"difficult" music: justify/S(+D)

hmmm. that's indeed a poser toby, one which i can relate to somewhat. but "abstract screeching" indeed has a place. say you're out on a date with some scraggy ho and you figure out you ain't getting the honeypot that night. well, rather than push her out of the car at the next block crank up some merzbow or, a personal favourite of mine, the fall. spectre vs rector or muzorezi's daughter at full volume will make nearly any chicks ears bleed and she'll leave your car voluntarily (no assault charges to deal with - i told that dumb bitch to roll with the motion of the car just before i pushed her but did she listen? no).

Merzbow as icon of anger and negativity = dud.

**so, please remind me why i should supplement my hiphop/pop listening with some abstract screeching (etc)**

Don't. Abstract screeching is rubbish - all of it. Noise is great as contrast, but when that's all there is it's pointless.

No, I don't think of Merzbow as about anger and negativity at all.

There's some fantastic writing about his work around the place, so I'm not even going to bother to offer my own comments, but I implore you to read some of this stuff.

http://www.fat-cat.co.uk/obsessive/merzbow-1.html http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=314 http://noiseweb.com/merzbow/

Re: 'challenging' music, it seems to me that 'conventional' music (re: standard chords, drums, bass, etc.) has just become so rote that it's difficult to find anything that seems to have any real meaning for me, anymore. By pushing the limits, exploring new sounds, new ways of interfacing with machines and instruments it seems that people tend to produce forms of expression that are more directly related to actual FEELING rather than just the technical limitations of a guitar, or what chords they can play, or think are acceptable to play, and blah blah blah.

'The Wire' writes about stuff like Fennesz and Jim O''Rourke which could be played in any dentists' office in the world. Not that it's bad, just that it's not 'screeching noise'

yeah, my use of the word "screeching" was a mistake, and has got us rather sidetracked; someone answer the question!!

screeching + anger/negativity = whitehouse

Re: 'challenging' music, it seems to me that 'conventional' music (re: standard chords, drums, bass, etc.) has just become so rote that it's difficult to find anything that seems to have any real meaning for me, anymore. By pushing the limits, exploring new sounds, new ways of interfacing with machines and instruments it seems that people tend to produce forms of expression that are more directly related to actual FEELING rather than just the technical limitations of a guitar, or what chords they can play, or think are acceptable to play, and blah blah blah.

so this is the kind of thing that i really don't agree with now (i think i prob wd have once); give me some examples to convince me!

come on, ppl, name yr avante-garde canon (haha)...

Andrew L to thread!

He always plays me these really difficult things, and I want songs to sing along to and to make me want to dance. I do listen to a few things that some people might think difficult, but only if they don't seem at all difficult to me.

To be honest, it's hard to trust people who say they are only into "difficult" music. I know what I like, and I also know that after a while I tend to move on from whatever I've been listening to. As it turns out, this often leads me to listen to stuff classified as "experimental" or "avant-garde" by many folks, but that seems coincidental to me. There have been times when I heard something, and it seemed difficult, and usually it put me off. Sometimes I'll come back to it later, and it will make more sense. Other times, I just never come back to it -- or when I do, I still don't like it. Most of the time, when I hear new stuff and like it -- experimental or not -- it's a pretty logical (to me) progression from what I had been listening to up to that point, and not really "difficult", but new, fun, interesting, etc.

My real question (and probably unanswerable) is if people getting their kicks out of what is widely considered "difficult" music are experiencing something inherently different that people loving the "non-difficult" (?) music.

I'm not trying to convince ANYONE! Listen to what you like.

Hard to answer the question when it's put that way. I mean, I listen to a whole lot of stuff whose values are not at all the values of the "popular music" that's actually popular, but I listen to it all for pleasure--I don't generally think of it as "difficult," or as difficult-for-me-to-like.

The way the question's phrased, it's sort of like "what are your favorite records that are impossible to enjoy, but can only be admired on an intellectual level?"

That said: when people ask me to recommend a record that "doesn't sound like anything else in my collection," I usually point them toward Chris Watson's two "solo" records, Fennesz's _Plays_ or the first News For Lulu album. Or, depending on who it is, Ella Fitzgerald's _Cole Porter Songbook_.

Well excuuuse me Martin for trying to widen yr oh so limited horizons :-))

I pretty much agree w/ everything DLeone said. At the start of the 90s, I just got SO bored w/ 'modern' (post-Pixies/Nirvana) rock; it wasn't exciting me or interesting me or 'challenging' me or anything anymore. Rather than turn into a bitter old fart, I let Forced Exposure, The Wire, and groups like Sonic Youth turn me on to new (to me) things that weren't always the same old same old. Nowadays, as Martin's post indicates, I can't really tell if something is 'difficult' or not (yes yes Merzbow, but even the shock of that kind of noize soon wears off) - personally I find, say, The Hives far more 'difficult' to listen to than Oval, or Charlemagne Palestine, or Derek Bailey or blahblah. But I still like pop too - I just don't feel the need to buy it/play it so much, 'cos it's all over the radio and telly, whereas you don't see Peter Brotzmann on 'Later' (more's the pity...)

The 'tune' that always seems to drive most of my houseguests nuts - 'Come Out' by Steve Reich, and that's nearly fourty years old.

and made by a robot (hurrah!!)!!

mark s's monsta rrewritten meisterwerk on noise vs noise to thread!! (sadly still not completed) (i am taking it on HOLIDAY WIV ME :( :( :( :( :( )

The 'tune' that always seems to drive most of my houseguests nuts - 'Come Out' by Steve Reich, and that's nearly fourty years old.

That was the one thing I played (when it was on the radio) when I was in high school that most upset my mother.

Don't you mean 'forty years long'?

One other thing: techno/hip-hop etc. have helped to popularise many of the gimmicks of 'difficult' music - repetition, unusual time sigs, cut and paste/sample and hold, minimalism etc. - so that the 'shock of the new' doesn't really happen so much any more in the avant- garde. Before (for me) Public Enemy, I would've found 'Get Ur Freak On' a v. v. 'difficult' rec - now it sounds like pop.

Also; final collapse of indie/punk dogmatism abt (lack of) technique etc. has led to reppraisal - eg. Krautrock - and broadening of the taste spectrum. Everything can be 'recuperated' now.

Much of the satisfaction of noise comes from those jaw- droppingly beautiful bits where the fog clears, the planets align and the sounds that had been borderline painful a few seconds ago are suddenly exquisite. It's a few levels of magnitude above the explosive final refrain of a rock song, but otherwise similar.

Or it could just be the lovely way your head feels when you suddenly stop banging it against the wall.

I've been listening to No Type's 'Freest of Radicals' comp for the last few days, and while it's relatively tame from an avant-gard standpoint, it certainly delivers plenty of those lovely shifts from befuddling/obtuse/obstinate/irritating to gorgeous.

Merzbow as icon of anger and negativity = dud.

merzbow as icon of orgasmic, synaptic overload and brain whiteout? classique.

Try Bjork. She invents new shit every time and it's anything but screeching.

Matmos Boards of Canada Mum The Avalanches Sigur Ros Aphex Twin Melody of Certain Damaged Melons Mu-Ziq Nobukazu Takemura Recent Radiohead Speedy J Some Zeena Parkins

Hehe, let me try separating it out.

Matmos - Boards of Canada - Mum - The Avalanches - Sigur Ros - Aphex Twin - Melody of Certain Damaged Melons - Mu-Ziq - Nobukazu Takemura - Recent Radiohead - Speedy J - Some Zeena Parkins

When the drugs aren't doing anything anymore you move on to stronger drugs, reductio ad absurdium. "Merzbow" (viz. harsh noise) rips my skin off a lot better than Pink or Accept, and sometimes I'm in the mood for that, you know? I wish there was someone like Tim writing about noise (is there?) because like dance music, it's all about eliciting the proper physical effect in the proper context, just like a drug. Except the context is more like drinking by yourself until you pass out than anything as socially rooted as the "dance culture". The whole Aube idea of "all these sounds came from cuckoo clocks and ninja swords" is so missing the point, as if it's all some kind of Anthony Braxton tone puzzle. I too rarely listen to noise anymore, but I'm glad to know it's there. If the noise isn't working for you, try turning it up louder.

Plinkety ploinky improv like Bailey and whatever I really don't understand though -- no dynamics or phrasing or ideas or stimulus. It just sounds like perversely bad playing.

I wish there was someone like Tim writing about noise (is there?)
I agree, and i don't believe there is.

bailey: stimulus = perversity (i don't think there IS anyone "like" him) (julio says jaworzyn but i say ???) (i like jaworzyn but ???)

What would "writing like Tim" mean in this context anyway? (no ego- stroking required, but always appreciated)

Non-rockist, that's all (writing like Tim is a much cooler way to put it).

Eugene Chadbourne sounds like Bailey when he's not playing country music or guesting on Turbonegro records.

i think i agree with who ever wrote the merzbow article (edwin pouncey? haha, it sits not 10 feet from my desk but i am far too drunk and tired to go get it) that you probably have to listen to a helluva lot of it to begin to make sense of his "language." everyone's right: it's not just "noise," but try telling the average punter that while auditioning pulse demon or noiseembryo (or even "someone like me" 6 out of 7 days in the week) and you're liable to get smacked with a purse. (plus he ruined my computer speakers, and i've never forgiven him.)

one of the "joys" of avant garde music in 2002 is that you can listen to it through the viewmaster of any number of other genres (most obviously rock, but hiphop/dance too, as dave pointed out on the miles davis thread. the "rated x" example also points out, whether or not you agree, how this approach can be a bad thing. "hey, screeching organ riff for six minutes, but damn if that doesnt sound like a jungle beat...except, like, not.") so merzbow can be painted as the "ultimate extension of rock", either by oblierating it (pouncey?) or aggravating it until it explodes (d. toop.) with all that miscegenation going on...i'm not sure if it "sullies" the "avant garde" or gives it a boost. artists intentions - including the climate they create in? - don't mean shit, but something like "bohor" obviously wasn't created to slot alongside japanoise which is like, less than one step removed from pigfucker noiserock. does thinking about it in terms of hantarash or even carcass make it easier to take?

(anyway, this is all a very long winded way of saying i'd rather listen to psychocandy than xenakis.*)

(*nb: might not be true. drunk.)

Hip Hop and Pop are usually descriptive of life. Noise is usually what life actually sounds like. Tonight, 'abstract' screeching is in my head... but perhaps tomorrow it will be the Sugababes in my head. Maybe reaching a point where the two cannot be distinguished is a nirvana of some sort.