NEW!!!!!!

This ties in with questions of taxonomy and mystery. It's the first principle of magic: by identifying something we gain power over it. By saying that Band X = Band Y + Band Z, finding the formula (see Death Cab thread) - do we kill that band's mystery? Are we adding an interesting frame of reference for that band - or are we making it safe for ourselves by working out an 'angle' on it?

Your question is so 1965. ;-)

To be honest? I don't know. I'd feel very uncomfortable trying to claim a moment for myself, so I don't. Everything I haven't heard before is a discovery, to be sure, and sometimes the connections to other music are more obvious than in other instances. I don't think the differences are obscured when the connections are noted -- though I don't think they do much with their influences from the Velvets, Weddoes etc. worth a damn either way, the Strokes aren't simply a tribute band per se, I'll agree. Similarly, my much-loathed 'friends' in Gene aren't just trying to be the Smiths, though they're not doing a good job in being anything else from where I sit (they're definitely not the Jam, for one thing).

I think the last time I was genuinely -- and *pleasantly* -- surprised by a "new" sound was probably the first Portishead album, DUMMY. The hybrid of emotive torch songs with hip-hop beats and chilly spy-movie guitars was a blend that truly sounded unique for its time. That said sound has since been co-opted and mass produced by countless other outfits is a moot point. At the time (summer `94?), it was certainly a fresh, heretofore unheard merging of disparate elements.

I suppose the first time I heard a "drum'n'bass" track was a simillar experience, but personally speaking I find that particular sub-genre of dance music to be rather insipid and not especially inspired.

the last time= during Xmas 2001 when i got john tilbury's interpretations of morton feldman's piano music in the 4 CD set released by londonhall. It was the first time I heard feldman's music. Quite phenomenal.

Problem with strokes= their take on things hasn't even got a hint of originality whereas, say, jesus and mary chain, has. Otherwise, i wouldn't be able to listen to it.

I can think of a couple of recent things that sounded completely new to me (though undoubtedly not absolutely "new" -- who ever really hears "new" stuff -- or conversely, is everything recently released "new"?): some of the sine wave electronic composition by people like Sachiko M and Otomo Yoshihide, Nobukazu Takemura, etc. sounds very new (i.e., not terribly precedented) to my ears. But then I don't have a backlog of electronic music in my collection.

Perhaps this only shows how out of it I am, but when I first heard "Get Ur Freak On", my true reaction was, "I've never heard anything like THIS before." It's definately not a reaction I have often anymore.

Gotta go with Charles Ives! Probably because I was (and still am) very much a novice when it comes to this type of musick. I think having *luggage* makes the appreciation of art different, not better/worse.

I just wonder if our attention spans are long enough to enjoy anything for any extended period now. Each newly hyped scene or artist is treated like a puzzle and once the critics and fans think they've cracked the x+y=z of it, it gets tossed aside and devalued, and usually mocked. The assumption seems to be that the artists are trying to pull something over on us, but we have to be clever enough to keep from getting fooled by them. We become the goaltenders of our own enjoyment. Sad.

The Yeah Yeah Yeah's. Listen to Art Star. Thats intense. & Zwan. Absolutely amazing. Enough material for a quadruple album. (but then again its billy corgan. check out the aeroplane flies high) they play heavy hard rawk as "The Poets of Zwan" & accoustic western ballads as the "Djali Zwan" & who knows what "Zwan?" will play.

I was wondering what the changing of the names meant. That said, though I caught one of the rock Zwan shows out here late last year, I'm sorta confused over the idea of calling what they're doing new/unique/strange. It's not really *that* great a difference from what he's done before, surely -- and he's not suddenly leapt into the great beyond.

Each newly hyped scene or artist is treated like a puzzle and once the critics and fans think they've cracked the x+y=z of it, it gets tossed aside and devalued, and usually mocked.

Just wanted to note that I think that this is exactly what should happen to every movement eventually, but that we are assuming that we've cracked codes too quickly and maybe not giving artists a fair chance to get anything else across beyond broadly understood cultural signifiers (eg. the dismissal of The Strokes as The New York Underground Band, The White Stripes as The Detroit Garage Band, Bootleg as Punk DIY applied to Pop - these are good frames of reference for understanding them, but surely not all there is to the discussion)

Bootleg as Punk DIY applied to Pop

It is?

The second part of this qn is probably the best/most important blah blah qn ever asked on ILM. Work commitments mean I won't be able to reply properly until tomorrow at earliest tho' - grrrr (AND: I haf heard some of Strokes LP now -shock- so understand qn!)

No, Nick. You've let your focus on similarities obscure an awareness of differences. Nitsuh's question focusses on the effect the cult of newness has on bands and their careers, I'm more interested in its application to listening and criticism. Nitsuh is asking part that question again though in his Britpop thread.

OK so I goofed. You don't actually expect me to pick up in such nuances, do you? Egg head!

Bootleg as Punk DIY applied to Pop

It is?

No, not wholely - but that's my point: we can't prematurely explain pop phenomenae in terms of past experience.

That Tweet song. Timbaland has been responsible for most of the recent ones.

Absolutely serves a purpose -- that is, if you can view music as NEW! even if its all been done before -- here as always, i introduce the question of social context as key to reception and therefore meaning. Last NEW!! thing I heard? Emmett Miller, though of course he is very OLD. Prior.. some Horsepower 2-step productions. The radio hasn't been surprising me all the time -- I heard What's Your Fantasy earlier today and it sounded super fresh.

Nitsuh is asking part that question again though in his Britpop thread.

Sure, drag me into it now. I had forgotten the "Cult of the New" thread, and am now staring at definitive proof that I have actually gotten dumber since I first arrived here.

Nitsuh, you EEDIOT! Then again, I've sunk much lower, likely.

You know, while I'm digging the whole bootleg remix craze, all it really is is the indie-pop version of Jackin' Beats remixes that hip- hop DJs have been doing for decades. Nothing particularly new there, for me anyway. (As an aside, Janet Jackson did a beatjack with "Give It To Me" in the version of "Nasty" she did in her HBO special and it was one of the greatest things ever.)

The last thing I heard where I went, "Wow, this is NEW!" was the first Boards of Canada album. This is amusing on several fronts, the first of which is that I had "Turquoise Hexagon Sun" on a comp I'd purchased 3 years previously that I just never listened to. Oops.

I'm talking as someone who has no large collection of the older records so I tend to listen to the newer stuff straight off. So for that reason I'd be terrified to say anything is original, particularly after being chastised here for doing so before. I've decided to just review stuff as I hear it, I don't see how Felix Da Housecats album sounding like (probably) a load of 80s bands I've never heard prevents it from being an excellent album.

It's a bit of a tree falls in the forest thing isn't it. And I mean if you liked all the influences it might be easier to hate the newer thing, if you never heard them, there's a whole freshness involved that wasn't there before.

It's also a matter of everybody from the critics to the artists themselves to the guy at the record store to loudmouths on the interweb trying to be cool by connecting themselves to older, more "authentic" stuff - pretending to have a preference for and detailed knowledge of The Real Shit. That can be fun and lead to a lot of cool musical discoveries, but ultimately a more self-conscious and less genuine response than Ronan's method.

That thread was so fucking cool.

sorry, am I repeating myself or something?

The last thing I heard that was truly different for me was the Pixies "Surfer Rosa" when all else I was hearing was pompous metal and synthesized brit pop. Maybe that's a bad reflection on my youth but the Pixies plotted my course to newer and better.

Haha, upon reading this it seems that my answer would be the Moldy Peaches hooray. Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that I heard them on a summers day the first time (and only time) I have ever been in our 'garden' aka WASTELAND OF HORROR.

Do you think pointing out historical antecedents to current music serves any useful purpose, or is it just being a killjoy?

My first instinct is to shout 'totally the latter' (like I did in English A- Level - oh so Austen was taking the mick out of people at the time was she? Well... so... BIG DEAL PFFFF SHE SMELLS etc)! It has to be asked what does it bring to your thought to think that 'someone has done this before' apart from contextuality and to say 'this was x response at x time therefore why are people doing it now'? Pop as something to study and learn from aint p!o!p! as I am liking it. So although some people may say the Apples in Stereo sound like the B3t135 (arrrghhh) I still like them because I don't think HISTORY MATTERS.

Do I?

Oval, or 'Paint It Black' by Fennesz.

This tweet single sounds distinctly different to anything I've heard recently- it's surely one of the *headiest* singles evah? a disorienting mix of tribal chant cutups, prickly electric guitar and first person narrative from a female(s, including missy) well versed in self-pleasure, all drowning in a swamp of reverb. but why does it sound as ancient as it does cutting edge?

(yeah, tim f did it better. so?)