death to the zeitgeist

On scenes: I think they're good, because they throw up ideas much faster than a single band or artist could reasonably be expected to, and they offer multiple perspective around an idea or set of ideas - the result is closer to discourse than interpellation, so I feel like I can approach this music more confidently critically, even if it's just in my own head.

I'm too tired to talk about the lack of new scenes or the shift from albums to singles right now - I'll just note that the number of good albums made in a year does not exist in an inverse relationship to the number of good singles. This was as good a year for singles as any other, but it was also a good year for album tracks.

IDYLLICTRONICA though? I'll stick with Pastoral Techno.

Plus, with the Internet connecting everyone everywhere all @ once, the chances of a scene bigger than a town or borough emerging lessen. It's sacrificing the neighborhood aspect of community for a larger, less connected sense of family.

I wonder if Reynolds has noted that the microhouse strain of tech-house fits his theory of migrating vibe (see last year's compendium).

PS. Jess: And all ya other blogs throwing shots at Skykicker? You only get half a bar: fuck y'all niggas.

(which actually brings up pipe-dream of mine: battle-blogs! Rebellious Jukebox, yo' ass is on da BLOCK!)

simon:"kieron, owya wantin yr potato"

kieron "mashitup goodstyle"

tremble ye not MrR -nu-SHOE-GAZER revival up in thee north-east GONE UNNOTICED BY SOUTHERNJOURNOTYPIES

The thing I find interesting about the album / single arguement, on a personal front, is that I began seriously listening to music as a pro- album, anti-single booboo. Now, I'm still fond of the album, but with a much more forgiving slant on singles. I wonder what other folks' experiences are with this, and I wonder if the album-love phenomenon is strictly a product of righteous male ignorance. (Goddamn "rock critics".)

(we ain't goin OUUUUUUTTTTT.)

I think Reynolds had a very strong & very influential thesis that reached fruition w/ Energy Flash, & what's happened since doesn't quite fit the framework. It's a transitional time for him, perhaps, but I find his commentary as useful as ever. I have no doubt that he'll adapt & develop new ways of looking at what is happening now, & I think it has little to do with getting older.

now let's start dissecting this motherfucker. ;)

* BLECTUM FROM BLECHDOM Snauses & Mallards and de Snaunted Haus. Anyone hear this one? It sounds so strangly aweful yet great.

* From 'Rooty': "Three brutal blasts of headbanger house whose lumpen thump adds weight to the theory that dance music, in the absence of strong influences from/secret affinities with rock, tends to the pale and uninteresting"

Wot?!? I'm amazed Tom hasn't been around sounding the rockist alarm. If I'm not mistaken this theory is bobbins.

* From the overview:

"The concept of "sound-design" makes me yawn, and a lot of this stuff seems to be heading for the ghetto of art gallery/museums/academic symposia-seminars-conferences/arts festivals i.e. subsidy-dependent high culture, funded by the government or foundations or similar institutions in the absence of an actual base of paying punters."

I think this used to be a real danger. But that's one of the interesting things about $#^%$^ microhouse that it is made for the dancefloor. Maybe not the hoover-rushing-your-bollocks-off dancefloor of our youth but a sort of "civilized" dancefloor. Mmm, dad- house?!? :)

* "Conversely, right now, for whatever reasons, the idea of psychedelia and space-rock and dreampop, music based around blissed narcolopetic daze-haze, seem totally uninteresting."

Give me blissed narcoleptic daze-haze or give me death I says. Maybe not as space-rock per se but there are still infinite possibilities for an electronic dreampop (Fennesz provides one model), or so I hope. The angularity alternative does sound like an I-want-a-post- electronica-scene-modelled-after-post-punk pipedream (but who is going to be Rotten? I love the way he is presented in that post-punk piece, fascinating character).

* Wagon Christ. Is Reynolds his last fan?

Wot?!? I'm amazed Tom hasn't been around sounding the rockist alarm. If I'm not mistaken this theory is bobbins.

Reynolds has been saying this years though - at least since the rise of big beat, and possibly earlier. I think the idea is not that dance has to sound like rock, but that at their best both rave and rock share a certain primal rawk energy that we more readily associate with rock. At the center of this thesis is the "Enegy Flash" = Black Sabbath equation. It doesn't really explain all the stuff he likes that doesn't fit the description, of course, but when has that ever stopped a music critic?

(Other comments to follow, probably. The dance-needs-to-draw from rock idea doesn't feel rockist, it feels quite interesting though I'd need to think about it more. As for micro-house and sound- installations, the problem there is (NB I've only skimmed SR's piece, nasty deadlines today meant all I could think about were bras on ILE) that the music used in sound instal.s does its job very well already. Six million ppl visited the Millennium Dome - that means in theory more people in Britain heard Ryoji Ikeda than Eminem last year.

I haven't digested it in full but I still find a lot in there to chew on, obviously.

Reynolds has been saying this years though - at least since the rise of big beat, and possibly earlier. I think the idea is not that dance has to sound like rock, but that at their best both rave and rock share a certain primal rawk energy that we more readily associate with rock

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Yeah Tim I know, personally I went from metal through Jane's Addiction into rave and did indeed find it to have the same 'energy' at the time, whatever that means. But I suspect the analogy takes you just so far before it a) turns into shite music i.e. 99% of Big Beat, post-98 jungle b) other forms of music start to weigh in (specifically thinking of funk here) c) you start to misread it as rockist. ;)

Still Jess has some interesting questions on his own:

"is there a "point" to constantly seeking out new trends and scenes"

I would say there is a point to seeking out new music, I find it to be healthy for the mind, keeps shifting your thoughts and outlook on the world, keeps you not bored. New scenes/trends though? One wonders how long one should keep hoping for a new meta-trend when the signs have been on the wall (at least since jungle not pushing aside everything and just accepting its role as niche) that those moments are extremly rare. As for microhouse, it's cute to think of it that way, but listing to a lot of the stuff I tend to agree with Ricardo Villalobos that they are just making house music in other words the "break" isn't that important as is made out to be (although one can argue that is already caught in the use of "micro", yeah?)

and:

"is there a danger - outside perpetual disappointment - to reynolds- style view of pop culture, that if something isn't pushing forward the - rather elastic to begin with - boundaries of pop music that it's essentially "lesser"?"

yeah, you'll miss some great music. For instance this year's rather rewarding strain of electro-pop (Felix/Kittin/Ladytron). But I also would argue that's Reynolds job innit: finding new shit for us all? ;)

ps.What are all these B** W*ts*n references in the past few weeks? I must have missed something.

You speak as if the two are mutually exclusive. Not sure that's true.

But I agree the emphasis on trends is unhelpful. (And I've noted the "death to genrephobes" crack, too, thankyou.) Pop in 2001 for me was one of those years in which the mainstream catches up with the zeitgeist. I've always found that in retrospect these prove to be the vintage years.

eh?? I'll certainly get Marianna to link it if she hasn't done already, that review was much admired by the band. What has us having/not having a drummer got to do with Simon Reynolds? Forgive me if I'm being obtuse, but I've got the hangover from hell - head, stomach, shakes.... I may have just gone blind..

well I never quite found the beauty that terrified and turned to stone with the House of Love's debut either.

The rest of us in the meantime deal with metaphorical deadends wondering if we would think that "The Blueprint" was the greatest record ever made if we were all 15 instead of whatever we are. And if we don't think that, why can't we? How is it beaten out of us? It can't just be down to biology.

And another subsidiary question would be: what's better, eclectic listening habits or exceptional narrow-minded but focused attention on a specific genre? Example: Tim Westwood, who apparently owns every rap record ever made but no records whatsoever in any other genre. Does he understand music better than Reynolds, or Sinker, or whoever? What about the times when you are a teenager and can only afford, say, one or two records a month, but immerse yourself in them thoroughly, the cover, the lyrics, and devote yourself to them? Isn't that more passionate than the Ladbroke Grove wine bar approach ("oh the Travis is off today, but there's a very nice Nas") into which we, seemingly involuntarily, become tangled?

And, clearly, the other way round - scenes not being picked up on until late in the game.

[Unfortunately I'm thinking mainly of the NME here... like the whole NWONW debacle, etc.]