Entirely true, which is where I think the matter of projection as to what that ground level 'really' is from the omnivorous standpoint (and my quote abuse is noted but I'm trying to foreground the point) comes in even more strongly than ever.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 20 December 2007 21:36 (sixteen years ago) link
"I think that's a tempting concept from the perspective of an internet music omnivore, but it feels a little, I don't know, co-optive? It may not take long before the world knows about any given little regional scene these days, but that doesn't mean that there aren't aspects that only make sense at ground level."
This is correct, but does it really apply to Burial? Burial's music strikes me as stuff that probably makes more sense to internet music omnivores than anyone else!
― Tim F, Thursday, 20 December 2007 21:38 (sixteen years ago) link
Yeah, totally, I wasn't talking about Burial specifically.
― Jordan, Thursday, 20 December 2007 21:41 (sixteen years ago) link
The last of The Wire's lists
Compilations
Achilifunk: Gipsy Soul 1969-1979 (Lovemonk) After Dark (Italians Do It Better/Troubleman) DJ Dixon: Body Language Vol 4 (Get Physical) Box Of Dub: Dubstep And Future Dub (Soul Jazz) Brazil 70: After Tropicalia: New Directions In Brazilian Music In The 1970s (Soul Jazz) Broken Flag: A Retrospective 1982-1985 (Vinyl On Demand) Cries From The Midnight Circus: Ladbroke Grove 1967-1978 (Castle) Doom & Gloom: Early Songs Of Angst And Disaster 1927-1945 (Trikont) LARM: From Mouth Cavity To Laptop (Kning Disk) Mute Audio Documents 1978-1984 (Mute) Psychedelic Phinland: Finnish Hippie And Underground Music 1967-1974 (Love) Remove Celebrity Centre (Junior Aspirin) Savage Pencil Presents Lion Vs Dragon In Dub (Trojan) Silver Monk Time: A Tribute To The Monks (Play Loud!) Skull Disco: Soundboy Punishments (Skull Disco)
Reissues
Neil Campbell - SOL POWR (Mundane Music) Miles Davis - The Complete On The Corner Sessions (Sony) Vladislav Delay - Multila (Huume) Fairport Convention - Liege And Lief (Island) Noah Howard - The Black Ark (Bo'weavil) Keith Hudson - Brand (Pressure Sounds) Annea Lockwood - Early Works 1967-82 (EM) Ju Suk Reet Meate - Solo 78/79 (De Stijl) Nico - The Frozen Borderline: 1968-1970 (Rhino) Daphne Oram - Oramics (Paradigm) Pentangle - The Time Has Come (Castle) Eliane Radigue - Jetsun Mila (Lovely Music) Terry Riley - Music For The Gift (Elision Fields) Terry Riley - Poppy Nogood And The Phantom Band All Night Flight (Elision Fields) Seefeel - Quique Redux Edition (Too Pure) Sly & The Family Stone - There's A Riot Goin' On (Epic) Sun Ra - Strange Strings (Atavistic Unheard Music Series) Sun Ra - The Complete Disco 3000 Concert (Art Yard) Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth (Domino)
Phew, that was a good lot of typing practice today.
― krakow, Thursday, 20 December 2007 21:55 (sixteen years ago) link
"But these phrases are all so cliched, and I think you could easily apply them to ANY music you felt wasn't taking the chances YOU wanted it to. By your suggestion that Burial is "wallpaper" music I suspect you want it to be more aggressive, perhaps. But I don't think that making melancholic, even "pretty" music necessarily has to be safe."
Yes, of course it could apply to any music that wasn't taking the chances I wanted it to. Just like saying something is boring means that I found it boring. Isn't this "subjective crit" 101?
Two things: First, I don't think that melancholic, pretty music has to be safe, which is why Burial disappointed me—it is melancholic and pretty music that IS safe. Second, by saying "wallpaper music," I meant that it seems best suited to atmospherics, and not to active listening.
There's nothing in it that surprises me, that makes me take more notice, that draws me further in—it seems remarkably flat, sonically, despite the obvious care in layers. Sure, it feels like waiting for a bus in the rain, but waiting for a bus in the rain is boring enough that I don't need a record to take me back to that.
I think I'd be happier with it if it removed all of what sounds, to my ear, like cliched dubstep rhythm tracks, and just left the washes of sound—at least then, I wouldn't have to wade through a tacked-on vestigial pseudo-techno to get to what's pretty (and even then, I'd have a hard time recommending it for repeat listens).
And regarding Burial and omnivores, I kind of feel like that's part of the disappointment for me—there are so many other options that are more in line with what I want out of music (novelty and depth?) that I just don't get why this one has been singled out since it doesn't seem to have any of that.
The age of internet omnivores means that I'm too used to having my mind blown to listen to stuff that doesn't connect.
As an aside, for me, reading the criticism around it feels like when Is This It came out and everyone got a hardon for the Strokes, but at least with the Strokes I could understand that there were decent songs there (just nothing that ever whipped me up into the same frenzy).
― I eat cannibals, Thursday, 20 December 2007 22:02 (sixteen years ago) link
"how'd he get those hi-hats to do that?"
this is really all i want to know about burial.
― Jordan, Thursday, 20 December 2007 22:04 (sixteen years ago) link
Oh, and thanks for that link to Skull Disco—I'm really enjoying the free mix they had up on their front page. It's pretty much what I hoped Burial would sound like (even though I probably wouldn't put something like this at my #1 slot or anything).
― I eat cannibals, Thursday, 20 December 2007 22:27 (sixteen years ago) link
see that makes more sense! i like yr comment about waiting for the bus. didn't mean to come off wrong, i just thought "safe," as shorthand, wasn't saying much.
did you get that skull disco mix to download? i haven't managed to. weird.
― pshrbrn, Thursday, 20 December 2007 22:33 (sixteen years ago) link
"didn't mean to come off wrong, i just thought "safe," as shorthand, wasn't saying much."
Oh, yeah, that's totally fair—it wasn't saying very much. And apologies for getting snippy, sometimes everything on ILX feels like sniping, and it gets my back up.
The Skull Disco was working at 1:30 PST, with nary a hiccup. Saved it, imported it, enjoyed it.
― I eat cannibals, Thursday, 20 December 2007 22:51 (sixteen years ago) link
Breaking news. . . NPR "All Songs Considered" listeners pick the best albums of 2007 (and yes 15 was missing from the listing I cut and pasted):
25. Artist: Rilo Kiley Album: Under the Blacklight 24.Artist: Lily Allen Album: Alright, Still
23.Artist: Tegan and Sara Album: Con 22.Artist: Beirut Album: Flying Club Cup 21Artist: Ryan Adams Album: Easy Tiger 20.Artist: Okkervil River Album: The Stage Names 19.Artist: Josh Ritter Album: Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter 18.Artist: Bright Eyes Album: Cassadaga 17.Artist: Band of Horses Album: Cease to Begin 16.Artist: Of Montreal Album: Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? 14.Artist: The New Pornographers Album: Challengers 13.Artist: LCD Soundsystem Album: Sound of Silver 12.Artist: Iron & Wine Album: Shepherd's Dog
11.Artist: Amy Winehouse Album: Back to Black 10.Artist: Andrew Bird Album: Armchair Apocrypha 09.Artist: The National Album: Boxer
08.Artist: The Shins Album: Wincing the Night Away 07.Artist: Modest Mouse Album: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank 06.Artist: Spoon Album: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga 05.Artist: The White Stripes Album: Icky Thump 04.Artist: Wilco Album: Sky Blue Sky 03.Artist: Feist Album: Reminder 02.Artist: Arcade Fire Album: Neon Bible 01.Artist: Radiohead Album: In Rainbows
― Rockist Scientist, Thursday, 20 December 2007 22:59 (sixteen years ago) link
Crunching the number of the individual lists of PFork writers/contributors, here's a baker's dozen of notable snubs (# of votes; ranking average):
Simian Mobile Disco: Attack Decay Sustain Release (7; 17.14) Band of Horses: Cease to Begin (6; 10.5) Blonde Redhead: 23 (6; 13) Nina Nastasia & Jim White: You Follow Me (6; 13.16) Matthew Dear: Asa Breed (6; 15) Grinderman: Grinderman (6; 20.66) Apparat: Walls (5; 12.4) Klaxons: Myths of the Near Future (5; 12.81) PJ Harvey: White Chalk (5; 12.97) Times New Viking: Present the Paisley Reich (5; 14.4) The Twilight Sad: Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (5; 15.4) !!!: Myth Takes (5; 16) Sir Richard Bishop: Polytheistic Fragments (4; 12)
Fwiw, Apparat, even with its average thinned over five votes, still outperformed listmakers Yeasayer (3; 20) and Beirut (3; 14). I dug into the individual lists' numbers because I figured there were albums/artist popular among the writers but their popularity didn't make the final cut (but nonetheless might be worth giving a shot).
― dblcheeksneek, Thursday, 20 December 2007 22:59 (sixteen years ago) link
the apparat album is better than both those albums, objectively speaking
― kamerad, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:11 (sixteen years ago) link
Here's a bit more looking inside the machinations (i.e., exercised editorial discretion) of Pfork, 11 listmakers (# of votes; ranking average; poll position):
Deerhoof: Friend Opportunity (6; 12; 31) Liars: Liars (6; 12.9; 20) Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago (6; 15.16; 29) Dan Deacon: Spiderman of the Rings (6; 15.3; 24) The Arcade Fire: Neon Bible (6; 17.83; 27) Black Lips: Good Bad Not Evil (6; 18.33; 35) Dizzee Rascal: Maths + English (5; 10.6; 49) Les Savy Fav: Let's Stay Friends (5; 12.81; 44) Ghostface Killah: The Big Doe Rehab (5; 14.2; 42) Marissa Nadler: Songs III: Bird on the Water (5; 15.8; 46) The White Stripes: Icky Thump (5; 15.82; 39)
― dblcheeksneek, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:16 (sixteen years ago) link
-- dblcheeksneek, Thursday, 20 December 2007 22:59 (19 minutes ago) Link
interesting stats. here's one omission you missed with comparable numbers:
UGK: Underground Kingz (5; 13.2)
― Alex in Baltimore, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:38 (sixteen years ago) link
i'm just guessing here, but at the top of the individual lists it says that the top 50 was culled from each writer's top 50, even though only top 25 was posted. so i guess if les savy fav was in everyone's top 50, that would propel it ahead of ugk if ugk was only in like 7 or 8 writers top 50s.
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:42 (sixteen years ago) link
My bad, I had UGK at four votes and 14.75, just ahead of Gui Boratto: Chromophobia (4; 15).
― dblcheeksneek, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:49 (sixteen years ago) link
I think you might just be on to something there (and figured out why I majored in English and not Math)! I just sorted the top fifty vote getters (according to the posted Top 25's) and 41 of them earned "poll" positions (whereas the other (9), from my list of "snubs" probably didn't appear much/often in the 26-50 ranks we didn't see)...ahem...as interesting as all this is...anyway...
― dblcheeksneek, Thursday, 20 December 2007 23:56 (sixteen years ago) link
"objectively speaking"
― Jordan, Friday, 21 December 2007 01:47 (sixteen years ago) link
LQTM, too.
― dblcheeksneek, Friday, 21 December 2007 01:50 (sixteen years ago) link
I won't vote as I am only now catching up on 2007 releases. :-( However if I am allowed to pick Robyn's s/t that woiuld top my list.
― stevienixed, Friday, 21 December 2007 01:53 (sixteen years ago) link
Surprising (to me) non-listeds:
Mekons Shellac The Fall Qui
― Usual Channels, Friday, 21 December 2007 02:10 (sixteen years ago) link
not surprising to me, older bands rarely seem to do well on Pitchfork year end lists, with some exceptions (often reunions/comebacks, like Dinosaur Jr. this year).
― Alex in Baltimore, Friday, 21 December 2007 02:18 (sixteen years ago) link
qui was on the rockarolla magazine list. pretty bad record though.
― scott seward, Friday, 21 December 2007 02:19 (sixteen years ago) link
yea i thought the shellac record would fare better than it has in these lists. it got quite a lot of positive attention when it came out.
― Mark Clemente, Friday, 21 December 2007 02:38 (sixteen years ago) link
no the field?? can anyone explain why?
― Durrr Durrr Durrrrrr, Friday, 21 December 2007 08:53 (sixteen years ago) link
OK, it's the one you've all been waiting for... the Nottingham Evening Post!
1 - Radiohead, 2 - Arcade Fire, 3 - White Stripes, 4 - Bruce Springsteen, 5 - Grinderman, 6 - The Good The Bad & The Queen, 7 - Kevin Ayers, 8 - LCD Soundsystem, 9 - Kings of Leon, 10 - Nick Lowe.
― mike t-diva, Friday, 21 December 2007 11:39 (sixteen years ago) link
Four of these are in my Top 50, Radiohead isn't because I'm old in my ways and I want to hear it on a Proper CD, which doesn't come out until Hogmanay, Bruce and Nick would have been in my 51-60 section if I'd done one, Stripes and Grinderman I didn't feel and Kings Of Leon I have never felt, and furthermore I now automatically think of the X-Factor.
― Dingbod Kesterson, Friday, 21 December 2007 11:43 (sixteen years ago) link
That's quite a sentence.
― dblcheeksneek, Friday, 21 December 2007 14:02 (sixteen years ago) link
karmic payback for the ridiculously high score on metacritic
― blueski, Friday, 21 December 2007 14:06 (sixteen years ago) link
not actually that popular beyond dance critics?
― Matos W.K., Friday, 21 December 2007 14:11 (sixteen years ago) link
Jordan is correct re the pitchfork albums poll.
― Tim F, Friday, 21 December 2007 14:23 (sixteen years ago) link
I just hope my crate-digging intent in crunching the available Pfork numbers isn't lost in translation: I feel like I found some interesting albums in tallying discs that repeatedly made individual Top 25's but didn't make the year-end poll.
However, the list-making album(s) I'm beyond intrigued by by now is the Studio disc(s).
― dblcheeksneek, Friday, 21 December 2007 14:30 (sixteen years ago) link
Studio's West Coast EP is fantastic, so I imagine the full-length (which has many of the same tracks) is just as fantastic.
BTW, Tim F.'s opening few posts on the Studio thread paint a vivid picture of how the disc sounds.
― Daniel, Esq., Friday, 21 December 2007 15:20 (sixteen years ago) link
man, i've been listening to the tracks from pitchfork's 100 tracks. i can't believe my ears. so many not-so-interesting tracks. groove armada? ellis-bextor? BARR? dirty projectors? bat for lashes? magic markers? no age? old time relijun? times new viking? so this is the sound of indie rock right now? correct me if i'm way off because it's been a long time since i listened to indie stuff.
― Durrr Durrr Durrrrrr, Friday, 21 December 2007 15:23 (sixteen years ago) link
dblcheeksneek, when you're done lqtying, you should check out studio, "indo" especially
― kamerad, Friday, 21 December 2007 15:36 (sixteen years ago) link
I don't think those represent ''the sound of indie rock right now,'' but complaints about the supposedly tired state of ''the sound of indie rock right now'' are old as dirt (i.e., they've been around forever).
― Daniel, Esq., Friday, 21 December 2007 15:37 (sixteen years ago) link
XP, obv.
Those tracks don't really represent "the sound of indie rock" at all. I don't know if you could create a representative sample of indie rock tracks in 2007, but if you could Old Time Fucking Relijun definitely would not be in the conversation.
I dunno, the non-indie rock tracks on the Pitchfork list aren't really very interesting either. There were some good albums in 2007 but it really just wasn't a great year for individual tracks.
― call all destroyer, Friday, 21 December 2007 16:09 (sixteen years ago) link
That Groove Armada track is good, duke.
― The Reverend, Friday, 21 December 2007 18:12 (sixteen years ago) link
between UGK and dblcheeksneek's list most of 51-60 on the p4k list are mentioned. Clientele and Menomena were also in there. We do have a slightly complicated tallying system for each list.
― scottpl, Friday, 21 December 2007 18:42 (sixteen years ago) link
slightly complicated, yet evidently mostly democratic.
― dblcheeksneek, Friday, 21 December 2007 19:02 (sixteen years ago) link
Boomkat's charts, inc. charts form Skull Disco, Robt Wyatt and others.
― Raw Patrick, Friday, 21 December 2007 19:09 (sixteen years ago) link
actually matos, i'd suspect the field was way more popular with non-dance critics than dance critics. and that no age is pretty great, durrr, give the album a shot.
― pshrbrn, Friday, 21 December 2007 19:10 (sixteen years ago) link
that boomkat list is awesome! kind of seems what the wire's list should've been...
― Mark Clemente, Friday, 21 December 2007 19:13 (sixteen years ago) link
i'd suspect the field was way more popular with non-dance critics than dance critics
Seconding Phil here.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 21 December 2007 19:19 (sixteen years ago) link
Not that I mean that as a dis. (Although I don't really see what the fuss was about, at all. That record to me feels like one half-decent idea, never fully baked, repeated over and over and over again. And no, I don't think that's what all techno (or minimal or whatever) does.)
― pshrbrn, Friday, 21 December 2007 20:48 (sixteen years ago) link
That record to me feels like one half-decent idea, never fully baked, repeated over and over and over again.
yes! sometimes this half-decent idea works -- there are parts of the album i enjoy -- but most of the time it gets pretty stale quite quickly. the half-bakedness of it all really shows, i think.
― Mark Clemente, Friday, 21 December 2007 20:58 (sixteen years ago) link
I actually really like it -- got on my Idolator ballot because I kept listening to it, the basic rule of thumb -- but no question it's simpler in comparison to something like, say, P***a B**r. Yet I also retain a belief than 'simpler' != 'worse.'
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 21 December 2007 21:04 (sixteen years ago) link
no question it's simpler in comparison to something like, say, P***a B**r.
Arrgh.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 21 December 2007 21:09 (sixteen years ago) link
Of all people to have that touch a nerve with!
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 21 December 2007 21:11 (sixteen years ago) link