simon reynolds: classic or dud

i truly look forward to the day where i am such an accomplished cognoscentus as s.reynolds or tim f because only then apparently will i know how to really listen to music and judge 'genre' because clearly i've been doing it wrong all these years silly me what was i thinking

i truly truly aspire to reach the levels of snark attained on this thread, clearly this is what i need to discuss music properly as i'm apparently doing that wrong as well!

i feel liek thats the final step on the ilx journey: earnest music poster > stando ile person > sub bord mainstay > indecipherable one liners > sock master

― ice cr?m, Thursday, February 26, 2009 4:21 PM

i'm simply stating the fact that people who compose music tend to listen to music in a completely different *manner* than people who do not. i'm not saying that it's better or worse, it's just a structural or compositional way of listening to music which will catch different things

oft repeated but I don't think it's a very accurate account. you'd have to tread v.carefully to flesh this thought out into something useful because most ways you could take it end up very reductive and not very FACT-LIKE.

seems like a dubious move to bring it in to help yr case, anyway.

oft repeated but I don't think it's a very accurate account. you'd have to tread v.carefully to flesh this thought out into something useful because most ways you could take it end up very reductive and not very FACT-LIKE.

i don't understand how this gets reduced into having-to-be-snipey when other facts about type1 listener vs. type2 listener (i.e. the music geeks and completists of ilx vs 'people who just listen to what's on the radio' dichotomy?) don't. is that defensiveness because there are far more music critics on this board compared to music producers? which is the opposite of most boards i've posted on

(one thing i notice is that when one is actually making music most of the time one is so engaged in the process of making it that one doesn't actually bother thinking about genre. one just thinks what-this-sounds-like-in-my-head. so of course i get confused when someone reviews a track i've done and says 'oh this is genre x' when i barely even know what x is - or the converse when you spend ages listening to genre y and decide you want to do a track in genre y and the reviews mention every single other genre in the musical universe apart from genre y)

i know from my own experience of listening to music with other people that i'll often hear things in a different way to others. i used to drive my ex girlfriend crazy because we'd be listening to a piece of music and i'd be going out of my skull at a specific hihat sound she didn't even notice was there. maybe my concepts of 'this piece of music sounds like x' or 'this piece of music sounds like y' are completely skewed because i'm listening to the building blocks and noticing the tracery around the windows while someone else is just looking at the general shape of the building

perhaps i'm listening to micachu and seeing grime-shaped windowsills when tim f listens to the same record and sees that the building is indie-shaped because he isn't interested in even noticing windowsills. and so we both think each other are cloth eared for not seeing what the other hears

i'm not even sure what this argument is about any more but if i'm following some sort of path to ilm regular status then so be it i should get off the internet and go and take a bath or something

I wonder what Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo (who wrote for New York Rocker and others) and other critics who then began putting out their own music think of your theory? Did they start hearing music differently when they switched jobs?

I'm not a musician, just an amateur critic, and I'm uncomfortable with this notion of a composer hearing music differently from how anyone else does. You might just as well say that people with red hair hear music in a different way from those with blond hair tbh

my 2c

ira once told me he always wanted to be a musician, but it seemed too impossible an aim, so he became a music writer to get closer to that ideal somehow.

You can just say you are a musician tho, if its easier.

i still don't know entirely how tim f got from my statement that composers listen to different things in tracks to his "all critics are failed musicians" straw man meme because if anything my statement seemed to imply that what was wrong with critics was that they were not musicians at all - failed or otherwise!

but i did learn from my time of lurking that this is quite a common thing here. that if you merely mention any kind of conventional-wisdom-truism then you'll be saddled with the load of them, whether they are actually related or not

i'd say all different kinds of musicians listen to music all different kinds of ways, like anyone.

its those musicians who are also critics and vice versa i feel sorry for. must be awful never being sure which ears to use.

Micachu and the Shapes are not grime, but to say that they don't "sound at all, remotely, in any way shape or form, like grime" is surely not seeing the forest for the trees. There's common ancestry in there. If we say that Micachu doesn't sound remotely in any way shape or form like grime, then what are we going to say about Elton John?

I'm not a musician, just an amateur critic, and I'm uncomfortable with this notion of a composer hearing music differently from how anyone else does. You might just as well say that people with red hair hear music in a different way from those with blond hair tbh

that's not it at all

it's much more akin to the idea that sheep don't all look alike to a shepherd

You should never let the internet prevent you from taking a bath.

Likening ALL music producers or musicians view of music to a shepherd's job doesn't work as an analogy for me

i don't like bathing very much especially in cold weather

trying to put this into words is difficult as i'm not a writer

see also the architecture analogy above of musicians as architects looking at bricks and mortar and the shape of the molding about windows while a non-architect non-muso would look at the shape of the building and go 'oh it's a house'

seems esp ironic that a discussion abt the politics of riot grrl should devolve into a privileging of 'musicians' - im sure most ppl on ilx have made some kind of music, at some point or other - and of course, plenty of musicians have proved themselves to be dull, unimaginative music critics, when they've tried their hand at it

i always say this is what's wrong with modern music too many sheep and not enough shepherds

BATH TIME NOW

this thread =

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a106/radface__/w2d3xv.gif

I know this isn't strictly the place but can someone please explain to this relative newbie why this board is referred to as ilx rather than ilm (there's a couple of examples above). I realize ilx is the site but most of the time when people say ilx they seem to be talking about the I Love Music board only. thanks.

most of the time when people say ilx they seem to be talking about the I Love Music board only.

er, they're not

Hope this helps

x=variable, placeholder for ilm, ile, etc.

"[gertrude stein] says that it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is done in the things that amuse you. You should have one absorbing occupation and as for the other things in life for full enjoyment you should only contemplate results. In this way you are bound to feel more about it than those who know a little of how it is done."

for full enjoyment you should only contemplate results

even the ilx 09 poll results?

if gertrude stein says it, it must be true.

Getting back to the point in hand anyone seriously claiming Micachu and the Shapes are bridging the gap between riot-grrrl and grime is making that particular bridge do an awful lot of work.

i can't quite manage any sort of opinion on micachu because i can't quite manage to listen to any of her songs all the way through. whatever this is, it SUCKS HARD. if indeed it is related in any way to riot grrl or grime, it does both a huge disservice.

that's a shame as micachu is a lot better than s.reynolds makes her sound

xp lex otm, I heard this album at the weekend it had a total nails down blackboard effect on me.

i'm just gonna do a lazy-journo categorisation thing w/this chick and throw her in with the rest of this era's pestilent Quirky Girls who think wearing bright colours and singing like a toddler are substitutes for talent

honestly it just makes me a bit sad listening to this overhyped and overpushed girl (and the rest of her peers) while seeing ridiculously talented artists like teedra moses having to drum up interest on twitter for her latest self-released venture b/c so many critics and industry people are unable to recognise real talent

people who sing like five-year-olds and try to make a virtue out of inability should step BACK this year and let women like teedra through to do their thing

The idea that an artist like Micachu (who has sold, what, three records?) is crowding out space that would otherwise be taken up by Teedra Moses is ridiculous.

lex sounding oddly rockist right now

not etherial enough to be a quirky girl tbh i think that gender is a red herring and she belongs in the same catchbag as the blenderphonic post-prog of her tourmates like late of the pier, metronomy, connan moccasin etc. tho i don't know the ilx oops sorry ilm hivemind party line on those bands perhaps i can google that too

Also can we have a moratorium on loose-to-the-point-of-meaningless words like "talent" please?

I don't get a whole lot out of her music tbh, but what Micachu has got going for her though is that she just doesn't really sound like anything else much. Totally resists easy categorisation. Also she sings pretty much like she talks as far as I can make out, don't think it's affectation.

says 'oh this is genre x' when i barely even know what x is

fwiw, I never heard of "blenderphonic post-prog" until 20 seconds ago.

that's ok i made it up

The idea that an artist like Micachu (who has sold, what, three records?) is crowding out space that would otherwise be taken up by Teedra Moses is ridiculous.

her and her ilk

don't care if it's rockist to think that people with a modicum - or even a massive fucking amount - of talent should not have languishing careers while people who sing and play instruments like they're in primary school get critically fêted

'...and they can't even play their instruments!!!!' lex you are becoming more rockist by the moment any second now an emerson lake and palmer l.p. will sprout out of your newly burgeoning beard

don't care. this is shaping up to be the year i listen to nothing but sade, anyway

sade being another example of REAL TALENT

don't care if it's rockist to think that people with a modicum - or even a massive fucking amount - of talent should not have languishing careers

Never knew you went to Berklee, Lex.

Hey Lex, Susan Boyle sold a lot more records than Micachu last year, be fair here.

not heard a note of Micachu because STUPID FUCK OFF NAME

But anyway if Teedra Moses' people can't even sell her records the millions of people who already like RnB, that's probably not the fault of the publicists behind some shitty parochial indie act.

Micachu incorporates some early 80s postpunk in her sound and it sometimes works, though I am not clear why Simon thinks she's exempt from "retro" references.

is it supposed to rhyme with "pikachu"