academic electronic music vs. tha post-ravers: FITE

who runs barter town?!

a: stockhausen.

what can you do to xenakis - sing it in the shower? shake yer ass? hardly technotronic's "pump up the jam" is it? while i like mr X i can only listen to him when i'm in that explorative adventurous frame of mind certainly don't unwind to it jeez no.

diamanda galas can sing it in the shower

perhaps innovators blast a trail, while those that follow colour it in.

Diamanda Galas can sing the shower.

well, no, but ye can't sing a good chunk of systemische either. (maybe diamanda galas can.) i don't often put on "mods and trans 4" to shake my ass or relax to either, but i hazard that i will still put it on more frequently than the big x, even tho he's arguably "better" than anyone on said comp.

UM?

yes?

Dunno - but presence of 'beats' in Oval etc. (however 'degraded') more familiar/reassuring to us post-ravers than the total lack of same in Xenakis etc?

sorry i was umming at ned's strange echo- post, which i don't understand

where the confusion lies:
"diamanda galas can sing it in the shower." - mark s
"diamanda galas can sing THE SHOWER." - ned

i wouldn't say most of these guys were trailblazers so much as having had time on their hands. i love'em all but they're no better than prick decay or bogshed, really.

"no better than bogshed" = cruellest four words in the world of music

there's been so much experimental electronic music ever since the 1960's but no on e knows about most of it since its all long out of print. It makes most of today's electronic music seem incredibly old fashioned.

mark - bogshed were kings - i will get on the dancefloor only for (a) jackson 5 "i want you back" (b)bogshed "excellent girl" as for l'electronique can you really ever resist side 2 of jean michel jarre's "equinoxe" it's so aphex twin!

This was posted on memepool.com and is pretty amusing, especially for idm types: a mock irc chat between such luminaries as rdj and plaid and plug and boc

Personally, I feel that when I listen to a work of highbrow academic electronic music, no matter how jaw-droppingly amazing it is, there's the pressure to really appreciate it, whereas with something from Mille Plateaux, I can bathe in its sound without having to appreciate it in an academic sense.

It seems like the pressure to appreciate creates a distance between the appreciator and the work (and, by extension, the artist) being appreciated. I mean, it's easy to say "Awww, just ignore the 'appreciation' thing and listen to it for what it is," but no one is naive enough to believe that context of listening is irrelevant to the pleasure derived therein. We approach listening to Xenakis and Oval differently (despite the Teutonic seriousness of both), and the differences in expectation for listening (on one hand, appreciation and the ability to justify that appreciation; on the other, the luxury, if you will, of being able to approach it more directly) cause differences in the results of listening.

Another point: The existence of something as an academic subject implies a distance between the researcher and the object of study, and perhaps this distance somehow comes across in a lot of academic electonic music and affects its potency. Your middlebrow and lowbrow producers, though, don't need this distance; they can immerse themselves fully in the world of electronic music, and although it's hard to adequately explain, I think their work--even the work of serious stalwarts like Popp--often has more vitality and passion than the work of academic composers.

yeah - academic composition is wank -not born of any primeval rock 'n roll urge - it reminds me of people who start sentences with the word "listen" ensuring that i don't. "exploratory" or "experimental" music i always find somewhat condescending - i feel that they treat me as if i don't have an imagination of my own. like i say - timewasters with equipment in the main - it doesn't matter if you'r epart of INA / GRM or you've just got a new release on tigerbeat6 & network yourself to the hilt - you won't convince me that your new release sounds any better than me "deconstructuralising" (read "fucking up through sheer boredom") "when you wish upon a star on my shitty guitar. academic music is condescending wank. the other stuff is just sheer "look at me" pointlessness. like i play my porter ricks records 24/7. no.

"not born of any primeval urge": this may apply to [insert name here] but it doesn't apply to stockhausen or xenakis (for example)

anyone taking multiple wives is obviously all about the primal urges. and the coolest thing about the big X is that he's using all this high-end math theory to create music that - while not necessarily imagistic - is certainly mining that primal, post-scare du printemps territory.

xenakis & stockhausen are just one-upmanshipsters. while they're undeniably great (actually i'm not sure stockhausen is), somehow i've sidetracked the whole thing into a question as to the validity of the music - and of course all music is invalid.

European intellectuals have been fruitlessly chasing pop culture for ages, whether they've been meaning to or not.

..."exploratory" or "experimental" music i always find somewhat condescending - i feel that they treat me as if i don't have an imagination of my own...

Bob, I tend to disagree. I think a lot of experimental music is cool because it allows you to map your own imagination onto it. It stimulates your imagination without telling you what to feel. Treating the listener as if he or she doesn't have emotions is a criticism one could hurl at experimental music, but I don't think your criticism above re: imagination really works.

maybe - yes; a thing that gets me though is the quest for the holy grail and the championing of works as if they were the second coming. i mean really i'm sure any of us could knock off a pimmon / fennesz album given time / equipment / inclination. parmegiani's de natura sonorum is great, but so much supposedly "experimental" music is just retreading & repeating experiments, and yes, maybe repeating experiments with a few muted beats thrown in which means maybe i can put it on while i'm cooking without getting a blinding migraine. let's face it - electronic music just isn't rocket science. there's so many templates and algorithms people work off whether it's concréte or glitchorama - and we know it all. at least blechtum from blechdom have a sense of humour (although i can find them v. annoying at times) i don't think that jumpcut postmodernist jim o'rourke / kid606 style serves any purpose other than "look at me" "see how clever i am" and it doesn't work at that. tunes are good - that last mouse on mars album was great.

I would pleasantly surprised if anybody on this board could make a record as good as 'Endless Summer' by Fennesz. But erm, so what if they could do? Who cares how 'easy' or 'difficult' something is to make - I mean, I'm sure its quite hard to play like Frank Zappa, but who would want to? Next you'll be saying yr three year old nipper could paint as well as that Jackson Pollock... Use other critical cliches pl.

but that's not what bob is saying — well, it sort of is, but combined with "all music is invalid" there's a more interesting thing to take from it. which is that glitch and the avant garde routinely walk on a tracery of habits and cliches and formulas and readymades just like chartpop: i think this is true, and basic, and yes, i think a major lot of avant garders shd totally get over themselves on the "i R groundbreaking and unique" tip, because the chief point is IS IT GOOD?

However, I also think we the listener has to get over the "agin em cuz full of themselves as radicals" since all performers are clearly full of themselves as SOMETHING, or they wouldn't be out there in the first place

Bottom line = if it doesn't cut it as an SAY- NO-MORE PRO it doesn't cut it as a SAY-NO- MORE CON either.

mark - yes that is what i was getting at. i love oval & pauline oliveros and xenakis & farmers manual etc etc. but they're only new the first time you hear it. maybe it's just me and my addled short attention span i don't know - i've been particularly flippant about the whole thing but it's not a subject that really deserves any more gravity than flippant off the cuff gibberish now is it??

jess- don't read my above posting as a diss of your question. and fennesz' endless summer is an overrated sack of shit. give me front 242 over that any day.

but what is? bearing in mind that we are in the realm where the big long heavy pars are reserved for britney?

But no i'd also argue for equal gravity rights for all now and them — Afroman or Zemlinsky — if it works.

Kneejerk bogus gravity suXor: and is also almost *always* flight from serious weakness. As all kno I too am tirelessly flippant and shallow: this = MY flight.

text "glitch and the avant garde routinely walk on a tracery of habits and cliches and formulas and readymades just like chartpop

If we don't always mind habits and cliches and formulas and readymades in chartpop - and I don't! - should we mind 'em in the AG? I don't just like pop that is 'new', and I don't think 'breaking w/formula' AUTOMATICALLY makes pop/rock/whatever gd. Are AG musicians somehow more 'obligated' to try something different and 'new' EVERY time?

MOST of the people on this board could make a better rec than Front 242...

it all depends on whether you can carry off the trenchcoat, though.

exactly, andrew: you and me and bob are at one and in the sink here, not at three and odds

(except of course re bogshed)

i have decided to listen to nothing but skynyrd for the rest of my life, rendering my interest in my own question moot.

Aw! - like the bit at the end of the He-Man (& the masters of the universe, natch) cartoon where Orko falls in a cake or something. Fantastic.

I definitely listen to more electroacoustic music.

My perspective on this issue is different from most of the people who have posted so far. I grew up liking rock and hating pop-dance music (liking rap OK but not really buying much until some point in university). I had to teach myself to like it, trying (but not really succeeding) to like KMFDM and Nine Inch Nails at the end of high school, getting around to New Order and Kraftwerk in university, Donna Summer and the Trammps and Sister Sledge at the end of 4th year, never really getting to techno. I have no "raver" background to give a context for "post-rave". I don't know if I'll ever reach a point where I'll play Chic, let alone the Orb, even as much as I play Iron Butterfly. Art music really does connect more readily for me than dance music.

A friend introduced me to Pan Sonic and Ryoji Ikeda (among others) a couple years ago. I was fascinated by the genuinely original sonic aspects - these artists coming from a "dance music" background (however far removed) seemed to be exploring similar ideas that I was studying and working with in an academic context. Ikeda seems to be exploring further in some of his work "drift study" ideas that La Monte Young was interested in.

From my perspective it definitely seems like there are major differences, that require different types of listening, between what post-rave artists are doing and what electroacoustic artists are doing that would make the first more appealing to fans of dance music. To treat them as the same sort of thing, or treat the second like the "trailblazers" for the first, seems as odd to me as claiming that Penderecki is the precursor to Fugazi or Mogwai (hey, they all make noise with strings). Art music composers are usually interested in large-scale structure in a way that is different from "pop" musicians. A sonata (and electroacoustic music is still ultimately coming out of the classical tradition), for example, is based on an argument between themes that are introduced, developed, modified, opposed and then resolved in a linear format. To appreciate a sonata requires the listener to understand and appreciate this large-scale linear structure. The structure of a pop song, on the other hand, is more simple, repetitive, and immediate, especially so in dance music. A pop listener gets off on the little things artists do within this relatively simple structure -- the way the drummer plays off the beat, the way the guitarist bends a note, the singer's tics and mannerisms. These elements are relatively inconsequential in Western art music. Even a repetitive minimalist/post-minimalist piece like Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is still more focused on large-scale structural development than a piece of techno music. Compare Varese's Deserts to an Einsturzende Neubauten track. The appeal of the first comes from the development and interplay between the tape sections and orchestral sections. The second may use some similar sounds but it is still a rock song. One still basically listens for similar elements that one listens to in a rock song - the singer's mannerisms, etc. Perhaps the way the noise is used may even be analogous to the bending of guitar notes or the drummer's playing with the beat in a more conventional guitar solo. Or, more obviously, compare a Branca symphony to an early Sonic Youth track. Both are exploring some similar guitar textures but the first does it in the context of a symphony, the second in the context of a rock song. The different structures require different types of listening and will often not appeal to the same listener.

Post-rave music is often very innovative in the sounds it uses and here it is comparable to electroacoustic music. In its structure and development, though, it seems to me to still be essentially rooted in dance music tradition (though it may be more complex than the most straightforward dance music, like prog-rock or post-rock is more complex than the most straightforward rock music). In fact, Andrew is right that there is even usually a beat in some form. Disc 1 of Matrix does seem to be aiming to approach art-music drone- minimalism in its structure but Disc 2 still basically sounds like a techno record to me -- a really weird techno record, yes, but still a techno record. For a listener like me, a lot of post-rave seems to me to present an interesting sound and then not do anything with it beyond repeat it a couple of times.

That's the difference. It's not that one is less emotional (I am moved much more intensely by Xenakis than by Oval -- the idea that the former is too detached is absurd to me) or needs to distantly "appreciated" rather than enjoyed or that one has added life to the academic innovations of the other. (I still do think, for the most part, though, that art music has often been more innovative.) They are different forms that require different types of listening.

Bob's point is something I've been considering since I saw Hazard open for Rafael Toral and Phill Niblock. I've been thinking about starting a thread on the topic for awhile. I think I will.

i never meant that xenakis was more or less "detached" than oval; if anything, given the evidence, the big X's work comes from a much more primal place than markus popp's. and i think to some extent you're right, the "post-ravers" (really just a catch-all i was trying to shoehorn any non-"composer" who makes electronic art music and who doesn't come from a university or conservatory background, post-1988) are still working with song structure, themes, modes, and (especially) repetition. even though i disagree with 90% of bob's expressed aesthetics on this thread so far, we're probably aligned in the fact that we'd both rather be listening to something with good choons, rather than something which just freaks out all over the shop for the hell of it. (or something that, if it does decide to go crazy like prince, has a little something more physical, primal, dripping...in other words more like rock music. of course i could be up my ass about that; i re-read the whole thread quite fast.) BUT...a track like oval's "store check" has very little (if anything) tethering it to the world of pop music. much of popp's more "formless" work (which he - way too po' faced - refers to as "audio") is even less concerned with structure than xenakis. i suppose the question was trying to get at while i - as a listener - respond more to something like "store check" (or parts of coil's "worship the glitch", cross-sections of any mille plateaux comp, etc.) than electro-acousticians.

also, and there's no reason to fib, this stuff *isn't* something i listen to even all that frequently. i'm still more like to listen to jungle than glitch, jazz than classical. i only discovered a lot of things (xenakis, young, etc.) in the last few years. so i'ma still learnin. you lot could probably school my ass nicely.

maybe it's the "lofty aspiration" of and the "moi=prometheus, i could be teaching violin at the juilliard if i so chose" aspect of concréte / labcoat music that grates. i'm certain all these guys have the best intentions, but drumming and shitey folk tunes with guys doing their best to sing like animals predates any classical / academic need or urge. that said - "i'm more minimal then you" coffee table techno sucks ass (i'm not sure i mean that at all cos i love pan_sonic). why do i bother if i can't get some kind of consistent argument together? beats me? wak wer dooey iwa fat boy slim.

no it's more complicated than sundar: with sonatas: the (meaningful) structure realises itself in the multiple hearing/playing. But in stockh'n/xenakis, "structure" (as in rationale for fashioning so, why it goes this way rather than that, is in lockdown into things you will NEVER HEAR HOWEVER OFTEN YOU LISTEN. To grasp them you require the precompositional manifesto (classic example = KS's essay …as time passes…) and even then you MAY NEVER hear, or jigsaw into the meaningful need for such-and-such a structural element. And this is because Stock and X — like Cage but far more ambivalently — are fighting to ESCAPE structure as the dominant meaning- giver in music (KS coined the term "moment form": "moment form" is pop's primary expressor, of course). Cage's randomism is a permanent war on structure as primary meaning-bringer. So above = a tangly continuum, whence the right to export pop- crit tropes BACK into pre-pop modes, which after all are herewith proven by science to express latently (in their yearning) the Will to Pop.

"It's all rock'n'roll to me" —Luigi Nono

X=Y/n. "Rockit" by herbie hancock it changes every time you hear it (especially that one-note scratch solo).

"no it's more complicated than sundar" = "no it's more complicated than THAT sundar"!!

THAT sundar + herbie hancock = sundar / THAT herbie hancock

Yeah, you're right, Mark. I guess I was simplifying things to illuminate one point. I do still think that Concret PH or Gesang der Junglige exhibit more large-scale structure, conceptual or otherwise, than what I've heard from Tactile or Illusion of Safety. The important point is that even the weirdest post-rave, at least what I know of it, which isn't a whole lot, is still tethered in a fundamental way to structural conventions of dance music. When Xenakis composes something structurally based on a theoretical framework that you don't hear he's still rooting his piece in the concept of large-scale architecture rather than the more immediate repetitive dance music structures. I guess that's the important thing about the sonata comparison - of course it's not always still a linear argument like the sonata but it's still a large- scale theoretical framework. It does take a different kind of listening than sonatas (and I rarely listen to sonatas). You're right that indeterminacy and moment form are challenges to this but in a way those are still ways of organizing music according to a large conceptual framework.

Idly curious: What exactly are primal urges? Eating, sleeping, fucking, wanting to kill your neighbour? Why are these superior to self-awareness, logic, fantasy, grace, wit, or sensitivity? Why elevate the lowest common denominator?

primal urges are things like wanting to be the most correct / the most logically argued. i'm not saying our more primal urges should be elevated (hell, i spend most of my time trying to keep them in check), but what's the point in denying them? how different does a tom smith record sound from an xenakis record? they may have a similar sound goal in mind but one has conceptualised the compositional process as "splattergun", one has conceptualised it as "let x= 0.6/n where n is defined by y/x". i just can't stand "sophistication"<- yes read everything you can into that word - it is revolting especially where pertaining to music. i've got a whole load of records with eddie prevost on drums - i like eddie prevost- i don't listen to them as often my shellac records, and todd trainer is not a great drummer. (well he is - but i'm sure you can figure what i'm getting at).

I think if you're going to admit non-discernable structures like Xenakis's, then you should be careful about what you think is going on in post-rave music. Individual tracks or local regions in tracks may seem to be structured solely the way post-rave's ancestral dance tracks are, but isn't part of the appeal the way in which rave genres mix together? The way that they're combined or set against one another? This sort of thing seems to me to be easy to pick out of the music, and natural to consider as part of one's appreciation of it, but more than simply the structural kind of information that you're thinking of. A more abstract kind of structure that involves relations between the music at hand and all the rest of post-rave and rave music (and more). In that case, I think the large-scale-structure/pop-structure dichotomy is a lot less helpful. It still gets at something, but it doesn't give a clear-cut distinction between the two kinds of music like the kind you seem to want to draw, Sundar.

bigger is never necessarily better. here you go mere mortals - see what you make of my new paradigm for composition in the 21st century. 1 out every 50000 people says "hmm.. interesting" everyone else is out dancing to the vengaboys.

Warning: Vast over-simplification ahead--take with grain of salt.

Academic electronic musicians create works. Post-rave Glitschmeisters make records. One approach chimes with the way most of us are more comfortable listening to, talking about, evaluating, and comparing music. One is more foreign.

you get yr gems and yr cack both sides of "the fence" i don't care how long someone has studied at le conservatoire - it doesn't render them incapable of producing poop. while experiments conducted in a vacuum of musical signposts can be admirable and of interest and can certainly spirit you away, the signposts used in "electronica" / whatever you want to call it allow communication through juxtaposition, memory, counfounding of established expectations etc etc etc. there is no inferior / superior here IN ANY SENSE. one thing done the same a different time is different and jigglypuff is the best pokemon.

Bob, are you just one big performance art piece designed to bring the downfall of musical discourse as we know it??? ;-)

i usually don't touch a computer but i'm laid up sick right now and my fever's running high. do i really have to have a point to join in? that would make me sad

yr fever must be stratospheric if you think jigglypuff is the best pokemon

no i will stind by that. jigglypuff IS the best pokemon. v.interested in jessie's thigh boots though

It is for the reasons you talk about being interested that the Strokes, White Stripes et al are getting so much attention. The electronica that now exists in the mainstream is so lame and the stuff in the experimental locker so lacking in real imagination. Is it any wonder that kids just crave release?

The mainstream never needed to think - just checkout the fallout of Radiohead getting number on both sides of the Atlantic with music to mull over. There has been no onslaught from the marketting mens versions. No one could be arsed!

Cld we perhaps root the distinction in physicality? That post-rave did not abandon the body, but instead sought to expand the field of sensious experience, wheras the compositional methods/approach of that classical avant-garde sought to make a sudden break with the very notion and crassness of physical existance? Hence the half-answers of beat/drone tick/structure element/theme et cet.?

We approach listening to Xenakis and Oval differently (despite the Teutonic seriousness of both)...

Ha! "Teutonic seriousness!" You must be joking.

Either that, or you're not familiar with Xenakis' stint in the French Resistance during WW2.

I like both 1960s/1970s (and earlier) electroacoustic music (with the exception of Stockhausen, he Serves Imperialism) and techno. They're two different things, and the idea that one can only appreciate music from one certain perspective is ludicrous. Apples and oranges are both tasty, even if they taste different. Well, except for Red Delicious (ugh), but that's a whole 'nother argument entirely.

Note: I wasn't saying that one is better or that only one can be appreciated at a time. Just that they work in different ways so if you're not used to one it might be harder to get into. FWIW, Immersion's Low Impact was my album of the year for 2000. Ryoji Ikeda's Matrix will probably be my album of the year for 2001.

Josh's point is interesting. I'm not sure it actually contradicts anything I wrote.

Look, even when I just listen to Xenakis I'm usually able to hear some sort of larger-scale structure in a way that's different from the way something like Immersion works. It's true that there isn't an absolute, clear-cut distinction between the two 'genres' (and I hate to just lump in all electroacoustic music as one genre).

Sterling: Since post-rave has by definition already left the dancefloor, I don't really see in what way it is more 'physical' than electroacoustic music.

Dancefloor, perhaps, but body? Is electroacoustic music head-nodding? Is IDM?

People nodded heads at my last show.

Has Oval ever scored a modern dance performance?

Something like the element of surprise in Dumitrescu's "Galaxy" definitely has a visceral physical effect.

When I think about it, though, I'm not actually sure that I listen to less post-rave than electroacoustic.

I found this thread and have attempted to find the parent URL (for want of a better word, I hope I'm being clear) but it appears to be an orphan. An interesting subject. The URL that I am replying to is: http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-post-reply-form.tcl Going back to: http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/ I get a rather long list that doesn't appear to include this group. Any help with this matter would be appreciated. I have been looking for forums where the relationship between popular electronic (dance in it's many current incarnations) is being discussed in an informed manner. The acceptance of electronic music, in the traditional sense, by a larger audience than ever before is an exciting proposition. The idea that someone who did not major in music is aware of people like Karl Stockhausen, Morton Subnotnick, Steve Reich, Pierre Schaeffer and others is refreshing. Perhaps in this post-rock era electronic music's rich history, predating R&R by many many years, will be realized and appreciated by more than academics. Cheers, Mick http://us.imdb.com/Name?Davies,+Mick http://pages.prodigy.net/rhyze/

― Mick D, Thursday, 27 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

that fennesz album still sucks ass