Scott Walker "Bish Bosch"

This computer discussion is pretty wearisome TBF.

you don't say

yeah god forbid people should actually have to make this shit and want to talk about how it is made

I don't generally go round being a content fascist on ILX - people can talk about whatever boring shit they like - but here we are, on the brink of one of the most highly anticipated releases of the last six years from possibly the most dynamic and challenging artists around today, and we're discussing whether the SILENCES were recorded on a computer or a tape.

On a more positive note, Christmas can't come any sooner for me :-D

i appreciate the the modern Scott Walker sound. i like the sound and the production.
he IS one of "the most dynamic and challenging artists around today",
as he WAS at the sixties, but something important is missing (to me, at least): a melody. the new song sounds almost like a spoken word.
i wonder if it's just me.

I hate to use a cliché, but his music's very much like a Magic Eye picture, I find. At first it sounds like operatic singing pasted haphazardly over an atmospheric collage, but over time they do tend to reveal themselves as song songs, just arranged and framed in an unorthodox way. Someone upthread mentioned the difference between bel canto and crooning, and I'd be inclined to agree. You could totally turn something like "This is not a cornhusk doll/Dipped in blood in the moonlight/Like what happened in America" into an (albeit sinister) swing tune. Far-fetched as it may be, I like to think of songs off the Drift as a deconstructed bizarro/Silent Hill/alternate reality version of what he's always done. After subjecting myself to the Drift almost every day for the last few weeks I find the more melodic/song-based stuff even up to and including Tilt to be almost bludgeoningly and transparently accessible by comparison. And so I'm actually glad to hear a further abstraction of his sound from what I've heard of Bish Bosch.

Melodies are so 20th century, so its just you I'm afraid :)

dog latin - tough shit if you don't like the discussion.

would it not sound computery if he had added virtual reverb?

― marguerite yourarsenal (clouds), Sunday, 11 November 2012 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How would you know he added reverb as oposed to it being an element that is just there? One answer would be in the randomness of the placement.

But Scott's last few records sound very calculated too (this is not to imply they are stiff; this is an inference I'd reject). So the question could also be about adding randomness as if its calculated??

Really don't know, just trying to think this through.

"Melodies are so 20th century"

yeah, i forgot Scott is a 30th century man, but it still sounds melodic to me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AexzqFLquG8

jeez have you people not heard schoenberg

From Rob Young's piece on the Bish Bosch site:
"What we did was record the drums, bass, percussion, strings and vocals in digital and analogue simultaneously. Because we knew there were a lot of silences in it, especially in something like ‘Zercon’. And in the endings – the ending of ‘Tar’, where you don’t know what’s going on. So in those spots we just cut off the analogue, and where we had the silences we just used the digital. And then we turned on the analogue again when everyone was playing together. Everything was recorded that way, so it’s about eighty per cent analogue."

even my mom heard schoenberg!

MJ - thx!

Is it worth buying Wire for that review? Might pop out and get it at lunchtime.

Nostromo - that's just an youtube excerpt btw, in the actual version the silences cut off and switch between analogue and digital silences for another 5 mins, its quite riveting you know.

dawg latin I'll keep the analog? or digital? discussion to the pro music boards if you promise to never use Silent Hill as an adjective again

music's very much like a magic eye picture.

How would you know he added reverb as oposed to it being an element that is just there?

that's what i'm saying

Michael Jones that is an illuminating thing that you posted, thank you. Of course that's the easiest and most economical explanation!

So in those spots we just cut off the analogue, and where we had the silences we just used the digital.

On the vinyl, the silences will be replaced by excerpts from "Yakety Sax."

Is that ish of Teh_Wire on the stands in the US yet?

When "Epizootics!" gets to the tubax solo I thought "cool tubax solo" not realizing I hadn't ever heard an actual tubax, it just sounds so much like what it would be

Meantime, a little good reading while we wait:

http://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/nite-flights/

Thanks for that link, Ned, that's a great article.

That blog always delivers.

some kind of special preview event being thrown by Beggars tomorrow at something called Sleep No More in NYC. I used to be in the loop.

Good old bowiesongs.

Yeah I noticed an FB contest to be one of three lucky fans to go to the NYC thing.

Obv if anyone gots a hookup for that get at me.

oh my god. the long song goes all jacques brel!

this is one of the best side-long songs i've ever heard

watching/listening to the video for epizootics!

holy hell this is something

some kind of special preview event being thrown by Beggars tomorrow at something called Sleep No More in NYC. I used to be in the loop.

wow. hadn't heard about that listening party. Sleep No More is a participatory theater thing held at a warehouse converted into an old hotel. it's pretty great actually, we went in July.

and yeah you're kind of out of the loop for not knowing what Sleep No More is, it's been on Gossip Girl and everything ;)

it's really grebt. I keep having to stop myself from watching it again. It's quite addictive

xpost

xpost as far as I know ian and wife went to the listening party...

Yeah. On your prodding Ian offered me an extra ticket at the last minute but I already had dinner/evening plans. MIkey IQ from Other Music went and posted some stuff on facebook "Oh, and cheers to whomever decided to host the event at Sleep No More in the McKittrick Hotel. Best listening party EVER."

I am a 42 y.o. sad fuck who had to get up at 8 the next morning so the 10.30pm start time was too much for me. Regretting myself now...

leaked btw

Must... Not...

2012 - the year experimental rock broke

Actual lyric, reportedly:

You're so fat when u go out in a rain jacket people mistake u for a cab

i donkey punch a ho in the streets of galway

xpost confirmed!

listening my way through the leak.

yes that just confirms to me that as much as i like scott his sense of humour is quite far from mine.

I've been listening to this while writing lecture notes; not the ideal way to do either thing, really. Hard to get a handle on it, but it's pretty extraordinary. The cab lyric is real, sounds fine in context.

I've severed my reeking gonads. Fed them to your shrunken face.

Just saying.

The line is actually:

You're so fat that when you wear a yellow raincoat people say "TAXI!"

But I heard it as:

You're so fat that when you wear a yellow raincoat people say "TAKE ME!"

Other good insults in the lyrics:

If brains were rain you'd surely be a desert.
If shit were music, you'd be a brass band.
Does your face hurt? Cos it's killing me!
Don't move, I want to forget you just the way you are.

I was trying to recall where that last one came from, or where I'd heard before, anyway.

The Monkees' "Head" film!

xp
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/Billy_Joel_-_Just_the_way_you_are.jpg