just disagree quite vehemently with your subjectivism.

i dont care about ronan, im just trying to figure out how anyone can make an argument that ultimately amounts to "we should all agree about these subjective matters"

resolved, of course nothing is entirely objective, but the radical subjectivism that ronan has been pouring forth is just patently absurd to me.

we're on the same page, here.

but table there are no objective facts in music, or none you've proven anyway.

or if there are....yet to hear a good case for them.

why does nobody without a musical agenda to prove ever argue in favour of a strong objective truth in music?

or if some academics have done so, why is their work never cited by these musical heretics? because the "facts" always seem to centre around one or two godlike auteurs, not actual theory/discussion?

x-post this has zero to do with me or my musical taste....I could like japanese polka and be making this argument.

people base their opinions on many different factors, some of which might have to do with objective facts and some which might not.

tiesto is the best dj in the world, based on the objective fact that tiesto draws far more people to see him spin than any other dj in the world

im sure ronan is frequently 'wrong' in the sense that i would disagree with him, but surely no more than pipecock, whose opinions about rap music are about as laughable as geirs on dance music. for a dude who is all about racial authenticity etc he sure has a pretty narrow caricature of blackness hes following. i bet pipecock has a much better hit rate w/ dance music but one of the reasons im on ronans 'side' here is that u guys really need to realize that this YOURE TOO SUBJECTIVE argument sounds really ridiculous

, im just trying to figure out how anyone can make an argument that ultimately amounts to "we should all agree about these subjective matters"

trees has never made this argument...? my statements up thread, yes, make this argument. but i don't agree with them, particularly. i'm happy liking what i like, and that some other people like what i like. i'm also happy never really spending any time thinking about any of this. hmm, perhaps i should get a sub to the daily mail...

yes it's not even a side.......the reason I'm being persistent on this thread is because I believe in subjectivity more than anything else in the entire world....in fact it's one of the only beliefs I feel supremely confident about.

Well then proving anything shouldn't even fucking matter to you.

Sudjectivity can fucking have ten million gerbils shoved up its ass.

o_O

table can you give an example of criticism/opinions you approve of? not trying to snark here, genuinely wondering what youre looking for here.

xpost if anyone would enjoy such a thing, it's gonna be subjectivity.

I think the point Ronan trying to make is that if Person A is discussing with Person B and Person B is saying this is objective, fact, it is what it is, then it makes that topic dead, it makes person A's view an irrelevance, either the fact is accepted. or it is not.

If person B says ok its not an objective fact, then there is room for dialogue. Perhaps even a beer

if Person A is discussing with Person B and Person B is saying this is subjective, nothing is better than anything else, it is what it is, then it makes that topic dead, it makes person A's view an irrelevance.

Does it? Can't A win B over to A's point of view. or vice versa. They could hold the same subjective view

Or why not send a text?

if everyone's opinion is equally valid about everything then why bother listening to anyone's opinion

i guess lots of people don't!

And isn't person A saying actually this Mingus record is a lot better than that Kenny Larkin record!

anyway, i agree with what you're saying, obviously. i don't know if anyone on this thread, pipecock aside, really thinks like Person B though.

Everyone opinion is equally valid! But i trust your opinion more than many other peoples! perhaps as much as 40% more!

that is the issue, max.

My argument from above about Hieroglyphic Being, for example-- one could criticize his music for being TOO rhytmically complex for dancing music, or one could jam out to it all night. It is still rhytmically complex.

One could argue that Tiesto's swells are superbly placed within a track, or one could argue that Tiesto's swells are much too obvious and uninteresting. They are still swells.

Get my drift?

comparatively

Opinions about the objective elements within music can and in fact SHOULD differ from person to person, but that doesn't change that those objective elements exist.

On the train on the way home i stood with a tall person.

As we went past the basketball court later, I thought perhaps he wasn't tall really. It may well have been a trick of the light

person A: "I really like this mingus record"
person B: "I never got into it, i thought it had toooo many horns, which we know objectively are often loud!"
person A: "did u know??? horns have a long history in jazz music, and i enjoy their use texturally because [long tim finney-style explanation omitted]."
person B: "I see why you appreciate this now! I'm not sure I agree, but..." OR "Wow, I think I am starting to enjoy this."

thats how people can often exchange ideas about music when they arent treating music like its a fucking prop for their ego

Is a 65 minute piece long? objectively?

cats around here sure like to jam lately

God this argument has degenerated a bit I think - surely the point of what Ronan is saying should really be beyond discussion. How many threads have we had on rockism and subjectivity etc. at this stage?

Tricky when you say a golden ear is like an olympic swimmer (paraphrase), the problem is that you're implying some sort of measurable objective standard to get your argument across the line. It's really the measurability (i.e. the empirically proven) part rather than the objectivity part which is the issue here, because it's that which does the rhetorical heavy lifting. If we couldn't measure (in a universally agreed manner) which swimmer was better than the other, we'd spend all our time arguing which was objectively better and never be able to prove anything finally, which would make Olympic selection a nightmare.

It'd be like, "Oh, X swimmer has great form", "well, Y swimmer has been training very hard", "but Z swimmer has really perfected a combination of muscularity and leanness" etc. etc.

Instead we just use our stopwatches and say "okay, A's going to the Olympics".

It's not invalid to say "if you disagree with the existence of something that can't be proved empirically than i just feel sorry for you."

But where does this get us? About as far as debates regarding the existence of God. Christians feel that "objectively" God exists, and atheists feel just as strongly that this is a "subjective" fantasy. Now it may be one or the other but we can never say finally which one it is, at least not without openly buying into a leap of faith w/r/t God's existence. Hence the intelligent design movement and it's quest to pile up enough empirical, erm, suggestions to lend weight to the notion of God's existence independent of faith. This is the kernel of the argument made by proponents of intelligent design that it ought to be taught in science classes rather than religion classes - they say that all they're doing is looking at what kind of conclusions the empirical data is necessitating, rather than importing their prejudices (other scientists disagree of course).

I think intelligent design provides us with an interesting model w/r/t how many of us try to grapple with notions of soul, genius, "the golden ear" - stuff that we have difficulty actually describing.

In theories of intelligent design, it's like the writers are tracing around the edges of the subject matter (e.g. the need for some kind of rational planning of biogenetics given it's complexity and interdependence) by pointing out stuff that can't be explained fully otherwise. ID scientists will say, "oh look at the human eye, it's too sophisticated and elegant, it can't be explained as an accidental development of natural selection, there's a void in the explanation (which God can fill)".

The common structure w/r/t debates on creationism vs evolutionism and debates about music is how the creationists/"objectivists" use God or supposedly objective notions of good or bad to fill the voids in their argument, the sections that they cannot explain. Intelligent design is the most sophisticated example of this plastering approach, and it derives whatever legitimacy it currently has from the acknowledgment that religion begins where science ends - rather than having religion instead of science (e.g. Creationism). Whether ID is right or wrong, historically it looks like it's fighting a losing battle: a rearguard action to defend the last vestiges of faith-based speculation after science has progressively eaten away at so many of Christianity's fundamental tenets. But the important thing to note here is that to some extent science and religion are actually on the same side: both are effectively "quasi-science" (or, to view it oppositely, myth) used to understand and control the outside world: science does it by measurement, religion fills in the gaps to cover anything that cannot be measured. But the implied standard in either case is measurement - both are attempting to account for the empirical world. Whether we say that rain is caused by moisture in the air or by the Gods, both statements can be "empirical".

Where the analogy with music breaks down is that musical judgment is aesthetic, and by definition cannot be measured. Oh, certainly we can measure chord changes and time signatures, and an understanding of form can tell us a lot about how/why certain music works in certain circumstances, but it only forms part of the question of the music's success - the other part of that question is how that form then intersects with taste, which changes over time, develops unevenly, and is governed by a host of inconsistent, largely unmeasurable factors. My taxonomy of the factors that shape gatekeeper militancy is a good example of this: there is no scientific procedure by which those factors can be applied; meaning develops erratically and interdependently, and it differs from person to person. Better to say that it functions, not like science, but like language: sure, we can communicate, but that doesn't mean that there is some independent "objective" truth of the statements we utter. Meaning exists only in the minds of the participants, and it differs for each person.

In music appreciation, there is not one empirical world to be accounted for; rather there are as many musical worlds as there are listeners. Because when we try to account for music appreciation, we're really trying to account for our own reactions. "There's no accounting for taste": all discussions of taste are ultimately propositional and rhetorical, a statement "I think...". We can try to explain why we like or dislike something as precisely and persuasively as possible, but that doesn't make that explanation "empirical" in some universally applicable, measurable way - else Mike Taylor wouldn't be left scratching his head when he reads my enthusiastic writing on music he doesn't like. Analysis of form in this context is much like linguistics: it can tell us a lot about what we're discussing and how we're discussing it, but it can't finally guarantee the truth or untruth of propositional statements.

Whereas in science/religion we can talk about that which can be measured empirically and that which (currently) can't, there is no such dividing line when it comes to writing about taste, since it functions more like a language than a science. It's an illegitimate rhetorical maneuver to draw a line around a couple of ideas like "the golden ear" and say "these phenomena just are, they can't be described or examined," intelligent-design-style. These are propositions to be debated just like any other.

Only rampant generalisation and deliberate blindspots create the notion of real consensus or "objectivity" - this is the whole point of Ronan's complaint about Theo Parrish making reference to a handful of great white european artists in dance music. As Ronan points out, by not specifying the artists, Theo allows everyone to think he is speaking for them, and then they mentally insert their white european exceptions. But of course everyone inserts different names. What Theo is doing is using a discursive device to generate consensus, he's not making a factual statement.

Well put.

Ps ID is a load of BS

^^^^ radical subjectivism

More simply, and ronan's already kinda made this point: what remains forever and always annoying about these critiques of "radical subjectivism" (which is not really applicable btw, it's not like we're talking about ethics or metaphysics ffs!) is that pretty much no-one is ever prepared to place themselves on the losing side of the debate. How convenient that objectivity is always on the side of the speaker.

Or prove me wrong: someone say "Subjectively I think Theo Parrish (or Ricardo Villalobos) is a genius, but if someone were to make a convincing argument that objectively he is not, I will accept that." (and mean it, rather than just say it is a zing).

But that would be the equivalent of a Catholic priest saying "subjectively I believe in the Christian God, but I'm prepared to accept that objectively Hinduism is correct."

We don't say these things because in these discussions a pretense at objectivity is always used as a rhetorical device to shore up the validity of opinions you cannot establish to the satisfaction of all participants.

"Ps ID is a load of BS"

Completely! I forgot to put that disclaimer in.

i don't really care, deej. get back to freestyling over wearemonster

-- resolved, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 6:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

did this happen? i don't know if it sounds like a good thing, but i really want to hear it!!

ID confused absence of evidence with evidence of absence

That's a really nice and succinct explanation actually vahid. I'm totally gonna say that to people and pass it off as my own pithy insight.

i don't really care, deej. get back to freestyling over wearemonster

-- resolved, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 6:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

did this happen? i don't know if it sounds like a good thing, but i really want to hear it!!

-- elan, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 6:40 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i think thats just a joke about me liking rap and being a techno new jack or something. i never liked wearemonster and much preferred rest

okay. i liked both but i heard wearemonster first. they are so different. i guess i would be a new jack too then.

yah thats part of the lols to me, im pretty sure a number of techno thread regulars got into this kinda stuff after i did, not that it should mean anything one way or the other

newb.

I love how this thread went completely batshit for like 2 hours this afternoon. It was giving me serious lolz while I fixed computers this afternoon.

ILX dance regulars are a totally disfunctional family.

i wasn't really thinking in terms of empirical qualities when i made the swimmer analogy. i meant it more in terms of a quality that is ultimately not empirically measurable which goes without saying i suppose. i see now how the analogy is flawed.

it is very bracing and weird being on the other side of the debate. typically i would be the first to argue that all taste is completely subjective, but sometimes (and not just because of this thread) i am not so sure in other things that could be deemed subjective (hence golden ear). i am going to fuck up in explaining this, but to me it is deeply ironic that this discussion in couched in the rhetoric of discourse because even though music is a language and language is one of things that is supposed to make things comprehensible, it feels inadequate in these cases. in linguistics there is the "belief context" which basically states that belief has an unknown truth value; you can believe lies are true. if subjectivity is something you believe in then, it follows that it has the same problems as the objective viewpoint. now tell me why i'm wrong.

ha - xpost tricky. I seriously wrote the following just before your post:

One thing I'd like to salvage from tricky's discussion of the "golden ear" is the notion of intuition. When he talks about producers wanting to work with the "hot" engineer who can hear certain potentialities in the sound of a track and tease those out. It's what I might call the "right"-ness of sound - all those minor subtle differences and inflections that might result in a world of (subjective) qualitative difference between two otherwise similar tracks.

A lot of this stuff is hard to pin down or describe, but producers and listeners can nonetheless make the intuitive leap and pick up on distinctions. The mistake at this point is to assume that the difficulty in describing this stuff makes it somehow transcendental ("soul" etc.) when really it's just difficult to describe.

What is interesting about the impulse towards transcendentalism is that most people (even pipecock) are happy to categorize that stuff which can be described as being a property of the track, but when they run into difficulties in describing what their ears are hearing, those elusive properties then becomes a property of the creator - "soul", for example, impliedly or explicitly imports assumptions about the personality and the life of the creator in a way that technique does not.

I suppose that this fallacy is a direct result of trying to apply the science/religion model - again there is a pretense at objectivity ("technique") whose void is shored up by a deus ex machina (god/soul etc.)

But when we intuitively hear such distinction (either in the process of creation, as producers/engineers etc, or in the process of reception, as listeners) it's not necessarily us responding to something other than techniques. More likely the "technique" at work is too subtle or complex for us to follow easily.

A good analogy is advertising: you can instinctively or intuitively pass judgment on an a particular commercial w/r/t whether it's good or bad ad, whether it "works". And then someone in marketing can come in and give a detailed explanation of why it works or not that replaces your pre-critical judgment with a post-critical judgment. If you agree with the marketing expert, it's probably because the kinds of factors they're offering already exist in your head, they just haven't been articulated. It's not replacing with religion with science: really what is happening is that you as a consumer have rules in your head w/r/t what counts as good or bad advertising, but you may not be able to articulate what those rules are; the advertiser has made a study of those rules. They're still "rules" though - i.e. arbitrary, contingent, made by humans and existing largely for the purpose of successful communication. Their status as "fact" is about the same as the "fact" that you shouldn't split your infinitives (my biggest grammatical failing, incidentally). Lots of people observe good grammar without knowing why; if they study linguistics all they do is replace their intuitive grasp of language with a self-understanding one.

Replacing intuition with self-understanding is (or should be) the model of good criticism: the compliment I most enjoy being paid as a writer is "thank you, I was sorta thinking/feeling the same thing but I couldn't put it into words."

" in linguistics there is the "belief context" which basically states that belief has an unknown truth value; you can believe lies are true. if subjectivity is something you believe in then, it follows that it has the same problems as the objective viewpoint. now tell me why i'm wrong."

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at tricky, but surely we should distinguish between factual statements and qualitative judgments.

If someone says "this theo parrish track was inspired by Count Basie" and that's not in fact true, then they're wrong, no matter how much they believe it.

If someone says "this theo parrish track sounds to me like Count Basie", it's not a factual statement that can be proven or disproven. You can maybe change that person's mind about the relationship by coming up with a better fit ("don't you think it actually sounds more like...") or by complicating their understanding of the resemblance ("well theo does this thing here but count basie would never do that..."). But you can't disprove the initial statement.

The question perhaps for you tricky is "what counts as a lie?"

i suppose so. i think what i am getting at (although at this point i am not even sure) is that both sides here seem quasi-religious. your previous post nailed it..

i mean i guess we did a big circle right back to the intial spark of this discusssion.

I think the subjectivist side would be religious if it said "whatever you can't describe doesn't exist."

I would never claim that, but I would say "what you're describing as soul is not in fact soul and is something else."

Or "I don't think you can just make those connections in the way you're making them."

The obvious example is what you might call the metaphysical blindfold test: Pipecock effectively claims that he can tell the difference between a "real Detroit techno" and a false one by virtue of the soul that inheres in the former.

I disagree with this proposition but I don't doubt that he would probably pass any such blindfold test by and large. What I would argue is that the connections he's hearing b/w the circumstances of the product's creation and the sound of the music cannot be short-circuited via transcendentalism, and can be better explained via a more careful consideration of technique, technology, aesthetic choices etc. Pipecock is intuitively processing that stuff, but the conclusions he comes to about what causes this intuitive leap are all wrong.

And furthermore, the fact that he can make that intuitive leap, the fact of his "golden ear", doesn't make him right about music per se. It makes him reliable as a source of music recommendations among a circle or people who share his musical prejudices (e.g. Mike).

Another "golden ear" might be able to pick up on all the slight distinctions that make Axwell better or worse than D Ramirez, and find the collected works of Omar-S to be boring as hell.

I think that what Ronan is getting at - and what other people are decrying as "radical subjectivism" - is that there are so many notions of what counts as "good" in dance music (or any music!), and all of these notions are based on different criteria. Simply assuming that one golden ear has the monopoly on rightness is not offensive because it assumes objectivity, but because it's just so myopic. It assumes that everyone should choose to live the life that you lead.

"real Detroit techno" track, I mean.

was trying hard to figure out an analogy that matched the ideas in this thread to the ideas of intelligent design but it doesn't really work.

i believe there's objective standards in music. like, when daniel wang says that an early disco track is more melodically or harmonically complex than masters at work's "deep inside", i believe him. of course, i don't think that makes it any better or more enjoyable or more interesting, and there are thousands of threads on ILX that give better explanations why.

if i had to try to do it in a sentence, i'd say that musical experience can be (and should be) transformative for the individual without necessarily representing the pinnacle of the form. i'd bet if you took theo parrish records around to academic music authorities they'd react more or less the same way that winston marsalis reacted to public enemy: "oh, this is ... interesting. it's not really in any key ... and it doesn't have melody or harmony. it does have rhythm, and energy. it's definitely an interesting attempt at music".

i imagine that a PhD might look at my chemistry students (they're 15-16) and say the same thing. "wow, it certainly looks like they're doing chemistry. although they're not making any discoveries, per se. and they certainly make a lot of mistakes." but still, i think their experiences can be important, deeply meaningful even, despite the fact that probably only 1 in 20 will go on to any sort of technical career or physical science career, despite the fact that their efforts are amateur, half-baked, etc.

and let's face it: if we put theo parrish up for review by the past champions of the marginal music (harry smith? stanley crouch? lester bangs?), they'd hate it!

"what you're describing as soul is not in fact soul and is something else."

the danger here is that it reads like you are co-opting language. the word soul has a very strong socio-historical lineage. using the word soul places the music within a type of continuum that means something to people. this is what i mean by the problem of discourse and belief contexts. it makes the whole subjectivist argument seem simultaneously politically correct ("cleaning up" language) and totally arrogant (overgeneralizing about culture) even if that is not the intent. what do you say to a musician who describes her music as soulful? or to the black girl on the south side of chicago with her hand up in your face? she reads this and says, "talk to the hand motherfucker you don't know shit about soul and don't even try to tell me what i know about it."

that hypothetical is a bit of a set-up? most outrageous strawman ever, eh?

"suppose moodymann had a gun to your head, ronan ..."

"what do you say to a musician who describes her music as soulful?"

It depends on what she means. If she is saying that her music has some spiritual quality that other similar sounding music does not, I'd say she's the arrogant one. If she's saying her music has musical qualities that are associated with the use of the world "soul" then it's a totally different story - we're back to questions about technique, aesthetic choice etc.

At any rate, at what point does personal experience take precedence over good argument?

What about the person who's grown up in a religious community who responds the same way regarding questions of science vs religion? "talk to the hand motherfucker you don't know shit about the creation of the world and don't even try to tell me what i know about it."

What about two people who have deep-seated but conflicting notions of soul? What about two black girls from the south side of chicago, each telling the other they don't know shit about soul because one of them likes deep house and the other likes rap?

Who is "co-opting language" at this point? It may be true that "the word soul has a very strong socio-historical lineage", but a component of that lineage is that no-one can agree on what it means! It's entire history is a history of co-option.

I think if you were going to try to distinguish between good co-option and bad co-option (or legitimate and illegitimate co-option) the question then becomes my status as a speaker - to what extent can I as a white middle-class Australian presume to involve myself in discussions about a musical quality bound up in notions of black working-class urban American community.

But this comes back to the point you made about gatekeeper militancy originally - ultimately what's "at stake" is not the quality of the music but broader cultural or even socio-political concerns. But let's be honest about that.

xpost

the premise of your examples is like this: i'm saying something about soul in response to a musician who describes their music as soulful. or to a black girl who's already mad at me. so whether or not i'm right about soul being a rhetorical construction, i'm already committing a faux pas by applying the strong language of ILX to a face-to-face conversation with a musician about their music. that's a little bit like "oh, so you oppose the war on terror? TELL THAT TO THIS LITTLE BOY WHO LOST HIS DADDY ON 9/11".

the question then becomes my status as a speaker - to what extent can I as a white middle-class Australian presume to involve myself in discussions about a musical quality bound up in notions of black working-class urban American community.

-- Tim F

coming from a white person, i love it. love it love it love it.

-- pipecock

yes, it was deliberately over the top. xposts..

"But this comes back to the point you made about gatekeeper militancy originally - ultimately what's "at stake" is not the quality of the music but broader cultural or even socio-political concerns. But let's be honest about that."

yes, exactly!

my point is that it is difficult to separate the music from everything else.

Again, I don't want to claim that the experience-of-music of a black girl from south side Chicago is invalid, but that doesn't mean that the way she chooses to describe that experience is "right" in an objective sense. But I will say that if she wants to convince me she will have to phrase her experience in a way that accords with my standards of reasonable communicability.

But if she believes in "soul" in that strong sense, she won't want to have that conversation with me - the terms of engagement already set out that I do not, will not and cannot "get it." Soul at this point is by definition non-communicable to people outside the community.

Since one of the terms of the hypothetical conversation is that a conversation as such cannot happen, what is at stake is not the existence and nature of soul, but the identity of the participants in the conversation, and whether they both belong to a community that believe in "soul" in the strong sense.

x-post Of course it is, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a certain intellectual dishonesty involved in saying something like "white european techno has no soul, with some exceptions that I will not name". If the speaker really means "I am politically and culturally invested in promoting the interests of musicians from Detroit" then they have the option of just saying that. Pretending that it's "all about the music" is a strategic deception.

Or prove me wrong: someone say "Subjectively I think Theo Parrish (or Ricardo Villalobos) is a genius, but if someone were to make a convincing argument that objectively he is not, I will accept that."

I do this all the time. I know next to nothing about jazz, therefore if I walk into the house of someone with 10,000 jazz records, I won't pick out 'Kind of Blue' and insist we listen to it from beginning to end; I'd let them put the record on. If they've got 10,000 jazz records, and I've got 5, they've obviously got something to teach me. There are objective facets to jazz that I've simply never been exposed to.

This is the same attitude the scientist takes: being open to persuasion. Room for doubt. I think what I think, but if you dig up the right bones, you've got the chance to prove me wrong.

This is why we have experts. This is why we have DJs/proper critics. Because they (should) have the bones, so to speak.

The problem with the radically subjective argument is that it's inheriently non-humble. It's not open to persuasion. It can even come across as a cover for ignorance: "I think what I think, and no matter how many records you play, or how well you explain why you like them, it's not going to change my mind one iota." In that sense, it's like religion.

Yes, music is a language more than a science. And the subjectivists will counter my example with "Yes, but the guy's 10,000 records might be all turn out to all rubbish." Well, that strikes me as a bit arrogant - a bit like "my subjective taste is the only thing that matters". As if they're somehow immune to the memes. I reckon the language analogy is a good one I think: Even if you don't like any of his records, you'll have learned a bit more of the language. And when you listen to 'Kind of Blue' again, it might sound different. More in context. Better or worse. This happens all the time.

The problem with the radically subjective argument is that it's inheriently non-humble. It's not open to persuasion. It can even come across as a cover for ignorance: "I think what I think, and no matter how many records you play, or how well you explain why you like them, it's not going to change my mind one iota." In that sense, it's like religion.

except that this isnt really the 'radically subjective' argument

Example: I used to give credit to Bjork for having a unique voice, until I heard 'Typical Girl' by The Slits!

on this thread, it seems like the "subjectivists" are more open to persuasion than vice-versa. or at least, they're not the ones complaining about the narrow range of worthwhile techno.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/ce/Straw_dogs_movie_poster.jpg/418px-Straw_dogs_movie_poster.jpg

see what i did there

good dog your argument is fundamentally messed up, because it's not (and tim was getting at this a bit upthread) a 2-way relationship.

what about the guy with 10,000 records? is his feeling 2,000 times more real than yours? what if you walk in with the EXACT PERFECT FIVE techno records, and he's still like "nope, shit sucks, made by machines, no harmony, no melody, no technique, no improvisation" and you're like "but but this drexciya track was recorded live in one take" and he's like "no way son, shit don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing".

the problem with your example is the same as tricky's: there's already a hierarchy implied in the set-up of your story.

and i don't mean to say experts aren't great! but generally what experts are good at is explaining the minutiae of their field, of explaining in very detailed terms what's great about their field of expertise. like sometime ILX poster phil d freeman (PDF), who is the guy to go to if you want an explanation of this electric miles track or that funkadelic track. he'll tell you what's great about them.

what experts are not so great at are doing the vague types of things that people on this thread are imputing to priveleged listeners: picking one genre over another, one subgenre over another, explaining the superiority of their particular turf over other turfs, explaining metaphysical ideas like "soul", "funk", "swing", "realness", etc.

at best, they can question these things, throw in additional complications, like "hey how DO you know that electric miles had less technique?" or "hey what makes you think disco's not real?" or "what makes you think tiffany isn't as raw as black sabbath?"

like most academics and most critics, experts are usually pretty good at making positive claims but very unpersuasive at making negative claims.

sorry deej i took it way too far.

what about the guy with 10,000 records? is his feeling 2,000 times more real than yours?

No, a feeling is a feeling, whether the music is good or not. I listen to cruddy music and enjoy it, but there should still be room in there for admitting that what I’m listening to kinda sucks in X, Y & Z ways. This is the difference: Subjectivists would say “I like it” means the same thing as “it’s good”. But those two things can (and should) be separated out. The value of it, the quality, the social environ, etc are independent factors completely separated from “your taste”.

To take a language example: little kids laugh at crap jokes. Does that mean these jokes are funny? Not really. What’s really going on is that the kids have never been exposed to the jokes before, therefore they laugh. “Knock knock” “Who’s there?” “Dr” “Dr Who?”. The first time, ha ha. Now you’ve heard it 1000 times, it’s like white noise. It’s not a matter of objective/subjective, it’s a matter of more information – being exposed to memes in the culture.

Which is why I would defend expertise: In your eg, the jazz dude’s feeling about techno is wrong not because of his feeling, but because he’s making a category mistake by judging techno with jazz criteria. The opposite is true too: you can’t listen to Pharoah Sanders for dancability. It’s like an Englishman trying to read a Chinese novel – first you have to learn the language.

I’d say it doesn’t work both ways: the dude with 10,000 records gets to instruct the dude with 5 records.

getting sort of annoyed w/ all the people in here arguing for objective 'criteria' without being explicit about what those criteria are