The next contemporary electronic artist that namechecks MBV gets punched

Personally, however, I am WAY more annoyed by the following all too typical, and corny, scenario: 1) indie rock person dabbles in electronics, makes "synthy" or "noisy" record with guitars and effects, and synths, and some electronic signal processing software 2) indie rock critic reviews this record and waxes ecstatic about how said record is "much better than all those cold, chilly electronic records, man" 3) indie rock fans buy said record and feel simultaneously "down" with electronics and somehow superior to them as a genre. This dynamic is really condescending and phony, and has produced a lot of touristic, fake encounters with "noise", "experimental music", "electronic music". In my humble opinion.

Flame On!

Drew Daniel

As for the main topic of the thread, I don't mind the namechecking. The Beatles have been namechecked more than MBV ever will. People adore their music ... so what? I don't think that hearing your fave music getting namechecked is something that becomes tiresome.

I personally think Fennesz has the melodic gifts and signal processing chops to warrant the MBV comparisons people are making about "Venice", but I would rather try to listen to it on terms that are organic to his previous work, i.e. I would rather listen to it as a new work from an artist I like than a version of a something else lurking in the background . . .

I guess what Dead Frog was getting at was just "Be careful who you compare yourself to", ie. a namecheck gets the attention of a set of people, but it can also hang the new artist in some heavy chains, and they risk failing by comparison with the canonical thing being namechecked. But then again, it's also about genre borders too; a crappy indiepop band can say they love The Beach Boys and they won't get crucified for daring to bring them up, but electronic folks comparing themselves to rock bands seems to draw more fire . . .

yeah, at least it's mbv they're namechecking...it's not like they're namechecking nickelback or something. when electronic artists start doing that then i'll just stop listening to music altogether and join a monastery.

OTM.

I'd dare say that some of the most interesting records I've heard have been "fake" and "touristic".
electronic music is not some rarified indigenous folk musc after all, it's just some tools.

Also. It's the critics that do the name-checking generally, not the artists.

sounds a lot like 'spitting games' by snow patrol, the chorus of which is very mbv-lite.

or the press releases -- name-check central

I think artists should be allowed to namecheck their influences without it being assumed that they're daring to compare themselves to them... though pulling this off is usually a trick hard to accomplish in a press release, which are slimy and horrifying almost by definition.

slogging through hyperbolic blurbs used to only be an occupational hazard for critics, these days everything's online and we're all choking on them.

i don't think what he said was meant to be snobby. it's these points he made that are important:

'2) indie rock critic reviews this record and waxes ecstatic about how said record is "much better than all those cold, chilly electronic records, man" 3) indie rock fans buy said record and feel simultaneously "down" with electronics and somehow superior to them as a genre'

if anyone, it's the indie rock fans/critics he's criticizing for condescending to electronic music by praising those who use elements of 'pure' forms but treating said forms like ugly stepchildren.

I guess the other problem with my original idea is really that "rock person" is too vague a term to mean much. Boundaries and techniques just are vague and do bleed into each other, and historically there's so much support for a more inclusive, less separatist account of the traffic between the rock music and electronic music. I mean obviously, Holger Czukay, Les Paul, Joe Meek . . . I could go on. They all used technology and electronics in totally forward thinking ways, and used them formally to change not just how their music sounded but how it was composed and shaped, so they're counterexamples to any kind of blunt assertion of an always hard and fast dividing line.

Drew Daniel

Sounds like Loveless to me

sorry, but genre talk always gets my goat. Is the shit good or not is all I want to know. .

Well, yes and no. I mean, I've wanted a new album as such since forever but enough time has passed to be able to see and appreciate the various different ways the sound has been used/interpreted.

Back to the thread (which I'm really enjoying): oh my god, I'm now remembering that at some point when asked about a song on our last Matmos album I said that I wanted the middle part of a song to be swallowed up in huge horrible distortion "just like the middle breakdown in You Made Me Realize", so oh shit, I totally deserve to be punched. Ooooops. Fuck!

Brad, you are in good company with Mr. Louis Armstrong, (it was he who said "there's only two kinds of music, good and bad" right?). I agree that the mixture and abuse of genre tends towards the improvement of music, most of what I really loved about the mid-90s was that a series of records came out that were very hard to pin down, genre-wise, and that confusion about genre, and seeming disregard of genre, was what made them so bewitching and exciting. I love inauthenticity in musical form: Can's "Bogus Ethnic Music" series, Kagel's "Exotica", Ruben and the Jets, Harumi Hosono's weird faux radio dramas, Anarchy 6 (the parody hardcore band that was I think members of White Flag and Redd Kross), yadda yadda, I could go on. I love when that happens. What I was complaining about (sorry I keep re-explaining, bad web form I am sure) is such genre-mixture leading to second hand critical talk about genre-mixing art being "better" than art that more or less comfortably sits in its genre. For example, people saying "I sure like Tortoise more than that awful free jazz stuff, Tortoise is like just what I like about jazz but with no irritating horns"- not a dis on Tortoise, and certainly not their fault if some fans felt this way, but all the same, an annoying claim to make because of its condescending-yet-coasting relationship to jazz as an idiom. Beut when it's time to make music, strong stuff, regardless of its authenticity, regardless of its papers, its official membership in a scene, etc. will always win out over "cred". I swear I won't paraphrase myself again, I promise! I really will shut up now, I swear!

because, clearly, the person who started this thread is tired of it and they, being rather important, need not expand on it.

mbv invented swirly guitar music.
more bands shoudl namecheck revolver just to be cheeky.

*penny drops* Hey wait, so you were working with Ken Reinhard recently for that UCI thing. I couldn't attend, alas!

As for the inauthenticity thing, Kraig Grady and Anaphoria to thread!

yeah, fuck that. but i guess we'd moved on anyhow. But it's also everyone who bought the soundtrack to 'oh brother, where art thou', and *got* bluegrass for the season. that gets more into authenticity conceits, though, not the same thing. oh, blah..