Do you tend to listen to "sophisticated" or "unsophisticated" music?

"I think the general arbitrary consensus is that if you're at that age where you just discovered pop music, go for it; this is exactly the type of album you should be constantly enjoying; if you're not going to Cub Scouts this summer, you really should have found something a little more sophisticated by now."

when i think 'sophisticated music' i think smooth 80s stuff like ABC and spandau ballet. i think that should be the definition!!

kilian what record does that quote refer to?

Argh no one is going to answer this thread. okay, I'll try to set a good precedent and extricate myself from my cop-out.

Unsophisticated. Or rather "music that is unsophisticated in its use of sophisticated technology" rather than the other way around. Barely, but I think the balance definitely swings this way.

(i didn't write it. it was Chris Ott. i shall check what record it was.)

The Sounds!

"sophisticated technology"?

i don't think these terms can be successfully projected across the whole of the music spectrum and maintain any consistent definition...are you thinking about a certain genre, a certain context? (i don't know all of the groups your mention in your first post tracer.)

Yeah, I don't think you're going to get any sort of coherent answer here. Right now I'm listening to the Rough Trade Country compilation. How the fuck do you work out which of your two categories that fits into?

Why would you want to?

As a starting point you can break this into two questions:

i. how do you define the term "sophisticated" when it refers to music?

ii. do you tend to listen to less or more of music that fits this description?

If you've a lack of interest I don't blame you, but as to "why you'd want to" I gave you my own personal reason in the question up there at the top—that I could sense a contradiction in myself based specifically on the distinction I draw between the two categories.

(geeta: using samplers in a slap-dash way vs guitars in a preening way; or hellfish and producer vs john mclaughlin)

I'll take Motorhead, AC/DC, and ZZ Top over anything on Alien8, Mego, or Emanem. As I've said many times before, anyone who says thay'd rather listen to, say, Matthew Shipp on a road trip than the Steve Miller Band is a big fat liar. Don't get me wrong - I love my beard-stroking music as much as the next guy - but I'm definitely more drawn to the primal, dunderheaded shit. Like Jeff Evans once said when someone asked him what kind of music he preferred, he replied: "Both kinds - rock AND roll." Jee-uh.

i don't get why using samplers in a slapdash way is 'unsophisticated'?!?

Um, OK. Sophisticated lyrically (The Lapse, say), aesthetically (Roxy Music) or musically (Autechre). I think that's about as much as I can break it down to, music being approachable from an innumerate amount of angles and such.

Taking that into account... probably about half and half as well. I was born on June 18.

"Sophisticated" conjures up images of "Adult Contemporary" So - trying desperately to cast away that prejudice, I still find that I more often listen to and enjoy unspohisticated - as anything sophisticated takes more work to listen to -if it's worth listening to.

Using the scale:
Sophisticated, but not Sting : Miles Davis
Sophisticated-unsophisticated : Clinic
Unsophisticated and proud of it: Replacements

geeta that's true!

i mean are we talking sophistication as affect or as an intrinsic formal quality of the music, i.e. complexity?

Argh, I guess I listen to mostly 'sophisticated' music in the sense that I like to feel that the musicians know what they are doing and are in control. But then, is Tom Waits 'sophisticated' when he has a pretty calculated aesthetic that values primitive sounds and junkyard instruments? Also, I love the Shaggs.

Anyone who says they would rather listen to, say, Matthew Shipp on a road trip than the Steve Miller Band is a big fat liar.

I would much rather listen to Matthew Shipp on a road trip. For real. But then again, some of his new stuff is pretty rock and Steve Miller is an unfortunate example (yes, I would rather listen to the Stooges or J. Timberlake on a road trip than Matthew Shipp).

I have no idea what this post is saying.

i mean like el records pretends to a certain kind of sophistication, but IMO lacks much musical sophistication. likewise momus.

whereas someone like spike jones hardly pretends to sophistication at all, indeed flaunts it, but can actually be quite complex and clever.

Whatever the definition means, I love sophisticated music. I mean, I have no sympathy towards the idea of keeping things "raw". I want head music, I want production detail, I want the rough edges smoothened out, I also want the composer/musician to have a very planned idea about how the entire thing is supposed to turn out. Also, I prefer studio recordings to anything live because I feel people who produce music in the studio have more control over exactly what the finished product will sound like.

Most of all, I prefer the values of classical music to the values of folk/traditional/ethnic music.

So I am definitely part of the "sophisticated" camp.

geir have you ever been tested for autism?

geeta i mean "that's true" as in of course you're right that technique alone can't possibly describe all the things we mean by "sophistication." bah i think this is really a tortured "use other words please" thread, or "defend the indefensible: sophisticated as a useful word"

geir's definition fits merriam-webster's second definition: "to deprive of naiveté and make worldly-wise," and perhaps the third: "to make complicated or complex," and also perhaps the first: "to alter deceptively," implying that he places value on a certain kind of musical deception

the bands you mention seem to confound the first definition though. because although they are clearly cosmopolitan and worldy-wise, they are also naive, sometimes achingly, desperately so. is "sophisticated naivité" a viable category?

amateurist "don't be pointlessly cruel".

surely any music-making device is sophisticated to a non-user.

also, technical sophistication is surely a sliding scale.

i think the hellfish & producer/johnny m. comparison is off. maybe musical mobb vs. masters at work?

Hmmmm, let's see. I'm just finished listening to some old Lord Kitchener and some recent Krosfyah (inspired by the calypso thread) and I'm now listening to Tanya Stephens. My most recent tracklist (music to listen to while I'm working on the computer) includes Outkast, Elvis Costello, Peven Everett, Spacek, Macy Grey, Sizzla, Dwele, Bugz in the Attic, Lukie D, Bounty Killer, and Ce'cile. Pretty much all of the music I LOVE would be detested by Mr. Hongro. Guess that makes me an unsophisticated twit. That's okay, I guess. I'll go make myself some Kraft Dinner with frankfurters and raise a glass of Labatt 50 to my own unsophisticated self.

Morillo is fairly vulgar I'd say, by now, though he certainly does attempt to sell sophistication. I think house can be fairly sophisticated mind you.

to answer the basic question, i think i tend to listen to sophisticated music which disguises itself as otherwise.

I associate sophistication w/ restraint, holding back & allowing the listener to do more of the work. I don't think I could measure how much of what I listen to falls into this camp.

So much a question of definition. The members of the classical music establishment who are always bewailing the "dumbing down" of Radio 3 because it is failing in its public duty to create an educated audience for contemporary classical music would be pretty damn sniffy about most of the music described as "sophisticated" here, even using Geir's definition.

Fudge word used by twats, then? I agree the hellfish comparison is off, jess. Even looked at from a strictly technical point of view, what they're doing with the sound is brain-bendingly precise and complex (even if it ends up sounding like runaway jackhammers) (though to a Marc Acardipane fan it might sound oppressively fussy and delicate!)

when i read the word sophisticated with regard to music i immediately think of microhouse...
i often think that microhouse is really good in spite of its "sophistication",it seems to be a genre built around the idea of being refined and tasteful,something i would normally resent (eg ninja tune v wu tang,i would always side with the latter) but somehow it gets away with it...

yes!!!

this thread should have been called "sophisticated music that gets away with it"

exhibit a: Scritti Politti

or jess's "sophisticated music that passes itself off as unsophisticated"

exhibit a for the OPPOSITE of that: Serge Gainsbourg

"unsophisticated music played by sophisticated ppl", to misquote Simon Frith

Sophisticated is potentially my biggest turn-off word in music, but that's the ilm consensus, I think.

Sophisticated is only shades away from 'tasteful' which is the kiss of death (and probably the thing that Erick Morillo is guilty of, rather than sophistication...)

Complexity does not equal sophistication, I think also - lots of jungle, funk and country records are complex without being sophisticated. But cleverness and sophistication are pretty close.

Sophistication implies some kind of po-mo refusal to commit to what you're doing aesthetically which is why sophisticated music always seems so wishy-washy and gutless. I think the reason unsophisticated music is great is because the artists aren't afraid of being labelled cheesy by people who don't like what they do. There's something very "all things to all men" about sophistication.

Sophisticated:twee::Unsophisticated:cheesy

And cheesy music pisses all over twee music...

I like fancy music.

When something is labelled as "twee" by those who dislike it, I more or less always love it. "Twee" is a sign of quality.

syntax error

the problem with geirs formulation is that there is much music of great sophistication made by people who are musically illiterate or simply don't bother to advertise their sophistication

also, jess; touche

(bows)

So much is determined by extra-musical context innit? The more I listen to dancehall the more convinced I become that *there* is where the really cutting edge, complex and refined attempts to blur the lines between acoustic and electronic and between different styles are happening, but it (deceptively?) exudes such an in-your-face, "raw" vibe that it's not the sort of music you'd immediately think of when you heard the term "sophisticated".

It seems to me that a lot of music we might call sophisticated is that which seems to spend a lot of effort on sonic detail which effectively can't be heard, almost as if the music is going to great lengths to obscure its own conditions of production - (or as Geir says, "I want the rough edges smoothened out"). Simon Reynolds says in Energy Flash that sometimes the most sample-heavy music is from people like Celine Dion, where they're used in such a way as to not draw attention to themselves as samples. Likewise in sophisticated music, and especially sophisticated dance music, a lot of effort is spent, to use a single example, on producing a certain bass sound which deliberately does not announce itself with any sort of fanfare; a fear of crudeness leads to a fear of any sort of distinctiveness at all.

Without declaring for or against sophistication, I will say that I tend to like music which somehow acknowledges or foregrounds its own conditions of production and plays with it creatively (eg. you've got this technology - use it and make it obvious that you are!)

Right, but the thing with that dancehall is that although the music does that, that's not the reason the music is made.

So maybe the issue is with music where sophistication is the end rather than the means.

Hence the reason that 'experimental' music never pushes any boundaries worth pushing and always sounds basically the same, no matter when it was made.

Welcome to Generalisation Thursday

Hence the word 'tend' in the original question

unsophisticated.

It was the word "never" in your answer I was referring to actually. As you were

Jesus I want BOTH - who doesn't?

**Whatever the definition means, I love sophisticated music. I mean, I have no sympathy towards the idea of keeping things "raw". I want head music, I want production detail, I want the rough edges smoothened out, I also want the composer/musician to have a very planned idea about how the entire thing is supposed to turn out. **

Well, I have my 'Scritti Politti' days too Geir, but this is fairly sad. I also have days when nothing else but The Raincoats will do. Is dub sophisticated? Who cares?