TS Progress vs Novelty

what's your point

There's an interesting seed of an idea in here but I'm not quite comprehending.

Two words with sort of similar meanings in a pop context but one is almost always positive and the other is almost always negative. Just find the rhetorical sleight of hand interesting. Thought it might leads to discussion.

Why do people like "progress"? Cos it's new and exciting! Why do people like "novelty"? Cos it's new and exciting!

Strawman rockist (of sorts) craves the giddy thrill of "progress". Strawman poptimist (of sorts) craves the giddy thrill of "novelty".

"Progress" implies a continued development and leads to further areas; "novelty" implies a one-off tangent.

I have to go and fiddle with LCD screens and Powerpoints, but I'll be back.

and progress is not intelligently planned
it's the facade of our heritage
the odor of our land
they speak of progress
in red, white and blue
it's the structure of the future
as demise comes seething through
it's progress 'til there's nothing left to gain
as the dearth of new ideas
makes us wallow in our shame
so before you go to contribute more
to the destruction of this world you adore
remember life on earth is but a flash of dawn
and we're all part of it as the day rolls on
and progress is a message that we send
one step closer to the future
one inch closer to the end
I say progress is a synonym of time
we are all aware of it but it's nothing we refine
and progress is a debt we all must pay
it's convenience we all cherish
it's pollution we disdain
and the cutting edge is dulling
too many folks to plow through
just keep your fuckin' distance
and it can't include you!

oh go and bang your rocks on the cave wall grandad

maybe innovation is the happy median of most critics. progress a little too much like those nasty prog rockers.

dark side of the moon vs mould old dough

Music writers want to tell good stories and the progress from point A to point B is kind of a classic model of story-telling. Descriptions of novelty don't have the same type of hook.

Similarly, musicians could be expected to prefer to be seen as artists going through process of evolution, not just tinkerers who got lucky and came up with something unusual enough to catch interest. Not only is the "progress" storyline more flattering, it also sounds like a safer career move - less reliance on chance.

But man, this plotline has done a lot to weight down music. Just for one example, "transitional" records tend not to be the greatest thing you ever heard. Obviously what makes a song good can come from progress or novelty or neither or both, and what moves most music fans I'd wager is their connection with individual songs, not with the arc of an artist's career.

PUNK IS DEAD DEAL WITH IT

But seriously (as if that wasn't serious):
"Shaddap You Face" and "Vienna" - which is which?

DSOTM now sounds pretty dated and old-fashioned tbh.

Progress is not merely good, it is absolutely vital. Novelty can be stunning if deployed effectively.

Does Mouldy Old Dough?

frankly i'd pick neither of them, by 1975 the likes of yes (and arguably hawkwind, can, neu etc) had advanced music well beyond what the floyd were capable of, even if they continued to release good records.

where had they advanced it too? was it a better place?

advanced it to a better place, yes, and moreover a more sophisticated one. 'relayer', for instance, does some stuff that no other 70's band could dream of matching. that's just my opinion, granted.

i should probably have phrased that 'sophisticated place, and moreover a better one', the 'better' bit being by far the more important.

How much further do 65daysofstatic go beyond Yes? Could it be quantified? Would it be immediately noticeable on first listen to someone unfamiliar with progressive rock?

Here we enter some tricky territory. Doubtless one can instantly tell from the (slightly) more unpredictable song structures, polished production, and above all IDM-and-effects-pedal-enhanced sound that this album was made with more advanced tools than Yes (essentially, a wider palette of sounds and ideas being available), but when it comes to judging which of the two is actually BETTER, things get a bit more complicated. Relayer is an album which does quite astonishing, grandiose things with the equipment available, and its many ideas and musical strings still cohere in a surprising, entertaining, and dare I say magical manner. I would personally judge the two records as being very close in terms of quality, and with chronological context removed completely, I'd say that the long-form compositions of Relayer are possibly the more stirring in terms of their build, shift, and melodic re-appropriation, whereas the 65DOS album is the more exciting in terms of its use of sound, production, and micro-management.

*Yes'

If really pushed, Gates Of Delirium is a better piece of music than anything that 65DOS have yet created, but this is an INCREDIBLY rare instance of the pre-1979 piece beating the post-1979 one (in a battle of near-equivalents). I'm a confirmed modernist, and I firmly believe in the truth of improvement. Sure, there'll always be musical genuises and pseuds, but we just have so much more available to us nowadays, including, most importantly, prior music whose bar we must strive to overvault.

louis i am eagerly awaiting a complete articulation of the schema by which you judge music "good" and "bad."

It boils down to whether I get a rush or not during the song, and whether in reflection I actually think to myself 'That was amazing'. This can happen after the first listen, or the 31st, but the most important occasion is generally the latest one.

Amazement is brought about by surprise, by sound, by depth, by variation, by progression, by rhythm, and by melody. The very best songs excel in all departments.

Louis Armstrong playing WC Handy is better than anything by Hawkwind or Yes.

lj just so you know youre about 10 years away from being geir

"I'm a confirmed modernist, and I firmly believe in the truth of improvement."

point me towards this "truth".

First time i've heard "modernist" used in that way, too.

I knew I shouldn't have mentioned 'melody', it's like an anathema to some people on ILM, entirely thanks to Geir.

Max, if you haven't spotted enormous and irreconcilable differences between Geir's musical philosophy and mine, you might need to take comprehension courses. Remember, this is someone who thinks that the best music was made in the 1970's, and that all music ought to sound like it, there being no point in innovation. That's pretty diametrically opposed to my own beliefs. Your zing/comparison is lazy, tedious, and above all inaccurate.

modernist = opposite of traditionalist, you could probably get away with calling me a rocktimist, although that label would be just as meaningless as many others of that nature that ILMers are so quick to bandy about (rockist, popist etc). The truth of modernism is that the bar will always be raised, and I describe it as a truth because I believe it to be one.

you and geir both think you've been able to organize what makes music "good" and "bad" based on the grades you give that music in a variety of arbitrarily-determined categories. the more you toss around words like "progress," "improvement," and yes, even "better," the more you move towards a systematization of musical quality. geir's is more or less set in stone now (the beatles >> genesis >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> rap); yours is changing, but give yourself a little bit of time and pretty soon you'll be able to set up a chart about music from the "best" to the "worst."

Bollocks! I don't 'grade' music based upon the categories I just mentioned. To suggest so would be flagrantly untrue. I was just searching for a way to describe the aspects of music which I believe combine to create a great listening experience. I'm not systematizing musical quality, I'm trying to describe its causation. What makes music 'good' or 'bad' isn't how it sounds or what tune it has, it's how the whole package interacts and stimulates the subconscious.

i don't know shit about rockism/popism. to exapmles of use of term "modernism": i) 20c literature, where it involved looking to the greatest and most profound statements as expressed in art and myth of the near and distant past, and bringing them alive in modern experience, and via up-t0-date techniques. but the notion that this was "improving" the odessey or the grail myth was ventured by no-one.
ii) MOD-ernism, england 1964. they revered james brown, motown, stax for the soul, the energy, the good time philosophy, the emphasis on daily experience, relationships. now i know there was/is a lot of bullshit notions of "improving/advancing music" in mod, but i'd imagine most ravers liked it it because it spoke to them and it sounded fucking good. and it still sounds good, better than most.

so where is your definition of "modernism" from? it sounds a bit late 90s idm. ltj bukem etc.
your ideas of music sound like some vile symptomn of future times that i want nothing to do with. ruthless, destructive.

Amazement is brought about by surprise, by sound, by depth, by variation, by progression, by rhythm, and by melody. The very best songs excel in all departments.

advanced it to a better place, yes, and moreover a more sophisticated one. 'relayer', for instance, does some stuff that no other 70's band could dream of matching.

by 1975 the likes of yes (and arguably hawkwind, can, neu etc) had advanced music well beyond what the floyd were capable of

frogman, i was using the word 'modernism' precisely on my own terms, it has nothing whatsoever to do with either of the examples you cite. i simply mean that modern music has the potential to be better than what has come before, potential which i believe it must realise.

max, those quotes are not the same as actually 'grading each song by certain categories'. it's not like i listen to a song and think 'ooh, strong depth, 4 out of 5 for progression, B- for the guitar sound, jesus that rhythm is shit-hot but the variation is weak'; judging the way in which a song works comes much later. enjoyment and delight are all I seek from a listening experience.

DUDE WHEN YOU SAY THAT MUSIC "ADVANCES" YOU ARE MAKING A JUDGMENT CALL. PERIOD.

you could say i'm a traditionalist in that i don't believe technology has improved music-making, qualititively for the better. furtwangler is still the best beethoven conductor, his orchestra's recreation of beethoven symps are among the best, musically. record-production is of course, another matter. simon rattle's recent berlin cycle proves that. the sound is astounding. the music-making can't touch furtwangler. who knows how they compared to mahler's interpretations.

so yeh, what matters is the intent, the talent, the energy put in.
technology factors in to the sound of the music on record. steely dan are one of my favourite bands. i love the sound of aja. but that record couldn't be "improved" today with better tech because their intent and energy is different. similarly, that record would be nothing without its strong musical ideas and execution.

i mean you cant actually say that one piece is more "sophisticated" unless you have a good, quantifiable definition of "sophistication," right? and in order to say one piece is more "sophisticated" you have to judge the "sophistication" of each piece and then say which one is "more sophisticated."

it sounds a bit late 90s idm. ltj bukem etc.

don't apply your on obscure pet definitions to other peoples' phrases! i have barely any idea what you're on about here. furthermore, my theory is not ruthless or destructive, it is demanding, yes, but it's all about creation and growth, hardly 'destruction'.

max, when i say that music 'advances', i mean that music, in terms of both compositional and sound quality, MUST advance because we WILL have knowledge of prior music, and we WILL be able to out-do it. this is as inescapable as the passing of time, time which causes this inevitability.

sophistication I can judge by how well I believe the music approaches its ideals. yes, this may be a value call, but this doesn't necessarily mean that i'm separating the music out into little bits. it's a thing i've gotten an instinct for. music approaches its ideals, i believe, by using the best possible sound at the best possible time to suit its purpose. some music uses great sounds at great times, other music less so.

Louis would you say rock music is more progressive than other forms of popular music? Would it be possible for a pop, hip hop or dance (etc, etc...) act to match 65dos or even Yes?

aja might have the best sounds for its songs! it might well! i'm not disputing this possibility. however, were it made now, those sounds WOULD still be available, and it still COULD be made just as it originally was. perhaps with a slightly crisper drum sound. ;-)

also, i know you've emphasised you're talking about rock, but music is music, right? so if "sophistication" is your bag, why aren't you spending all your time listening to orlando gibbons, charlie parker, ornette coleman, and pierre boulez?

acrobat, i may mention 'rock' because a large percentage of my taste falls under what many would describe as 'rock', but i don't as a rule like genre descriptions in the slightest. orbital are a 'dance' act, and they've matched yes, if you want a comparison on your terms, but i believe that it would be possible for any musical act to surpass any previous one if they come up with better ideas and execute them well. when you consider the lines between 'rock' and 'pop', for instance, and where exactly that line might lie on a sliding scale, then such descriptions (to me at least) appear ludicrous.

grr frogman I HAVEN'T emphasised I'm talking about rock, the reason i don't spend all my time listening to those guys is either because i haven't been introduced to them, or, as is more likely, that i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

"max, when i say that music 'advances', i mean that music, in terms of both compositional and sound quality, MUST advance because we WILL have knowledge of prior music, and we WILL be able to out-do it. this is as inescapable as the passing of time, time which causes this inevitability."

just complete horsehit from START to FINISH.

times change, fashions change, technology changes, music theory changes, music taste changes, music changes, not necessarily in that order. all opinions of the quality of the music is based on the listeners pleasure and interpretation, as affected by a number of the above factors. this is inescapbly true. all else is dogmatic and ignorant assertion.

"grr frogman I HAVEN'T emphasised I'm talking about rock, the reason i don't spend all my time listening to those guys is either because i haven't been introduced to them, or, as is more likely, that i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish."

i'm not the one talking about "out-doing" music!

on other threads you've said that when you come out with all this guff, you're mainly referring to the history/progress of rock.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

sorry "youve said you're mainly referring to the history/progress of rock".

For fuck's sake Max, when I say that I mean that WHENEVER I listen to a jazz piece IT JUST DOESN'T PUSH MY BUTTONS, OK? That isn't snobbishness, that's just the way I'm built. I even say, 'not because it is jazz'! I have nothing against 'jazz'! Just that most pieces which are described as 'jazz' don't do very much for me! Jesus!

Well done for spotting such a tenuous irony, though! You must feel so good about it! So good you reposted it about 7 times!

times change, fashions change, technology changes, music theory changes, music taste changes, music changes, not necessarily in that order. all opinions of the quality of the music is based on the listeners pleasure and interpretation, as affected by a number of the above factors. this is inescapbly true. all else is dogmatic and ignorant assertion.

'change'

Listen, buddy, music doesn't just go. Sure, new developments are made, but that doesn't mean we just lose the old stuff! Music can't change, once it's recorded or played, then that's it! It's happened! It exists as its creators made it! Everything else on your list adapts and develops, but it does NOT completely change! Ever!

"max, when i say that music 'advances', i mean that music, in terms of both compositional and sound quality, MUST advance because we WILL have knowledge of prior music, and we WILL be able to out-do it. this is as inescapable as the passing of time, time which causes this inevitability."

not many people use windows 95 any more, so i guess you're right.

are you equating my use of the word change with die or disappear?
i think you'll find that adaptation and developement come under the heading of change. srsly.

also your ideas aren' that "modern" (if modern = enlightened). they're like the worst examples of thnking from the 1930s atonal school, or radical aesthetic thought from the '60s.

Basically, I believe that although it is often pleasant to take the surrounding context of music into account, in order to study how influences spread and to benefit other such areas of historical scholarship, when it comes to one's basic enjoyment and appreciation of the sound itself, you should treat all music as if it were being written in the here and now. I'm not a post-structuralist, and I believe there are many, many things wrong with Barthes' philosophy (foremost amongst which being that he doesn't take the emotional, responsive reader into account), but there's more than one way of approaching music, and at its fundamental level, one must judge how the music you are currently listening to currently sounds. Other concerns help us to understand music, but only listening allows us to fully enjoy it.

I mean that music itself can't change, because music at its basic level is a linear chronological progression of sounds. no time travel = no change.

"you should treat all music as if it were being written in the here and now"

yes EXACTLY.

hallelujah, i think we agree.

forget about bullshit notions of "advancement, improvement", how does this music written 300 years ago/last month sound to me and affect me right now? THAT'S IT. that's the criterion.

Can you really seperate how you respond to music from the stories you ahve been told about music?

*have

xxpost: YES but if I THEN factor in the dates of the pieces of music that affect me the most (namely, when I seek to UNDERSTAND the music), I generally find myself enjoying recent pieces FAR MORE. "Why?" I ask myself. And then I realise: the recent music has TAKEN the older music INTO ACCOUNT, and then PROGRESSED beyond it.

xpost to myself
although that's not quite what you said, is it. because if you treated all music you heard as if it were WRITTEN in the here and now, then some music (some really great music) would fall short because one is inevitably a product of his time to some degree, and might develop some ridiculous prejudice against old-fashioned sounding music. like bach or ornette coleman.

...as you've just done.

oh well.

"the recent music has TAKEN the older music INTO ACCOUNT, and then PROGRESSED beyond it."

really fucking heinous.

howard shore is automatically better than monteverdi. because the musical style has progressed.

Acrobat, this is similar to the concept of 'practical criticism' in literature: imagine one is handed an utterly unknown piece of music, handed ONLY the music, and instructed to describe its musical effects, and there is no story to affect you. When one takes the story into account, things change slightly, of course, but not as much as you might think. Such factors, as I say, are worth far more when it comes to understanding the music and discussing its context and periphery, than for describing one's enjoyment of it.

Bach sounded WAY better when Ulver covered some on synthesisers and drum machines (the coda of 'It Is Not Sound').

dad a otm. progress is a directional story people attach to history in order to justify the conditions of late capitalism (ha!) or in order to, i don't know, do whatever work people need it to do. this doesn't mean i would throw away the phrase "does something new" as a good thing, but "new" in my mind is a million times more complicated than some kind of measuring line, especially when you consider the listener's context. the language of music is strange; i think there's a fifty-fifty split between the sounds and the context determining what the music 'is.'

anyway, i think the crudest stories of progress are usually attached to a historical something by people who know the least about that something but want to sound (to others, to themselves) like they know the most. louis, you should listen to more stuff before you start making shit up! try a random jazz rec! if it doesn't come to you, you have to come to it, etc.

so many x-posts

xposts: haha, I'm speaking generally. Some old music is of doubtless high quality. New music, however, is any music that can be played now. This INCLUDES the old music. The old music might form a PART of the new music. However, the music I enjoy more tends to have been MADE recently, because it combines the best elements and ideas of ALL music, and the more recently, the more elements and ideas it has had to combine. Imagine a great classical work. Now imagine a piece of music that updates some of the elements of that work with modern instrumentation, SO THAT the classical work sounds better (just imagine that is a possibility). The work has been improved, no matter how high the quality of the original.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Hamlet-bloom.jpg

i think if lj had maybe heard elsie carlisle or ambrose & his orchestra he'd have realised his so called progress would look pretty silly

not to mention sol campbell & his riverboat gamblers

fifty-fifty
least
most

making shit up

I've tried plenty of random jazz records!

but some people dont necessarily realise time runs backwards a lot of the time, which is how i was in highgate just under an hour ago but i havent even set off yet

but don't you see how your "enjoyment" is wrapped up in all sorts of assumptions about the music of your time? you're incapable of listening to music without that being present in your head, front or back. and with you it (seemingly) forms a HUGE element in your taste and appreciation, whether you recognize it at the monent of listening or not.

The listening always comes first. I really like Magazine's album 'Secondhand Daylight', and when I compare its (great) sounds to those of a modern record, it often comes out favourably. No matter that it was released in 1979; for its time it is very forward-thinking, but it's an album that I'm listening to in 2007, and it's judged, initially, purely on those terms. Dates are taken account of later on, as I say, when I wish to understand the music.

Some old music is of doubtless high quality.

just..wow.

"the recent music has TAKEN the older music INTO ACCOUNT, and then PROGRESSED beyond it."

not that I particularly want to give this comment any credit, but isn't it also true that the old music that exists serves to limit what can be done today? 65DOS can't do one particular great thing because Yes have already done it, or whatever, and that'd just be DERIVATIVE, not progressive. Your suggestion seems to come to the conclusion that taking a John Coltrane album and laying down some laptop glitch would improve it. Note to self: don't try to make points when falling asleep.

'my time' is also a fallacy; most of my favourite records are over 5 years old! I simply believe that by definition our stockpile of music will improve with time, and this inevitably will allow some of the newer additions to the heap to extrapolate yet better combinations of sounds from that stockpile. as long as they're not lazy.

laziness is the only thing that can sink my theory.

"Imagine a great classical work. Now imagine a piece of music that updates some of the elements of that work with modern instrumentation, SO THAT the classical work sounds better (just imagine that is a possibility). The work has been improved, no matter how high the quality of the original"

well you're clearly talking to the wrong person cos 3/4 of my recordings of pre-1800 works are played on authentic (of-their-time) instruments and using authentic performance practise. so i disagree with that almost completely.

louis you need to either admit more frequently that the terms youre using--"good"/"bad"/"progress"--apply ONLY TO YOU--or you need to quantify and explain those terms.

"'my time' is also a fallacy; most of my favourite records are over 5 years old!"

do you know how long music/notation has been around for. i think 5 yrs ago is "your time".

Whether a piece is derivative or not falls under the 'secondary concern' category. Again, it allows me to understand the piece. If, however, there's an album out there (for the sake of argument, Yes' 'Relayer') which is one wrong sound away from perfection (it isn't, but let's assume it is), it is my argument that for another band to record that very album with the sound changed and improved would be a very good thing. Of course, perfection of an idea is nearly impossible, and will probably never happen over the sustained length of an album (haha, Loveless to thread? :-P), but being derivative is of no real initial concern to me when listening to music.

you dont get to have it both ways, dude--"progress" is either objective and quantifiable OR subjective and applicable only the specificity of your listening tastes and habits.

brave new world

Louis, you once claimed there had not been a single UK no 1 single you had liked since 1997. This seems strange because many of the records that have reached no 1 in the last ten years fulfill your criteria for seeing music as worthwhile. Of course you may dislike say "Toxic" or "21 Seconds" for other reasons but it seems to me those records amongst many other have rather successfully "extrapolated yet better combinations of sounds from the stockpile".

yes, but even if they're from 'my time', this is COINCIDENCE. mozart's sanctus in c minor is NOT of my time, but when i was young it was one of my favourite pieces of music, i realise now because the piece's musical concept was so well suited by its instrumentation and rendering.

we have progressed beyond the savage. now we have soma.

I never really listened to the charts much; Toxic isn't so much my cup of tea, I'll admit, but it is a very good song, which I will dance to. Other than that, well, I'm not sure those songs appeal to my definitely subjective view on what constitutes perfect sound.

So, Max, your answer: The sounds thing is subjective, but the theory on improvement is surely by definition objective, if we regard all music as taking place when it is heard right now.

perfection is art is a shitty concept. unless you're hyperbolating in which case it is adequate. perfectly adequate.

and it was 2000, I believe, with 'Pure Shores'. What a tune. :-D

yes of course i'm creating a hyperbole, and although i'm sure perfection is possible, it merely takes one's aim to shift slightly and the 'perfection' is no longer feasible. 'perfection' is crude, yes, maybe 'suitability' is a better phrase.

"the theory on improvement is surely by definition objective, if we regard all music as taking place when it is heard right now"

well no obviously not because we have all sorts of different responses on hearing music. you'd have to rank, say, ecstasy over other forms of appreciation and then attach THAT to "improvement". so, totally subjective.

No, I mean that one's choice of possible music will always be better after the passing of more time, because there will be more music to choose from.

unless you regard music as a bad thing, or you hate choice.

or if your favourite music is word-of-mouth folk-song that never did get written down, and is currently being forgotten.

Anyway, I've said enough. To bed, and let the brooding vultures tear this apart howsoe'er they shall, come the morning...

then louis you're confusing "availability" with "quality"

No, I mean that one's choice of possible music will always be better after the passing of more time, because there will be more music to choose from.

-- Just got offed, Saturday, June 2, 2007 2:31 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Link

this is v. OTM! but you have to admit that the social conditions surrounding (subtending, sorry) the creation and consumption of a particular piece of music get altered with the passage of time, so that say, without the network of friends or concert-goers or bandmantes around you in the early 1970s, you miss a few dimensions when you're hearing 'exile on main st.' in 2007. the great thing is you can flirt with entering it (get stoned and listen to it + other stuff from then), but it's a bit of a dream-world isn't it? (probably then as much as it now i guess.)

and then there's the invention of recording techology, which i believe fundamentally altered the creation, reception, understanding of music as we know it today. i think there's a major rift (concerning again musical creation, consumption, use) which immeasurably separates us from anything pre-1870! we literally don't know how to 'evaluate' it with our current ears (except for relying on pre-established canonism). ok that's all, drunk and time to go to bed, preemptive sorry.

bad

then louis you're confusing "availability" with "quality"

Yes, or variety with quality. Who knows what Mozart or Bach could have come up with given synthesisers or pro-tools or electric guitars or whatever? But the fact is that in the paradigm they were working in they were (generally considered to be even though this is subjective too) producing music of the highest possible quality, and to suppose that that music could be improved with modern technology or modern ideas is thoroughly absurd.

Well, like I say, should the aims differ, the means to expressing them will differ as well. Mozart and company had their aims restricted by the technology of the time, not to mention the available past resources of music, and their own imaginations. In those circumstances, they wrote music that perhaps well suited what they were trying to do. Had they access to a greater palette of sounds, however, they would by definition have been able to aim for better things, and thus execute their aims with more advanced technology.

'Better' here is subjective, but everything else makes logical sense. My belief hinges upon the greater variety of choice being for the best.

And as I say, Bach's 'Toccata and Fugue' is REALLY improved by a bit of Ulver synth madness. :-D

Had they access to a greater palette of sounds, however, they would by definition have been able to aim for better things

You're still conflating variety and quality! Why is black and white photography still a going concern when everyone has access to the full palette of colours?

The most you can say is that had they access to new technology and ideas, they have have been able to come up with a wider variety of music, and thus have been more accomplished composers. But that says nothing about the quality of the music they did write.

havewould have

Because black-and-white photography is often a more aesthetically-pleasing way of rendering certain images. I'm not saying that the medium of Mozart's music is NECESSARILY worse than current media, but I AM saying that since there is more choice now, current-day Mozart could STILL write his works just as he originally did, and indeed as you say, for his aims the music might well still suffice the best. However, there is the chance that owing to better recording techniques, and a greater quantity of available sounds, Mozart might wish to subtly alter certain aspects of his work in order to, say, derive a lusher sound or a greater dynamic effect.

The b/w photo argument is not a great comparison. Music is made up of interacting sounds, and photos are made up of interacting images, yes, but the images themselves don't change when rendered in b/w or colour; a subtle means of representing them does change, but the musical equivalent would be CD versus vinyl, or better, analog versus digital recording; it doesn't affect the overall make-up of the photograph, but is simply an aesthetic choice in how is is rendered. It doesn't limit the 'variety' of what photographs one might take.

Well, I don't doubt the quality of the music that they did write, but it doesn't stir my soul particularly. This is entirely subjective, I know, but I think that the reason I don't particularly like classical is the limited stash of sounds and ideas belonging to the composers and performers. Others love it, though, so clearly it's doing something right.

Ha ha, LJ is the New Geir! What does poor old Geir do now??!?!?

Your reconfiguring of the analogy is... arguable. But let's not get sidetracked.

How far do you suppose this progress is going to take us? Is there an end point or is it infinitely removed? What is the distance between Toccata and Fugue and your preferred modern version? Between either of those two and what might be possible 10,000 years hence?

It's not the limited stash of sounds you don't like, it's the particular sounds and ideas that they use. Are you saying every artist and song you appreciate strides a vast soundscape? Nothing simple stirs your soul?

Well, there's still so much to be done that I don't think it's worth considering infinity. The possible sounds are so plentiful and so unexplored that I think it'll be many years before we're even comfortable with constructing music out of as wide a range as sound permits. The next step, I think, aside from mastering modulations and distortions, and micro-managing music so that the sounds vary from instant to instant rather than remaining complacently static, would be to incorporate quarter-tones and eighth-tones into music, for its benefit. Sounds difficult, is difficult, but I regard it as a necessary step.

FFS I'M NOT THE NEW GEIR, all of this is theory, not absolute credo I apply to everything I listen to

If the cap fits...

ledge, as I say, all of this is general aethetic theory. no, i don't particularly like the sounds they use, and indeed music i appreciate tends to have a more 'modern' sound. simplicity stirs my soul if it is in the right context and if it is the best that can be done. for instance, at the very end of talk talk's 'runeii', hollis has made his near-perfect artistic statement, and totally drained the listener. after a minimal, affecting song made out of piano, mumbled vocals and harsh-sounding guitars, he simply plays a few piano chords, pauses, and then plays them again. its brilliance comes from it being the VERY best that could have happened, and that in the context of a very ambitious, experimental record. sadly, i don't think the same is true of most if not all classical music.

The difference between the old Toccata and Fugue and the new one is that the new one goes through several modulations to rack up the tension better than any clavichord could, and it uses amazing synth sounds to truly stun and delight me, the listener.

if it is in the right context and if it is the best that can be done

I can't really debate this without getting into the whole subjective v objective thing, which I am loath to do right now. But just to let you know my position is one of total sujectivity so I think these notions of "right context" and "very best" are utterly unsalvageable.

to truly stun and delight ME

HI DERE I IS SIMON "GRIMEY SIMEY" REYNOLDS:

SR: It could be that rock has now become like jazz, in the sense of carrying on, being active and bustling with subgenres, but simply no longer commanding the leading edge/center of music culture role it used to have. Jazz when it arrived was revolutionary and feared in just the same way as rock, and it was also the site of intensity, exactly the kind of seriousness and obsessiveness that we think of as being characteristic to the rock era. There were all these jazz clubs in the UK where intense young people (mostly male) would listen to all these obscure jazz sides and debate the merits of such and such a player, gauge innovations, etc. That apparatus of taking music seriously and hunting and collecting it obsessively, that then shifted its focus gradually to the blues, and that was a major tributary into the emergence of rock.

It could also be larger than that, though: it could be that it’s not a specific genre but music as a whole that has ceased to be at the driving center of the culture. That is something I find hard to get my head around, but you could certainly argue that’s something that’s been creeping up on us for a long while.

discuss

However, there is the chance that owing to better recording techniques, and a greater quantity of available sounds, Mozart might wish to subtly alter certain aspects of his work in order to, say, derive a lusher sound or a greater dynamic effect.

but dont you get that the stuff mozart was writing is culturally/historically specific? playing games like "what would mozart sound like if he had an electric guitar" is ridiculous because the composition itself is as bound by its context as much as the instruments and songwriting methods available!

the argument only really works if you assume that the best musicians working today are going to make music that incorporates everything. Yeah, the variety = quality thing. This whole thing is, I think, just so bewildering that I have no idea how to argue against it. Other than that the qualities that make music (subjectively) good cannot be expressed in terms other than the music itself, so speaking of music being better because it uses technology better or whatever is pretty crazy. Which is a point that Louis pretty much made, oddly.

im going to make my lunch in 3 hours time, the range of ingredients that are available to me will be greater than what was available to me even just a few hours ago, mainly because of developments in 'going to Morrisons' technology but also because of ingredients that were in the freezer but have now defrosted. Not only this but at 1pm i was only marginally hungry, whereas now i have a range of experiences, from quite fancying a snack right through to cavernous hunger. i should be able to draw on all these experiences when i make this lunch

i think this is why in most developed countries, and especially in Norway, breakfast is now served at 7.30pm

well that is of course the progressive european social democratic approach to lunch making, what of a more fiercely capitalist lunch which relies on some form of novelty to keep one sated?

i think so yes, i did have a quick glance at foucaults article on this, but havent had chance to read the whole thing yet. im sure ive got the gist of it though

but dont you get that the stuff mozart was writing is culturally/historically specific? playing games like "what would mozart sound like if he had an electric guitar" is ridiculous because the composition itself is as bound by its context as much as the instruments and songwriting methods available!

http://www.billandted.org/pics/ea/eabeethovenstore.jpg

"Beethoven's favorite works include Mozart's 'Requiem', Handal's 'Messiah', and Bon Jovi's 'Slippery When Wet'. "

hahaha latebloomer i was thinking the exact same thing when i wrote that.

Max, I've said several times that of course the composer is restricted by his or her context. If Mozart had an electric guitar, his compositions would be able to alter their aims and select from a wider palette of sounds. Of course, Mozart might wish to eschew the electric guitar despite his knowledge of it; this would be completely fair enough, if he regarded the existing instruments as being the best to suit his ends.

I was thinking today that quite often the alarm of a garage door, the song of a robin, or the whirr of a fridge provide a perfect sonic context for my existence as I pass through life. I think artists should be more willing to incorporate such atypical sounds into their compositions, perhaps electronically tweaked to attain just the right pitch or timbre. There's a whole world of sound out there, and when I hear yet another indie-dance band using exactly the same noises as the other 4000, and yet hitting the top 10 of the charts because the public know no better, it makes me want to puncture things.

I mean, just listen to Yes' 'Gates Of Delirium', everyone, and you can sense a band actively searching for the perfect sound, using the still-primitive 1974 technology to the limits of its ability. The defining moment for me (and the defining moment of 1970's music) is 13:43 into the song, when the guitars suddenly and unexpectedly develop a seriously awesome effect, and spiral up into the exosphere, tipping the listener (me) over the edge into utter bliss. Few artists are willing to adopt such painstaking methods in order to create their own ideal listening experience.

Few artists are willing to adopt such painstaking methods in order to create their own ideal listening experience.

few artists that you are aware of

I think artists should be more willing to incorporate such atypical sounds into their compositions, perhaps electronically tweaked to attain just the right pitch or timbre.

uh, theres a million things like this, people make whole albums of them, you want stuff like this go find out about it, go find some..i dunno, jean-francois laporte or toshiya tsunoda, scrap that just go get some harry partch. or make it yourself!

There's a whole world of sound out there, and when I hear yet another indie-dance band using exactly the same noises as the other 4000, and yet hitting the top 10 of the charts because the public know no better, it makes me want to puncture things.

if only Blair had listened to the LJ plan and educated the great proletariat with free Mansun CD's then perhaps we'd have a better society today. one in which one was free to go about ones business without those pesky chavs everywhere urinating in your face

sorry, 'one's face'

Don't twist my words to make me sound classist. That's the most poisonous straw-man used on ILM, and it's sickening that you can stoop so low in argument (cue snarky and utterly witless reply of 'I'm stooping this low to meet your level'). I'm railing against music that I regard as vacuous and pathetic; class doesn't come into it.

I don't (necessarily) mean albums purely composed out of sampled found sounds. I mean albums that use sounds from musical instruments AND from samples together in order to create an ideal mix. Of course, it is possible that an album has been made out of found sounds that places them together in a thrilling and utterly enthralling manner; if records like this exist, I'd like to hear them!

Finally, to address all your points in reverse order, name me some artists who HAVE adopted such painstakingly micro-managed techniques in order to create the sort of music I describe!

i gave you a couple, and i didnt say anything about samples. there are many threads on ilx to further this

Ok, well, I'll check them out.

and you know, it might be better to approach things from a "anybody know anything like xyz" angle, rather than "there is no one doing xyz", which is a pretty authoratitive statement

Well, yeah. I'm still doubtful that these people are creating compositions with quite the ambition and scope I'm after, but I'll read a few reviews, perhaps listen to some of their works, and decide for myself.

and your approach on this reads pretty classist to me, implicit and prob unconscious maybe, but still

dude you're doubtful about people you've never heard of? self fulfilling prophecy

you're prob right though, i never said anything about ambition or scope. this is small music im talking about

im sure there are other things that fit your bill much better, best say they dont exist before hearing about them from somebody though

Dude, I'm a natural skeptic, of course I'm doubtful at first! I'm all ears to any recommendations. The stuff I've just read on Harry Partch makes him sound totally awesome! He invented his own microtonal scale AND his own instruments! That's the kind of visionary stuff I'm after! Next, to find out whether it actually worked...

I'd like you to explain your classist accusations.

apparently the general public (and we're not all middle class yet) dont know any better and listen to stuff you don't approve of. theres kind of an implication that, LJ, oxbridge student, cream of the crop, knows better (perhaps down to his superior education!)

Max, I've said several times that of course the composer is restricted by his or her context.

then why the hell are you arguing that we should be judging mozart alongside roy orbison??

The general public in this case mostly comprising of posho North London 'indie kids' who go out and buy The View's latest single because it nails the trad-indie sound and creates a talking-point for their otherwise vacuous existences. Now I'm in danger of going the other way and developing a chip on my shoulder, which is equally harmful, so I shall therefore retract that and merely state that some people, regardless of their background, like awful music. My education doesn't come into this; lots of people with the same (or even better) education than me still listen to shit. The reason I listen to better music is that I'm an enthusiast, and I've chosen to dedicate a large part of my life to musical research and audiophilia. Your instant recourse to accusations of classism bespeaks of an attitude already soured towards any perceived 'superiority'. I'm not superior. Really, no. There's a whole life ahead of me, and I may well be a failure, whereas many people who didn't go to uni will be successes. You can't afford to be complacent. The general public are simply those who aren't sound obsessives, and are lazy in their listening habits.

Max, for the nth time, I'm saying that the INITIAL stage of judging, the LISTENING, WOULD place Mozart on an even footing to Roy Orbison, but IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND WHY one or the other may be coming up better or worse, and in order to attain a reference point for one's comparison, one must SUBSEQUENTLY study the context.

louis it sounds like youre arguing that any composition that uses a variety of sounds is better than a composition that uses only one.

and i think the trouble people are having with you is that that's a ridiculous argument to make

No, I'm not. I'm arguing that the better composition is the one that uses the best sound(s) to suit its ends. A decent folk performance featuring just one man and his acoustic guitar, for instance, doesn't generally appeal to me, but there are rare instances where such a medium is ideal for delivering the type of music which the composer wishes to create. It isn't particularly ambitious, sonically, but it'll beat Dream Theater or other such posturing wank any day.

I'm arguing that first one has the concept, the ideal, and secondly one must construct it out of sounds. The concepts which appeal most to me (subjectively) are those which will require an extremely large palette of possible sounds. Such concepts haven't really been approached in any music I've heard before.

I mean, I still love loads of music, but that's generally because the execution of a good idea has been superb. Very little music I've heard dares to even take on INCREDIBLE ideas.

(INCREDIBLE being again subjective.)

so louis, if all of this is as subjective as youre admitting, where do you get off asserting the existence of "progress" in some objective sense?

The objective progress is due to the very fact that we have got stored up in data banks all the sounds and music from the past, but owing to the natural paths of progression new sounds are added all the time, ergo the banks are filling up, and more progress in terms of greater use of sound is becoming possible. This is immutable fact.

I mean, just listen to Yes' 'Gates Of Delirium', everyone, and you can sense a band actively searching for the perfect sound, using the still-primitive 1974 technology to the limits of its ability. The defining moment for me (and the defining moment of 1970's music) is 13:43 into the song, when the guitars suddenly and unexpectedly develop a seriously awesome effect, and spiral up into the exosphere, tipping the listener (me) over the edge into utter bliss. Few artists are willing to adopt such painstaking methods in order to create their own ideal listening experience.

This is a joke right. You are actually an hilarious troll and I claim my five pounds.

the listener (me)

Do you still not get the dichotomy here? "The Listener" != "me".

I am going to bed now. I WILL LISTEN TO YES' GATES OF DELIRIUM IN THE MORNING MMMKAY.

Louis, can bliss only come from progress? Do you believe posho North London 'indie kids' fail to obtain bliss from the music they listen to? Last week I listened to "Jesse's Girl" by Rick Springfield on repeat for almost two straight hours, do you think that I may have at some stage attained a state of bliss?

you might have been better off going out to be honest

I was out.

I think I just have a really different way of responding to music to LJ. Which is OK of course. His comment about liking music that was made recently better really baffled me. If I take in the context of a song I'm far more likely to like/respect it if it was made a long time ago, I guess for it's innovation or imagination, I don't get this modernism thing. I suppose I don't really understand his position of the 90s being this great decade for music when to me it's a consolidation of the 3 decades before, with nothing really new being added, just mixing up what came before, which is all well and good and everything, but nothing to write home about.

That bliss was as Colonel Poo intimates my own personal bliss. Of course you can obtain bliss from any music you like; I don't expect (or want) everyone to be like me! Such is the variety of human response, such is the fuel of debate. I don't know whether Acrobat attained a state of bliss, because I wasn't there and he hasn't told me. Fair play if he did, though!

The 90's more or less marked the stage at which popular music couldn't diverge any further along its extant terms, i.e. along simple genre-bound paths, and this coincided with a sudden upsurge in musical technology. The music thus created showed a great deal of structural and sonic progression, which in turn became genre-bound (shoegaze, post-rock, IDM etc), necessitating yet further forward steps. Just my personal crackpot theory, feel free to debunk it if you like!

Do you still not get the dichotomy here? "The Listener" != "me".

QFT

Musical "progress" isn't linear. That music in the future will be some neat little extrapolation of the musical "stockpile" coupled with the latest in audio technology sounds logical enough but in reality is not very likely. Midi modules, computers, and Pro Tools programs don't make music, people do and as such all the things that may befall mankind over time will have a profound impact on how people think of and make music (as well as artistic expression as a whole).

At any given second in the world there are geopolitical/social shifts, natural and geological changes, wars and armed conflict, new directions in art and science, and many other variables that arc and weave themselves around the human condition on this planet. I don't know what the future will hold for music and art (nor do I desire to) but I'm happy to be along for the ride! For all I know the music of the future will be made with sharp sticks and <A HREF=http://www.amazon.com/Music-Stones-Stephan-Micus/dp/B000025ZXK/ref=sr_1_8/105-5531896-3136414?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1180845122&sr=1-8&gt;rocks</A>.

I must learn how to link...

This thread got very silly while I was driving three teenage chavs to Woodlands Adventure Park, near Totness, Devon.

Interestingly I was playing Skinny Grin by Acoustic Ladyland in the car while I did so.

Also interestingly, the appeal of the 65dos record may not be its "progress" so much as its "novelty" - i.e. the fact that, in today's climate, its uncompressed sound is massively novel and appealing.

However, I would say that neither "progress" or "novelty" is actually what attracts me to music, but rather some spurious notion of "quality" where "quality is, in the Pirsig mould (as iffy as that may be) the "interface" between a person and their culture, sort of.

Also, re; the Reynolds thing, "rock" is not the new "jazz" because the "aesthetic" of "rock" is still the default aesthetic, whether that be visual or sonic, for almost all popular music. Paris in a Ramones t-shirt = rock. Britney in a Coltrane t-shirt = not happening. McFly waving guitars around = rock. Kelly Clarkson's marimba solos = not happening.

Also "Kelly Clarkson's Marimba Solos" would be a wicked name for a blog / album / band / satirical TV show that no one watches.

There's a lot of "old cynics baiting young idealists" on this thread, too, which has always happened on here and will always happen on here and is always a little distasteful.

I can totally imagine Britney wearing a Coltrane t-shirt. I take your point though. But there is a parallel I think between Bop and onwards and the "seriousization" of Jazz and the same movement to separate Rock from Pop starting around the mid-60s.

(And whilst I didn't want to get into a fight with LJ I do think he's OffTM here and its always good to test your own Idealism against the world as others see it. And admitting doubt and wrongness can be a strength too, if you let it.)

Oh I agree with that totally, and I think this process is gonna be good for Louis (not meaning to sound patronising - I think it'll be 'good' for everyone engaged in it, if they let it); I just object to a lot of the "you're so young, you're so wrong, shut up, you may as well be a troll, how silly you are" approach that bleeds through. Louis' fuck-all like Geir, for instance, and that kind of bullying, which is what it is, will only discourage discussion.

no-one's baiting idealists on this thread. baiting mentalists maybe.

QED. Calling Louis a mentalist is bullying; how about, rather than belittling his opinion by calling him a retard, you say "have you considered this approach / idea / etcetera?", thus making yourself look like less of a snide twat and actually contributing to the discussion at hand.

jesus christ, calm down. there are loads of people taking his arguments seriously on this thread and offering suggestions. disagreeing with someone /= baiting.

Your previous post isn't disagreeing though, it's being nasty for no reason.

come on, mentalist is a term of endearment on ILM, you know that

Hmmm.

cmon scik, i dont think thats whats happening here at all (and hes more like martian than geir on this thread)

LJ's approach here is deeply flawed, and he should expect to be called on it just the same as anyone else. 1) the old theme about how the general public doesn't know any better - like this isnt going to get called out? especially when 2) hes happy to just blithley say music that does xyz just doesnt exist - er maybe that puts LJ, like the rest of us, in the 'doesn't know any better category.

I have just listened to Gates of Delirium, for my sins. Just not my cup of tea. Interesting that at the time I'm sure they considered it to be at the very cutting edge of progress, but to my ears it sounds like pure novelty - in the more pejorative sense of the term, silly and ephemeral.

Fair enough, ledge. I mean, by modern standards I can see how it sounds quaint and contrived, and I didn't expect you to like it particularly (nothing personal, just my natural skepticism burning through!). Now you know my 1970's jam, though, which is nice!

Now to address some other concerns. Cliftonb actually tackles my arguments more convincingly than anyone else here; I'm not quite sure how to respond to them assertively, so I may have to accept their at least partial truth. All I will say is that my arguments are purely theory. I've been road-testing (as NV indicates) an idea which I believe will bear fruit. It's not, as I say, a credo I apply to all music I listen to (NS mentions how 'quality' is the musical aspect that excites him, well, as I've said many times, me too buddy, but this quality is frequently harnessed more effectively by the growth of ideas and the advanced execution of those said ideas, which is where my argument comes in), but it's almost a sort of mathematical proof. Assuming that modern composers have access to all recorded sounds, and are prepared to use them, music of a wider nature will doubtless ensue; Cliftonb's qualifier is that this will not always happen, owing to cultural context. I still believe that many of the things I've (and others have) said on this thread are very interesting; I'll have to go back, collate the best bits, and turn them into an essay or something.

As for Gareth's concerns...

1) the old theme about how the general public doesn't know any better

I mentioned this once, in passing; it has nothing to do with my argument, and was an admittedly lax piece of rhetoric. Calling me out with accusations of classism on this basis is wide-of-the-mark and pointless. Besides, the general public DOESN'T know any better, on average; they're not all music nerds like us!

hes happy to just blithley say music that does xyz just doesnt exist

After highly extensive study of ILX, and the internet in general, added to my large audio experience, VERY LITTLE has even BEGUN to approach my ideal, the chances of someone actually having already reached out and touched it without me knowing is non-existent. The ideals of musical invention are extremely difficult to comprehend, but I'll hark back to my 'possible sounds' argument: imagine a piece of music whose every sound was micro-managed and debated, imagine a piece of music whose structure was open to any direction, imagine a piece of music to whom 'style' or 'genre' meant nothing. Nobody, I am confident, has done anything like this before.

I think your most fundamental error here is looking for all of those qualities in the music itself, as if they can inhere to one particular piece or genre without the intervention of listeners. You or I don't even hear the same Beatles that their contemporaries heard, never mind Stravinsky or Bach.

And whilst I believe that there might be a kind of progress in music in terms of refinement of technique, composition, new sounds, that kind of progress is different to the common use of the word which implies going somewhere better. That definition can't apply to aesthetic responses, objectively, and I think the two differing versions of the word create a lot of confusion in this debate.

Style and genre are inescapable.

It's almost as if you're saying "improved film-stock and CGI and other modern technology means modern movies must be better than old ones" whereas all there is is the opportunity for them to be different.

lol i actually think that

The difference with movies is that a film must adhere to more rigid rules than a piece of music in order to be entertaining; music is more of an abstract, whereas films have scripts, plots, and characters, which must develop in a certain way in order to work. Therefore, a truly great film can be made at any time, with any equipment, as long as the fundamentals are gotten right. I like the advent of CGI, though, don't get me wrong; it's now possible to make more different kinds of film, and I appreciate the variety. As far as music is concerned, though, I don't think humanity as a whole has yet sufficiently explored the possibilities of such an abstract, subconscious art-form.

xpost...

Same here...

ALSO LOUIS WATCH MORE GODFREY REGGIO DUDE.

AND STAN BRAKHAGE.

Style and genre are inescapable inasmuch as a) they are only ways of describing how music sounds, and ii) humans are hardwired for seeing patterns and applying labels.

It's true that I like far more films from recent years than from a while ago. People like Charlie Kaufmann are formulating great ideas and executing them superbly with CGI; such movies weren't possible 20 years ago. That said, Bringing Up Baby (for example) is practically perfect for what it is, so you don't need to be avant-garde and wacky to make a great film. I still think that movie creativity is in a very fine state at the moment.

I suppose my music, if it's ever made, will be labelled by the rags...'micro-storm' sounds like quite a likely moniker.

Bunuel, to name one out of many, was pwning Charlie Kaufmann 70 years ago.

I need to see some Bunuel. I've read loads of reviews about him, all saying he's one of the greatest movie-makers ever known, and yet I've failed to watch any of his films. Is L'Age D'Or a good place to start?

('of many'...do you also mean Renoir? La Regle Du Jour is a brilliant piece of work, which I have seen.)

20s: rich french people pay for avant-garde films by established artists like leger, cocteau, dali
(bunuel, parvenu spaniard, hitches a ride)
1930: lol ur fucked rich people
30s: former avant-gardists go into the mainstream (vigo, renoir, carne)
40s-50s: some americans and some euro emigres make avant-garde films in america
60s: these and more get more prominent largely cos of warhol
60s and 70s: american and british avant-gardes go up own arse and into galleries

Yeah I mean obv I do not want to make an avant garde better than popular statement. But I don't believe you could make a "better" version of The Maltese Falcon just because the tech had got more sophisticated.

if they'd had shot it on location and had better sound design and stuff, i reckon it'd be better, but these were technical/economic constraints and it's a pointless argument, that's just how it was. to remake it now only with those aspects improved would be stupid and rubbish.

Constraints can sometimes be good though. Those painted backdrops in Doctor Caligari are at least partly a result of constraint.

(I'm sorry I know this has nowt to do with the thread, really.)

but also i mean british rock music of the 60s, the beatles anyway, all sounds basically shit, but you kind of compensate for it, if you want to.

You'll eat them words when the remasters hit if they're done as well as Love is.

imagine a piece of music to whom 'style' or 'genre' meant nothing

cant think of anything worse

Nobody, I am confident, has done anything like this before.

i dont understand how you can be so confident this is the case. i certainly wouldn't be, but then outside a couple genres i dont really know much music, so fair play i guess but it almost sounds like you want it to be that this micromiddlemanagement music hasnt been made yet. theres no reason you couldnt make it yourself though

for instance, at the very end of talk talk's 'runeii', hollis has made his near-perfect artistic statement, and totally drained the listener. after a minimal, affecting song made out of piano, mumbled vocals and harsh-sounding guitars, he simply plays a few piano chords, pauses, and then plays them again. its brilliance comes from it being the VERY best that could have happened, and that in the context of a very ambitious, experimental record. sadly, i don't think the same is true of most if not all classical music.

Louis, this is really interesting to hear you say, because of the very opposite paths Laughingstock sent me on after it came out. It was such a revelation, and I spent immense amounts of time and money trying to find anything else that had that kind of mastery of emptiness and solidity, noise/silence, that acute feeling of shape. Eventually I discovered that the place where that shit had been really going on like crazy was in Classical Music. For god's sake, listen more than cursorily to Sibelius' 4th, 6th and 7th symphonies, Mahler's 5th and 9th, Debussy's 24 Preludes and 12 Etudes for piano, Nielsen's 4th and 5th syms, Lutoslawski's 3rd, George Crumb's Night Of The 4 Moons, Bartok's Music For Strings Percussion and Celesta and Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion... the rare qualities exemplified in Laughing Stock and, say, Tilt, are not the only important qualities in music by any stretch. But they are found in the work of the best classical composers IN SPADES. I dunno what you've listened to that's given you this impression you have of historical compositions.

Another point, maybe too subjective... I don't think anyone will ever again have the options of dynamic range, sound-color and musical event micromanagement that was available to the orchestral composer from, say, 1890 onward. It's no longer economically feasible to write for that "technology," so people (outside of very small cadres of publically supported composers) don't do it anymore. But you cannot do electronically today what you could do with a 100 piece orchestra including large percussion battery, an acute conductor, and lots of rehearsal time. Lots more chaos and complexity would have to be introduced to the way electronic sounds are generated for the mind-boggling richness of massed acoustic instruments to be matched. IMO the "musicians have more options now" statement is just wrong.

Also, Nick-- jst wanna mention that full dynamic range recording, from a whisper to a roar, has been the norm in classical recording for decades, in fact anything else is pretty much laughed at.

Although my knowledge of classical music is pretty limited, I agree with pretty much all of what Jon just said, and shall be investigating some of those compositions most assuredly. What I wanna know now is, does any classical music manage to get psychedelic?!

YES-- and I have wanted to write about that in depth for some time. Hopefully I will. But in the above stuff, you'll definitely find psych all over Lutoslawski and some movements of Nielsen. Mahler's great psych moment is probably his 6th. When Bartok gets in his nocturnal-insect mode minds do get jellied. Any of Boulez' orchestral works will be psych as fuck. Earth Dances by Harrison Birtwistle. Scriabin's later Piano Sonatas (5 through 10, say) are so famously psych that in the early 70s they got the full freak-out treatment on album sleeve graphics (a recent magazine survey of Scriabin Sonata recordings was titled "Cocaine and Rainbows".) Ravel's piano cycle Miroirs is dizzyingly psych as are Szymanowski's piano sets Masques and Metopes. My special fave Debussy is probably at his most psychedelic in Jeux, for orchestra and book II of the piano Preludes. And if you can stomach some teutonic pomp & bombast, R. Strauss' Ein Alpinesymphonie (sp?) is planetarium-stoner music avant la lettre, using a humongous orchestra to "depict" a day climbing in the mountains. Also the orchestral prelude to the first opera in the Ring cycle (Das Rheingold) is stone psych. The Rite Of Spring, duh (if it's not psych then the performance you're listening to sucks).

OK, well, the classical music I've been introduced to is mostly the standard Bach/Mozart/Vaughan Williams/Beethoven/Vivaldi stuff. Your descriptions of these pieces (which I don't think I've heard) excite me somewhat. If they do have the effect you claim, then I may well have to retract some of what I've said. How ambitious and surprising would you claim these pieces are, though? Do they never slip into complacent repetition or cop out when on a roll?

^^ this sounds really negative! why dont you go listen to them first, instead of pre-emptively doubting their worth?

wouldn't it be easier just to not talk about stuff until you know a reasonable amoung about it? cc lex.

xpost

amount

i mean theres been a lot of implied criticism of things you havent heard yet!

next on ilx: masonic boom doubts whether morten gamst pedersen has what it takes to cut it a top 4 side

They're criticisms I have of pretty much all music to some degree, so of course I'm going to assume that these pieces fall foul! I'm just wondering to what extent they do so, though; if I end up really enjoying them, they'll probably have negotiated the potential pitfalls pretty nicely.

Morten Gamst Pedersen = a one-season novelty, copped out when on a roll, might end up at Newcastle if he's lucky.

after the news: modestmickey berates the bangladeshi community of canning town for lack of positive movement re: integration

Pedersen looks good when you watch him play, but take into account his context and you swiftly realise that his methods are outdated and soon to be overtaken by the hi-tech combination of David Bentley and Paul Gallacher.

you're not masonic boom

"complacent repetition" is one of my favourites! that's a great description of spacemen 3. complacent doesn't have to be bad does it?

i think the last rock album was "bat out of hell" i don't see how anything has really progressed beyond that. apart from "bat out of hell II" maybe but not "bat out of hell III".

I actually had Spacemen 3 in mind as I wrote that. Their demo-album Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To consists of laughably simple garage-rock riffs repeated for about 6 minutes with no variation. I remember seeing a comment (in an Amazon review?) that one can only understand the brilliance music if one forgets one's usual musical responses, devalues one's intelligence, and realises that this is art that operates under different rules to the ones you're accustomed to. True that this may be, I can't get into it. I mean, the guitar sounds are occasionally pretty groovy, but the music itself is (to my ears) dull beyond measure. That said, both main component parts of S3 actually went on to create some stunning material, so clearly I shouldn't place too much judgement upon a load of rushed demos.

*brilliance of the

xpost to Louis' question "do they ever just repeat or cop out"--

You might find Mahler overlong, and certain movements of his will seem repetitious even though they aren't (ie toying with numerous variations on a theme). The rest of what I mentioned, no. By 1900 repetition was way out of fashion in composition, so much so that when the Reich, Glass, Riley bunch came along in the Sixties with repetition to the fore, it was revolutionary.

You might find that certain movements of pieces explore a specific sonic territory too thoroughly, I suppose. It's important to remember that esp. in symphonies these guys were always thinking of the dynamic/mood profile of the piece as a whole (the 1. Allegro 2. Adagio 3. Scherzo 4. Finale classical inheritance). For instance, Mahler's 6th might be profiled as 1. Tromping Menace 2. Sardonic Laughter 3. Nostalgic Dreaming 4. Nightmare, Agony and Death. I used to get impatient with slow movements when I was first getting my head around the language of this stuff.

But in the twentieth century you get more and more pieces where there are no formal movement divisions, no breaks in the argument but rather constant transformation. Sibelius was one of the first to show this in his 7th symphony and Tapiola tone poem. But for Sib you'll do better to start with the 4th and maybe the tone poem Pohjola's Daughter, their profiles are more immediately striking. (The 4th is the symphonic cousin of King Crimson's Red, ie wholeheartedly embracing the tritone.)

Vaughan Williams gets a bad rap because some of his stuff is so thoroughly beautiful and flowing. But his 6th symphony is astounding. The first movement is a tour de force of confusion and the finale is a still, terrifying tableau suggestive of a depopulated landscape in which nothing will happen again. VW got unusually agitated in his work whenever there was a World War going on...

Nick, in that psych paragraph re: Nielsen I wanted specifically to point out his 5th sym, where there's a side drum soloist who is instructed to disrupt the activities of the rest of the orchestra at all costs (in many recordings the side drummer is too polite to really pull it off, but it's such a great idea.)

Wow, that's really helpful! :)

Repetition, occasionally, is ideal, don't get me wrong. It's got to be deployed in the context of change and re-establishment, however, for its effects to be felt most forcefully.

Re: the Nielsen side-drummer thing, that's way cool, but I always prefer such things if they're written down, worked out, calculated beforehand to be as effective as possible; if there was, say, some set drum pattern that clashed most wonderfully with the orchestra.

xpost to nick!
i dunno. Berlioz, Mahler, Scriabin, Webern, Bruckner, Debussy, Stravinsky could all fill that brief in their ways.

"And whilst I believe that there might be a kind of progress in music in terms of refinement of technique, composition, new sounds, that kind of progress is different to the common use of the word which implies going somewhere better. That definition can't apply to aesthetic responses, objectively, and I think the two differing versions of the word create a lot of confusion in this debate."

i think this is pretty otm. as i said above, i mostly think "change" is what occurs in music over time, schoenberg is not a progression of beethoven, despie what he said a the time. look at music in its length and breadth over time and you're swiftly disabused of notions of "progress" in music-composition, i think. music-making progresses and regresses, for example, the majority of classical performers are far more technically skilled/accomplished than they were in the past, we have old recordings to tell us that, as well as pre-1900 written accounts of orchestras' ineptitudes. also performers are much more knowledgable about music history and practise, so the won't play handel like he was composing in the late 19c. practise has been brought up to date by, ironiclly, going into the past in more depth and with clearer intent to understand. so that's progress. HOWEVER. listen to recordings issued on naxos/testimony from the earler half of the century and its clear that music-making has become less passionate, less driven by life-or-death vigour and "spirit" (this music represents what i'm feeling; the nazis are banning this work next week; this music is the FUTURE and i must show that!; this music is the only thing that i and my audience live for, i may be poor but i'm alive). so there's some very objective regression there, which is mainly due to changes in society for the better. oh well, at least we have those recordings, thank god, because a good deal of them, eg furtwangler are miraculous. music-making has had some set-backs and many positive developments while the technology used to record and reproduce that music has progressed and improved beyoond all recognition. on some cds i do find myself thinking, this has added posiively to my listening experience. but "objectively" i know that this in itself hasn't necessarily improved the music-making, merely the listening exprience. that's an important distinction for me. certainly it has changed it, in all sorts of ways (ppl can hear the minuitiae of interpretation a lot better, ambience, the details of sound-layering etc.) which then perhaps goes on to affect how an orchestra plays a piece in the concert hall.
so. music-composition, music-making, music-production. these can be said to be affected by progression in different ways. and i put progression/progress against regression, the most obvious example of which for me would be that the first two suffered as a result of concetrating too much on the third. and that's probably a good definition of novelty, for me. obvioussly then, i'm perjuring novelty, but i'm using it in this way to take a particular stand in the argument. beethoven's 3rd symphony was arguably "novel": a top-heavy frst movement, a gigantic funeral march, qualities of monstrosity in their time. but i'll use "novelty" on the whole, to stand for processes and effects which redound to the detriment of music-making. ligeti's wwoks: novel(ty)? no, startling and inventive.

i apologise in advance nick if you think this is unfair, but perhaps louis does chiefly value novelty in his music, listens for it more than other things. i think, as people are sugesting, if he listened a bit wider his ideas about music might change.

Not if you want to "bliss out". Tempo shifts and development are really unnecessary, they only disrupt. I find it… odd you use the term bliss so much. The term to me suggests a lack of progression. Bliss is sort of reaching a plateau of sorts.

xp

"Mahler's great psych moment is probably his 6th."

noo the 7th!! that's the trip!

and the 3rd, too.

i do think louis would really lik mahler, actually.

"like"

xpost to Louis re: side drummer--

I've never seen the score. It sounds to me like the pattern of rolls and hits is written out, but the percussionist is instructed to play them arrythmically and unpredictably. I've heard it done where it was in a tempo, just not in same the tempo the rest of the orch is in, and that's ok but doesn't really do the job. It has to be more "wrong", like errant spluttering, as in the meat-punching rhythm on the Scott Walker song. The best i've heard so far specific to the side drum thing are the Bernstein rec on Sony and the Schonwandt rec on Da Capo. (The latter is available on eMusic).

Louis might even ilk Mahler.

Bliss is reached (for me) through a state of repeated sounds which subtly reconfigure themselves as the song progresses, adding or removing details, changing rhythm, or even employing a slightly oblique sound-pattern that one can 'work out' over the course of an extended repetition. There are lots of hooks, tricks and methods in which music can thrill, and many of them do indeed involve repetition, but this repetition must in itself contain a certain level of complexity, be it complexity of melody, complexity of rhythm, complexity of texture or some other such complication. Bliss has certain stages, and for a song to 'move through the gears' it must build through lesser plateaus to a climax, which it may then sustain. The Boredoms do this very, very well.

also ligeti != ken hom. sorry.

Frogman, yeah, some composers were better off in performance fifty years ago. There probably will never be another Furtwangler and that's sad (His La Scala (1951?) Ring Cycle, despite the bootleg sound, is by far the best I've heard). Other composers are faring best now, for example the last 15 years have been INCREDIBLE for Sibelius interpretation, and there are still revelatory Mahler records being made. And someone sooner or later is going to split the diff between the tech virtuosity of Euro/US Shostakovich recordings with the wildcat intensity of Soviet 60s and 70s Shostakovich recordings. I hope.

Louis' most recent post OTM. I'll cosign dat.

The meat punching thing in 'Clara' is utterly amazing. Great song. 'Tilt' itself is something I own, incidentally, but it's actually proven TOO difficult for me thus far. I'll get it eventually; of that I'm certain. I like 'The Cockfighter' and 'Bouncer See Bouncer' so far.

Thanks for the Mahler recommendation (this is why I say such things on messageboards, to get a positive response, and any recommendation is assuredly that).

Oh, and what if I think your claim that I'm mostly after novelty is unfair? :-P

Ligeti's requiem is that thing in 2001: A Space Odyssey, right? I love that piece of music.

where does gene vincent fit into all this?

"And someone sooner or later is going to split the diff between the tech virtuosity of Euro/US Shostakovich recordings with the wildcat intensity of Soviet 60s and 70s Shostakovich recordings. I hope."

i look forward to that

after vincent left sol's riverboat gamblers he arguably regressed.

gene vincent is a perfect example that the 'political' of music, isnt just at the high end, but in the day to day stuff that affected peoples lives certiainly since world war two. i know you don't like me going back over this stuff, but its pretty foucauldian, in its own way

oh, i almost forgot! there was a piece about the the riverboat gamblers in yesterdays daily mail!

Bliss doesn't = state, it = process, for me at least. Ascention to transcendence. Context. Which is why listening to New Grass straight off doesn't work; you need to run through the fire first.

It's about the climax, for me, Paul.

MANY MANY XPOSTS.

So basically you've re-iterated what I said, Nick, except through a clearer definition (the word 'process'). I can agree with your 'New Grass' comment. 'After The Flood' sounds so much better as well just after 'Ascension Day' abruptly cuts.

This goes back in some way to the Allegro-Adagio-Scherzo-Finale tradition.

it's as much hoggart/raymond williams/stuart hall as foo'coh.

Yeah, but there should be no set sequence for a song's progression; it should progress in whatever way suits it best.

why must we bring stuart hall into this?

I didn't mean "in that order", I just meant the whole idea of engineering a 30 minute or 60 minute musical experience with an eye towards peaks and valleys.

as any decent album should be!

Everyone thinks of albums that way now, but it wasn't always so. Anyone have a nomination for when the tide turned in rock albums in that respect?

not that stuart hall.

GIGGS LEAPING LIKE A SALMON TO KISS THE BALL HOME, KEANE A GLADIATOR IN THE AMPITHEATRE OF OLD TRAFFORD BEHIND HIM!!!!

yeah, nick's talking about the stuart hall i meant. 'mount olympus', 'fulminating left-foot drive', 'hue and cry breaking loose here at sixfields', 'he placed it with all the swaggering braggadocio of a toreador into the bottom right-hand corner of Sorensen's goal' etc

xpost to jon: sgt peppers amirite

60 minute musical experience with an eye towards peaks and valleys.

-- Jon Lewis, Sunday, June 3, 2007 3:44 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

as any decent album should be!

-- Just got offed, Sunday, June 3, 2007 3:45 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i know this is your personal opinion and taste, so thats fine, but i do want to say that not everyone agrees with the idea that good music 'should' be like this. i like stuff like this, sure, but i prefer music that is genre bound, doesnt deviate from template much, and all basically sounds the same

which is to say i dont like the assumption that some of these ideas, variety, range, progression are necessarily positives

Sorry, I should have qualified it as being my personal taste. If someone else has a different taste, it should be catered to, sure! Is your final sentence a devil's advocacy or is it genuine, though?

its genuine, those things may well be good, but they are not implicitly good. if 90% of the music i liked were to progress, i wouldnt play it any more

Fair enough! I guess that undermining my arguments about 'progression' is the fact that often people find something that just suits them, and they stick with it, it having become an integral part of their life.

im not sure id quite put it like that, but i like the idea that music is of time and place, and therefore its already perfect

and i think you like the idea of the genius in the lab reaching ever new heights, but to me those steps are steps away from perfection, not towards

(in general, in theory, of course i like lots of things that contradict the above) - but this is really getting closer to the old purism vs eclecticism debate again,

So, you'd say that an honestly-performed folk tune (or some such composition) would signify the essence of music? In that case I'll have to accept the difference. My judgement is based around patterns I have noticed in music I enjoy, though, so as far as my own tastes are concerned, my theory holds true, as I'm sure yours does of your tastes.

I need both those kinds of music as well as things from the gray area in between.

Right now not much is giving me more pleasure than listening to the first 4 Cheap Trick albums and I wish they had never stopped making records that sounded like that. I wish Marc Bolan had made a dozen more records that sound just like The Slider, and that every Hawkwind record sounded like Hall Of The Mountain Grill. I adore Robyn Hitchcock and he never really progresses.

not sure what honestly-performed means!

im not saying that folk music is the essence of music at all! think of it like this, certain tunes (and this can be from western swing to dancehall to minimal techno) are of certain times and places, and thats part of what makes them great, so its not that they are the essence of the whole of music, but the essence of music at a particular time and place, and that that cannot be improved for that. implication being, there isnt going to be some superior end point not yet reached

There isn't a singular essence to music though; that's the whole point, it's why Geir's an idiot and Lex is too (sometimes). You can get something from almost anything.

ok quick question for LJ

listen to this song

my kids a crooner

my take is that any changes or improvements to this would make it *less* of its time, therefore dilute its *essence*

thats what i mean scik, many essences, not an overarching essence

"So, you'd say that an honestly-performed folk tune (or some such composition) would signify the essence of music? In that case I'll have to accept the difference"

no, for me the problem is if you're distorting and obfuscating your potential enjoyment of music like say, bill monroe or blind willie mctell with ridiculous and discredited theories/notions about how music should be. folk, blues, rnb, jazz, country all pre-1960, loads of unbelievably great music are all ruled out b/c your ears are filmed over with technophilia and nonesensical ideas.

OK, I just listened to that song. It's largely lyrically-driven, and it sets a certain mood. It's crafted in such a way as to allow the mood to wrap around the lyrics and provide an ideal cocoon for them to be transmitted. If it were 'advanced' with modern technology, this cocoon would be alienated from the lyrics, and the song would be profaned. Therefore, I agree with you.

However, good music as it might be, it doesn't contain the collusion of ambitious ideas that keep me coming back for more. I appreciate that this is a subjective issue.

Nick, I know there isn't one 'essence', I was perhaps setting up a straw-man for Gareth. If indeed that seems the case, I apologise.

Frogman, these ideas are hardly 'nonsensical' if I genuinely don't like the music they apply to! For the hundredth time: I judge first on my enjoyment, then I factor in context so that I might understand. 'Technophilia' doesn't come into it (at first).

nah 696's song could really benifit from some beats. did "doop" teach us nothing? that's progress.

"There isn't a singular essence to music though; that's the whole point, it's why Geir's an idiot and Lex is too (sometimes). You can get something from almost anything."

"thats what i mean scik, many essences, not an overarching essence"

yeh, except perhaps, just perhaps this plurality of good musics can be unified under simply the "essential" in good music which is: "goodness".

and what if the song were instrumental LJ? i knew i should have picked one with less specific lyrics:(

Wait, one of these people is Gareth?!

my point is that changing the instrumentation or production or styling would make it 'less 1935' and therefore 'less perfect'

(nb im not saying 1935 was the most perfect year for music, though it was a very good year)

geezers kiosk

time for a new name, perhaps not a number this time

louis it is a fact that music reached its aesthetic peak in 1983; don't try to deny this.

acrobat otm.

and we can't ever reach that plateau again because Frank Tovey is dead, don't you see????

louis, i still dont get this: you keep claiming that your enjoyment of music is "subjective," but that music's progress is "objective." maybe you and i have different definitions of "progress," but i can think of two dozen people off the top of my head whose tastes skew heavily towards music produced 10, 20, 50 and even a few hundred years ago. how do you reconcile an objective sense of "progress" (which is to say that as time goes on, music gets better) with yr clearly subjective sense of music listening?

If it were instrumental, it would still evoke its time, and should one place an interest in historical context, I can see how this would mean that the piece as it stands could provide enjoyment.

I'm not saying that we should 'change' old pieces, though. Old music exists as it stands, immutable and immortal. What I am saying is that we can extrapolate FROM past music ideas and sounds which we can then reconfigure and (in my opinion) refine.

Max, as I keep saying, the objective progress is based around the inarguable theory that the POTENTIAL to create more music grows by the day. As more sounds and ideas are collated, the bigger a reference we inevitably have, and the further we must then go in order to trump the music of the past. What good is making music if you're not trying to make the best music possible? Everyone has their own ideas of best possible music, so we'll still have variation, but surely the bar will continue to raise, by chronological definition! Even if the best piece of music has already been written, logic dictates that eventually it will be beaten.

xp
he's explained that. it's down to the march of time and technology.
so it's verifiably true. apparently.

I don't think there is such a thing as a "best" piece of music. There is no finite ideal.

Even if the best piece of music has already been written, logic dictates that eventually it will be beaten.

Music isn't a fuckin' track and field event.

"inarguable"
"trump"
"logic"
"beaten"

fallacy-detective.gif

LJ you are coming across as the kind of person that ranks the meals of the day.

this thread really seems to have detoured round the novelty part of the question. "doop" should lead things back on topic. this was regarded a novelty song when it hit the charts in the early nineties yet in it's mixing of early 20th century dance sounds and late 20th century dance sounds it surely represented the frontiers of where music could head as much as any contemporaneous "post-rock" records. also more people liked it.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tvLDm8821jQ

Breakfast is best, but lacks wine. OH THE HORROR.

Max, as I keep saying, the objective progress is based around the inarguable theory that the POTENTIAL to create more music grows by the day.

this is not progress, this is increased variety. your idea that variety is good is as subjective as your taste in music.

As more sounds and ideas are collated, the bigger a reference we inevitably have, and the further we must then go in order to trump the music of the past. What good is making music if you're not trying to make the best music possible?

again, "best" = subjective; the idea of "trumping the music of the past" (implying, making better music) is subjective

Everyone has their own ideas of best possible music, so we'll still have variation, but surely the bar will continue to raise, by chronological definition! Even if the best piece of music has already been written, logic dictates that eventually it will be beaten.

"best," again, as youve acknowledged is subjective, NOT objective!

Take umbrage with my rhetorical techniques all you like; some pieces of music are better than others because they provide me with greater enjoyment and wonder. The best pieces provide me with the most. YEAH I KNOW IT'S SUBJECTIVE. I am DEFINING, subjectively, 'progress' to mean 'potential variety' in order to create an objective ARGUMENT.

no no people of the present and future are CYBORGS and thus have bigger and better BRANES for music than people of the past

White Town - Your Woman

progress or novelty?

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/seconds/white-town-your-woman.htm

So who is Frogman Henry?

I am DEFINING, subjectively, 'progress' to mean 'potential variety' in order to create an objective ARGUMENT

YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THIS MEANS THAT PROGRESS IS NOT OBJECTIVE EXCEPT IN TERMS OF HOW YOUVE DEFINED IT.

I don't like this 'progress or novelty' thing. It's trying to paint innovation in black or white without understanding how one can be implicitly involved in the other.

Let's think about evolution for a sec, and the fact that it does not really mean a constant process of improvement, but a constant process of fitting the changing environment a species finds itself in. Dinosaurs were "best" for the earth they lived in. Then things changed, and small mammals were "best". This can certainly help our thinking about "progress" in music.

No, Max, I'm saying that 'progress' is 'potential variety', and THEN creating an argument. If I merely said 'potential variety is increased by there being more extant sounds and musical ideas as time passes', I have said an equivalent thing, which is as far as I can see inarguable.

ok so even on a 'POX: best penulimate track' board this thread is a great example of the male categorizing and rating brain (that toast! best toast EVER!). lets keep in the spirit of the thread and rank the female posters to this thread in order

"So who is Frogman Henry?"

that would be me.

jesus I don't categorise and rate until LATER ON in my QUEST FOR UNDERSTANDING, the most important part of music is the LISTENING and APPRECIATION, whereat NO RANKING takes place.

BTW louis and Nick, because of your to-and-fro on that other thread on Friday, I went to Union Square on my lunch break that day and spent actual earth money on the Battles and 65DOS CDs. Saving them for tomorrow's listening, though, so I can't weigh in yet!

at least not until later on

True, Gareth, but it doesn't figure in the most important part, as I say.

Jon, you are in for some treat.

Anyway, on balance I reckon I pissed off the Dr. Who fans far more than you guys. Viva music! :-D

Louis it sounds like you are interpreting your evidence to fit the theory instead of the other way around. And why do you need a theory in the first place? Just enjoy.

Hope so. Also, doubly good workweek of listening ahead because last night I found some spanish language message board with links to the entire 24CD Duke Ellington Centennial Edition AAAAAAHHHHH

xpost

liking the dr who post! id say it was your 4th best of the thread

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adk1ujjmguo

progress or novelty?

"Let's think about evolution for a sec, and the fact that it does not really mean a constant process of improvement, but a constant process of fitting the changing environment a species finds itself in. Dinosaurs were "best" for the earth they lived in. Then things changed, and small mammals were "best". This can certainly help our thinking about "progress" in music."

yes zigackly. hence my point above above changes in fashion, taste, theory and technology, being hugely important in terms of which particular musical style is most composed in and consumed by an audience at any point in time/history. beyond that, there might be an essence common to all good music, viz. "goodness".

FOR EXAMPLE. when i only posted posted thunderpants jpg, that was novelty.
now i am discussing music with louis jagger, that is progress.

today i am alive,
one day i will be dead
that is progress my son
said craig bellamy

gareth is your use of the phrase "male categorizing and rating brain" the serious part of your post or the funny part of your post?

The reason I need the theory is in order, eventually, to create a credible musical manifesto which will enable me to create the music I wish to create with the help of people who understand what I wish to do. It's also a very interesting area of debate. The evidence has led up to the theory!

gareth is your use of the phrase "male categorizing and rating brain" the serious part of your post or the funny part of your post?

-- Curt1s Stephens, Sunday, June 3,

in all honesty, i cant remember. it was a while ago that i posted that!

But the theory does not need the evidence at its most basic level. The evidence is subjective, but the theory is objective.

a credible musical manifesto which will enable me to create the music I wish to create

why dont you just have a go, and have some fun, and enjoy it? throw the manifesto in the bin, make something thats fun?

it's cool, I'm just trying to figure out whether it's the #7 serious post on this thread or the #2 funny post

In summary to answer the crucial question on this thread:

Does Mouldy Old Dough?

-- acrobat, Friday, 1 June 2007 23:02

Yes.

I will enjoy it! But I must also be sure with myself that the music I'm creating is the very best music I could possibly imagine, and in order to do this, I'll have to lay down a few core beliefs to my bandmates. Or learn to play all the instruments myself. :D

One needs a theory so that one can find other things one might like, possibly.

do you know curtis, its 6.45 in the evening here in london, and its very warm outside and im sat inside on the computer. isnt that silly? im going to go down to camden (2nd best of the 11 nw postcodes) and have some beers (ranked 1st in the alcoholic drinks stakes may 2007)

Yeah, my bandying around of this 'theory' has gotten me a load of cool recommendations (Partch, Mahler etc), which I'd otherwise not have had.

Mouldy Old Dough sounds "sounds pretty dated and old-fashioned tbh."?

I beg to differ! It sounds like hauntology gone pop but better than that!

It is also 6:45 and boiling hot here in Cambridge, a mere 40 or 50 miles north of London, and I am similarly sat inside on the computer. I'm going to eat, then perhaps enjoy a drink or two also. Such is the similarity of our lives.

It's 6.54 and dull as fuck in Devon.

I am in the future, obv.

It's 18:47 in east sussex and i have just transcribed:

AN: Yeah that’s ok. They have to be naked. The scariest thing would be naked feet on a guy I don’t know. It’s like a person I don’t know and then they took off their socks when we were in a train compartment; that would be the scariest thing ever.

from an interview I counducted with Swedish indiepop artist Hello Saferide.

I wish I enjoyed Partch more. I only really get off on the stuff that involves the spoken word over the top e.g. "Barstow". He's so, so great to think about though. Fuck it, I'll try him again this week.

Remember how Tower Pulse! mag used to have the comics back page? I got to do one of those once, and I wrote about Partch & Debussy. I had my buddy do painted color over my pencils, though, and it came out pretty muddy.

Strange to say, I owe my first knowledge of Messiaen to james kochalka's Pulse! back page about him...

Mouldy Old Dough sounds "sounds pretty dated and old-fashioned tbh."?

no, it's ace!!

i was being a puzzlewit.

This is a fun thread. Kudos, dudes.

Well you were responding to my question which was if MOD sounded "sounds pretty dated and old-fashioned tbh." as LJ seems to think DSOTM does.

ok out now, but you should all check out Dinky Dink by Nexus & Blowback, for more of this kind of sound

I'm trying to finish a pitch today and all I've done is post to this thread. Time to man up. Unless someone posts something else I wanna respond to.

I just had a lengthy conversation with a good friend, whose parents are both concert-standard classical musicians, and who regards classical music as the subtlest, most complicated music that there can be, and the one he can appreciate most profoundly. I accepted that I wasn't so versed in classical as he was, but I (successfully, I think) attempted to explode some assumptions he had about popular music. I tried to explain how there was plenty of modern non-classical music that was just as subtle, just as complex, and just as profound as any Vaughan Williams (he played me The Lark Ascending again, as he always does, and I enjoyed it, as I always do, without going completely bananas, as I rarely do for classical). I think that both of us need to expand our tastes in opposite directions, but we agreed on what the effects of good music were, namely to create a profound mood (perhaps I place more currency in surprise and thrill than he does). He accepted my point (once I spelled it out) that we are now at a better potential state than before, because we have more choice. However, he only accepted this with the 'potential' qualifier, there being, as he said, far more to music than choice of sounds and complexity. The only way this can be completely resolved is if I manage to produce the music I believe in; then my personal ideal can be understood.

He also mentioned how difficult it would be to find the 'best possible' sound for a concept, and how such decisions would take so long that no music would ever be written. I explained that of course this was only conceptual, and that of course decisions would have to be made and certain compromises may (reluctantly) have to take place, but the more active you can keep your imagination, the less lazy a decision you're likely to make.

He also broadly agreed with my proposed abolishment of genre, although there is plenty that self-defines to certain genres, creating a big problem for me, the idealist.

I also asked that he play me some Mahler, but he was reluctant, claiming that it was 'a bit heavy', and that someone unversed in classical might not appreciate it much. I insisted and he caved in, but before it could really get going he had to go. :(

'a bit heavy' in my book = Sunn 0)))

"The Lark Ascending" is dreadful!! He should've played you "Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis". TLA s certinly not subtle, profound or complex.
Mahler is otoh. Check out symphony no.7.

Here's an interesting thing. My friend played me some of the Steve Reich piano piece, in which two pianos play the same riff, with one piano a single metronomic beat per minute faster. The result sounds wonderful, disorientating, and genuinely forward-thinking...but is it as Acrobat puts it more of a novelty, a trivial and unemotional experiment, or the sign of genuine, worthy advancement in music, and a link in the chain of musical evolution?

I just read this whole thread in one go, which is tough going at times, and I think that I agree with almost everything Louis has said, except that the music I like is quite at odds with his. I think one qualifier I have is that by his assertion on the abolishment of genre as an ideal clashes with the notion I have held for some time that music has to be approached on its own terms sometimes. By this I mean, a lot of people will complain that a club track is bad if you can't dance to it. But I can never dance to dance music, I mainly listen to it at home, and I can only really get going on the dancefloor to indie rock I never listen to or have much desire to. But that's neither here nor there.

I don't really understand why his argument for progress is so offensive to people. Progress is important, it is part of what makes something sound fresh, the shock of the new and all that.

No, Steve Reich's tape loop stuff is amazine.

xpost

Oh good, that's what I thought! :-D

I think that such things as Steve Reich's experiments, his ideas, ought to be harnessed with perhaps different instrumentation/sounds and adapted into a wider context of music as a whole. Hence the remix album, of course, but I mean that his ways of thinking can be used for totally original pieces, out of the 'classical' context. I'd like to hear the result.

Acrobat puts it more of a novelty, a trivial and unemotional experiment, or the sign of genuine, worthy advancement in music, and a link in the chain of musical evolution?

why cant it be both? and wtf does "worthy" mean? and "genuine"? and why is "unemotional" such a BAD thing?

I like the idea of progress sometimes. For instance "Just What I Needed" by The Cars sounds like a warm up for Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl". This is progress. Whereas The Cars could only attempt the kind of integration of palm muting, synths and choppy hooks the skinny tied new-wave sound promised Springfield was able to stand upon their shoulders and reach even higher. Strangely The Killers have revisited this template with modern technology but been unable to quite recreate this strange magic.

I don't always relate things in that way. I tend to think of Steve Reich more in terms of painting (see Agnes Martin, Robert Ryman). Especially with something like Music for 18 musicians where it sounds like a gradual acummulation of colour.

I like that you get my point, and I like it even more that you don't necessarily like the same music as I do. It shows that my 'progress' theory can be applied to all sorts of subjective tastes, and that all sorts of ideals can be pursued through the use of an ever-widening palette of possible executions. What would your ideal album sound like?

'Worthy' is slightly lazy speak for 'useful in wider context, worth following up with more music along similar lines'. 'genuine' applies to 'advancement', and 'unemotional' isn't necessarily bad, but it won't make the music especially dear to many.

The reason that The Killers fail is that they aren't very imaginative.

"why is "unemotional" such a BAD thing?"

"Strangely The Killers have revisited this template with modern technology but been unable to quite recreate this strange magic."

I always liked this about the Killers. They use modern technology as an advancement in the way that a photocopier is an adancement on an Oil Painting. I don't mean this disrespectfully, it's got a certain deadening effect that for me is what makes the Killers worth having around. Its what makes Ariel Pink so scary.

I would disagree that their lack of imagination makes them a failure.

Speaking of The Cars, my friend actually enjoys listening to them in a social context, but he doesn't actually rate their music highly alongside classical; he appreciates their charm and their mood, but can't take them very seriously. Is there a certain amount of classical snobbery going on here, or are The Cars, as a self-defined 'pop' band, designed to be taken in an instant-gratification 'pop' context?

How important a role does imagination play in the creation of music, then? Is it better to be able to play 'soulfully', or play each note in the right order at the right time, than to play a surprising and original combination of notes?

I think the problem I have here is with the word "better"

Some music can be better than other music, but these parameters constantly change and they vary from person to person, there is no catch ideology for music because the very notion of progress negates this. As a new ideal emerges, it is also gradually or rapidly becoming obsolete. Maybe fashion is an important element in this debate.

Well, I meant 'better in your opinion'.

I will agree that should I fulfil a certain specific musical ideal, that ideal by the very nature of its fulfilment will have become obsolete, and a new ideal will have to be sought; such is the nature of progress. However, the chances are that my ideal will not be adequately fulfilled, and since my ideal consists of constantly seeking more inventive ways in which to link sounds and sound-patterns together, the ideal itself arguably shifts along with its execution.

xpost, that was quick.
In that case, it comes back to my belief that you have to come to music on its own terms. This is why I love the massive orchestration of By the People by Van Dyke Parks and also Hireklon by Ricardo Villalobos equally. But also just because both grab me in a way I just can't explain.

Yeah, like the fiddle in Desperate Guys by the Faint. It just lashes into the song. But so do the strings on Toxic. Which came first? Does that matter?

in a way I just can't explain

This is perhaps my folly: trying to explain the inexplicable.

I don't think it ultimately matters which song came first. Such things are of secondary, contextual interest only.

Sometimes what I like about a piece of music seems to have nothing to do with what other people say about that music. For example Room on Fire was paraded out as being just like the first one, a knockoff of 70's New York New Wave and therefore shit, minus a few good songs or whatever. But I loved that album intensely, it seemed to have more to do with a kind of perfect pop minimalism. A Blondie riff stretched out across an album that made it a kind of minimalist masterpiece to these ears. In fact the borrowed image, sound helped. I've already mentioned the photocopier in this thread and I think that this album nailed a certain aesthetic I've never met anyone who cares about except for me. You had this idea of rock and roll, which for our generation had been flattened into the canon. The Strokes never attempted to reinvigorate these ideas, they instead sucked all the life out of them. I'm not explaining this very well...

"Sometimes what I like about a piece of music seems to have nothing to do with what other people say about that music"

I don't mean "not influenced by" I mean, the reference points everyone else is using to talk about a piece of music, in this case denigrate it, seem so secondary and besides the point.

Re: your second post there, you're pretty OTM. Often many people have a preset genre-bound perspective on an album, a 'general critical line' as it were, that in no way does justice to that album's aims. Your theory of The Strokes' 'Room On Fire' is very interesting. Certainly what I heard of that album I preferred (significantly) to the first one, but that's beside the point; to approach the album as a 30-minute exploration of a certain, isolated, refined musical ideal sounds like an incredibly intriguing way to approach what most regarded as a derivative, inadequate sequel.

I think you understand what I meant way better than I explained it :-)

Well, if what you say is true, then the album as a whole could be said to be (in your opinion) the perfect execution of a 'minimal pop' ideal, an ideal which I would probably value quite highly, all things told, despite my ostensible antipathy towards 'minimalism' (I like complexity, yes, but a sort of perverse complexity can be found in minimalism, when it is deployed correctly; the complex and ever-changing patterns of sound between Reich's two pianos being an example). This being so, I may have to return to that album to test your claim's validity.

"a sort of perverse complexity can be found in minimalism, when it is deployed correctly; the complex and ever-changing patterns of sound..."

This is the one idea in art that relentlessly sucks me in. It is also about the link between a kind of boredom. A big idea in minimalism that appeals to me is as a form of meditation almost. Don't take that wrong. I just mean that when something is boring and the duration is stretched out, things become disengaged in a new way that I think is really interesting. Instead of sitting down and listening to an album or putting it on in the background, I like the idea of there being a halfway place, is this coherent so far?

The idea is that there are these invisible elements and the endless possibilities can be explored at their most microscopic level.

Needlessly mangled is the best way of describing what I have written in this thread so far.

He also broadly agreed with my proposed abolishment of genre,

:(:(:(:(

My friend played me some of the Steve Reich piano piece, in which two pianos play the same riff, with one piano a single metronomic beat per minute faster. The result sounds wonderful, disorientating, and genuinely forward-thinking...but is it as Acrobat puts it more of a novelty, a trivial and unemotional experiment, or the sign of genuine, worthy advancement in music, and a link in the chain of musical evolution?

i dunno which one he played you, but steve reich is the shit, thats the good stuff right there

I think he agreed right there.

I get what you're saying. Earlier on in this thread I referenced Spacemen 3's 'Taking Drugs...', an album of garage demos. Of far greater interest (and subjective worth) is their Dreamweapon recording, which contains the 44-minute 'An Evening Of Contemporary Sitar Music'. Drones, arbitrary sitar plucks, and the occasional tannoy announcement (the recording appears to be taking place in a theatre foyer) combine to create something superficially boring. However, when listened to intently, not so much a pattern emerges as a state of listening whereat one's boredom becomes the focus of interest, and the microscopically-altered events of the music accomplish a sort of ambient fulfilment of one's act of listening. It's music that requires a condition of the hearer, that condition being one of existential neutrality. Then can the music be appreciated as a dialogue, commenting upon its own inertia, and deciding stoically against change.

Of course, that could all be a load of cobblers, and the piece could just be a couple of reeeeealy stoned Rugby natives playing the same not over and over again because their addled brains don't want to do anything else. New Historicism dictates, however, that the reader's interpretation is the final verdict, so my words above stand as a subjective take on an intriguing piece of performance art.

*same note

ok, we all agree on STEVE REICH. hooray!

I say the 'abolishment of genre', but people would still be free to make music that belonged to self-defined genres. I merely wish to refer to music in other, more technical terms. Gah, perhaps genre descriptions are necessary for ease of definition and the passing on of musical heritage.

xpost
Okay, that sounds amazing.

How exactly do you propose to abolish genre?

Newspeak

maybe LJ could abolish race too

Also this entire mental argument is kind of moot seeing as the notions of 'progress' that are being drawn up are so tiny. Consider that the majority of people are unable to put Bach, Mozart and Wagner in any chronological order, in 100 years time people won't know what came first, the Beatles or Yes or drum and bass. They'll think it was all happening at the same time, part of the grey fug of '20th century music'.

if we could just get him some time off to sort out darfur

Genre won't abolish itself, I guess, and that's the only way it'll go. When I say 'abolish genre', I mean in terms of the music I aim to make. Sadly, someone will doubtless invent a genre or description for my style of musical thinking. I guess genre is inescapable. That part I will reluctantly retract.

"if we could just get him some time off to sort out darfur"

Didn't Saxby just ban this sort of thing or whatever?

xpost

Maybe "transcend" would be a better word then

i knew we could count on saxby:)

i heard he stopped some kid from walking into a lake as well

696 - that's pretty difficult, considering in Darfur they have a far greater palatte of weaponary to choose from. I have no doubt that, with the far more sophisticated arsenal available in the 21st century, either myself or Tony Blair would easily be able to best the hordes of Genghis Khan, or Hitler.

They'll think it was all happening at the same time

Good! The 'progress' I'm talking about is progress into the future from the present. Ideally, past music should be (initially) judged equally. Of course, contextual concerns do help to explain a lot, but surely one can tell how different musics interrelate most accurately by merely listening to them?

I regard the most important music as the music yet to come, and I believe that this is true at any given moment.

transcend darfur? xxxxpost damn

;-S postx

I for one welcome the day when the Beach Boys, Palestrina and Ned's Atomic Dustbin are all judged as equal relics of the past because a starry eyed visionary has presented us with IDM remixes of Spiritualized tracks music that transcends all genre and fully unifies and builds upon the myriad possibilities of music.

i think i might reminisce about darfur instead

I don't know who Palestrina is.

yeah, if autechre ever get their hands on 'shine a light' i'll probably have to give up there and then

I think its very easy to poke holes in Louis's theory, but at least he has made a concerted effort to understand why he likes what he likes.

"yeah, if autechre ever get their hands on 'shine a light' i'll probably have to give up there and then"

But that sounds fantastic to me!

it is the motherlode

One of the reason I started this thread is because 65daysofstatic sound a lot like Enter Shakiri to me.

Now it all comes out! It's 'Shikari' btw. My pedantry is a small measure of revenge for your belittling comparison...

I think its very easy to poke holes in Louis's theory, but at least he has made a concerted effort to understand why he likes what he likes.

there are a lot of us who think that louis is crazy who have also made concerted efforts to understand why we like what we like

I think I was too harsh on The Killers up there, I do rather like a few of their songs, well the first two singles but they seem to have learnt a little too much from “glamorous indie rock ‘n roll” and are a little to unwilling to sound… goofy. Though “Glamorous Indie Rock ‘n Roll” itself is very goofy but not goofy in a good way. The Strokes thing is interesting. “Room on Fire” is I think a “better” album than “Is This It” in the sense that it is tighter and better played but I don’t like it as much and that is I think much down to context. I wrote something on stylus about this but y know this is the internet’s famous ILM and I’m not up for linking myself. Actually “Is This It” thematically is a far easier album to love as it’s about, as much as it’s about anything, being young and bored whilst “Room on Fire” is about being a rock star frustrated with the trappings of success which is far harder to relate to. So even if the band has progressed musically the lyricist has also progressed to somewhere beyond the experience of most listeners.

So even if the band has progressed musically the lyricist has also progressed to somewhere beyond the experience of most listeners.

Does this matter one iota?

Okay that basically has nothing to do with what I was trying to communicate, albeit rubbishly.

Enter Shakira?

c'mon stevem, that's never been done before *COMICAL ROLLING OF EYES*

"So even if the band has progressed musically the lyricist has also progressed to somewhere beyond the experience of most listeners."

"Does this matter one iota?"

I think it does in this instance, where in the context I'm trying to create for this album, i.e. the one it suggests naturally to me but which I realise is nothing like what it suggests to most people. The fact that the lyrics refer to something irrelevant to most listeners means that the album doubly directs its own focus back on itself. It preserves itself in its own vacuum of signifiers.

That's an intriguing way of looking at the lyrics as a positive development, but I was railing against Acrobat's insinuation that in order to enjoy a work one must somehow be able to relate directly to the lyrics.

Maybe, I think beyond the experience is the wrong way of putting it. I mean people like music about being knights and stuff but they probably have no experience of actually being a knight. I think the thing is that lyrically it’s a turn off and I know Louis you seem to be a church of Ned type who doesn’t think lyrics do much but there are certain listeners who, in certain circumstances, relate very strongly in terms of what the subject matter is of a song and the subject matter of “Room on Fire” is quite distancing; I don’t know how it feels to be in your position Julian Casablanca’s and moreover I have no interest. I can not use this music you have presented me with to relate to my own life therefore I have little use for it.

in 100 years time people won't know what came first, the Beatles or Yes or drum and bass. They'll think it was all happening at the same time, part of the grey fug of '20th century music'.

although the volume of documentation available on the subject (20th century music) combined with the ease of accessing it means people will probably be more clued up on it generally than Classical which is different anyway because it's always been put on a pedestal above 'popular' music, portrayed as more the realm of the top-educated, elitist etc.

500 years on tho who knows indeed.

Actually, my attitude towards lyrics is:

-If the music is bad but the lyrics are good, then it's worth a listen.
-If the music is good but the lyrics are bad, it doesn't matter
-If the music is good and the lyrics are good, then great!
-If the music is pretty good and the lyrics are awesome, then I'll probably love it.

In the latter camp: some Dylan, most Massive Attack.

Genuinely great lyricism appeals to me as the best poetry does, and is worthy of study on its own, totally aside from the music.

No! Lyrics are PART of the music they are NOT NOT NOT poetry! Apart form when they are! Do not seperate the two! Magic of the words dies 90 % if the time if you do this!

Not always though.

The first few lines of Astral Weeks work better for me on the page than sung.

I said 90%! 10% work on the page. Maybe.

I'm just against absolutes I suppose. Absolutes are dangerous.

OK, there are 2 kinds of good lyricism (I should have clarified this earlier): the sort that works as poetry, and the sort that works with the music. Occasionally, you get both, and THAT, my friends, is genuinely great lyricism.

Yeh, the words to "Juicy" look pretty cool written down but "Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis" is actually the coolest thing ever when Biggie raps/says it.

Yeah, but then there's intentionally bad lyrics (Swans for example...) which can be needed. So I think the argument is immediately muddied.

Morrissey, I think, writes great lyrics but bloody awful poetry.

My definition of great != yours, then!

I am beginning to suspect this may be the case.

I'm just saying that my tenuous description of what makes 'genuinely great' lyrics relies entirely on the subjective use of ephemeral term 'great'. Your use of 'great' re: Morrissey's lyrics contravenes my own 'it must work as poetry as well' proviso, but it's your version of 'great', so you're free to define it on your terms.

so, will lyric writing progress ?

But then... why? Just because a lyric can't be studied as one would a piece of poetry doesn't suggest to me it is a bad lyric. In fact that would seem to completely miss the point of how lyrics function in popular music. It was John Lennon who said of Bob Dylan: "It's not what he sings it's the way he sings it" which is not always true but makes a fair bit of sense to me, especially in regards to Dylan.

I agree with acrobat, it's often the delivery that makes the lyric work and reveals what lies beyond the words

NOOOONO I didn't mean 'it must work as poetry too' as a necessity for lyrics, I just meant that it was how I defined a 'genuinely great' lyric in my previous post. Lyrics that fit the music well are ace!

Lyric writing won't necessarily progress, unless language itself progresses to a higher state. That said, when I get going with mah crayzee rimes, lyric writing will temporarily spike. One would like to think. ;-)

'higher state' = subjective state whereat language is used in more expressive, aesthetically-pleasing ways

I often feel slightly embarrassed when people treat lyrics like poetry. Today my favourite track with words is probably "30 Century Man" by Scott Walker and the way he sings the lyric is just so cool but on the page:

See the dwarves and see the giants
Which one would you choose to be?
And if you can't get that together
Here's the answer, here's the key
You can freeze like a 30 Century Man
Like a 30 Century Man
I'll save my bread and take it with me
'Til a hundred years or so
Shame you won't be there to see me
Shakin' hands with Charles De Gaulle
Play it cool and Saranwrap all you can
Be a 30 Century Man
You can freeze like a 30 Century Man
Like a 30 Century Man
Like a 30 Century Man

Is hardly Derek Walcott (or insert name of any other poet you like).

Yeah, except when reading it I was singing it in my head. I'm gonna put that song on now...

i'm listening to 'buffalo' by stump

Anyway Seventh Seal has way shitter lyrics. Its like he cut and pasted from the screenplay. I hate the way it just tells you that whole film's plot.

best thing he did was that jacques brel stuff

pity he progressed to beating meat

*i'll get my coat*

I'll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway.

'I'll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway.'

Dear Mr Walker, I can not use this music you have presented me with to relate to my own life therefore I have little use for it.

Well I'm from Galway so...

Never seen a donkey in the street there though...

What with the CARS and everything.

I like the idea of progress sometimes. For instance "Just What I Needed" by The Cars sounds like a warm up for Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl". This is progress. Whereas The Cars could only attempt the kind of integration of palm muting, synths and choppy hooks the skinny tied new-wave sound promised Springfield was able to stand upon their shoulders and reach even higher.

RONG

I prefer Dreamweapon to Ravi Shankar's Passages album he did with Phillip Glass for the reasons above - even though Passages has a sterile grace.

It makes better use of palm muting, synths and choppy hooks?

sorry, Absolut is dangerous !

Good for covering your genitals on Time Square though.

Just got offed,

You assert that a function of X, Y and Z elegantly cohere to produce, for you, musical bliss. You also assert that "few" artists painstakingly craft music in a fashion that will produce this effect for you - which is interesting consider how you've spoken athoritavely on music you later admit to not know very much about. Now I'm not here to argue musical taste and I'll even venture to say that you and I are alot alike in terms of what we appreciat in music. But I sincerely think you're limiting yourself and missing out on some great music by adhering to this algorithm by which you determing what is "good" or "progressive".

As I've stated before, musical progress happens on a level that it is impossible to fully comprehend being that we are finite beings. There's just too many variables to synthesize. There's no telling what, how, when, where, or from who the next interesting sound or idea will come from. I just have to keep my eyes and ears open for it.

Oh, and lyrics are great especially if they tell an intriguing story or create a world and characters you could almost see touch and feel. Many times I hear truly great instrumental music that I nonetheless think would benefit from a really great lyricist and singer. I would just add a new dimension to the music overall.

It, I mean

I was sort of devils advocating a position a bit like Louis' in this thread:
Is the Stone Roses debut really as good as is claimed?
Arguing that the 'Roses could be seen as if not progressing the sound of their sixties forbearers then distilling it to a perfect form. Something like the minimalism idea upthread, keep whittling it till you get the purest manifestation of a sound. The trouble with this is, well, you run out of things to do pretty quickly, which reminds me of one of Grimey Simey's points in:
http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/da/53579
When he says:
. Indie rock and hip-hop feel equally deadlocked. They're both traditions, set in their ways. They can be redeemed every so often by an artist with personality and verve and vigour - a group like Arctic Monkeys, or in rap many would currently say Lil Wayne. But neither genre seems to hold the possibility of surprise.
He doesn't see the flipside of this and probably wouldn't see it as a good thing anyway, but the idea that rock and hip hop could be fueled by novelty rather than some cock-eyed idea of progress strikes me as kind of cool. Also I think his age and experience is working very much against him in that quote.

surprise is overrated

if i fuck some hot girls i dont want to be surprised by an ugly one

would you not want variation in the hotness? i think it was aristotle who suggested that if one lays only with girls who are "hot" one will soon develop a listless and lifeless character.

yes but he fucked young boys.

it could have been ziziek. i forget.

he believed it was an improvement on years of men fucking women.

Good grief a lot happened after I buggered off to watch True Romance and drink rioja.

Two things.

1; the postrock piece on Stylus on Friday was about 'trying to kill genre' - from hanging out on a postrock forum to check their reception to the piece, that's never ever gonna happen, I suspect.

2; Is This It vs Room On Fire - Paul, a big difference between these two albums, and between a lot of records both within one band's career and across different artists, and something that 'progress' and 'novelty' and improved technical skills and advanced studio technology etcetera do not take into account, is songwriting. Which I think is the elephant in the room here.

Re; variegated hotness - haven't psychologists recently announced that the way to be happy is to accept that sometimes you will be sad, that happy relies on the juxtaposition of sad, otherwise it's just dull? The rollercoaster of human existence, the peaks and troughs, ups and downs, consistent spaces punctuated by dynamic shifts... all human life is about balance, which isn;'t achieved by an even route so much as oine that goes as far in each direction as the other at various times. Flat, level, even, totally smooth and unchanging routes are negative in almost everything. OH I'M TALKING ABOUT COMPRESSION AGAIN.

What have they been saying in these post rock forums? The comment box was rabid enough.

Well despite the lengthy intro stating that I'm using my own definition of postrock and not considering the term as a genre name, and that I'm not trying to 'unearth obscure genre classics that need more attention', but rather trying to start assembling a manifesto for what rock ought to do next, I am being accused of all those things I state I'm not doing, and accused of- oh hell, here's a few responses.

Interesting article, extremely interesting album choices. I could write about 10 pages write now discussing it but I don't have the effort to expend, so I'll make this quick.

Post-rock is a genre. "Post-rock" is the name of a genre. (It is a ridiculous name. It is ridiculous like "Intelligent Dance Music" is ridiculous.) Like IDM, the name of the genre has little bearing on the music which the genre describes. These simple facts make that article not an article about post-rock, but an article about what the word postrock could mean if it didn't mean what it did. So right from the start, it is disconnected from reality, and basically a free-for-all.

The album choices... dunno what to say. A grand total of one of them, Gastr Del Sol, fall under the post-rock genre in my opinion. Hundreds of bands could be labeled as post-rock precursors, but Talk Talk and Bark Psychosis are notable among them, so I understand the inclusion. Never heard Long Fin Finnie or whateverthefuck. Mouse on Mars, incredible, but about as relevant as Autechre to post-rock, that is, not relevant. Califone, own one of their albums, don't like it, "experimental country", no thanks - not relevant, unless you want to take special notice of the semi-novelty post-rock band Lanterna. Boredoms.... noise, relevant as Merzbow - see: not at all. Beta Band, ok band with a great "album", the extant of their relevance to post-rock is that they could have been drinking buddies with Mogwai. Battles, they are a lot of things, many call them math-rock, but if I had to put math-rock on the list, it would be Slint, or Rodan, or June of 44, or any number of other things - but really, why bother with a math-rock inclusion on a post-rock list, related or no?

Ok, so I had more effort than I thought.

One last question, what is the deal with that little name-dropping episode at the end of the last paragraph. Am I missing something?

PS - how dare you mention Fennesz in the same breath as Cornelius, TVOTR, Grizzly Bear, Menomena, !!!...

It seems to me the list is simply stuff that's advanced past traditional rock, thus taking the name extremely literally.

I like the article, though I think it got a little caught up in some of the obfuscatory stuff you commented on at the very beginning honestly. I appreciate the idea of going through "postrock" as an adjective/direction rather than a genre, but I don't doubt that around here the latter use is more recognised.

Last two paras are separate posts to the first, multi-para response, btw. Should have formatted that better.

that wasn't nearly as rabid as expected.

genre's are very useful. getting rid of them seems almost perverse, check any of the rolling genre threads minimal bobbins, teenpop, country etc to the outsider they seem to chart the most minimal changes and developments but for one "inside" the genre these changes i imagine seem huge. 696 seems the closest to coming from this angle as anyone on this thread.

Genres are sueful, yes, but they can also be restrictive, and if, like Louis and to an extent myself, you want music that takes in elements of different genres, to find an approach that seems as if it points towards a future of that and then see it restricted is disheartening.

of course they can be restrictive, thats a good thing!

Not always though! Not if you want shoegazing guitars and jazz trumpets and funk beats and ambient spaces all together and get given Slint instead!

shoegazing guitars and jazz trumpets and funk beats and ambient spaces all together

i dont think id like that very much

Well no, I probably wouldn't either because it'd be done by some dumbass who'd fuck it up, but you know, platonic ideal and that.

yes but nick music is almost always produced and consumed within a set of conventions. when i heard 65dos i immediately made the call that it was "herky jerky post rock type stuff with not very sophisticated electronic bits" which isn't a genre per-se but enough to suggest it wasn't really going to be up my street.

i guess it depends what you want. but i imagine a new hi-hat sound in certain dance records is as exciting for some as this maximal mixing is for you.

"Genres are sueful"

blame culture taken too far i think.

No no no minimal mixing! Mix quietly, with lots of space! (I know that's not quite what you mean...)

It is indeed true that music is generally made within a set of conventions, and this is fine and good and a lot of music I enjoy sits squarely in one convention or another; however, I really, REALLY like music that integrates different conventions, and I think a lot of people do; Mark Hollis, of all people, once said that the only way to really innovate is to combine things that don't seem to fit together and haven't been combined before. It's why I prefer Remain In Light to '77 (also that elephant again, songwriting).

existing genres kind of are platonic ideal already.

*are a platonic ideal.

oh and there was perhaps an under current in your soulseeking essays from a long while back that opening oneself up to too much music was in the end limiting. you didn't argue it yrself but one could argue that genre mining could be a fruitful way to avoid this kind of dilettante’s overload.

Aye, and arguably what Louis and I are (kind of) doing is genre-mining - wanting a music that contains elements from different genres doesn't mean dipping into al those genres, necessarily.

i find that idea attracive in some respects. i was wondering recently what Revolver would sound like if someone tried that today. The Beatles "genius" was pastiche and plagirism and on Revolver they are sort of ram-raiding every stlye available in 1966. i don't get this feeling at all from much fo the stuff you and Louis seem to be sugggest is doing something vaguely similar but maybe that's as you suggest to do with songwriting.

The thing with Revolver is that it's doing it in a very much 'pop' methodology, and very little 'pop' recently has done similar. Certainly there are people, Timbaland being an immediate example, who are doing something similar, but if it's in a 'pop' context it's probbaly flawed in one or other directions that would rule it out for the likes of Louis or I; mixing in commercial, flat, radio-hungry manner, over-emphasis on lyrics / singing / vocal performativity, etcetera, songwriting again, the lack of a 'band' where a band is a group of musicians interracting on several levels. The dynamic of group interplay is something I like a lot, for instance, and you don't get that in figurehead-led R'n'B, for instance, or in, let's say The View, either, because they're not 'playing' in the same way as The Beatles - they're not gonna suddenly start looping and editing and using other instruments and so on in a contemporaneously progressive way that's comparable to what The Beatles did. They may, and in fact almost certainly are, using studio technology in a far more advanced way than The Beatles, because more advanced technology exists, but it'll be for different ends; autotune to smooth out vocal errors, looped guitar lines cos the guitarist can't play more than 8 bars at a time, overdubs or playing to a click because the drummer can't keep time, etcetera - the studio as orthodoxy tool rather than innovation tool.

And by pop I also mean rock - Oasis, for example.

i think damon allbran would like to do this genre tourist stuff, parklife era blur and gorrilaz both seem like attempts to do just this. that he can't quite get everything in focus in the same way The Beatles did is, for me, the problem.

I'd agree with that. I think Damon's got close on occasions, I think TGTB&TQ gets close, but then it's fucking atrociously mixed and mastered, so there you go.

Paul would you mind if I hiked a load of this stuff between us onto my blog, perhaps?

course not.

also the elephant in the room here as allbran and reynolds have both i think worked out is that the rock band is so longer in a privileged position. The Beatles could reasonably hope to between the four of them and studio friends mimic with a certain accuracy pretty much every contemporary pop trend could a "rock band" do this today? i don't think so. albarn had to take the group out of the equation and recast himself as producer/ringleader to achieve what he wanted with gorillaz.

was "clint eastwood" a progression of trends in rock and hip hop or just a fun novelty that mixed a rock type hook with hip hop and in the remix they caned on the radio 2step.

I don't think The Beatles did it in a contived manner, and once an approach has been taken, anything that comes after it, with knowledge, necessarily has to be contrived because it's aware that this has been tried before. So you either don't try (Oasis), or you try ironically (Damon?). Or if you do try it you're either too weird or too unweird, depending (Guillemots).

xpost- it can be both.

Once the progression is made, as Louis said earlier, it is no longer a progression, assuming it is adopted within the mainstream. Talk Talk's last two albums never really were, hence they still sound like a progression. And here is the rub of the dichotomy; you want EVERYTHING to progress, and maintain a thrill of the new, but if EVERYTHING does then progresion itself becomes passé, and you swing back to bluegrass and ragtime and platonic essences of genres, because what's the point of progression anymore?

I think contrivance is possibly the key here and would possibly explain why Prince my ears is/was playing the same game as The Beatles but Damon and B Gillespie aren't/weren't. Genre hoppers like Bowie and Madonna muddle it all completely though.

I'd agree with that.

Patrick Wolf seems pretty uncontrived to me. Bjork? It seems liie solo artists these days. Did The Rolling Stones, Led Zep, Pink Floyd, The Sex Pistols and The Stone Roses too clearly define what a (British) 'band' was, and stop the divergence? Beta Band... Clash...

Most embarrassing Louis thread yet?

Does Bowie sound a bit contrived when he soul sings about being a "Young American"? Sure, he's from Bromley but does it move me, yeh it does. The contrivance becomes part of the fun, that's what's kinda fun about XTRMNTR actually, is Bob G a renagade anti-capitailist rock terrorist? Well no, but it's fun to pretend he is.

Yeah, definitely; it's the performativity, I guess, like watching a pantomime.

is Bob G a renagade anti-capitailist rock terrorist? Well no, but it's fun to pretend he is.

It is?

it was when i was 16. do cheer up. louis hasn't been that bad, sure he's been "wrong" but he's articulated and argued his way pretty well which is y know sort of better than a load of snidey one liners.

There's "wrong" and there's "wrong" on the scale of a Geir, and when you're faced with idiocy on that scale, snidey one liners is all I can muster these days

"Idiocy" is a bit harsh, delusional silliness with a side order of creepy is maybe closer

Most embarrassing Louis thread yet?

Actually, it's by far the most rewarding, but if you can't see that then it's your loss, I guess.

Most embarrassing Louis thread yet?

Well, there was that one other one...

The reason I err, Tom, is to have my opinions challenged, refined, and progressed, much like my music in fact.

Louis, are you musician?

i think damon allbran would like to do this genre tourist stuff, parklife era blur and gorrilaz both seem like attempts to do just this

13. 13 sounds like everything and nothing. You can't possibly pigeonhole it. Many did so by describing it as a 'mess' or a 'murky attempt at combining rock and electronic music that fails', but to my ears it's a practically genre-less and enormously successful combination of many disparate influences into one thrilling, cohesive whole. Hence one of my favourite albums. I've said enough on it before, though, so I'll schtum now.

Tom, I play bass guitar to a low-ish standard, entirely self-taught and improving, mind, and I drum with my teeth to a staggeringly high standard. Don't laugh. Whenever I make up music in the street, my teeth provide the rhythmic backdrop, the propulsion, that creates a concrete framework for my mind to drape its imaginings around. Left side = bass drum, canines = toms, right side = snare.

we're all potential musicians/murderers

Word

Louis, why is 13 often seen as an interesting failure and Kid A as a huge success? Is it just to do with the money each album made?

Now to address Cliftonb.

Just got offed,

You assert that a function of X, Y and Z elegantly cohere to produce, for you, musical bliss. You also assert that "few" artists painstakingly craft music in a fashion that will produce this effect for you - which is interesting consider how you've spoken athoritavely on music you later admit to not know very much about. Now I'm not here to argue musical taste and I'll even venture to say that you and I are alot alike in terms of what we appreciat in music. But I sincerely think you're limiting yourself and missing out on some great music by adhering to this algorithm by which you determing what is "good" or "progressive".

As I've stated before, musical progress happens on a level that it is impossible to fully comprehend being that we are finite beings. There's just too many variables to synthesize. There's no telling what, how, when, where, or from who the next interesting sound or idea will come from. I just have to keep my eyes and ears open for it.

I didn't mean 'functions X, Y and Z', I meant 'functions SUCH AS X, Y and Z'; the actual means to approach musical bliss are very wide-ranging, and in fact I prefer it if they're surprising, if on each listen they thrill me anew. Furthermore, I don't exactly limit myself; I'm always buying music that people have recommended to me! There's no 'algorithm' to the music I listen to, but there is a common thread to virtually all the music I dearly love. That said, very few artists actually pursue the same aesthetic ends as I would ultimately wish them to. I know this as pretty much fact; how? Because I'm a music nerd who spends ages looking up bands, looking up related bands, following 'trends', asking around for 'the most amazing, out-there stuff you've ever heard', listening to it, and not being quite as impressed as I felt I should have been.

Re: there's no idea where the next great sound is coming from: I don't like to refer to movements as 'sounds'; it's confusing and implies that all the music involved therein has a certain 'sound' (ouch). The next great sound generally comes from your imagination, I've discovered.

Acrobat: Kid A sounds a little tighter, a little darker, it integrates more of an electronic influence and takes itself very, very seriously indeed. 13 has time to joke around, it includes several poppier songs (oh NOES U CAN'T DO THAT) and consequently ISN'T taken seriously as a Big Rock Statement. Essentially, we're dealing with very stock prejudices here.

Better: 13 is the extrovert, the album that's bursting with energy and nakedly wearing on its sleeve the desire to show you what it can do, whereas Kid A is the introverted, oblique soundscape of a certain emotional state, consequently one that more people can relate intimately towards. I'm sure you can work out which one I relate to more, based on those descriptions... ;-)

Not sure I buy all of that. Revolver had "Yellow Submarine" and Pet Sounds has "Sloop John B" Geir told me they were the greatest albums ever and you can't fuck with that.

what kind of malcontent doesn't like sloop john b

The relative success of Kid A / 13 on commercial and critical and historical levels is shrouded in the context of the success of each album's predecessor.

I wish I'd seen this thread sooner.

Paul, name a cannonical album since London Calling that includes a 'joke' tune, without mentioning Oasis.

Pixies?

3 Feet high and rising

The Queen Is Dead

I was just gonna chime in that most of The Smiths cannoical albums are almost weighed down with comedy numbers. If were gonna talk hip hop then even Enter the Wu has funny bits. If were staying in Q territory you might have a point.

And lets be honest Blur's pre 13 back catalogue was hardly Closer material.

Closer material? This isn't another harmful rockist comparison, is it?

Oh come on, you can't seriously still be using the term "rockist" in 2007?

I don't think it's rockist Louis, I'm just making a throwaway comparison to something that a lot of people think of as y know a bit depressing.

What do you mean by "rockist"?

Yeah, as I've said, I loathe the terms 'rockism' and 'popism' as meaningless signifiers, and whenever I use either, it's as a means of derision. What I should have said was 'appeal to authority'.

How is that relevant, though, Acrobat? Are you saying that a depressing back catalogue is necessary to lend sufficient gravitas to a piece of music?

No. Nick asked for post London Calling examples of canonical albums with "funny" songs, I was merely suggesting that Blur themselves fit the bill. Where did you get the gravitas idea from?

Nick might have a good point though, there does seem to be a distinct lack of "novelty songs" on your average modern rock album.

Ah fair enough, I thought you were doubting 13's status as a serious musical statement, but you were instead pointing out how Blur often throw in a joke song (hi dere Bank Holiday) onto a canonical album.

Bank Holiday is my favourite song on Parklife!

:-/

it's probably my least favourite

The Second Coming is all comedy songs.

but if it is canonical then i vote we fire the canon

13's status as a serious musical statement

If B.L.U.R.E.MI is a serious statement I will eat all of my cocteau twins cds.

I like Bank Holiday just fine.

Taking sides; sincere joke songs vs ironic joke songs?

If B.L.U.R.E.M.I is a serious statement I will eat all of my cocteau twins cds.

See my point? One semi-serious (if still quite inventive) joke song and the whole album is judged as a result. I think a serious statement can INCLUDE humour, as long as that humour fits into the album's wider context, which I believe B.L.U.R.E.M.I. does. The album as a whole demonstrates a whole range of approaches, which somehow serve to create a unified if unpredictable journey.

Please give examples of the two? How much of a difference is there between a joke song and a novelty song? Your Woman could be called a novelty but probably not a joke, Cotton Eye Joe could be seen as both. Amusing songs off "serious" albums fit where?

xp sm

That's what I was asking! Yellow Submarine as 'serious@ (yeah, right), Digsy's Dinner as ironic...

Also this thread has skirted round the value of novelty a bit. Remember how excited some sections of ILM were by the Crazy Frog and the less remembered Schnappi, some going as far to proclaim it album / single of the year. Even perhaps the Paris album fits into that, the novelty of her making an album was enough to make the album interesting, maybe. That approach to thinking about pop seems if not oppositional then certainly pretty different to the ideas this thread has mainly dealt with.

I think you could quite fairly say that both of the biggest UK hits (excepting X Factor) in the last 12 months: “Crazy” and “Grace Kelly” were novelty hits.

Crazy was not a novelty hit. No way.

I dont get a sense of unity or concept at ALL from 13. And I like the album! But its like it is 2 albums or something.

Well some critics regard Yellow Submarine as a joke. Not all. Tom E wrote a magic piece on it and Eleanor Rogby on Popular but i think FT is banned at my work so i can't dig it up now.

Sure "Crazy" was a novelty hit. It sounded kind novel in a retro way. It didn't seem to have that much in common with much going on round it.(Devils Advocate)

xp

There's no single 'concept' (aside from a generally alluded-to regret @ broken-up relationship w/Elastica woman)! It's a 'journey', a sequence of songs that take the listener into many different places. Dunno about you, but the journey utterly thrills me. Plus, there's a musical unity in the album's ambition. It's all very overwhelming, extroverted, and sonically berserk. In its very wonder it is unified.

B.L.U.R.E.M.I. is a Sex Pistols spoof isn't it? I dunno I've never heard it. I quite like the Pistols song though.

i wonder if LJ would like rupaul

Nick, your "post-rock" list was wonderful. Don't lose any sleep over the message boards. Post-Rock kids are tres tres tres ridiculous. I poke around some of their message boards sometimes, and jeez the statements made are highly lollable.

Actually the astounding thing about those message boards is the sheer plethora of BANDS, all of whom apparently sit "squarely" within the genre.

The ostensibly forward-thinking lad or lady who describes Boredoms as "noise"-- fuckin' hilarious!

But the thing, the thing that has to be asked before one lolz it up too much is; why are these people listening to "post-rock"? What are they using "post-rock" to do? Are they looking for some kind of emotional response? Some kind of community? The feasibility "Post rock" as anything more than genre term kinda died when Hope of the States appeared. Lets be honest "post rock" is in so many ways an update of "progressive rock" and when that got over the free-for-all open period that all new genres have the road lead to The Wall. Same thing happened with "punk rock" as well I guess.

Way up thread the idea of progress as a way of charting an artists career was mentioned, I was thinking about how a few artists have sort of wrong footed the process. Think Bowie's Lets Dance period. After all the Berlin era experiments it's suddenly "Call me Dave", put on your red shoes and dance the blues. It's not progress in the kind of sense methinks Louis (sorry to strawman you here!) would like but he was keeping abreast of current pop trends (Intersections of Disco and New Pop etc). It would be like if Damon ALbarm had followed up "13" with a goofy 2step track... oh wait.

where to start with your first paragraph...

What are they using "post-rock" to do?

I guess they're using it for basic tribal context and self-definition. And for power display via erudition. Same things youth have used whatever musical genres for since whatever time we first allowed them to own their own stuff!

So no more lolful than anything else on the face of it, but it just seems so much funnier to me because it's "Post-Rock".

Anywhere's fine LJ!

I read Nick's piece and I liked it, I admire his intentions but I get the feeling it's a lost battle. Like if I wrote an article saying; "No the true spirit of punk is this, all that stuff you call punk is not true to this." I might be *right* but that wouldn't stop hundreds of kids slavishly imitating Minor Threat or whoever. "Post Rock" is dead as a progressive force now it's just another rock subculture, maybe "post rock" isn't but them names are damn similar.

I had great hope for Hope of the States - pretty naive, in retrospect. Enemies/Friends is still great though.

Do you guys feel like insane micro-genre spawning has had a more beneficial effect in Metal and dance music than in (what we could loosely call) Rock? Beneficial meaning, resulting in more interesting records?

I guess they're listening to 'post-rock' because they've found a reasonably out-there, singular 'sound' which marks them out as individual, creative, 'eclectic' people. Or, at least, I'd guess that if I was being particularly cynical. The nice part of me wants to believe that they keep an interest in bands commonly described as purveying 'post-rock' because they really, really like the music. The truth probably involves a teensy bit of both. Sure there's 'catharsis' in a huge instrumental freak-out, and sure there's comfort in a community, but I think you're perhaps being a bit harsh.

As for the rest of that paragraph, I don't know what to say. Explain that HOTS thing! Do you say it because they were widely described as 'Post-rock' but in fact sounded no different from any other guitar-band out there? Is there such a thing as subjective genre descriptions? Couldn't you just claim HOTS were 'indie-rock' or whatever rather than gallivanting around proclaiming the death of 'post-rock'? And what's with the 'progressive rock update' thing? Why must you define one sort of music as an update of another sort of music? 'Progressive rock' as many know it isn't dead, and moreover to describe 'post-rock', much of whose music has strongly demarcated aims, aims which differ enormously to the demarcated aims of 'progressive', as an 'update', smacks of lazy journalistic pigeonholing. As for your comment about everything leading to 'The Wall'...WAHT. Any fool knows it led to '90125'. But seriously, what are you on about?

micro-genre spawning is pointless. sure you may wish to perfect a certain aesthetic end, but to tie it in with an entire genre-descriptive will only encourage stagnation.

HOTS songs that are still great: 'The Black Amnesias' (sort of), 'Black Dollar Bills' (like, totally), and a few of the tracks towards the end of their debut album. I think 'Goodhorsehymn' and 'A Crack-Up At The Race Riots' might be my favourites, but I'd need to check them out again.

Hope of the States was the moment that Post Rock really stopped making sense. You could actually place it with Godspeed! on the front of the NME but I wasn't listening to music then so I'd rather not. Post Rock as I understand it was coined by Simon Reynolds and others at Melody Maker in the early to mid nineties, the term described much as Nick argues a place to go once the framework of trad rock has rusted to retro. But genre terms are not fixed, y know how long the press were trying to fix the term Britpop on something / anything before Blur and co? A long time. Anyway the philosophical thing got lost at some point and Post Rock became merely a genre signifier. Much like prog, much like punk and all those other genres that started out with high intentions.

Hope of the States are sort of the moment the whole idea becomes kind of... silly.

HotS were gonna be post-rock goes pop though. A fusion par excellence!

Like Head Hunters for the now crowd?

But how can you define this single moment? What philosophical thing got lost? Explosions In The Sky continue to put out records every couple of years, records which as far as I can tell adhere to some sort of 'post-rock' philosophy.

Blur predated 'Britpop'.

Post-rock gone pop = Battles' 'Atlas', no? :-D

Actually, post-rock gone pop = Hood's single 'The Lost You', still one of the finest songs of this decade.

'Atlas' definitely needs a disembodied-robot-limbs video a la Herbie's "Rock It". I'm callin' Gondry.

I love the micro genre stuff! One of the rolling dance threads is talking about a genre called "Space Battles" now! How cool is that! And then you have all the "Post Grind Noise Core" or whatever with the metal lot, that's cool as well though not my cup of tea. I'm not sure how you keep up with it though. You gotta mine them genres! I remembering walking round Glastonbury with a dance dude and him pointing at each tent and identifying which micro genre was being played, so cool! It sort of works with rock. Yr average tweepop group are quite far from yr average hard rock group or whatever. I think the difference is people don't change as much as they do in dance and maybe metal. Bands tend to pick and stick maybe.

Bands that pick and stick tend to have very static ideals, which depresses me.

No! Explosions In The Sky mine a genre!

"Britpop" preddated Britpop era Blur! Scribes were throwing the term at Cud and folks before Blur actually made sense of the term.

xpost to acrobat-- Yeah that may be the telling difference. In Metal and Dance they're perfectly fine with inventing a new genre every 20 seconds. Do you think the more stick-with-it-ness of the Rock micro-genres is a legitimacy thing, like "we mean it man, this is for real?"

ahh gotta catch a train! back laterzzzz

Explosions In The Sky mine a genre!

Isn't this what I said? When I claim they 'adhere to a post-rock philosophy' I mean they stick to a certain formula. Oh, hang on, by 'post-rock philosophy' do you mean a way of thinking that demands constant flux and progress, progress which EITS aren't demonstrating? If so, then fair enough.

Definitions are so confusing. Which is why micro-genres, I find, tend to get caught up in specifics, without ever creating any timeless music.

music shouldnt be timeless, music should be of time (and place)

i shall rephrase: 'without ever creating any interesting music'.

although i disagree about music being of a time and place. we must settle this somehow. and i'm not versed in swordplay.

the time and place of music should be here and now, though coincidentally for me "here and now" is equivalent to whatever time and place is evoked by this album:

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s62661.jpg

the time and place of music should be here and now

i've said something like this already on this thread

I like just about any record to evoke some time and/or place. But it doesn't necessarily have to be one that ever existed or ever could exist.

yes and I agree. But "here and now" is completely subjective and ephemeral and I don't think it has anything to do with music always progressing/evolving or the music of NOW being inherently better or more evolved than music made in a different here-and-now.

or what Jon said

technology changes, social trends change, people don't always remember the music of yesterday so they can't always build upon what came before. People consume much more mass-produced music today than they did, say, 100 years ago, but that doesn't mean that they necessarily have more musical knowledge to build upon than they did 100 years ago. Which I think has been addressed earlier in this thread.

xpost: Well, yeah, I kinda agree with Jon, in that whilst music is heard and felt in the context of here and now, it can evoke thoughts relating to whatever time or place your imagination is capable of conjuring. My 'here-and-now progression, must constantly improve' theory has nothing to do with this!

My theory depends upon idealistic total knowledge of prior music, something which I accept in reality isn't going to happen.

This thread is mental. I'd rather re-read this one Class, etc. pt. 4 - Did post-rock "kill" indie? (Also, did it realign the "rhythmic impulse" towards an alternative to funk-based rhythms?)

This one is cute too: Post rock means different things in America and UK

(josh: nabisco = someone you know and wuv already tho for some reason he is no longer using his actual given birth-name)
poss related to being googled re fisting ethan etc

-- mark s, Thursday, May 2, 2002 12:00 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Link

grrrr this thread isn't about 'post-rock' or 'indie'

well...it is though, isnt it?

huh.

Three years ago - http://www.stylusmagazine.com/reviews/hope-of-the-states/the-lost-riots.htm

Also today I indirectly prompted an article in The Times and a piece on BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat.

Louis, when Paul talks about a 'postrock philosophy' he means, I think, the one I outlined in my ridiculous introduction to the postrock top ten.

I was busy as fuck between 3pm and 5pm and then away from a computer til now, shame as I'd have kicked ass if I hadn't been planning integrated media study systems and arranging to spend £20k on macs.

you're in the london lite as well if we're talking dynamic range compression

Yeah? Link, or something? See the Music Into Noise thread revive. Adam Sherwin stole lines off me! I got some kid sacked from gigwise.com last Friday for doing similar.

re: gigwise sacking, that was MY baby, southall... :-P

Although Acrobat and I have frequently been at cross purposes with this thread (a sort of tug-o-war as to which direction we've tried to pull it) I think the results have been intriguing at worst and very rewarding at best. Better still, our purposes have begun to gravitate towards one another, which is handy.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23399351-details/It%27s+confirmed%3A+music+is+really+getting+louder/article.do

suspiciously similar to times piece

As in word-for-word - must be syndicated. If I was the pissy type I'd be irritated that he's got paid for that when it's kind of my work. But... I'll just be glad if we get better-sounding records out of it.

of course, you may not be the only audiophile to have noticed this dynamic range compression scourge... ;-)

True, but I did write the sentence "The Beatles lobbied Parlophone, their record company, to get their records pressed on thicker vinyl so they could achieve a bigger bass sound" almost word-for-word, over a year ago.

Remove the faintly ridiculous "their record label" sub-clause and it's my line, verbatim. There's probably others. Certainly most of the examples are the same as mine. Which I nicked off Wikipedia...

might be on wikipedia under 'vinyl' for all you know!

seriously, though, I guess you have a point. at least the word's being spread!

oh wow SNAP

you see, we both knew independently that this would ALL boil down to wikipedia. C/D telepathy etc etc.

I'm referenced in the Wiki entry for Teo Macero, which is fucking awesome.

[terrifying raspy Miles voice] Teo... Teo... [/terrifying raspy Miles voice]

Today's more adventurous rock groups are embracing technology and the avant garde to forge a new genre: post-rock. Simon Reynolds talks to Main, Seefeel and Disco Inferno, and looks to a future where riffs and powerchords will be replaced by virtual zones, machine time and the cyborg interface

shaking the rock narcotic

Like a clapped out stretch limo cranked in reverse, today's 'alternative rock' is synonymous with a retreat to one of a number of period genres from rock history. For Primal Scream think Exile On Main Street-era Stones. For Suede think Ziggy-phase Bowie. In 1994, just six short years from a new millennium, this is where the money is at: in the musical equivalent of reproduction antiques.

Recently, however, a smattering of British groups, energised by developments in electronic studio based musics such as Techno and HipHop, as well as free improvisation and the avant garde, have started venturing into a more financially precarious, but aesthetically vital hinterland-without-a-name. The roll call of futurist honour includes Disco Inferno, Seefeel, Insides, Bark Psychosis, Main, Papa Sprain, Stereolab, Pram and Moonshake, along with such prolific figures as Kevin Martin (Ice/Techno Animal/God/EAR) and ex-Napalm Death drummer Mick Harris (Scorn/Lull).

What to call this zone? Some of its occupants, Seefeel for instance, could be dubbed 'Ambient'; others, Bark Psychosis and Papa Sprain, could be called 'art rock'. 'Avant rock' would just about suffice, but is too suggestive of jerky time signatures and a dearth of melodic loveliness, which isn't necessarily the case. Perhaps the only term open ended yet precise enough to cover all this activity is 'post-rock'.

Post-rock means using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than riffs and powerchords. Increasingly, post-rock groups are augmenting the traditional guitar/bass/drums line up with computer technology: the sampler, the sequencer and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). While some post-rock units (Pram, Stereolab) prefer lo-fi or outmoded technology, others are evolving into cyber rock, becoming virtual.

*

The best way to get a handle on how these groups depart from the 'rock process' is to work from a rigorous model of how the traditional rock 'n' roll group operates. And there's none more rigorous than Joe Carducci's Rock And The Pop Narcotic (published in 1990 by Redoubt, with a revised edition planned for later this year). Carducci may be a bit of a reactionary, but his theory of rock is grounded in a precise, materialist definition of it as music, rather than 'attitude', 'spirit', 'rebellion', or any other metaphysical notions. Rock's essence, says Carducci, is the real time interaction of drums, bass and rhythm guitar. A group should be a rhythmic engine creating kinetic energy; 'breathing' as an organic entity.

Carducci valorises the strenuous, collective physicality of performance. His ideal rock process is opposed to the Pop Method, which is studio based and elevates the producer over the musicians. Modern music is a sterile, frigid wasteland because the producer/studio ('cold') has triumphed over rock ('hot'). With a typically American prejudice, Carducci favours the 'presence' of live performance over the increasingly 'virtual' nature of studio music, and prefers the 'documentarian' recording techniques that characterised early 70s hard rock, which were revived by Spot, house producer at SST, the seminal 80s hardcore punk label that Carducci co-founded.

If Carducci has a polar opposite in rock theory, it's that archetypal boffin in the sound lab, Brian Eno. In fact, the art rock tradition that Eno stands for an which is crucial to the development of today's post-rock, is something like an egghead version of the Tin Pan Alley pop process that Carducci detests; there's a line running from Phil Spector and Brian Wilson that leads to Eno as clearly as it does to, say, Trevor Horn. Both the Spector and Eno approaches to soundscaping involve using musicians as a sort of palette of textures, as opposed to the rock band's collective toil. Increasingly, the post-Eno approach involves dispensing with musicians altogether in favour of machines.

Another way in which Eno is the prophet of post-rock is his elevation of timbre/texture/chromatics over riffs and rhythm sections; the desire to create a 'fictional psycho-acoustic space' rather than groove and thrust. When he was invited to produce U2 (a group that Carducci reviles as the very model of non-rocking fraudulence) Eno warned Bono: "I'm not interested in records as a document of a rock band playing on stage. I'm more interested in painting pictures. I want to create a landscape within which this music happens." As it turned out, this subordination of the aural to the visual was perfect for Bono's 'visionary' vocals, The Edge's stratospheric guitar and the inert rhythm section.

Throughout Eno's own oeuvre, there's a gradual eradication of kinetic energy, beginning with the early solo LPs (with their limpid, uneventful water colours and lyrical imagery of treading water) and culminating in the entropic, vegetative bliss of Ambient. The difference between the Carducci and Eno aesthetics is the difference between 'manly' manual labour and 'effete' white collar brainwork. Carducci actually calls his tradition (the blues-bastardising lineage that runs from Black Sabbath through Black Flag to Soundgarden) "new redneck". By defending the aesthetic of 'heavy' (heavy rock, heavy industry) against studio-concocted 'lite', Carducci wants to protect traditional artisan skills from being usurped by machines (which, in studios as much as factories, are more reliable and cheaper than humans). By contrast, the Enoites embrace technology that empowers the musically incompetent.

*

Carducci can't make sense of the pop present, which is based in the soundsculpting innovations of dub, in disco's remixology and HipHop's sampladelic sorcery. His version of rock history also downgrades psychedelia, which was the first music to use 24 track recording to conjure fictional headspace. 'Phonography' (a term that author Evan Eisenberg coined, in his book The Recording Angel, to describe the art of recording) bears the same relation to live music as cinema does to theatre. With most rock records, the studio is used to create a simulacrum of live performance, although multi-tracking makes it more vivid and hyper-real than 'live'. But multi-tracking and other studio techniques can also be used to create 'impossible' events, which could never possibly take place in real time. The sampler, transubstantiating sound into digital data, takes this even further - different eras, different auras, can be combined to form a transchronistic pseudo event. You could call this 'magick', you could call it 'deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence' - either way, today's post-rock groups are absconding into this virtual, ethereal realm.

*

Post-rock draws its inspiration and impetus from a complex combination of sources. Some of these come from post-rock's own tradition - a series of moments in history when eggheads and bohemians have hijacked elements of rock for non-rock purposes (think of the guitar based late 60s music of The Velvet Underground and Pink Floyd, and a subsequent lineage that includes New York's No Wave groups, Joy Division, The Cocteau Twins, The Jesus And Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and AR Kane; or the so-called 'Krautrock' of Can, Faust, Neu, Cluster and Ash Ra Tempel; as well as the late 70s/early 80s post-punk vanguard of PiL, 23 Skidoo, Cabaret Voltaire and The Pop Group). Other impulses arrive from outside of rock: Eno, obviously, but also the mid-60s drone-minimalism of Terry Riley and LaMonte Young, as well as musique concrete and electroacoustic music, dub reggae and modern sampladelic genres like HipHop and Techno. Most of the British post-rock groups also explicitly define themselves against Grunge, which was Carducci's dream come true: the fusion of punk and Metal into an all-American nouveau hard rock.

*

For the post-rock groups, Sonic Youth's idea of 'reinventing the guitar' really means un-rocking the guitar; sometimes the next step is ditching the guitar altogether. Disco Inferno's Iain Crause says he always wanted to make his guitar sound like "actual physical things", such as waterfalls, but in DI's early days (when the group sounded closer to Joy Division and The Durutti Column) he had to do it with masses of effects. It's been said that DI decided to go digital after seeing those samplin', rockin' Industrial muthas of invention The Young Gods live. But according to Crause, the real Damascus experience was hearing Hank Shocklee's Bomb Squad productions for Public Enemy. Inspired, Crause traded in his rack of pedals for a guitar synth, which he now rigs up to MIDI so that each string triggers a different sample.

The results can be heard on the astounding LP, DI Go Pop. "A Crash At Every Speed" samples Miles Davis's "Bitches Brew" and Industrial Improv unit God; "Starbound" samples U2 and children's laughter; while the gorgeous "Footprints In Snow" samples Saint-Saens's "Aquarium". Not that you can tell, since Crause 'plays' these sample-tones rather than merely quoting them. Because he's using a fretboard rather than the usual keyboard, he can use all the guitarist's traditional devices - bending the strings ("It literally sounds like you're twisting the samples", he says), jamming and improvising. This results in unearthly ninth dimensional noises that bear no discernible link to the physical acts that generated them. (Perhaps even more disorient ating is the group's approach to the drums. They use a MIDI-ed up kit whose pads also cue samples. On "Footprints", for instance, the tom-toms reproduce the sound of footfalls.)

Crause sees Disco Inferno as a "virtual reality band". But what's really inter esting about them is the way they haven't totally abandoned the rock process: they combine the physicality of live performance with the wizardry of sampling. (Crause claims that DI Go Pop was recorded live, and that the group's future plans include using Marshall amps!)

*

Other post-rock groups are more affiliated to Techno. Insides compose on Cubase, a widely used computer music program that functions as a sort of "virtual tape recorder", according to the group's J Serge Tardo. "Cubase allows you to 'play' things you couldn't physically play," he says. Like a sequencer, it 'remembers' a riff, motif or beat and reiterates it in any timbre, whether sampled or derived from a module (a sort of digital library of sounds, no bigger than a Kelloggs Pop Tart).

Insides' non-rock approach dates back to their earlier lo-fi incarnation as Earwig. "[In Earwig] we all played hermetically sealed patterns that overlapped but didn't gel. We'd play separately, in a sense," explains Tardo. Like systems musicians, Insides weave a tapestry of sound-threads, where Tardo's guitar features as just another iridescent filigree. In fact, he says the greatest influence on his guitar playing is Kraftwerk!

Tardo prefers "the godlike position of manipulating the soundscape from the outside [the classic Spector/Eno role] as opposed to being in the mix, like a guitarist." When the group play live, improvisation figures only in the sense that "you can have a husk of sequencer patterns that you can mutate, like in a dub mix" (an approach which has direct parallels with the live performances of such Techno operatives as Orbital and Mixmaster Morris). Performance isn't strenuous in the Carducci sense, but it's mentally draining - "Like doing somersaults in your head," says Tardo.

*

Like Disco Inferno and Insides, Seefeel are one of those groups whose Year Zero coincides with the arrival of Joy Division and The Cocteau Twins, and whose aesthetic is shaped by the late 80s dreampop of My Bloody Valentine and AR Kane. The latter awoke Seefeel's interest in sound-in-itself, which gradually led them to club based musics such as Techno and House. Of all the post-rock units, Seefeel have most avidly embraced Techno's methodology appropriately, they've found a commercial niche in the 'electronic listenin g' genre (recently performing alongside Autechre and u-ziq), and a home on its premier label, Warp.

Seefeel use a lot of guitars, but only as a source of timbre (all cirrus swirls and drone drifts). If it's mostly impossible to distinguish their guitar tex tures from the sequenced/sampled material, again it's because of Cubase, which, says Mark Clifford, allows them to "take two seconds of guitar and chop it into 1000 pieces, loop it, string it out for ten minutes, layer it, and so on." Similarly, Sarah Peacock's voice is not deployed expressively but used as material; the title track of Seefeel's imminent Ch-Vox EP (a one-off for Richard 'Aphex Twin' James's Rephlex label) is composed entirely of her treated and timestretched vocal drone.

Live, the Techno process means that Justin Fletcher drums to a click-track, while the rest of the band must keep in sync with the pre-recorded parts. Not surprisingly, this is unrewarding and they'd prefer to dispense with gigs altogether. Clifford's fantasy alternative would involve Seefeel creating an aural environment but not actually being the focal point on stage, which is closer to the process of club DJing than being in a rock 'n' roll group.

*

A similar fantasy appeals to Robert Hampson of Main, who reckons "these c ould be the last days of gig-going." He imagines organising "a live mix scenario, where we'd be hidden out of sight, behind a desk"; a sort of avant rock sound system, in other words. Unsurprisingly, Main are primarily studio based, a sound laboratory. With Main, Hampson has returned to the experimental music he made before he formed the mid-80s indie group Loop, which was based around tape loops and layers of processed guitars. Main have progressively shed Loop's vestigial rock traces, dispensing first with human drums, then with the drum machine. The percussion on their new LP Motion Pool is all sampled, and even this may eventually be replaced with pure ambience.

Hampson is a longtime foe of the sampler, he says, and resorted to it reluctantly. Sometimes he prefers to physically play Main's most monotonous, uninflected, one chord riffs, because of the minuscule differences in attack and tone this produces. "To sample the chord and sequence it," he says, "would iron out the character, flatten the sound." As Main drift away from the rock process and the rock mainstream, they inevitably move closer to the avant garde, finding allies with contemporary improvisors and droneologists like Jim O'Rourke, Paul Schutze, AMM's Eddie Prevost, Thomas Koner, KK Null and J im Plotkin. A recent North London live showcase for Motion Pool made this connection explicit, with Main's two sets split by a free improvisation featuring O'Rourke, Plotkin and Prevost.

*

Another key player in this area is Kevin Martin. He runs Pathological Records, leads the post-rock outfits God, Techno Animal and Ice, and participates in the 'supergroup' EAR (along with Sonic Boom, Kevin Shields of MBV and Eddie Prevost). From his own experience as a producer and bandleader, Martin reckons that "working with technology, you become fond of machine time and fed up with the fallibility of human time." God is his most traditional project, since it's about combustive improvisation and physical effort, "the sparks and flashpoints that come from human elements. I see God as a relic of another time, which is why we have images of burnt out locomotives on the covers."

God LPs (a new one, The Anatomy Of Addiction, is imminent) straddle jamming spontaneity and studio mixology. By contrast, Ice and Techno Animal were both conceived with no thought of live performance. For those units, Martin was (like Disco Inferno's Iain Crause) heavily influenced by Public Enemy, specifically the way Hank Shocklee's production situates a song's dynamic in the vertical, not the horizontal: "The shifting layers of frequencies, not the development of verse-chorus narrative," says Martin. "Of course, you could say the same about Jeff Mills or Stakker Humanoid. But Shocklee, on Fear Of A Black Planet, was the first to use sampling to pile on the intensities, rather than just quote obvious riffs; he took the peaks of other songs, like trumpet solos, and layered them densely."

Many of his kindred spirits on the avant rock peripheries - Robert Hampson, Mick Harris, Justin Broadrick (Godflesh/Final) - are embracing digital technology, and Martin thinks that's because digital sound appeals to control freaks. "[These musicians] are a bit solipsistic, they like to control all aspects of what they do. Also, as the audience for adventurous music c ontracts, they get less interested in playing live, it doesn't pay, and instead retreat to their home fortresses and surround themselves with machinery. I think that connects to what's going on in society as a whole - a process of atomisation and disconnection. Digital also appeals because it allows you to break down structure."

Despite the 'cold' accuracy of digital sound, Martin sees post-rock retaining some kind of primal energy. It's not physical in the Carducci sense, but "a different kind of friction, the kind that comes with people wanting to interface and integrate themselves with machinery. It's like Lee Perry saying he wanted the mixing desk to take him over, or Can talking about machines having souls. People feel outdated by machinery. So they're taking on technology, but using it to unleash primal energy."

So perhaps the really provocative area for future development lies not in cyber rock but cyborg rock; not the wholehearted embrace of Techno's methodology, but some kind of interface between real time, hands-on playing and the use of digital effects and enhancement. As Kevin Martin points out: "Even in the digital age, you still have a body. It's the connection between 'Techno' and 'Animal' that's interesting."

This article first appeared in issue 123 (May 94).
© 1997 The Wire.

hmm... maybe i shoulda just posted the link http://web.archive.org/web/20011202075606/http%3a//www.thewire.co.uk/out/1297_4.htm

see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-rock

Thanks for posting that, I'd been wanting to read that for ages!

I think from that article the killer line is:

Perhaps the only term open ended yet precise enough to cover all this activity is 'post-rock'.

The term is no longer open ended, it, for good or ill, means something now it means quiet, quiet, LOUD, jazzy bit, LOUD. In some ways this is alright with me 'cos if people are enjoying mining a genre that I can dip into from time to time that’s cool but I can see why it might be kind of heartbreaking if you want your rock to prog. Maybe these days "post rock" is one of those SUPERWORDS that Frank Kogan talks about. I wouldn't know about that though you'd have to ask Frank Kogan.

xpost to acrobat-- Yeah that may be the telling difference. In Metal and Dance they're perfectly fine with inventing a new genre every 20 seconds. Do you think the more stick-with-it-ness of the Rock micro-genres is a legitimacy thing, like "we mean it man, this is for real?"

-- Jon Lewis, Monday, 4 June 2007 16:37 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Ah, it's only taken us about 500 posts but authenticity rears its head! I think in guitar based music it maybe harder to change micro genres with much ease. The kind of technology used by dance producers allows I guess a lot more variation on a very small but significant level. I guess also with dance that changing something quite minor can totally alter the way a track performs in a dance floor context. Whereas most rock type musicians aren't skilled enough to change so quickly or simply not working with music that can be micro managed. I am surprised Louis hasn’t gone deep, deep into dance yet, as he seems so interested in changes at a micro level. Maybe with rock though if you buy into a micro genre you also buy into the ideological baggage that comes with it and the music is part and parcel of the lifestyle / community. So there in comes the authenticity and the notion of “sell out” or something if you betray these ideals.

The term is no longer open ended, it, for good or ill, means something now it means quiet, quiet, LOUD, jazzy bit, LOUD.

The thing is, the quiet, LOUD, quiet sequence is, as you can predict, pretty fucked. Mogwai's last album didn't really have any quiet bits. Louis Sclavis is way more shockingly dynamic, and he's an old jazz dude.

Ok, a simulacrum of loud then. We’re all post-modern now huh?

The quiet-LOUD thing can still be very effective to listen to if done in a particularly skilful manner, but sadly the vast majority of post-rock is as subtle and original as a wet fart.

I like quite a lot of electronic music, but often it just doesn't contain the awesome dynamism, range of textures, or multi-rhythmic exploration of alternative rock, for the simple reason that it must perform its duties as a dance piece. I would prefer it if electronic music weren't referred to as 'dance' so much; it would be freer to go in more interesting directions. Not that I dislike all 'dance'; some is very, very good, and when one's actually out clubbing, there's nothing better.

I think Louis you are wrong but it's an inside / outside, micro / macro, dilettante / devote thing. i would really prefer someone more into dance then me to argue the toss with you. the thing, i think, is very much about the context from which you are approaching a work and the narratives one constructs round it.

there's an ENORMOUS wealth of electronic music out there that does not 'perform its duties as a dance piece'.

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there's an ENORMOUS wealth of electronic music out there that does not 'perform its duties as a dance piece'.

recommendations plz!

Dom, at least I've been largely confining myself to a couple of threads. I've been near a computer by necessity for the past couple of weeks ('revision') and the temptation has been too great.

Louis dammit go listen to Ulrich Schnauss or Bitcrush or something.

um some semantic sleight of hand here. i was talking about "dance" not "electronic music" i find the micro shifts in trends and styles facinating. my point was just thatLouis earlier was suggesting music should be managed at a micro level and well modern dance music seems as good an example as any of music that is managed in such a way.

This ain't a thread it's a goddam arms race, Dom.

You're not gonna get me involved in this thread, Paul.

Mouse On Mars.
Plaid.
Aphex Twin.
Manitoba / Caribou.

Someone be less predictable.

Bear in mind that I don't want joyless, arduous minimalism whose merit is purely intellectual, I do want something fun and enjoyable as well!

I like plenty of 'dance' music as well, don't get me wrong. I've been looking to broaden my horizons in that regard, but I don't really know where to start. (Plaid/Aphex Twin = already gotted, Nick)

Geez you don't ask for much. I mean seriously, I can't work out from everything you've been saying exactly what this holy grail you're reaching for is, to be honest with you. It is baffling me.

That sounded ruder than I meant it to, sorry.

Ha. It was you who coined the basterised Public Enemy line about nu-rockism!

xp

I think this thread would benefit from extra perspectives. Dom, rather than rising above this, why not try dragging it up to your level?

Trayce, I'll have a look at your recommendations! I don't know EXACTLY what I'm after either; a wider breadth of knowledge will doubtless help.

Oh by the way. Nick: you might find this curious.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21850186-2702,00.html

Article in shitty rightish Aus broadsheet about... dun dun dun.. DYNAMIC COMPRESSION. WTF is going on here?

louis get the rough trade electronic compilation from a few years back.

how do i shot?

Trayce, the common denominator here is PETER MEW. Methinks MURDOCH is SYNDICATING all of this.

Google Al Bowlly Louis, i think his work is pretty close to your ideal.

^^ al bowlly is fantastic, but lj didnt like ambrose & his orchestra, ft elsie carlisle, so i dont think hes going to like al bowlly either

i danced to eat tapes, dj scotch egg, booka shade and riton a couple of weekends ago. though i am not very up on this kinda stuff i did notice that "dynamism", "range of textures", and "multi-rhythmic exploration" all occurred, though not at the same time. i'm not sure i like maximal mixing.

re: the modern Revolver idea we was batting around nick, i think the first LCD Soundsystem album was kinda striving for that. For that reason I found it a massive disappointment: I wanted 12 versions of "Yeah". I liked the 2nd disc.

I like quite a lot of electronic music, but often it just doesn't contain the awesome dynamism, range of textures, or multi-rhythmic exploration of alternative rock
I like quite a lot of electronic music, but often it just doesn't contain the awesome dynamism, range of textures, or multi-rhythmic exploration of alternative rock
I like quite a lot of electronic music, but often it just doesn't contain the awesome dynamism, range of textures, or multi-rhythmic exploration of alternative rock
I like quite a lot of electronic music, but often it just doesn't contain the awesome dynamism, range of textures, or multi-rhythmic exploration of alternative rock

hahaha

I too, am in awe of how Franz Ferdinand speaks to me in so many ways John Cale does not.

i like al bowlly!

I would prefer it if electronic music weren't referred to as 'dance' so much; it would be freer to go in more interesting directions.

i actually cant think of anything more 'interesting' than facilitating the dancing with babes, and i think you should reconsider your low opinion of hot chicks

Al Bowlly + micromanaged electronic = at least some of the Ghost Box stuff.

and the caretaker as well i guess?

thing is, i just come back to

a) al bowlly + some other stuff
b) al bowlly by himself

and i dont understand how a could ever be better than b

Depends whether "some other stuff" = Dennis Potter.

yes, true

Jordan, thanks for pointing out the beautiful manner in which I managed to castrate my own argument. Your implied straw-man, however, doesn't take into account what I actually define by 'alternative rock' (a meaningless term on its own). I could be (and am) talking in part about 'rock' music that incorporates strong electronic influences. I'm saying that I prefer some experimental rock to most purely electronic music, because the song-structures and textures are generally more adventurous (to these ears), and more to my liking. Is there anything wrong with that? You're using your own subjective opinion against mine, but you're ridiculing my words and presenting yours as objective gospel. Be assured, my dear fellow, I am NOT talking about Franz Ferdinand.

Oh, and Max: Music and women are things I'm perfectly capable of handling independently, thank you very much, although I understand your point that a combination of the two is frequently ideal.

I have also long been intrigued by the concept of DJ Scotch Egg.