simon reynolds: classic or dud

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/jan/04/clearing-up-indie-landfill

Interesting article, but I think he never heard The Strokes: "The Strokes had a curious post-techno precision and propulsiveness to their sound, their mathematically plotted, grid-like songs at times resembling Daft Punk if they actually had gone punk rock."

That's a fairly standard line on them actually.

"At the start of the noughties, indie was seen as the rubbish dump of contemporary music. But by the end of the decade, it had produced some of the most impressive sounds"

really?

i would have said the opposite

well that was the subeditor's paraphrase. as usual it may or (more likely) may not be an accurate précis of the article in question.

It's a pretty accurate summary of the article.

I guess it depends on what you think of Micachu and the Shapes.

Who do not sound at all, remotely, in any way shape or form, like grime, whatever sr says.

Moratorium on grime as placeholder for "rather odd sounds that are either electronic or percussive" plz.

I'm guessing it's more a placeholder for 'feisty girl from London who is a bit shouty' more than anything tho

is it reynolds who's saying that micachu is influenced by grime, or is it micachu who says so?

what do you, o critics, do with artists whose explicitly stated influences and "stuff they listen to/consume/dj on a regular basis" don't quite match up with what you think their resultant product sounds like?

x-post - I thought that was dealt with by the "riot grrrl" part of the "riot grrrl meets grime" equation.

karen - I would say "micachu say they listen to/consume/dj this thing and they sound like that thing"

maybe they are consuming and being influenced by different elements of their stated musical elements than you are able to hear

Maybe, in which case you can say so in your piece.

Sure the critic doesn't have a monopoly on interpreting the music at hand, but nor should they ignore the evidence of their ears, else their job would be simply to reprint the press release (of course it's going that way...)

franz ferdinand used to go on about being into crunk and R&B but i could never hear it in their music. not even a bit. even if they had just shouted 'okayyyyy!' on a remix i would have been a bit more impressed. but dont bands always do this? like stone roses going on about all the black music they were into but not really sounding much like those genres (even if they were more heavy/groove based then the competition, which arguably is prob better than sounding explicitly like an influence).

franz ferdinand used to go on about being into crunk and R&B but i could never hear it in their music. not even a bit.

Not sure they ever claimed to be attempting to put it there really

I do think the tendency to conflate statements of "we like x type of music" in the course of an interview (in response to a question, or part of a conversation, remember) and "we are trying to sound like x type of music" is confused far too much

Yes, yes, of course.

Note I am referring to SR's description of Micachu etc. rather than what they themselves say.

What's odd is he specifically commends The Klaxons for not conflating "we like x" with "we must sound exactly like x".

i was gonna say, in an interview i'd mention what the band are into (along with whatever authors, artists etc they like) (if any of this is interesting), in a review who cares what they say. in a longer review there might be room to go into eg the xx effect, whereby they say they're influenced by one thing, don't much sound like it but if you squint you can see where they've taken up certain qualities that that thing values.

calculating how much you'd have to pay me to read that SR article.

i don't think that s.reynolds is attempting to 'ignore the evidence of his ears' but that his ears may be picking up on evidence different than yours - what would be your ear-evidence of 'grime' signifiers, if you have discounted 'rather odd sounds that are either electronic or percussive'? just curious.

"I do think the tendency to conflate statements of "we like x type of music" in the course of an interview (in response to a question, or part of a conversation, remember) and "we are trying to sound like x type of music" is confused far too much"

true enough, but bands often use 'we like x music/genre' as if to signal that x genre/artist is somehow imbued in their own music. kind of like piggybacking off a certain edgier sound/artist even if the influence is sketchy at best (sometimes obv the influence can be pretty subtle, i know, doesnt have to be overt, but a lot of the time its just PR crap.

not read the article yet but i hope SR mentions hadouken!

the xx effect, whereby they say they're influenced by one thing, don't much sound like it but if you squint you can see where they've taken up certain qualities that that thing values.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^because this to me looks quite more common from a music-producer point of view than a lazy journo giving things a casual listen, not hearing what they expect in terms of genre signifiers and dashing off in another direction

but of course i may be biased given that i've only ever been a music-producer and never been a journo lazy and casual-of-ears or otherwise

i don't think that s.reynolds is attempting to 'ignore the evidence of his ears'

that'd be a shocking departure from his usual then

well i dont actually, they were shit, but they did actually mix grime and indie.

Karen I would expect anything that even remotely resembled actual grime sounds like a grime beat maybe. Grime does not equal any electronic or percussive odd sound y'know.

Funnily enough "riot grrrl with production from herbert" conveys the sound of the album much better.

but of course i may be biased given that i've only ever been a music-producer and never been a journo lazy and casual-of-ears or otherwise

Hmm I better cede the point now in the face of this serious cred-move. You might also profit from describing critics as failed musos at this point.

idk im not reading the article but that description of the strokes is reeeeaaaaaaching to a ridic extent.

i'm not going for a cred move, 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

for instance, hearing beats as the one and only sole signifier or a genre as opposed to hearing atmosphere or instrumentation or methods of working

or for example hearing 'shouty girl' as being evidence of being slotted into the 'riot grrrl' genre and nothing else - which is more than enough evidence of your laziness as a critic

there are very many things wrong with that s.reynolds article but spotting a 'grime' influence in micachu simply isn't one of them

bloc party's zephyrus really does sound like grime.

Probably poor form to quote wikipedia here but I seriously didn't know Micachu's pre-Shapes backstory. Maybe it explains SR's grime reference?

Levi performed as a DJ and MC around the UK garage and grime scene in London, and released a mixtape titled Filthy Friends, which was posted on her Myspace page. For Filthy Friends she enlisted the help of friends and musicians of various backgrounds including MCs Man Like Me & Ghostpoet, singer-songwriter Jack Peñate, jazz band Troyka, London pop-band Golden Silvers, producers Kwes and Toddla T. Following its release, Filthy Friends had become sought after on the London club scene.

"there's always been a dance element to our music"

there are very many things wrong with that s.reynolds article but spotting a 'grime' influence in micachu simply isn't one of them

Maybe you could mention a couple specific Micachu tracks and the grime elements you hear in them? Or are you just going to stick with "well if you're not a musician you wouldn't be able to hear it."

I didn't raise riot grrl in connection to micachu, simon r did in his article.

In fact micachu's vocals don't sound that much like riot grrl to me - more like the raincoats - but even less like grime.

I think the nearest track to grime on Jewellery is probably 'Wrong' btw, specifically during the verses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4OhRVn_b80

^ oh yeah, also this

i don't have the micachu album with me so i can't quote chapter and verse, but there are certainly tracks on the album which have that skittering off-beat broken up rhythm that i associate with grime and in the process of googling, if we're allowed to quote wiki as a source, ooh look whose listed as a grime artist right there under m:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Grime_artists

Funnily enough "riot grrrl with production from herbert" conveys the sound of the album much better.

and it's interesting that you back off on the riot grrrl comparisons after agreeing so soundly on this ^^^^^^^^^^ because one thing that micachu lacks which is as inherent a genre signifier of 'riot grrrl' as skittering beats are of grime is the political content

All I meant by the above is that simon could simply have used the herbert production angle to convey the necessary impression of cool jagged rhythmic futurism. Anyway if you wish to claim victory on the grounds that i agree that micachu aren't riot grrl then go right ahead.

It seems foolish for me not to cede all points in fact given your foolpoof google-review of grime.

I saw this article yesterday and was hoping to god no one on ILM felt the need to highlight it.

Generally speaking, grime is less beat-focussed than pretty much everything else in the history of UK dance music, so the idea of indie bands using a 'grime beat' as a fashionable signature sound doesn't really work with me.

damn tim how does it feel to have been so thoroughly owned by karen tregaskins music production experience and ability to check wikipedia

if i were you id just quit the music crit game and join the french foreign legion

In truth, the best stuff by these bands had more rhythmic life and surprise in it than the majority of hip-hop or dance music made these past several years.

Hmmmm, Animal Collective...(he cites them, Vampire Weekend and Micachu)

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.