TS Progress vs Novelty

what's your point

There's an interesting seed of an idea in here but I'm not quite comprehending.

Two words with sort of similar meanings in a pop context but one is almost always positive and the other is almost always negative. Just find the rhetorical sleight of hand interesting. Thought it might leads to discussion.

Why do people like "progress"? Cos it's new and exciting! Why do people like "novelty"? Cos it's new and exciting!

Strawman rockist (of sorts) craves the giddy thrill of "progress". Strawman poptimist (of sorts) craves the giddy thrill of "novelty".

"Progress" implies a continued development and leads to further areas; "novelty" implies a one-off tangent.

I have to go and fiddle with LCD screens and Powerpoints, but I'll be back.

and progress is not intelligently planned
it's the facade of our heritage
the odor of our land
they speak of progress
in red, white and blue
it's the structure of the future
as demise comes seething through
it's progress 'til there's nothing left to gain
as the dearth of new ideas
makes us wallow in our shame
so before you go to contribute more
to the destruction of this world you adore
remember life on earth is but a flash of dawn
and we're all part of it as the day rolls on
and progress is a message that we send
one step closer to the future
one inch closer to the end
I say progress is a synonym of time
we are all aware of it but it's nothing we refine
and progress is a debt we all must pay
it's convenience we all cherish
it's pollution we disdain
and the cutting edge is dulling
too many folks to plow through
just keep your fuckin' distance
and it can't include you!

oh go and bang your rocks on the cave wall grandad

maybe innovation is the happy median of most critics. progress a little too much like those nasty prog rockers.

dark side of the moon vs mould old dough

Music writers want to tell good stories and the progress from point A to point B is kind of a classic model of story-telling. Descriptions of novelty don't have the same type of hook.

Similarly, musicians could be expected to prefer to be seen as artists going through process of evolution, not just tinkerers who got lucky and came up with something unusual enough to catch interest. Not only is the "progress" storyline more flattering, it also sounds like a safer career move - less reliance on chance.

But man, this plotline has done a lot to weight down music. Just for one example, "transitional" records tend not to be the greatest thing you ever heard. Obviously what makes a song good can come from progress or novelty or neither or both, and what moves most music fans I'd wager is their connection with individual songs, not with the arc of an artist's career.

PUNK IS DEAD DEAL WITH IT

But seriously (as if that wasn't serious):
"Shaddap You Face" and "Vienna" - which is which?

DSOTM now sounds pretty dated and old-fashioned tbh.

Progress is not merely good, it is absolutely vital. Novelty can be stunning if deployed effectively.

Does Mouldy Old Dough?

frankly i'd pick neither of them, by 1975 the likes of yes (and arguably hawkwind, can, neu etc) had advanced music well beyond what the floyd were capable of, even if they continued to release good records.

where had they advanced it too? was it a better place?

advanced it to a better place, yes, and moreover a more sophisticated one. 'relayer', for instance, does some stuff that no other 70's band could dream of matching. that's just my opinion, granted.

i should probably have phrased that 'sophisticated place, and moreover a better one', the 'better' bit being by far the more important.

How much further do 65daysofstatic go beyond Yes? Could it be quantified? Would it be immediately noticeable on first listen to someone unfamiliar with progressive rock?

Here we enter some tricky territory. Doubtless one can instantly tell from the (slightly) more unpredictable song structures, polished production, and above all IDM-and-effects-pedal-enhanced sound that this album was made with more advanced tools than Yes (essentially, a wider palette of sounds and ideas being available), but when it comes to judging which of the two is actually BETTER, things get a bit more complicated. Relayer is an album which does quite astonishing, grandiose things with the equipment available, and its many ideas and musical strings still cohere in a surprising, entertaining, and dare I say magical manner. I would personally judge the two records as being very close in terms of quality, and with chronological context removed completely, I'd say that the long-form compositions of Relayer are possibly the more stirring in terms of their build, shift, and melodic re-appropriation, whereas the 65DOS album is the more exciting in terms of its use of sound, production, and micro-management.

*Yes'

If really pushed, Gates Of Delirium is a better piece of music than anything that 65DOS have yet created, but this is an INCREDIBLY rare instance of the pre-1979 piece beating the post-1979 one (in a battle of near-equivalents). I'm a confirmed modernist, and I firmly believe in the truth of improvement. Sure, there'll always be musical genuises and pseuds, but we just have so much more available to us nowadays, including, most importantly, prior music whose bar we must strive to overvault.

louis i am eagerly awaiting a complete articulation of the schema by which you judge music "good" and "bad."

It boils down to whether I get a rush or not during the song, and whether in reflection I actually think to myself 'That was amazing'. This can happen after the first listen, or the 31st, but the most important occasion is generally the latest one.

Amazement is brought about by surprise, by sound, by depth, by variation, by progression, by rhythm, and by melody. The very best songs excel in all departments.

Louis Armstrong playing WC Handy is better than anything by Hawkwind or Yes.

lj just so you know youre about 10 years away from being geir

"I'm a confirmed modernist, and I firmly believe in the truth of improvement."

point me towards this "truth".

First time i've heard "modernist" used in that way, too.

I knew I shouldn't have mentioned 'melody', it's like an anathema to some people on ILM, entirely thanks to Geir.

Max, if you haven't spotted enormous and irreconcilable differences between Geir's musical philosophy and mine, you might need to take comprehension courses. Remember, this is someone who thinks that the best music was made in the 1970's, and that all music ought to sound like it, there being no point in innovation. That's pretty diametrically opposed to my own beliefs. Your zing/comparison is lazy, tedious, and above all inaccurate.

modernist = opposite of traditionalist, you could probably get away with calling me a rocktimist, although that label would be just as meaningless as many others of that nature that ILMers are so quick to bandy about (rockist, popist etc). The truth of modernism is that the bar will always be raised, and I describe it as a truth because I believe it to be one.

you and geir both think you've been able to organize what makes music "good" and "bad" based on the grades you give that music in a variety of arbitrarily-determined categories. the more you toss around words like "progress," "improvement," and yes, even "better," the more you move towards a systematization of musical quality. geir's is more or less set in stone now (the beatles >> genesis >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> rap); yours is changing, but give yourself a little bit of time and pretty soon you'll be able to set up a chart about music from the "best" to the "worst."

Bollocks! I don't 'grade' music based upon the categories I just mentioned. To suggest so would be flagrantly untrue. I was just searching for a way to describe the aspects of music which I believe combine to create a great listening experience. I'm not systematizing musical quality, I'm trying to describe its causation. What makes music 'good' or 'bad' isn't how it sounds or what tune it has, it's how the whole package interacts and stimulates the subconscious.

i don't know shit about rockism/popism. to exapmles of use of term "modernism": i) 20c literature, where it involved looking to the greatest and most profound statements as expressed in art and myth of the near and distant past, and bringing them alive in modern experience, and via up-t0-date techniques. but the notion that this was "improving" the odessey or the grail myth was ventured by no-one.
ii) MOD-ernism, england 1964. they revered james brown, motown, stax for the soul, the energy, the good time philosophy, the emphasis on daily experience, relationships. now i know there was/is a lot of bullshit notions of "improving/advancing music" in mod, but i'd imagine most ravers liked it it because it spoke to them and it sounded fucking good. and it still sounds good, better than most.

so where is your definition of "modernism" from? it sounds a bit late 90s idm. ltj bukem etc.
your ideas of music sound like some vile symptomn of future times that i want nothing to do with. ruthless, destructive.

Amazement is brought about by surprise, by sound, by depth, by variation, by progression, by rhythm, and by melody. The very best songs excel in all departments.

advanced it to a better place, yes, and moreover a more sophisticated one. 'relayer', for instance, does some stuff that no other 70's band could dream of matching.

by 1975 the likes of yes (and arguably hawkwind, can, neu etc) had advanced music well beyond what the floyd were capable of

frogman, i was using the word 'modernism' precisely on my own terms, it has nothing whatsoever to do with either of the examples you cite. i simply mean that modern music has the potential to be better than what has come before, potential which i believe it must realise.

max, those quotes are not the same as actually 'grading each song by certain categories'. it's not like i listen to a song and think 'ooh, strong depth, 4 out of 5 for progression, B- for the guitar sound, jesus that rhythm is shit-hot but the variation is weak'; judging the way in which a song works comes much later. enjoyment and delight are all I seek from a listening experience.

DUDE WHEN YOU SAY THAT MUSIC "ADVANCES" YOU ARE MAKING A JUDGMENT CALL. PERIOD.

you could say i'm a traditionalist in that i don't believe technology has improved music-making, qualititively for the better. furtwangler is still the best beethoven conductor, his orchestra's recreation of beethoven symps are among the best, musically. record-production is of course, another matter. simon rattle's recent berlin cycle proves that. the sound is astounding. the music-making can't touch furtwangler. who knows how they compared to mahler's interpretations.

so yeh, what matters is the intent, the talent, the energy put in.
technology factors in to the sound of the music on record. steely dan are one of my favourite bands. i love the sound of aja. but that record couldn't be "improved" today with better tech because their intent and energy is different. similarly, that record would be nothing without its strong musical ideas and execution.

i mean you cant actually say that one piece is more "sophisticated" unless you have a good, quantifiable definition of "sophistication," right? and in order to say one piece is more "sophisticated" you have to judge the "sophistication" of each piece and then say which one is "more sophisticated."

it sounds a bit late 90s idm. ltj bukem etc.

don't apply your on obscure pet definitions to other peoples' phrases! i have barely any idea what you're on about here. furthermore, my theory is not ruthless or destructive, it is demanding, yes, but it's all about creation and growth, hardly 'destruction'.

max, when i say that music 'advances', i mean that music, in terms of both compositional and sound quality, MUST advance because we WILL have knowledge of prior music, and we WILL be able to out-do it. this is as inescapable as the passing of time, time which causes this inevitability.

sophistication I can judge by how well I believe the music approaches its ideals. yes, this may be a value call, but this doesn't necessarily mean that i'm separating the music out into little bits. it's a thing i've gotten an instinct for. music approaches its ideals, i believe, by using the best possible sound at the best possible time to suit its purpose. some music uses great sounds at great times, other music less so.

Louis would you say rock music is more progressive than other forms of popular music? Would it be possible for a pop, hip hop or dance (etc, etc...) act to match 65dos or even Yes?

aja might have the best sounds for its songs! it might well! i'm not disputing this possibility. however, were it made now, those sounds WOULD still be available, and it still COULD be made just as it originally was. perhaps with a slightly crisper drum sound. ;-)

also, i know you've emphasised you're talking about rock, but music is music, right? so if "sophistication" is your bag, why aren't you spending all your time listening to orlando gibbons, charlie parker, ornette coleman, and pierre boulez?

acrobat, i may mention 'rock' because a large percentage of my taste falls under what many would describe as 'rock', but i don't as a rule like genre descriptions in the slightest. orbital are a 'dance' act, and they've matched yes, if you want a comparison on your terms, but i believe that it would be possible for any musical act to surpass any previous one if they come up with better ideas and execute them well. when you consider the lines between 'rock' and 'pop', for instance, and where exactly that line might lie on a sliding scale, then such descriptions (to me at least) appear ludicrous.

grr frogman I HAVEN'T emphasised I'm talking about rock, the reason i don't spend all my time listening to those guys is either because i haven't been introduced to them, or, as is more likely, that i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

"max, when i say that music 'advances', i mean that music, in terms of both compositional and sound quality, MUST advance because we WILL have knowledge of prior music, and we WILL be able to out-do it. this is as inescapable as the passing of time, time which causes this inevitability."

just complete horsehit from START to FINISH.

times change, fashions change, technology changes, music theory changes, music taste changes, music changes, not necessarily in that order. all opinions of the quality of the music is based on the listeners pleasure and interpretation, as affected by a number of the above factors. this is inescapbly true. all else is dogmatic and ignorant assertion.

"grr frogman I HAVEN'T emphasised I'm talking about rock, the reason i don't spend all my time listening to those guys is either because i haven't been introduced to them, or, as is more likely, that i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish."

i'm not the one talking about "out-doing" music!

on other threads you've said that when you come out with all this guff, you're mainly referring to the history/progress of rock.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

i don't generally rate conventional 'jazz' very highly. not because it is jazz, you understand, but because i don't often like the sound or the compositional ideas of a jazz piece.

your words are just SO snobbish.

sorry "youve said you're mainly referring to the history/progress of rock".

For fuck's sake Max, when I say that I mean that WHENEVER I listen to a jazz piece IT JUST DOESN'T PUSH MY BUTTONS, OK? That isn't snobbishness, that's just the way I'm built. I even say, 'not because it is jazz'! I have nothing against 'jazz'! Just that most pieces which are described as 'jazz' don't do very much for me! Jesus!

that wasn't really snidey was it, fergal?

It was heartfelt, man

Heartfelt & Snidey - criminal damage lawyers

you're making me feel like mark grout here dude

Blueski: I like Schnauss and I dont like Seefeel at all. Too minimal and nothingy for my tastes. No waves of emotion. No emotion at all!
-- Trayce, Thursday, 7 June 2007 00:45

to be honest i don't know much Seefeel but if you don't like 'Spangle' or their remix of 'Cherry Coloured Funk' (both monotonous but far too pretty for that to matter) then u crayzeh.

what is all that, then? :D

maybe this is 'first listen' syndrome, but what i'm hearing is heavenly (and great post-breakup music to boot)!

-- Just got offed, Wednesday, 6 June 2007 11:36

well that was quick.

Oh Mark Clifford's cocteaus remixes are definitely pretty! :) Theyre just that tho = pretty, shimmery bon bons. I dont get the swelling, emotional gasp for breath that I get with some Schnauss things (esp "Blumenthal" with its rising chiming almost guitarlike sounds that sound really Cocteausy).

i was just listening to this

a mon like thee

and thought of this thread

One thing I'm noticing about Schnauss is that although the songs are uniformly brilliant, they often pursue quite structurally similar ends. Is this a problem? Is creating an album full of wonderfully diverse sounds and wonderfully diverse tunes de-valued if all the tunes are pursuing a similar ideal? Or does this unity of purpose create a more believable experience?

for me, i like a record more if similar ends are pursued, using similar sounds and instrumentation, but i fear im repeating myself, which would be fitting

do you like the song i just posted LJ?

I was waiting for some sort of techno breakdown! :-D

Actually, I did kinda like it whilst I was listening to it. It's not the sort of thing I'd resurrect in moments of silence and meditate upon, but if placed within the context of a wider, more diverse listening experience (say, an album), that song could work in a certain emotional manner, playing off the other songs effectively. It certainly sets a very authentic mood.

oh come on gareth surely the pigeon detectives and air control have progressed that formula to a more acceptable level of modernity. a quick read of wvo quine would have shown you this.

air TRAFFIC goddammit, they keep fucking coming top of our student radio chart

ok so im picking things here that are the exact opposite of what you're wanting.

actually i just realised what might well fit your bill - pharoah sanders

no i'm talking about another group

as for the john haworth & oldham tinkers track i posted, i think you could remove the guitar completely, and just have it as unaccompanied singing and it would still be awesome

Gareth, I did like it! Here's the thing. All of what I've said above (more or less) is idealistic theory; in practice, I actually like an absolute ton of older, sonically 'one-dimensional' material. The very best material from the era you're presenting to me doesn't really have the sonic heft to thrill with variation and surprise, but what it DOES do brilliantly is set a mood, set what you call a 'time and a place'. This, in my non-idealistic world, still has a virtue.

its not like what ive posted, but you should hear this lp, its only got 2 tracks, and im not going to post the main one as its 33 minutes long

http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/karma%20cover.jpg

^^ all the shit you are talking about is in this record

ts: purpose vs dilution

Although an artist might have an overall purpose that involves re-interpreting and altering smaller musical themes, this is not necessary 'dilution'. It's 'progression'.

It is possible to get 'progression' wrong, but when it's gotten right, that there is my jam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQwYq4oKIDQ

Populist vs. groundbreaking. I slag off new TVOTR album for being mundane. ILM disagrees. Argument ensues, at which point I start listing all the great, innovative, progress-making work I can think of released since 2000. It peters out amid bad zings and ill-feeling.

Unless you have a different narrative projection in mind?

Especially I'd like to see how people attempt to present music that is both populist AND groundbreaking, and how much *novelty* is required for an original work to be popular (or vice versa).

To answer your question, just over the limit you set but Enter the Wu-Tang comes to mind; certainly there are a couple more hip-hop and metal albums though I'd have to think about it more. The only "rock" band that I can think of that MAY be in that discussion is Liars. What groundbreaking albums got stomped by SoS last year?

Louis I think you know a decent amount about music but let's be careful with "innovative" and "progress-making" vs. "genuinely groundbreaking" because those are real different to me.

I haven't really heard much Liars; their 2nd and 3rd albums I definitely must give time to.

OK, deep breath, here are records which I consider to have broken ground in 2007:

Murcof - Cosmos (stunning, subtle classical-electronic heaviness)
Caribou - Andorra (microproduction of electronic pop on a more intricate scale than previously seen)
Deathspell Omega - Fas: Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum (psychedelic black metal, compositionally streets ahead of anything else I've heard in that type)
Chrome Hoof - Pre-Emptive False Rapture (rave doom! I mean come on! Their ethic is unlike anything I've heard before)
arguably Studio/Strategy for their work with electronic production
65DaysOfStatic for their marriage of organic production values with electronic indie-rock
Working For A Nuclear Free City - Businessmen & Ghosts (broke up debut album of previous year and reworked it into a brilliantly effective segue-ing double-album presentation of their collected output, in effect reinventing their own history)

Those are just the pick of the ones I heard, and I'd say in their own ways they forged new paths. Something which SoS and DS signally fail to do, IMO.

Erm, I should say for Murcof, that Cosmos is for a record of its ostensible type (sample-based IDM beats'n'clicks electronica) a truly revelatory study in atmospheric layering, thematic ambition and control of sound.

A+ trolling thread starter from the LBZC's fallen soldier here.

Totally disagree on Caribou, which is essentially a 60s rock record with nice production. I would need someone to make the argument to me on Studio's production.

I'll track down the other things you listed.

The production itself is the issue here, the manner in which these "60's rock" sounds can be made to swirl together. The last two tracks especially (which break from idolising the past) are unlike anything else I've remotely heard.

Go listen to ocrilim, louis.

I don't think there is an argument re Studio. That was my favourite album of last year but it's not "groundbreaking" in any way shape or form, unless it's in terms of being the first album to be endorsed almost entirely under the banner of "balearic revivalism".

I mean, there's something to be said about tvotrbeing groundbreaking. Even if you've heard those sounds and melodies before, they're at least doing then in a way that connects with people, which is breaking ground in a way.

conversely, stfu

Something i wrote in a thread a while back which is relevant here:

"I love that a mainstream commercial club these days plays music of the kind I like, and that was underground 10 or 20 years ago, but those tracks are floorfillers picked by worldwide DJs, (and at the risk of contradicting myself, having above chosen major label blatantly commercial pop examples that IMO are experimental anyway) doesn't that probably mean that these dance track are not experimental, and are in fact calculatedly commercial

This depends on whether "experimental" is a property that is unrelated to populism or whether it is merely the inverse of populism. If we decide on the latter then something like "Rocker" would indeed not be experimental, but it also renders the overall thread-question insensible (popular music is by definition not experimental).

Probably the truth is somewhere in the middle - the "experimental" in music is defined in comparison to what we imagine to be the expected, the standard in music, and the latter is partially defined by what is popular. BUT there's room for movement. Timbaland didn't suddenly appear to be status quo the moment his productions were resulting in no. 1 hits: there was a significant space in which his stuff could simultaneously be populist and also challenging to our preconceived ideas of straightforward populism. But that space is closing, or (for many of his more copied tricks) has already closed. And this is partly because it's no longer surprising to discover that "popular music" can be jittery, syncopated and wired in that particular way.

So maybe the specific question to ask is: does pop music continue to challenge our imagined norm? This is a hard one to answer because the more restrictive your norm is, the easier it will be for a piece of pop music to challenge it.

Two ways (non-exhaustive list) in which we might end up with restrictive norms: a) being so close to something, so invested in a particular set of stylistic rules, that even minor and not-really-novel deviations from these rules appears relevatory (this is why pursuing micro-genres in dance music can be very enjoyable); and b) approaching a genre with a set of preconceived and conservative assumptions about what that genre is, only to be bowled over by the fact that (oddly enough) the genre is rather different, or more complex, or more etc.

(B) plays into what Simon R has called the "theory of vibe migration" - the odd tendency for really hot scenes to suddenly emerge out of styles of music that appeared staid, boring, finished etc. There's some objective truth to that - scenes really do go through hot and cold patches - but I reckon there's also a subjective element of the skeptics suddenly realising that all their prior assumptions are increasingly wildly inaccurate, that they're going to have devote special effort into getting their head around this style of music whose ancestors they'd readily dismissed. That's really fun too, because you feel this whole world opening up to you which you had never known was there.

The difficulty w/ popular music is that most listeners who are not totally biased against it will always keep their ear half-cocked to what is going on, without necessarily investing whole-heartedly and cultishly in the music that is charting. So you have neither the reduced standards for an inventive step of the (a) type listener, nor the erroneous assumptions requiring correction of the (b) type listener.

(the exception to this might be the phenomenon of e.g. the Popification of Pitchfork: listeners and writers who'd so divorced themselves from popular music that the realisation a few years ago that some of it might actually be very good came as a bit of a shock)

...

The point here of course is that ultimately it's always listeners who decide what is experimental, whether that decision is backed up with allegations of artistic intention or not. It's not like we pasively accept every claim made by an artist that their music is groundbreaking; we always assess that claim against what we perceive as the music's (lack of) experimental qualities.
By this I do not mean that the listener invents the experimental qualities wholesale; BUT the fact that those qualities are considered experimental is a lot to do with the listener's approach to music, as "experimental" is a relational and not absolute category.

One thing that I think gets missed when we try to talk about artists vs listeners in this sense is that artists are listeners too!

i.e. if we care about artistic intention, and we think that the artist is trying to be experimental, then the next question is: how does the artist work out what is going to be an experiment? How do they go about differentiating themselves from everything else out there? And how do they expect that difference to be heard?

"to appreciate the experimental you have to be narrow-minded, or perhaps recovering from being narrow-minded."

Or, rather, to appreciate something as being experimental. This is not that paradoxical really: for something to be groundbreaking one has to feel that ground is being broken. And this ground is necessarily subjective as much as it is objective, because none of us come to the table with a complete understanding of all music ever, so what we see as "the ground" is always a composite of our knowledge of and taste in music.

Another way to look at it is like this: there are two things to conclude when music appears groundbreaking -

1) in one certain sense, all music prior to this was narrow-minded (the objective interpretation)

2)in one certain sense, the sum total of my listening to and thinking about music prior to this was narrow-minded (the subjective interpretation)

Thing is, "all music" pretty much = "the sum total of my listening to and thinking about music" anyway...

OK, with Studio it's quite probable I just haven't heard enough of its forebears. I loved it regardless, and considered its mood and artistic construction not only arresting but also original at least to my ears, which neatly proves the wisdom of the final sentence of your long post. With things like The Field (From Here We Go Sublime), however, I was instantly repelled. My knowledge of dance music is limited, but sight unseen I was deeply moved by Studio's art in an entirely new way (the manner in which scenes were evoked, progressed, intimated...), whereas The Field's record struck me as a limited exercise in appertaining to microgenre and selling itself as a "populist" brand rather than musical work. I wrote "microgenre" there BEFORE I read it in your post there fwiw.

ANYWAY...

You hint towards an intriguing point, which states that if one was to have total comprehension of music, even the most "experimental" of compositions wouldn't be a surprise, and what might thrill you most at a certain mental state could be the simplest of pop confections.

The way I see it, through life's inevitable journey, one as both artist and listener picks up musical experience and hones sophistication through a Darwinian trial and error process. However, this should not preclude either from challenging themselves to seek (in the listener's case) or compose (in the artist's case) work that refines and improves the emotional and intellectual impacts music CAN have. My own solution to this, as stated, is to compose with the complete waveform in mind, the complete directional possibility of music, the maximum layering imaginable, the conceptual limit of progression, and then to create something that a) is new and b) works.

The word "experimental" is something I use to describe "new" or difficult music. It is a red herring. The very best music, I firmly believe, isn't experimental in the slightest. It is made up of single, brilliant conceptions by great artists who know exactly what they want and subsequently divine (even if initially by a process of trial and error) exactly how to get it.

I basically agree with your post, but if we accept that "groundbreaking" mostly means "my ground was broken", its usefulness as an objective descriptor becomes limited to the point of non-existence.

The widespread usage of the notion in rock criticism primarily is testament to critics' habit of pretending that they have, in fact, heard every piece of music ever performed.

louis, you are about 10 steps away from geir about some of these things

Well you can only go by someone else's sensations when reading rock criticism. That I do so is testament to my faith that a good piece of music will effect a receptive ear in a largely intended manner.

And hey, Geir's only 10 steps off making sense, sometimes! ;-)

:-/

hahahaha

he's also about 10 suggest bans away from being offed ;_;

for posterity:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think that's a strategic mistake louis. That thread wasn't terribly successful the first time.

This was a better thread on this topic: The Cult of the New?

Dear Science, is a very good album. I like it more than the first two I think. Partly because of better, catchier, cornier songwriting.

The problem with looking for stuff that is "genuinely groundbreaking" is that pretty much the only way it can really happen in (let's call it) "alternative rock" these days is through being "edgily populist". No one will pretend that anything done by TV on the Radio or LCD Soundsystem or any of the bands you mention is actually expanding our notions of what music can do; at best a band or an artist can be smartly recombinant, establishing links between disparate ideas and drawing them into an unexpected, pleasing constellation. Or by siphoning off ideas from other genres and presenting them in a "rock" context. In that sense making something "edgily populist" has the same formal capacity for greatness as any other strategy a band might employ - as [nabisco] and Josh conclude in that thread I link to, the choice between progress and novelty is collapsed in rock into a choice about style.

[nabisco] says: "I'd largely agree, Josh, with the idea that's it's "just" style now, at least within the space of a broad genre such as "indie rock" or "chart pop" or "nu metal" --- the formal elements are largely the same (hence the genre classification), but the presentation varies. It's a bit like eating chicken for dinner every night, except that one night you get Caribbean jerk chicken, and the next you get Florentine, and the next it's battered and fried."

Shouting "The Emperor has no clothes!" might be fun but I think we're all open to that charge if we try to defend the contemporary music we like with the phrase "genuinely groundbreaking". Which is not to say you're not allowed to dislike Dear Science,, but it's more convincing to explain your disappointment in terms of the music being an articulation of ideas that you find weak or unpleasant (and why), rather than casting everything in the terms of a mythic battle between progress and populism.

― Tim F, Sunday, 26 October 2008 22:22 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oddly, i didn't want or expect this album to change my life. nor did it.

still fuckin' great, though, innit?

― remorseful prober (grimly fiendish), Sunday, 26 October 2008 22:37 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i was playing this on a big soundsystem at work the other day and this rocker dude in his late 40s/early 50s came in the room smiling and nodding his head and was like "peter gabriel-- sweet!"

― ♪☺♫☻ (gr8080), Sunday, 26 October 2008 22:38 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I mean seriously the criteria for "groundbreaking albums" should be such that we're talking about 5 albums a decade tops. Maybe more in the 60s when everyone put out an album a year or more.

― What's good for Wall Street (call all destroyer), Sunday, 26 October 2008 22:40 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^And when there was still a huge whack of stuff that hadn't been done in rock/pop music yet. By the mid-70s (being very generous) there remained little terra incognita and everything that came after was essentially some kind of reiteration.

Tim F, the final paragraph of your last post is so OTM my pockets are rattling.

― staggerlee, Sunday, 26 October 2008 23:18 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i was playing this on a big soundsystem at work the other day and this rocker dude in his late 40s/early 50s came in the room smiling and nodding his head and was like "peter gabriel-- sweet!"

― ♪☺♫☻ (gr8080), Sunday, October 26, 2008 6:38 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the post that convinced me to get off my ass and get this album

― max, Sunday, 26 October 2008 23:24 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i might be in the minority but i really did think the young liars ep sounded very innovative. or if not 'innovative' per se, totally unlike anyone else.

― titchyschneiderMk2, Sunday, 26 October 2008 23:48 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I take your points, Tim, and I accept that while this album isn't for me especially, the stylistic choices at least apply TVOTR's distinctive ethic onto poppier songwriting, which is doubtless to the joy of many ILM listeners. Yes, while not world-ending, it does what it sets out to do. My issues with it are not only brought about through my own subjective non-enjoyment of the majority of the record (fwiw Shout Me Out is another pretty darn good track, just so I can say I'm not blanket-dismissing it), however, but as a political response to what many claim is the record's "importance" within a chronological or progressive musical narrative. I also happen to believe that previous TVOTR records were not only more enjoyable, but did more that was new and exciting.

Now, as for your points as regards how innovation might be wrought.

at best a band or an artist can be smartly recombinant, establishing links between disparate ideas and drawing them into an unexpected, pleasing constellation. Or by siphoning off ideas from other genres and presenting them in a "rock" context. In that sense making something "edgily populist" has the same formal capacity for greatness as any other strategy a band might employ

and staggerlee's narrative demarcation

By the mid-70s (being very generous) there remained little terra incognita and everything that came after was essentially some kind of reiteration.

Why must the "ideas" be disparate, why cannot the work be ONE idea executed through a myriad of techniques and instruments? Sure, innovation has often been wrought by bringing electronic techniques to rock or jazz techniques to metal to name but two, but when I hear a genuinely groundbreaking record, its individual songs at least (and no less) have generally been constructed upon a single cogent thematic principle, no matter where the actual wave-forms lurch. I don't believe in a "rock" context either, and I only use such terms for identification. Using available wave-forms and sound production techniques to create new, arresting, cogent and affectingly artful music is the only way of achieving sustained artistic greatness, in my opinion. Pop music can of course fulfil these criteria. It has done so in the past and will again. However, TVOTR aren't searching for pop heaven, they're working within the discourse of popular rock, or "populist" music for those who crave their bands to have a narrative. "Edgily populist" music, verse-chorus formulaic rock with your aforementioned recombinant styles, can achieve greatness within this populist narrative, and of course it can resonate to the level of greatness with those that hear it and are deeply moved by it, but much as I personally love a great deal of music like this, I am always looking for bands like TVOTR who have demonstrated a willingness to experiment to open their minds further and make adventurous stylistic choices rather than safe ones (see: "Family Tree") or bafflingly limited ones ("Stork And Owl") to develop themselves away from horn sections, swooping strings or snippets of noise my brain has previously registered. The catch is that 'adventurous' is easy to tune out to if it doesn't quite catch the ear right, hence loss of popularity and the inevitable death of status as pop. TVOTR are too compositionally one-dimensional to work outside of a context in which rhythm, tension and sound are fucked about with, and there is too little of that going on here to really interest me, two or three good songs aside.

As for the point about how everything now (and since the 70's) is a reiteration, I am dumbfounded and appalled that somebody could think in such a closed-minded, self-denying manner. We've almost exhausted 4/4 pop, I'll give you that. But with software techniques and compositional avenues expanding almsot by the day, I think we're only a short mental leap away from a world where compositional rules become even more pliable in the (even popular) music discourse. There is so much more that can be done, so many more uncharted artistic effects that can be wrung out of combined waveforms. Yes, they are combined, and yes some of them might have been used before, but the art and the purpose will be entirely new.

― restraint and blindness (Just got offed), Sunday, 26 October 2008 23:56 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Again, this is not a problem I have with the band, and I will probably place "Halfway Home" in my year-end vote (provided someone nominates it!).

― restraint and blindness (Just got offed), Monday, 27 October 2008 00:04 (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"genuinely groundbreaking"

oh for fuck's sake.

does anyone look for this as a virtue in albums? I want "great performances" and "good songwriting." As it happens, the corniness of the tunes and delivery on this one (as Tim intimated) make this one leagues beyond its predecessors. This band needs corn like Bryan Ferry needs melodrama.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 27 October 2008 00:20 (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Why must the "ideas" be disparate, why cannot the work be ONE idea executed through a myriad of techniques and instruments? Sure, innovation has often been wrought by bringing electronic techniques to rock or jazz techniques to metal to name but two, but when I hear a genuinely groundbreaking record, its individual songs at least (and no less) have generally been constructed upon a single cogent thematic principle, no matter where the actual wave-forms lurch."

I disagree with this as an interpretative approach, although I should stress that it's not from my perspective obviously wrong. My distance from the position you're taking has developed gradually over a long period of time. There's certainly a proud tradition of thinking about music in terms of the one (idea) and the many (sounds) but I think this leviathan model ultimately simplifies, reduces and hypostasizes something much more complex going on within music. A given piece of music is never about one idea, although it may be that for a particular listener it appears to express one thing more forcefully than anything else. The disagreement between listeners w/r/t what a given piece of music does is not an epistemological discord over an ontological singularity, it's an indication of the inherent multiplicity and inexhaustibility of music, which I would argue is itself a result of any given piece of music's covalency. That is, the "meaning" (which I mean more broadly than just, say, lyrical or thematic meaning) arises not directly from the positive (sonic) properties of the music, but from the relationship between them. This is one reason that almost all complimentary terms we use to describe how a given piece of music works ("groove", "soul", "pathos" etc.) are ultimately undefinable: they cannot be boiled down to a property but rather denote relational effects.

Which is why I prefer terms like "articulation" and "constellation" - terms that suggest ideas being expressed together, or being bought into contact with one another, in a way that does achieve a unity without dissolving that which comprises the unity. It also gets more closely to what I think ultimately is impressive in music, which is not the presence or absence of a particular idea or sound, but the skill and flair with which ideas and sounds are presented.

― Tim F, Monday, 27 October 2008 00:29 (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It also gets closer..., urgh.

― Tim F, Monday, 27 October 2008 00:30 (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OK. What I was perhaps guilty of was failing to separate the conception and execution of a piece of music. The conception, whether it's "blues jam" or "five-piece prog suite about War And Peace", or "work which uses this electronic effect and this riff and this lyric" is the single idea I refer to. The actual execution, I suppose, is the "constellation", the flair of combination which may (as I said on the other thread; the two arguments could do with being united) result from trial and error or "experimentation", the mythical "groove". The "inherent multiplicity and inexhaustibility of music" is what must inform the conception, along with an idea of how the piece will engage with the listener as art or entertainment, but the enmeshed sounds are produced by performance, by a strange alchemy of different strands rhythmic textural and tonal; this I will freely concede.

― restraint and blindness (Just got offed), Monday, 27 October 2008 00:42 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

"The very best music, I firmly believe, isn't experimental in the slightest. It is made up of single, brilliant conceptions by great artists who know exactly what they want and subsequently divine (even if initially by a process of trial and error) exactly how to get it."

Funnily enough this is perhaps the same point I just tried to skewer in the TV on the Radio thread: Louis you're going to enormously convoluted lengths to keep idea and performance strictly separate, and to consequently argue that the creators of music have some privileged access to what the "idea" of their music is.

Certainly it is the habit of musicians to present (and listeners to receive) a given piece of music as a unity of singular, pre-determined idea and corresponding subsequent execution. Because as listeners we experience all recorded music as "post-facto" it is very difficult to keep in mind that often the "trial and error" process involves a much more radical experience of doubt, uncertainty, indecision and (to put it in positive terms) open potentiality as the process unfolds, than appears at the end.

I remember watching Rolf Harris's show where he had artists compete to create portraits of the same person. And many of the artists would follow quite a linear process as they executed their painting in a style they were quite familiar with - in this sense they "knew" what the finished product would be because they knew what the process they were following involved. Others would start off making a particular type of painting, then lose confidence in their process and veer off radically in a different direction halfway through. The finished product, however, mostly looked like it had been intended the way it was all along (I always liked it when these paintings won).

"The finished product, however, mostly looked like it had been intended the way it was all along"

because you were actually "finishing" the painting.

Whoa I missed that you responded here as well!

Ok, well briefly then, seeing as many of those points have possibly been covered since: the artistic process should in an ideal world with ideal omniscient artists be conceived and then executed flawlessly, but in reality, in all but the simplest and tritest of identikit exercises, creation is a process of continually trying to articulate what you have not been able to articulate before, and thus during the creative process, of course modulations will suggest themselves, through a combination of doubt, divergent thinking and outside influence. That those paintings eventually won sometimes is proof of a procedure that I'm all too familiar with (in poetry above all): that what you start off trying to do will always be compromised by better ideas, if you allow yourself to engage with the light-seeking tendrils of process.

I think you need to stop being so hung up on ideal world perfection scenarios, and embrace serendipity and pragmatism more, at least in your narrative-of-music discourse, if not in your actual listening /enjoying music habits.

novelty was quite good but I prefer Transmission.