Your Last Paradigm Shift

So the last time I heard music I had no idea could exist in the way it does was probably 1996, listening to Ryoji Ikeda's +/- in Alex T's parents' kitchen. I remember laughing with amazed glee at the physicality of the sounds that were coming out of a really quite small stereo (and thinking - "I have to get this!").

Seeing "The Specials" doing "Gangsters"on Top of the pops (I suppose that would be late 1979) probably had the biggest effect on me that any music has, before or since.

In a more pop context the first time I heard Goldie's Inner City Life would have been the last time I had a huge new vista of music open up.

I went back and bought the early Amon Duul stuff because I'd read that's where some of the ideas came from & I could see a thread but the impact wasn't comparable. And I've not heard anything since that affected me in such a powerful way (even VCN, which I was dissapointed by at first, but I now realize that was only b/c it followed Super Ae and I wanted something that hit me just as hard.)

The major shift was when I realised that there was other music out there that wasn't being repeated over and over on commerical radio. It was amazing to me at thew time to hear several different types music that was driven by the expression/feelings of the artist rather than the commerical potential. My friends said that they went through this underground/non commerical phase-in six months or so you'll forget about it...Well its been 20 years and still going.....

I am so ashamed and embarrassed. I will either have to A) totally re-evaluate my stance on dance or B) turn into David Bowie.

Hey Indieholic, I heard this song by a man called Out Cast yesterday. It was amazing! Instead of singing, he talks over the music! I never realised that African-Americans could be so interesting!

It's 11/15/07. When was your last paradigm shift?

Wow, great question. For me it was probably in 2004 with Wilco's "a ghost is born." Before that record I had been listening to nu-metal and alternative rock radio pretty exclusively, but after I read an article about the Wilco record in Spin and Rolling Stone I picked it up and after that there was no going back. A record geek was born.

I have gestalt shifts these days, but no paradigm shifts.

yeah paradigm would be an exaggeration. but in the last year and a half i've finally sort of started really making an effort to get into jazz, just listening to various "classics" type stuff and it's great. also finally went out and saw a couple of "real" jazz artists in concert, not just cocktail bar type stuff...so that's been a lot of fun.

i shift weekly.

clockcleaner are shifting right now!

shifting me, that is.

last week it was mike nesmith.

my last one was in 2001. i was looking on slsk for jill scott mp3s and i happened upon a remix by some guy named "Theo Parrish" and i recognized that name from the original DEMF lineup (i couldnt go but i was already into detroit techno) so i DLed it. hearing that shit was like a complete and total shock, in basically every way. it was the most complete paradigm shift i've ever had musicially and it really hasnt stopped. i just hear things differently now. i dont imagine anything like that will ever happen again, but i'd welcome it if it did.

hearing the Burial record last summer....a friend had been raving about it and dubstep in general, but emphasized that this record was way beyond "good in terms of the genre"; indeed when I finally played it on my college radio show I was simply blown away by all aspects of it. Mainly b/c I'd never heard music with rhythms/bounce like that record.

i used to hate everything jefferson airplane/starship related except for "lather". a few months ago, my dad gave me his old copy of "blows against the empire" (despite it being an album i ESPECIALLY hated) after buying the remaster. i threw it on one day, god knows why, and ended up listening to it 3 times in a row or something.. it still sounded "shitty" to me but a different kind of shitty.. like early royal trux shitty. now i'm loving all this jefferson stuff, even everything up to "spitfire". and "manhole"!!! good grief what a record!!

I never really liked hip hop. Hearing Prefuse 73 for the first time a few years ago was a very eye-opening experience as far as me rethinking hip hop. He actually got me approach my own compositions in a different way - prompting me to draw parallels between his cut n' paste and the music of Stravinsky (for me at least).

But recently a certain Japanese animated television series changed all I thought I new about hip hop after introducing me to the music of Fat Jon and Nujabes. In the case fo Fat Jon, he uses these swirling ambiences that contain live instrumentation that have been mixed to sound like they were sampled and overall sounding remarkably like what Brian Eno would sound like as a hip hop producer. Nujabes, on the other hand, has a Lateef-esque piano (played by nujabes himself), flute, and suprano sax ensemble compostion over tough oldskool breaks thing going on. In addition to loving these guys music almost to the point of obsession, I now have a totally different view of hip hop's musical poteintial.

"I never really liked hip hop. Hearing Prefuse 73 for the first time a few years ago was a very eye-opening experience as far as me rethinking hip hop."

cassielongway2go.jpg

It's a while since I had a paradigm shift, which is probably a sign that I'm fucking up.

Probably the last major shift was getting into Stars of the Lid a few years ago. Italo Disco was a big thing for me 6 months ago or so, but that sort of passed eventually, though I still get down to Charlie.

cassielongway2go.jpg

I don't get it :(

http://panther1.last.fm/coverart/300x300/3239488.jpg

I guess I should be less snide and say that Tim thinks, judging by what you wrote above, you have a long way to go as far as coming to grips with hip-hop.

I don't take issue with his sentiment in the least. It's just that Fat Jon, Nujabes, and Prefuse 73 are the only hip hop musicians that really "speak" to me, as it were.

WINSTON I CAN HELP YUOU

Secret Museum of Mankind

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51z2UEt3vXL._SS500_.jpg

or maybe this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/419VAKERS5L._AA240_.jpg

I don't take issue with his sentiment in the least. It's just that Fat Jon, Nujabes, and Prefuse 73 are the only hip hop musicians that really "speak" to me, as it were.

-- Cliftonb, Friday, 16 November 2007 06:02 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

IP check please mods

or this, even:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41B14T80QCL._AA240_.jpg

The last major shift: the first Billy Bragg / Wilco album made me realize there's a world of country that doesn't suck.

Minor shift seem to happen every year. This year has been an enhanced appreciation of early 80s electro.

I shall answer this with a Thread Connection.

# Your Last Paradigm Shift [Started by Mark, last updated 21 seconds ago] 25 new answers
# Cardiacs: Classic or Dud? [Started by Phil A., last updated 48 seconds ago] 8 new answers

The last major shift: the first Billy Bragg / Wilco album made me realize there's a world of country that doesn't suck.

taking sides: this vs the prefuse 73 comment

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/pic200/drP200/P274/P27478JBGUE.jpg
Steve Roach

Razorlight made me realise that indie music could be good

<i>The last major shift: the first Billy Bragg / Wilco album made me realize there's a world of country that doesn't suck.

taking sides: this vs the prefuse 73 comment

-- Tracer Hand, Friday, 16 November 2007 13:46 (2 hours ago) Link</i>

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right now Sparks are shifting my paradigms all up in this bitch. that band is crazy.

Fire Engines

Jazz, starting with freak-out stuff but then moving into other classic type material. That's the only paradigm shift I've had since I was a teenager.

Coincidence - I've been writing about this topic over here for the last week or so, mostly looking at my most significant paradigm shift, which was when I discovered the entire concept of indie rock when I was in high school. Already wrote about Slint and Drive Like Jehu, still working on something about Low.

I had a few other paradigm shifts since then but lately nothing so dramatic. Most recently I've been turning my attention to 60s/70s stuff, lots of harmonies and solid songwriting. My trajectory is similar to what dleon said way up near the top of this thread - my head was in more experiemental, more electronic, more abstract places for a long time, and lately I've been especially attuned to straightforward melodic songwriting.

Hearing New Orleans brass band music, realizing that there is music that combines jazz chops with a hip-hop mentality, clave, and dancing, in a completely unforced and non-corny way.

A lot of jazz that used to hurt my head sounds good now.

When I was younger, I couldn't listen to most pre-WWII music simply because of recording quality. When I got past that, I went through big changes in my listening habits and the way I hear music in general.

I blame ILM for my latest shift -- trying to catch up on the last 25 years of metal.

This is a great question. It's hard for me to say, especially since it can be hard to differentiate between the small openings of perspectives and big, sweeping paradigm shifts. In spring of '04, though, I remember getting into jazz in a really huge way. Before then, I had the obvious major ones for a while - Love Supreme, Kind of Blue, etc., and even a few avant-jazz records here and there, because my oldest brother had a solid collection of that kind of stuff. I had heard his collection before, but I think I had to get into it on my on terms at some point to really "get it."

So in '04 I had been working in a used record store that brought in a decent amount of jazz, and I think the easy access to all this music, plus being a little older than I was when first hearing my brother's jazz stuff, just allowed me to completely immerse myself in so much great music - all of Coltrane's 60s stuff, Albert Ayler, Ornette, Miles' 60s quintet, Herbie Hancock's 60s stuff, tons of Blue Note hard bop, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Julius Hemphill, it was awesome. It was basically all I listened to for about 9 months or so, I was totally blown away, and still obviously collect a lot of jazz. Right now I'm finally getting into Miles' electric stuff.

Apart from that, maybe this year has seen some big paradigm shifts, or at least a lot of smaller ones -- metal, noise, and a decent amount of experimental stuff. Merzbow especially changed how I think about music in some ways, or at least how I enjoy music - that's probably more accurate. Hearing Wolfgang Voigt's GAS stuff for the first time this year, too, holy shit, that stuff really blew me away. Finally getting around to hearing Swans and Angels of Light stuff in the past couple weeks has been pretty powerful, too.

It's interesting to read the older posts upthread -- the few years coming out of the experimental electronic/glitch/IDM boom of the mid-late 90s, people still digesting it quite a bit. I absolutely love this stuff and came pretty late to a lot of it. I could be wrong, but it seems like not too many people still talk about it that much, and IDM certainly gets ripped on quite a bit, glitch too.

The last major shift: the first Billy Bragg / Wilco album made me realize there's a world of country that doesn't suck.
taking sides: this vs the prefuse 73 comment

Whatever dudes. Not everyone knows everything there is to know about every genre, nor do they always know the critically-approved-aesthetically-correct-bullshit genre entry points. Maybe it takes someone like Wilco or Prefuse 73 to turn people on to country music or hip-hop, so what?

to add to my earlier comment, my first real paradigm shift (i've only had 2) was almost non-musical. it was when i was 11 and Nirvana were first coming out. i was already listening to different kinds of things (classic rock and motown from my parents, pop stuff from being a kid in the 80's, hiphop, metal, etc) but when reading interviews with kurt cobain he would be mentioning all these labels and bands that i had never ever heard of before. thus went my introduction to the world of independant music, which oddly enough has never included much if any "indie rock" unlike many people here. i went straight from nirvana and that kind of thing into punk and ska and reggae and then jungle and its been a crazy ride since then.

but when reading interviews with kurt cobain he would be mentioning all these labels and bands that i had never ever heard of before. thus went my introduction to the world of independant music

I have a friend who sought our Flipper because he saw Cobain wearing their t-shirt.

I'm at a loss. I was under the impression this was a thread about major shifts in perception or opinion or an othewise discarding of previously held notions about music. It just so happens (as these things aren't planned) that Prefuse 73, fat jon, et al were the ones who initially brought about this shift.

Charles Ives kinda did the same thing for me in regards to classical.

yea it kinda of bothered me that people were all wtf

joseph what kind of help are you offering????

Heh. Just wanted to grab your attention and make sure you'd tracked down Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun. Upon hearing "Harp Tree Lament" your paradigm shift will be complete.

Heavy question.

In terms of most recent paradigm shift I guess last year getting the reissued blue and yellow This Heat pretty much changed my life. Like suddenly I realized there was a whole other world of rythms and textures and ways of making songs in a rock context than I'd imagined before. You could actually play just mindblowing sounds without any restraints. Or whatever!

And this summer standing up front, basically putting my beer on stage, at a small Deerhoof club gig. Such an immediate performance, making sure what you heard right there and then's what matters, not just performing a bunch of songs from some album. A true live pop performance, and also showing how much there is to gain to do your own thing and just pay attention to what you're doing.

I used to hate jazz until one day I heard something that changed everything for me. Was it Miles? Coltrane? Ellington? No, it was ...Gene Krupa! Ha ha, really.

I'm at a loss. I was under the impression this was a thread about major shifts in perception or opinion or an othewise discarding of previously held notions about music. It just so happens (as these things aren't planned) that Prefuse 73, fat jon, et al were the ones who initially brought about this shift.

Charles Ives kinda did the same thing for me in regards to classical.

-- Cliftonb, Friday, November 16, 2007 4:04 PM (Friday, November 16, 2007 4:04 PM) Bookmark Link

yea it kinda of bothered me that people were all wtf

-- Mark Clemente, Friday, November 16, 2007 4:06 PM (Friday, November 16, 2007 4:06 PM) Bookmark Link

I think the issue that Tim/Tracer/whoever are taking is that those artists are outliers from their genres and mostly listened to by people outside of the pertinent genres' main listenership. This act of missing the core of the genre for periphery, especially when coupled with obnoxious, semi-dismissive phrases such as "there's a world of country that doesn't suck," creates an impression that you still don't accept those genres' central values, even if you've come to embrace a few less important values.

("those artists" = Prefuse 73, Bragg/Wilco, etc. I'm not familiar with Charles Ives, so no comment there.)

I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but I thought at least Nujabes and Fat Jon could be considered actual authentic hip hop. I've also gone on to really enjoy the music of artists like DJ Mitsu the Beats, Blockhead, and Floyd the Locsmif. This list is far from exhaustive. It's not even complete. Its a process - yet another I've adopted in my overall enterprise of searching out (or allowing to find me) music that resonates with the deepest recesses of my being.

Didn't mean to come off as dismissive If I did. This is all kina new to me.

- Clifton

I grew up with punk/hardcore/SxE, even some krishnacore. The somehow I got the first pink floyd album, the only non-punk album I listened to for years, until somehow I got into Dub and got "Dub Chill Out" comp. It was punk and dub until 2001, when a drunken taxi ride in NYC introduced me to Bollywood via the Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham soundtrack and before long I was buying Mohammed Rafi, RD Burman, Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar comps downtown in Indian video stores ("Mehbooba Mehboobs" from Sholay is still the best song in the world).
I always detested techno as vapid and soulless (though I dug the Kraftwerk catalogs), until I stumbled across polish trance - admittedly the hair metal of the entire genre, but it's a guilty pleasure and trance is super cheesy fun. The linnaean taxonomy of techno is bewildering: http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/
Even though I'm originally from Detroit, the only electronic music I used to listen to (besides Kraftwerk) was DJ Assault, just for laughs I guess.
(p.s. Booty music begins and ends with Assault and Godfather) And then, just the other day, I found out about the Silver Apples. Fantastic!

Oh yeah, and last summer I heard Booka Shade on the Essential Mix and thought "I don't know what genre this is, but... more, please". I guess it's "Minimal House"?

when i heard big & rich, annie from norway, m.i.a, northern state, keren ann & andrew wk and my testicles imploded

Last for-real paradigm shift was when I had to listen to "Orbits" from Miles Smiles over and over again cause I was writing a paper on it. I had to work out the structure and realized in the process just how complex it was. Mind = blown.

Didn't mean to come off as dismissive If I did. This is all kina new to me.

Oh no, not at all. The "dismissive" part was more pointed at Mr. Odd (hence his quote).

Re my "long way 2 go"... I just wonder if that very initial, tenuous and tangential engagement with a genre (where you like one or two artists, often only nominally falling within the genre in question, and what you like can be expressed in terms of how it reminds you of other genres) constitutes a "paradigm shift". The term to me suggests a change in taste that actually realigns your taste across the board. It's that moment when you go from liking a few discrete examples of a genre to being a fan of the genre per se and what it stands for, which in effect rewrites your entire

In that regard I think it can be quite difficult to identify. You may remember the first country record you didn't think sucked, but can you remember the first country record that you were able to unambivalently appreciate on its own terms, such that what the music was trying to achieve felt natural and self-evident (in a good way)? That's hard to identify because it's perhaps defined precisely by the lack of surprise or startlement.

My last major one was probably by means of Akufen years ago, when a young naive dance-a-phobe went through another phase in the cave of music.

x-post My post above should say "...which in effect rewrites your entire conception of how and why you like the music that you like."

"It's that moment when you go from liking a few discrete examples of a genre to being a fan of the genre per se and what it stands for, which in effect rewrites your entire conception of how and why you like the music that you like.

In that regard I think it can be quite difficult to identify. You may remember the first country record you didn't think sucked, but can you remember the first country record that you were able to unambivalently appreciate on its own terms, such that what the music was trying to achieve felt natural and self-evident (in a good way)? That's hard to identify because it's perhaps defined precisely by the lack of surprise or startlement.

-- Tim F"

i think it should be noticable by how different records you may have either previously liked or disliked have completely changed over to the other side. that is at least to me the best way of proving that youve had that paradigm shift.

Yes that's right, this is the first time today I've agreed with you pipecock!

Jeez, what's with all the mocking? Oh, right, this is ILM, home of uber-intelligent discussions. I guess my comment requires clarification.

A "paradigm shift" is a change of basic assumptions. For me, it tends to be more like an epiphany, a bolt out of the blue, that causes me to reassess previously disliked (or liked) music. I used to hate The Fall, hated Billy Bragg's voice, and didn't cotton to early Wire - now I can't imagine living without them because one day (more or less) I went back to them and they just totally clicked for me.

However, sometimes a true paradigm shift occurs. Prior to 1998 I did, in fact, completely dismiss country as too twangy, lyrically vacant, only-appeals-to-red-necks drivel. After hearing the Bragg/Wilco album it caused to reassess my basic assumptions, so I picked up a Wilco album which helped me get past my anti-twang, then an Uncle Tupelo album, then some Bloodshot compilations, then back to Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Bob Wills, etc. And throughout this process I had to rethink my previous attitudes and came out realizing I had been completely wrong about country and now find I crave it as much as things I've loved forever.

This experience helps keep me on my toes and makes me revisit things frequently. I keep trying to fall in love with the Nuggets box, some of which I quite like but don't get the worship - yet. I got the _What It Is_ funk box out of the library because I want to love more than just James Brown (who pretty much satisfies my funk needs at the moment). I just got that 50s American Folk box from the library, too, just to see what all the hubub is about. In other words, I'm TRYING to bring about a paradigm shift for various genres, I keep chipping away at my underlying assumptions.

Cheers to Mark Clemente, by the way, for his insightful comments, one of the few people who gets it.

i'm not sure you can really force those kinds of things, though.

i'm not sure you can really force those kinds of things, though.

Correct, you can't. But you can bring things back into your purview every couple of years and see if anything has changed.

When I first heard Spiderbait's "Glockenpop" (due to a mention on these boards), I dismissed it as cheesy bubblegum pop, the kind of stuff I would deride whenever possible. Then I found I couldn't get it out of my head, and would blast it at full volume with the windows down whenever I was in the car. The song single-handedly made me lighten up on what I was willing to listen to.

Saw Haino Keiji a couple years ago in NYC. Completely rewrote the way I relate to his music. Prior to that it seemed like aimless, self-indulgent drivel. Live show let me see both the absurd theatricality and the genuine emotion. His records sound very different to me now.

Slowly, grudgingly, over the past decade or so, I've finally learned to relax and embrace any viscerally appealing music I hear in whatever context. Used to be I'd want music to pass through some kind of complicated taste barrier before I'd even consider admitting that I might like it. No longer care. The taste barrier is still there, all eyebrows and gravity, but happiness leaks in between the cracks.

I actually had the same experience with Prefuse 73. I was a big fan of early '90s chart hip-hop but didn't listen to anything until that first Prefuse album, which briefly got me into Def Jux acts and then back into the pop stuff I liked in the first place.

But you can bring things back into your purview every couple of years and see if anything has changed.

interestingly (for me that is), this week has been all about this exact situation. over the years i have bought quite a few Laswell/Axiom discs in the belief that one day they will make more sense, and i am beginning to think, that time is now. the music is totally doing it for me (the tala matrix one - whoa !), whereas previously, a lot of bills music left me cold.
i think what changed was that in recent months i have OD'd on short, sonically sharp electro and suddenly switching to deeper, more drawn out passages of unusual instrumentation felt truly wonderful.

"interestingly (for me that is), this week has been all about this exact situation. over the years i have bought quite a few Laswell/Axiom discs in the belief that one day they will make more sense, and i am beginning to think, that time is now. the music is totally doing it for me (the tala matrix one - whoa !), whereas previously, a lot of bills music left me cold.

-- mark e"

laswell in general for me comes in waves. i can appreciate what he does all the time, but i only feel like listening to it every now and then, usually in the spring time for some reason.

this is the only hit when searching "krishnacore" on ilx.

so I don't know how to tell you guys this but the new 108 album is total fire, especially track #4, "reduced."

that's all.

Possibly hearing 'Blood Inside' by Ulver for the first time with the headphone jack pulled slightly out of the socket, the resulting ass-backwards out of phase version was one big ? Then when I listened a second time the record was still one big ?

"Let me begin feels good 'cause it's early
Ease open my eyes and let light in
Some ideas are brewing"

Transcendentally beautiful