Hip Genres & Musical Styles: Which Is The Worst??

whoops i fucked up, Japanese should not be there lol.

i shoulda put on so many other dumb things, sorry, please write in your personal dislikes.

Japanese was gonna be japanese psych but i dunno, i stopped half-way

so racist

is this about which music sounds worse or which attracts the most obnoxious hipsters because there might be a different answer depending

Voting private press singer-songwriter because every singer-songwriter on earth should be dropped down a well (can be all the same well, as long as it's deep enough). But West Coast psychedelic rock can go on the bonfire too.

Voted https://funnynamesblog.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/rrk.jpg

free jazz fandom can definitely has a bit of a stick up the arse quality especially when it gets into euro improv more avant than thou territory (which is where the music gets really boring)

I think country blues takes it though for being built up into such a tedious reductive racist masculine heterosexual mythology and industry that has essentially swallowed (and killed) the blues as a whole in the popular imagination, erasing all the genuinely cool things about it. some of which if more widely known would make blues more relevant to contemporary audiences and less of a museum piece but that's the last thing the blues bros seem to want. the music on its own is fine but if this is about reception it doesn't get more obnoxious than mr keep britain white's musty old reverence over mr johnson for example

leave rahsaan out of this

TS: Robert Johnson vs Boris Johnson

Drone in its various forms looms large the last 10 years-ish: drone rock, new age and minimalism,
"composers" working with open ended scores, etc. not necessarily the worst but glaring omissions.

automated "cybernetic" music is another one.

it's not robert's fault he became an icon for all the most boring men in rock it's just an unfortunate part of his legacy xp

the band that opened for stereolab in brooklyn in october was like the end of 'unobtrusive music'. they were idk a smooth jazz/disco-funk wedding band, overly self-conscious with that mac tonight look. def one of the most nauseating things i've ever seen.

as a fan of most things psychedelic apart from the b.o. rife san fransisco variety this is not real hard for me. los angeles is also west coast tho, maybe i just hate the jefferson airplane.

leave rahsaan out of this

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Wednesday, May 17, 2023 6:16 PM

fr i don't even think he falls into any of the styles mentioned. (maybe hard bop?)

i actually don't have much of a problem with any of these. ended up voting industrial/noise as a "least favorite."

Feeling torn between Private Press Singer-Songwriter (<0.01% strike rate?) & Musique Concrete...

I woulde probablye go with English folk if you asked me which I would leaste like to listen to.

These are all great except for private press stuff which let’s be honest is variable. But it feels like a soft target. So can I just nominate GAPDY?

Guessing “Garage” means the ‘60s rock and not the UK thing. That‘a not my answer though.

Noise/Industrial… I’ll take the Noise, you can have the Industrial

Private Press Singer-Songwriter sounds like something that would disappoint me 100% of the time

Dancehall but only cos it ain't the stuff from 10 years earlier I would prefer.
Garage cos it takes vital music and makes it an insular scene retrospectively.
Does classic indie rock last til 2000 or did it drop off way earlier.

Country blues was shaped heavily at the time by record company pressure and expectation. Possibly even moreso down to the people sent out to record artists. Shame cos it killed off more idiosyncratic approaches being recorded.

Surely it all also has some pretty vital music included.

gonna wait until imago weighs in on what a dying message board would choose

I Love Music

lol "Japanese" is almost a defensible option, the country's contributed a wide variety of genres all of which could apply here - psych, jazz, city pop, house all have pretty vocal tastemaker contingents.

the "private press" in front of singer-songwriter kinda makes it the only choice, I've heard some pretty terrible private press singer/songwriter stuff get hyped. but I'm sure there's plenty horrible private press stuff getting the same treatment in other genres.

is the garage referred to garage rock, UK garage or US disco garage?

"free jazz fandom can definitely has a bit of a stick up the arse quality especially when it gets into euro improv more avant than thou territory (which is where the music gets really boring)"

Obnoxious, you say?

Ok I bite, what is Boogaloo?

60's latin music with soul/r&b influences. a lot of the fania types were doing it before salsa hit big.

Ah ok I am going to check a comp.

"Classic Indie Rock (1980-2000???? argue w me here please)"

I think indie of the Siltbreeze probably has a place here. I would probably re-write it as the good stuff that would follow on the only tradition (classic Pere Ubu and The Fall, with drone stuff).

The UK equivalent would be Skullflower and 20 names I used to have at my fingertips. This is the stuff I listened to that was basically the road not taken. Instead we thought The Verve's Princess Diana anthems were psychedelic.

So: "Indie Rock from 1992-2000 (the road not taken)"

I guess shoegaze and post rock merit inclusion.

+ math rock!

Psychedelic/Acid Folk is hardly ever as good as you hope it's going to be but it's not the worst here. I don't know any Boogaloo.

I kinda wish Musique Concrete actually was beloved by critics & hipsters everywhere... or do I?

My wife and I have a running gag where we invent an indie band and an indie label and talk about them as if they exist, but I harbor a secret fear that we will accidentally name something that really does exist.

Oh, 8fux? Yeah they are great, I heard they were recently signed to the Algae label, after a brief flirtation with SpaceDrawer Records out of Seattle.

I recall that they had some members who were originally with SpleenGodz, but then SpleenGodz left Algae and signed with Faucet instead.

Most of their early stuff was Neo-Plywood but then they kinda moved on to be a little more TaintCore.

(I literally just made up almost all of those words, but I am preemptively apologizing just in case there are real Spleen / Algae fans out there.)

Add New Age and IDM /Ambient to the list and PC music I suppose. Though not being a hipster I guess they may look down at this stuff.

I laughed out loud at “japanese”

Not sure what Hard Bop is but sounds promising

Nathan, here you go. You're welcome.

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

Sorry nashwan

I love all of this music btw.

Industrial/Noise has the highest number of tedious provocateurs associated with it, although English Folk might be running it second for right-wing affiliations (maybe not the hipster end of it though). Ditto Classic Indie Rock (1980-2000) if that includes you-know-who.

Voted Psychedelic/Acid Folk in the end due to the existence of Devendra Banhart.

English Folk certainly does not have right wing affiliations in, er, England!

Yeah, English Folk revival basically started with a bunch of communist party members jamming in Soho beatnick cafes aiui.

i love all of these inc English Folk which i don't associate with the right wing (Shirley Collins, surely not), except for the dreaded Classic Indie Rock (1980-2000???? argue w me here please) which is my eternal musical room 101, so an easy vote here.

Not sure what Hard Bop is but sounds promising

― nashwan, Thursday, May 18, 2023 8:46 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hard Bop is a subgenre of "Japanese"

https://i.discogs.com/SjrozDnbzxU2csabOXsAZy3D4UOEpSTimAaQhGC54NM/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:586/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQxNTc4/NDUtMTU4NzgxNTIw/MS02ODk1LmpwZWc.jpeg

Throw in dub techno and deep house and you've just got a list of the best genres

Almost put deep house tbh.

Almost put deep house tbh.

Some 'true European music' types tried to latch onto trad folk as 'pure' music a while ago, is what I meant. Guess there's not that many of them though. Although given the age of most folk fans you can bet that a lot of them are entering the Daily Mail phase of their existences, old socialists ending up railing against wokery/immigrants etc! Admittedly this isn't really the Alasdair Roberts end of things you might find at Supersonic festival etc.

Pvt press has a high swing and miss ratio, a lot of it loses its luster once some of the mystery about a rare grail being discovered is removed. But obv there is some gold in there. Some of the reissue labels are pretty reliable when it comes to finding the good stuff.

That's the one I would probably vote for just on overall merit, everything else is classic and pretty unassailable imo.

it would really suck to be the kind of person who can't even enjoy sleepy john estes or barbecue bob without having a brain aneurysm thinking about eric clapton's presentation of masculinity

the band that opened for stereolab in brooklyn in october was like the end of 'unobtrusive music'. they were idk a smooth jazz/disco-funk wedding band, overly self-conscious with that mac tonight look. def one of the most nauseating things i've ever seen.

It looks like this was ILM favorite Fievel is Glaque? Attn: imago. :)

what are some examples of hip salsa music?

Maybe Willie Colon and '70s Fania reissues?

yeah country blues rules, it's just a beautiful genre xxxp

I don't really understand what this list represents. About half of these seem well represented through modern reissues more than current artists, or maybe that's my take since I'm more inclined to check out older exhumed recordings than a 20 something attempting to replicate those sonics.

is the garage referred to garage rock, UK garage or US disco garage?

Yea this is confusing. If it's referring to Burger Records bullshit or anything that resembles The Black Keys, then yea garage is definitely the worst thing here.

Gonna take a wild guess that "Classic Indie Rock (1980-2000????" will get the most reactions because it has probably confronted ilx people more often than the others, even though garage rock revival is an actual landfill of shit. Whereas "Classic indie" has a pretty broad range of textures compared to most of these -- a lot of it sucks and a lot of it is good.

what are some examples of hip salsa music?

I was also thinking this. Not on my radar at all.

I assumed Garage means Nuggets/Pebbles stuff. Unfortunately hipsters have heard this music over the decades and decided to make more of it themselves.

This list seems good as far as hipster record store categories, like Boomkat or Forced Exposure or whatever, but yeah it makes the most sense in terms of reissues for most of these genres.

(I voted noise btw)

smashing FP on enochroot's RRK diss

what are some examples of hip salsa music?

not entirely sure it's hip but there's lots of really raw Colombian Salsa that I love, with Fruko perhaps being the deity of it. This one totally rules.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K18qzUeVxh8

I don't really know a lot about Private Press Singer-Songwriters, but that sounds pretty bad to me

Ian is not selling it too well

the best garage rock revival was probably a lot of the Oblivians stuff and adjacent affiliate bands/solo projects, plus a lot of the music on SFTRI. maybe some of the stuff like A-Bones too.

the closer the garage bands got to sounding like Jet, the worse they were obv.

the band that opened for stereolab in brooklyn in october was like the end of 'unobtrusive music'. they were idk a smooth jazz/disco-funk wedding band, overly self-conscious with that mac tonight look. def one of the most nauseating things i've ever seen.

It looks like this was ILM favorite Fievel is Glaque? Attn: imago. :)

― Random Restaurateur (Jordan), Thursday, May 18, 2023 10:48 AM (fifteen minutes ago)

Yes, they're great! But seeing them opening for Stereolab was indeed an odd experience, a lot of moments where I wondered if it was meant to sound the way it did. Lots of aggressive turns away from tonality and incongruous skronky guitar solos amidst all the smoothness and scat singing.

Almost put deep house tbh.

― ian, Thursday, May 18, 2023 4:18 PM (forty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

techno is hipper now and clearly worse imo

kinda fake 'soulfulness' is so much better than kinda fake 'future visions'

That's a good example of hipster salsa, love it. Maybe similar to funk, soul, reggae, lots of other genres where the living contemporary version doesn't have the gritty '70s recording aesthetic and the hipsters are continually digging for more unheard versions from the past.

what are some examples of hip salsa music?

When Fania's catalog was reissued on CD in the mid-2000s it got a big press push and a lot of critics hopped on board (me included). Since then a bunch of labels have been unearthing great stuff from all over, including multiple compilations on the Soundway and Vampisoul labels, including the Fruko album posted above, which rules. It's as close as salsa ever got to punk rock. There's a whole lot of hipster-embraced Latin music, including Peruvian chicha and Colombian "Afrosound"; I wrote about some of this stuff last year.

I kinda don’t give a fuck about much new music so yes this list is mostly about old music smsnd my experiences with record collectors. Also half a joke re: the maligned genres thread and half trolling for challenging opinions.

Although given the age of most folk fans you can bet that a lot of them are entering the Daily Mail phase of their existences, old socialists ending up railing against wokery/immigrants etc!

Well, fans maybe, but in terms of actual musicians I think the Brit Folk ppl have mostly held the line admirably. Helps that unlike the boomer rockers few of them got rich off the stuff.

The hippest music is always old, imo. Anything that's happening in the present can always be dismissed as a flash in the pan, old stuff has the instant cred of having "survived".

lol not in dance music land

but it does have to mine some mostly forgotten micro trend from 1997 or something to be hip

as much as I love dance music from the 90s, I feel like the fetishization of the "classics" has been crowding out the future-forward mindset that helps keep things fresh

Sue Stewards book Salsa! Is a decent history I think. May have been outdone since it was released .
Apparently David Took did a mixtape of the genre for her which knocked her out and she took a deep dive into researching the music.
I'm not sure if the discography still sstands as the best starting points.seems compilations she recommended at the time have been overtaken by far more comprehensive sets and artists have much better loved sets listed on RYM but it is several decades since the book appeareed.

smashing FP on enochroot's RRK diss

― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Thursday, May 18, 2023

I obviously have no idea what sub-genre RRK was working in, but nonetheless that picture is exactly what free jazz sounds like to me. My upper limit is like Mwandishi or so.

I'd describe Rahsaan Roland Kirk's music as more soulful than skroky.

In my experience lots of trad music is about stealing, making really bad romantic decisions, and dying tragically.

Not sure how that aligns with conservative values

RRK was not free jazz.

tbh I like all of these, even if I feel some are "overrated" from time to time ... I have an irrational loathing for "The Girl from Ipanema" ... I had a roommate in the 90s who would play that song on repeat for hours (who was also annoying) so I voted Tropicalia even though I really only dislike that one song that is basically associated with that genre.

also for a while "The Girl from Ipanema" was used as hold music for some horrible conglomerate like the phone company or something? ... like 20 years ago, idk?

the girl from ipanema is bossa nova, not tropicalia

tropicalia possibly my favorite of all these

my deep apologies to the genre of Tropicalia, clearly my uninformed vote in this ilx poll has caused great harm to so many

lol

Tropicalia is basically Brazilian psych ...but it still represents that soft, curtains-blowing-in-the-wind side of Brazilian music that suuuuucks. The only Brazilian stuff I like is from the north of the country, with huge pounding drums. Samba, bossa nova, and tropicalia all go in the "no thanks" pile.

The only Brazilian stuff I like is from the north of the country, with huge pounding drums

i think I've heard some of this, and it totally slays

my actual boring answer is that all these genres, including the specific releases that hipsters have fetishized over the years, vary greatly in quality, so i have to abstain from voting

Tropicalia is basically Brazilian psych

it is SO much more than that! crazy imo to write it off based on having such a narrow idea of what it is.

It's all part of the same thing. I like the samba batucada stuff best too (made this playlist recently), but it's basically indoor vs outdoor versions of the same music, or at least very related.

xp

The only Brazilian stuff I like is from the north of the country

this is also crazy to me. there is an unbelievable amount of Brazilian music and taking such a miniscule view of it just feels like supreme musical arrogance.

well i guess you got your shitty challops ian

Yeah, crazy to throw out some of the most harmonically (and rhythmically) advanced music ever because it's "soft" or got marketed as lounge/chill-out music in the U.S.

some people just don't like "soft" sounding music, just like some people are anti-free jazz or anti-industrial or idk, don't like "hard" sounding music ... i don't like new age or smooth jazz ...

I only like Dark Smooth Jazz and Nu Age

Notoriously soft sounding Tom Zé.

Hard Bop is a subgenre of "Japanese"

― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes)

god dammit, one of my least favorite things about /mu/core is that it seems like these days more people have heard ryo fukui than bill evans (_scenery_: 8,383 rym ratings; _waltz for debby_: 4,505 rym ratings)

LISTEN TO MORE BILL EVANS MOTHERFUCKERS

/mu/core is the worst, i hate how much music i love is just shit fucked up self-loathing 4channers crate dug

private press singer/songwriter should probably be ruled out because 99% of it is just boring people singing about how much they love jesus

i like the little boogaloo i've heard but i had no idea it was hip. part of me still thinks of ricky ricardo when i hear the genre brought up. sort of a descendent of afro-cuban jazz?? maybe?

ricky ricardo played straight mambo, no? too early for boogaloo I think.

Notoriously soft sounding Tom Zé.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, May 18, 2023 11:29 AM (fifteen minutes ago)

lol ... y'all can make me feel guilty for not liking the stuff y'all like

but tbh ... it's like the people who through some weird quirk think cilantro tastes like soap ... and that's how they experience cilantro, and no matter how much you try to shame them for it or extoll the awesomeness of cilantro, they still have that taste ... and that's me and the music I just don't like. However I do like cilantro

i think that's different than implying that certain regional preferences for brazilian music are for gay pussies?

Sarah, I think it's fair to say bossa nova is "soft sounding". It's dumb to say tropicália is, much like it's dumb to categorize it as "Brazilian psych". It's not taste I'm being snarky about here, it's the dismissiveness.

xpost

ricky ricardo played straight mambo, no? too early for boogaloo I think.

― Daniel_Rf

yeah now that you mention it i think i just mix up "boogaloo" and "babalu"

first time i heard boogaloo was when bob dylan played "why is woody sad?" by bobby pauneto on his radio show, he said he thought it sounded like a song-poem. song-poems are probably the only genre with a worse hit rate than private press singer/songwriter...

"dark smooth jazz" is probably like... i mean my favorite record of the year so far is the one that mixes progged out weather channel smooth jazz with death metal vocals. at least i'm assuming there's only one record this year like that, i'm probably wrong on that. but i bet you... wait, hold on, "dark smooth jazz", isn't that just like Bohren und der Club of Gore? god i forgot those guys existed

boogaloo is early (mid 60s?) joe bataan, ray baretto, eddie palmieri, harvey averne, joe cuba, tito puente, sabu martinez, willie bobo, etc etc

all of these artists get folded into salsa in the late 70s, how i break it down in my head is if they’re wearing mod suits, playing in small combos and singing in english (“whoa whoa, we got latin soul!!”) then it’s boogaloo, once they start wearing disco suits and doing 15 minute jams with huge groups and singing primarily in spanish etc then it’s salsa

Tropicalia started in Bahia ffs... oof ILM, why did i ever come back sadlol. stirmonster otm...

Not the one that mixes yacht rock songwriting/singing with death metal drumming?

xp

My main reference for boogaloo is how it got folded into hard bop and soul jazz in search of hits, ie Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder" being the big one, but there seemed to be a period in the late '60s where every jazz record had to have a boogaloo tune. And the drummers basically approached it like a funky bossa nova.

I don't have beef with any of these but if I had to pick one... industrial/noise is probably the one where I'm least curious at this point in my life to acquire a deeper familiarity.

i think that's different than implying that certain regional preferences for brazilian music are for gay pussies?

― budo jeru

vanguarda paulista: soft music for gay pussies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-W5wlk8QsI

oof ILM, why did i ever come back sadlol. stirmonster otm...

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:56 (two minutes ago) link

for terrible hot takes???

boogaloo is early (mid 60s?) joe bataan, ray baretto, eddie palmieri, harvey averne, joe cuba, tito puente, sabu martinez, willie bobo, etc etc

Exactly. It's a specifically New York music, too, blending Latin rhythms and horn styles with soul, R&B, early funk and even rock 'n' roll and doo-wop. The evolution from bugalu to salsa is something I wrote about last year.

FTR, although there's a lot of Brazilian music I don't like, there's a lot that I do like, and for some reason a couple of different editors think I know a fair amount about it, so I've been able to write about it at some length in the past few years for The Wire and Bandcamp Daily, interviewing Flora Purim and Hermeto Pascoal and reviewing a lot of the weirder albums from Azymuth members and whatnot. And I interviewed one of the brothers from Os Mutantes about 15 years ago. Just to say that I'm not a total ignoramus when it comes to this shit — I just have preferences.

Another preference I have is that I would prefer not to listen to Bill Evans if possible. Sorry!

re: hard bop, I often think of an particular exchange between OP* and a certain JAPANESE author buying dozens of hard bop LPs from him. I really don't know why tbqh... but anyways when I saw said author a few days later I asked him about hard bop and he said at the cafe he owned he had over 10k LPs for customers to choose from and he wanted to have options to even the most picky/prickly clientele.

*<3u iaîn

Not the one that mixes yacht rock songwriting/singing with death metal drumming?

xp

― Random Restaurateur (Jordan)

i can't say for sure we're not talking about the same record!

xp wow way to JAZZ KISSA AND TELL

Another preference I have is that I would prefer not to listen to Bill Evans if possible. Sorry!

― but also fuck you (unperson)

it wasn't a universal thing. i guess i'd say i'd be genuinely curious to hear from someone who likes ryo fukui but has heard and doesn't like bill evans as to what they think fukui has that evans doesn't!

Cilantro-swing is my favorite genre

I'm not familiar with Fukui at all, but I generally don't have much use for that nodding-out/don't-wake-the-baby style of jazz piano... put your whole forearm into it, I say!

what they think fukui has that evans doesn't!

Obscurity?

my deep apologies to the genre of Tropicalia, clearly my uninformed vote in this ilx poll has caused great harm to so many

― sarahell, Thursday, 18 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Thank you

Not the one that mixes yacht rock songwriting/singing with death metal drumming?

xp

― Random Restaurateur (Jordan)

i can't say for sure we're not talking about the same record!

Ok, I have a very clear memory of listening to this record online (and I think posting it somewhere to ILM), but now I can't find it anywhere and it's making me think I hallucinated it. I think Greg Fox was on drums???

Tropicalia today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXX6L_fXuzk

Just to say that I'm not a total ignoramus when it comes to this shit

fair enough. i have been to Brazil many times, heard lots and lots of Brazilian music from all eras, collaborated on music with, and then supported Os Mutantes and helped run a Brazilian reissue label, but would still consider myself pretty much a total ignoaramus simply by nature of the depth and volume of music that has been made and released there, which is truly breathtaking.

hard bop is great!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b7/Hard_Bop_%28album%29.jpg

music is pretty great.

if u gonna bop u better bop hard

bill evans looks like a member of kraftwerk, no idea why he’s not more hip

engagement with a handful of artists and albums :

Tropicalia
Free Jazz!!
Musique Concrete
Northern Soul
Psychedelic/Acid Folk
Hard Bop
Dub
Japanese (Psych)
Garage
Dancehall

more than a handful:

Classic Indie Rock (1980-2000???? argue w me here please)
Krautrock
Industrial/Noise

no to minimal engagement, maybe one comp max:

Private Press Singer-Songwriter
Country Blues
West Coast Psychedelic Rock
English Folk
Ska (original only)
Salsa
Boogaloo

Original ska is awesome

it's all awesome, mostloy, that's why it's so fun

btw is it Garage Rock or UK Garage?

It's the Garage where they started Apple

hate to say to that unperson poster, but sorry, you're pretty dumb about brazilian music. if you say something as stupid as 'samba is soft', hate to tell you, you know shit.

which doesn't mean you can review albums by brazillian artists. just saying, be a bit more humble?

can't review, sorry

all music are bad

Write in vote for British

which doesn't mean you can review albums by brazillian artists. just saying, be a bit more humble?

― fpsa

turns out that unperson poster is actually actually jerry shirley, doesn't get much more humble than that

i do like hard bop but the thing i always think of is that my copy of john coltrane's "the olatunji concert" somehow got tagged as "hard bop". great hard bop record, that one.

Obscurity?

― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes)

that's the thing, it's getting to the point where fukui is better-known among a certain demographic than evans is...

Ok, I have a very clear memory of listening to this record online (and I think posting it somewhere to ILM), but now I can't find it anywhere and it's making me think I hallucinated it. I think Greg Fox was on drums???

― Random Restaurateur (Jordan)

nah i'm thinking of the newest fire-toolz record, the new liturgy record is really nice too tho (fox isn't on that one mind)

Yeah this was something else, it's driving me crazy

Genres missing:

Canadian novelty alt-rock
Swedish K-Pop
Nu-gaze
90s Tribute Album Remixes
Spoonman

the production on that O Pacto youtube xyzzzz posted is wild ... thank you!

That's baile funk, which just keeps getting better.

thanking you kate for this all time scold-

LISTEN TO MORE BILL EVANS MOTHERFUCKERS

and unperson for that link!

(also small chuckle at bill evans getting brought up and the cliche "BUT HE DOESN'T SWING!!" retort almost immediately following. "things repeat forever and there never is a remedy")

the worst industrial/noise is more unlistenable than the worst of anything else here, that's getting my vote

ha I feel that exact same way about private press SSW stuff, by a wide margin (sorry ian)

Fun fact:

"Now I didn't call the music I was doing `free jazz.' Someone [at the Atlantic record label] named it that, put a Jackson Pollock painting on it and called it `Free Jazz.'"

the production on that O Pacto youtube xyzzzz posted is wild ... thank you!

11/10.

I always mean to dig for more new baile funk on soundcloud, but there are some gems in these threads:

baile funk - search and destroy

rolling baile funk 2021

maybe wrong thread, but anyone wanting to hear bill evans doing not "LOUNGE PIANO MUSIC" check out living time. it may confirm your hatred of not only bill evans, but also free jazz! hooray!

around the same time as _symbiosis_ with the claus ogerman orchestra which isn't as "free jazz" as _living time_ but isn't quite lounge.

to me bill evans isn't just "lounge piano music", he's lounge piano music suffused with as much pain and loss as, like, gloria ann taylor

ryo fukui otoh just kinda sounds like lounge piano music for the "lo-fi hip-hop beats" generation imo. that's probably not fair to him, i'm old.

harsh but fair imo

also thanks for the vanguarda paulista link

idk how anybody expects to sustain a convo on a thread like this, i just sort of pop in and out

I sometimes collaborate with a Texan songwriter who lives in Maryland but who (I think by virtue of a diplomatic career) is decently well versed in Brazilian music and frequently writes and sings in Portuguese.

This may have been the only time I have combined bouzouki and bodhran, only to be completely drowned out by a lead triangle.

https://www.reverbnation.com/ceroe/song/32457769-bom-dia-neila

idk how anybody expects to sustain a convo on a thread like this, i just sort of pop in and out

― budo jeru, Thursday, May 18, 2023 3:00 PM

idk i kinda like it!

and i appreciate kate's internet cult(ure)-informed thoughts because i willfully ignored all that shit forever and i can get the cliff's notes on shit like why "the kids" sleep on bill evans.

(never heard fukui, checking out now. two tracks in and yeah these guys definitely dug sunday at the village vanguard)

i'm not dissing the quality of (most) posts, i'm just saying i never have the fucking energy to keep track of it all

ahhhhh, i'm old, "keeping track of it all" hasn't been a goal of mine for a while. i just pop in and obsessively track a thread for a day or so and then i get bored and ghost for a week or a month or six months.

the only way to do ilm afaic

ha I feel that exact same way about private press SSW stuff, by a wide margin (sorry ian)

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Thursday, 18 May 2023 21:26 (yesterday) link

you don't need to apologize to me, buddy. the vast majority of that stuff is terrible! but like in all types of music there are plenty of lovely records.

"Japanese" free jazz

jazz critics shitting on Bill Evans, now I've seen everything

Thank you for the laughs, message board

Bill Evans rules

"jazz critics"

A certain kind of Country Rock deserves mention here, I think - Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, Mike Nesmith, ppl like Townes Van Zandt, the more obscure stuff on the Numero Wayfaring Strangers series. Some overlap with the private press singer/songwriter stuff I guess.

Yeah that’s a viable choice. My personal gripe with that stuff is that people will gobble it up but ignore every $2 kris kristofferson record, say. Whatever!

Kristofferson rules. But yeah it's a genre where the uber hip and the uber not hip (Eagles, Linda Ronstad) rub shoulders.

Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, Mike Nesmith, ppl like Townes Van Zandt

these are all great though

lol well yeah, I don't think I dislike any of the music discussed itt

Once again.., it’s all good!! Which is what baked it a funny question. IMO.

"jazz critics"

― xyzzzz__, Friday, May 19, 2023 8:32 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it is my understanding that a person who writes for Downbeat and has authored several books on the subject of jazz and jazz artists is a jazz critic but please correct me if I am wrong

I was just getting mad online, don't worry, no correction required.

^^^ this is the vibe

^^^ this is the vibe

"Japanese" free jazz

― xyzzzz__

one of my least favorite genres is j-jazz, because first off it's just fucking jazz, these guys played with the american jazz groups, masabumi kikuchi was gonna be in a group with miles, joe henderson is backed by japanese musicians on _in japan_, making its distinct genre to me carries a whiff of inferiority which isn't really warranted. but more importantly the genre name sounds like a stutter - speaking as someone with a speech impediment i'm sensitive to that kind of shit

"jazz critics"

― xyzzzz__

again i don't like jazz critics, but only because the only jazz critic i can think of is nat hentoff, who's also a big name in libertarianism

unless you count charles mingus's shrink, do they count as a jazz critic?

otm.. especially the point about RYM/Evans/Fukui. J-jazz is a sub-genre of anime soundtracks.

i collect rare obi strips

"one of my least favorite genres is j-jazz"

Btw I was mostly joking. I don't really know about j-jazz I was mostly talking about guys like Takayanagi and Abe who, from what I've read, were fairly hostile to the conservation-y nature of jazz in Japan and wanted to carve out their own space. It was mostly done by the late 70s but I approached jazz in Japan through them.

joe henderson is backed by japanese musicians on _in japan_

this album smashes btw

also i'm gonna start using the genre tag e-jazz to describe people like bud powell, dexter gordon, and sahib shihab. the "e" can stand for "european" and "expatriate."

(which also raises the question: where's the hipster love for sahib shihab goddammit!?)

an obi strip really classes things up imo

has anyone ever cosplayed as an obi strip?

I think that the term J-Jazz may have come from those comps by BBE records, and those I don't think wanted to isolate it as a genre, just put the spotlight on some cool overlooked stuff.

Reddit types who listen to those and no US jazz are exoticizing idiots tho yeah.

i made a handy explainer for the hierarchies of j jazz

https://i.imgur.com/u9Bm5Rw.png

heh otm

even more embarrassment, i wrote makoto but meant osamu

makoto are from LA, they also shred but in a different sort of way

i endorse these prime exponents of j jazz, although only the first is "japanese" in the sense that ryo kawasaki is "japanese"

https://www.discogs.com/master/277545-Osamu-Kitajima-Osamu
https://www.discogs.com/master/408145-Makoto-Makoto
https://www.discogs.com/master/17647-Jade-Warrior-Floating-World

makoto are from san francisco, sheesh i should just hang it up

jade warrior are British… or am I ruining a joke

i think tlg is flawlessly trolling this thread. keep up the good work, friend.

i don't think tlg is trolling so much as this thread trolls itself

jade warrior is british, makoto (the band, if not the namesake bandleader) is from west coast of usa, i said only osamu is japanese, i am not trolling and unironically love all those albums, what’s not to understand

this album smashes btw

― my beard exists more than i do. (Austin)

can confirm!

xpost- just joshin trying to keep things light =)

i don't think people don't listen to bill evans because he's not _cool_ enough, i think they're just not aware! he's not part of the canon. it's a variation on "paul mccartney was in a band before wings" syndrome. when my generation found jazz it was often through _kind of blue_, but these days, if you're going through recommendation engines or whatever, it's just as likely to be _scenery_. i don't think it's a bad thing necessarily that everybody knows about _plastic love_ (when the same technology means that everybody knows about, say, matt walsh, it's more of a problem). i also don't think continuously revising the canon is a bad thing overall. i guess it's more personal grief, that lots of youngsters these days will get to know ryo fukui but won't necessarily get to know bill evans. i think that's a shame. there was a time, you know, when everybody loved bill evans.

"bill evans is ypur favorite pianist's favorite pianist."

ypur

proper trolling.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

no one talking about spiritual hat jazz itt is a big branding failure on my part

or, if you think about it, unimpeachable success

thank you to everyone for voting, this is my master's thesis

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

someone actually voted "JAPANESE" lmao

also who's the stick in the mud that voted dub? you also hate ice cream too, you absolute killjoy? sheesh.

finally, are we to surmise that the ones that received 0 votes are still the pinnacle of musical fashion?

I can live with these results. The one person who voted tropicália gets jail for a thousand years obv.

industrial being number one is very unexpected. it strikes me as the least fashionable of all of these! or I guess, most fashionable, but only in a way where it hasn't really had its moment yet. 99% of people I know--music nerds included--still seem to think of trent reznor as someone who emerged fully formed from nothing (nb under gen x years old)

because it’s coupled with noise, I assume it refers to throbbing gristle and whitehouse and stuff rather than god lived underwater

lol yes that was my take as well, "harsh noise"

i love that stuff, didn't realize it was so bad and hated

You never thought people might hate Whitehouse??

Not as loved as "Unpleasant Ambient"

xp i don't mean whitehouse specifically, obviously they're hateable for extra-musical reasons. but they're marginal, you can hate whitehouse and still like noise

or you can hate noise and still like whitehouse. i once put whitehouse on to a very noise agnostic audience thinking it would shock them, but they went down a storm. so much so that i had to do it again by popular request.

What a beautiful world

Surprised northern soul got three votes. The people may be insufferable but the music is sublime

Would guess those votes came from brits thinking of the cultural baggage more than the music. Despite its digger origins it's a much more mainstream thing here.

I would be upset about noise winning this but noise doesn't need you to like it. I'll be over in the corner with my saw and contact mics, having a blast.

Not as loved as "Unpleasant Ambient"

― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes)

i mean i think that genre is just called "dark ambient", isn't it?

i like noise! i just don't like harsh noise wall. it has to be _good_ noise. that's what a lot of people can't wrap their head around, i have _preferences_ as to what sort of noise i prefer.

my objection to "northern soul" is that it doesn't refer to the musicians themselves, but to the fans. gloria jones lived and recorded "tainted love" in LA!

Btw I was mostly joking. I don't really know about j-jazz I was mostly talking about guys like Takayanagi and Abe who, from what I've read, were fairly hostile to the conservation-y nature of jazz in Japan and wanted to carve out their own space. It was mostly done by the late 70s but I approached jazz in Japan through them.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, May 19, 2023 7:41 AM (four days ago)

lol Abe and Takayanagi are closer to Noise/Industrial than "Jazz"

though the drummer that played on some of those albums -- I did actually see him play a free jazz gig -- but with two Americans and a Brit

Not really. Takayanagi's "Gradual Projection" is on purpose quiet. I'd need to double check but a lot of those guys around that group played with Bailey and Milford Graves when they toured Japan.

Also industrial/noise has a different politics, even if at times it might sound similar.

Yep, Mototeru Takagi (aka Lee Won Hui), Kaoru Abe, Toshinori Kondo, and Toshiyuki Tsuchitori are all on both Milford Graves's Meditation Among Us (1977) and Derek Bailey's Duo & Trio Improvisations (1978). I know that Graves and Bailey performed in Europe with Min Tanaka (Revenant teased a possible release back in 1996, but evidently nothing came of it), but I don't know if any of the aforementioned musicians joined them on those or other dates.

And Takayanagi's Free Form Suite includes his rendition of "You Don't Know What Love Is," in addition to a couple of other similarly understated (and acoustic) tracks -- not really close to noise/industrial.

Yes, and when the average person thinks of "jazz" and music that sounds like "jazz" they are thinking the aforementioned Bill Evans, rather than Derek Bailey ... like I was making that connection to noise/industrial based on what the music sounded like, rather than how the musicians classified themselves

Also industrial/noise has a different politics, even if at times it might sound similar.

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, May 24, 2023 7:52 AM (one hour ago)

uh ... what?

That's definitely true re: when someone thinks of "jazz," but I feel like calling Takayanagi more noise-adjacent than jazz-adjacent leaves out maybe 60% of his work.

xp

I remember reading somewhere that Abe thought Graves was a bit of a big head/show off, which sounds like more of a cultural clash than anything heard in the music they made together. Abe and Takayanagi totally within the jazz tradition.

fair enough -- I guess the point I was trying to make was that a lot of noise musicians have been influenced by him

as in you can see the noise aesthetic in what is coming from a jazz tradition and pushing the boundaries of that tradition

Definitely.

Also industrial/noise has a different politics, even if at times it might sound similar.

you misunderstand industrial/noise. the fash shit represents a small subset. also there is a lot of free jazz/noise crossover

I remember reading somewhere that Abe thought Graves was a bit of a big head/show off, which sounds like more of a cultural clash than anything heard in the music they made together.

Likely a cultural clash, but also, if you were performing with Milford's band, regardless of whoever else was onstage, it was Milford's band. He often did a lot of interaction/engagement with audiences, likely in ways Abe had not really witnessed before. For his part, Milford spoke very highly of Abe. Over a decade after Abe's passing, when talking about him to one of his classes, Milford was nearly moved to tears recalling their work together.

also there is a lot of free jazz/noise crossover

― c u (crüt), Wednesday, May 24, 2023 9:36 AM

genuine q: where does stuff like john zorn's painkiller fall? is that just considered free jazz?

If there's a genre called free rock then there I guess

genuine q: where does stuff like john zorn's painkiller fall? is that just considered free jazz?

― my beard exists more than i do. (Austin), Wednesday, May 24, 2023 10:00 AM (forty-eight minutes ago)

John Zorn is his own genre kinda?

novelty schlock

although tbf they'd've been half decent with massimo pupillo or petter eldh or someone instead of laslwell

Yes, and when the average person thinks of "jazz" and music that sounds like "jazz" they are thinking the aforementioned Bill Evans, rather than Derek Bailey ... like I was making that connection to noise/industrial based on what the music sounded like, rather than how the musicians classified themselves

― sarahell, Wednesday, 24 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

The average person is probably thinking of someone who is in the jazz charts doing a copy of Bill Evans. We can both play this game.

you misunderstand industrial/noise. the fash shit represents a small subset. also there is a lot of free jazz/noise crossover

― c u (crüt), Wednesday, 24 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I wasn't really thinking of the fash stuff. I think improvisation comes from an entirely different outlook than what it is to make industrial music or noise like Merzbow.

totally disagree, see e.g. Arcane Device or Thomas Dimuzio for improv theory with noise tools

and most early Merzbow is literally improvised noise made with junk objects!

the recorded wolf eyes + anthony braxton performance is all-time

borbetomagus too

The average person is probably thinking of someone who is in the jazz charts doing a copy of Bill Evans. We can both play this game.

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, May 24, 2023 8:45 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

but only one of you can be the most annoying person in the room about it, i have my bet on you :)

also there are like a zillion local mini-scenes where free improv + noise are in constant communication and collaboration xp

but only one of you can be the most annoying person in the room about it, i have my bet on you :)

― ꙮ (map), Wednesday, 24 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

So have I! I always back myself :)

The average person is probably thinking of someone who is in the jazz charts doing a copy of Bill Evans. We can both play this game.

― xyzzzz__

we should just find an average person and ask them what they think of when they think of jazz

i'd say maybe _a charlie brown christmas_ but probably people think of that as christmas music, not jazz music

and most early Merzbow is literally improvised noise made with junk objects!

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Wednesday, 24 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

That stuff comes out of a dada-ist approach. It's not rooted in jazz.

https://masamiakitamerzbow.bandcamp.com/album/door-open-at-8-am-remastered-bonus-tracks

the recorded wolf eyes + anthony braxton performance is all-time

borbetomagus too

― c u (crüt), Wednesday, 24 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I know that record but I don't see any long term associations here. Braxton has composed classical works too iirc.

This thread is really paying off thanks folks

i asked a random co-worker what she thought of when she thought of jazz and she said stan getz

it turns out she likes jazz

oh well, i tried

I def think of "improv" and "free jazz" as two very different things, both w/varying degrees of crossover to noise (which, again, I differentiate from "industrial")

Jazz is about cow

Surprised northern soul got three votes. The people may be insufferable but the music is sublime

― ian, Tuesday, May 23, 2023 5:13 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah this is weird. I hate it when a DJ plays....classic R&B and soul records!!!

Huh

My huh was an xpost to myself sirry

oh okay yeah i agree w/you

we should just find an average person and ask them what they think of when they think of jazz

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81xLhMMoRRL._AC_SX355_.jpg

i like the cut of his jib

T/S: Acker Bilk vs Herbie Mann

Average person would say Charlie Brown music

Snoopy music surely

when I was teaching (adults) in China I would sometimes ask students what music they liked, about 10% said "jazz" - by which they generally meant kenny g.

T/S: Acker Bilk vs Herbie Mann

where does al "he's the king" hirt factor into this?

lol I was gonna mention him

also Herbie Mann rules, c'mon, sure there is schlock but a lot of cool stuff as well

Not about music, just a knee-jerk reaction I had to that album cover. Something about the facial hair. The late 60s Mann band with Sonny and Linda Sharrock got pretty ferocious at times.

yeah, see also this insane LP
https://www.discogs.com/release/1366821-Herbie-Mann-Gagaku-Beyond

otm some herbie mann was decent early new age/jazz fusion. kinda ecm lite. very not bad.

also yeah- push push is one of the worst covers ever.

lol I also love hot bear disco Herbie but ymmv

stone flute is a great herbie mann album, lots of atmosphere

If you say GAPDY to the average person, they think of cargo shorts.

Landfill GAPDY

I think improvisation comes from an entirely different outlook than what it is to make industrial music or noise like Merzbow.

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, May 24, 2023 12:47 PM (ten hours ago)

are you talking about free jazz or "improvisation" in the white Euro tradition ... because free jazz (even though there have been some solid musicians who are white and from Europe who play "the music") comes from an African-American tradition where the "outlook" (and idk if you can even just say there is a solitary outlook) is a bit different? I mean, there are certain similarities between what I think of as the free jazz "outlook" and one of the "outlooks" of noise/industrial -- which has to do with a certain amount of "catharsis" (for lack of a better term), though a tendency of free jazz is to see it more of a spiritual "positive" exaltation, whereas noise can be more of an exorcism kinda? Whereas the white Euro practitioners tend to be more cerebral and controlled in how they feel/talk about what they're doing and why ... that's just my off the cuff take on it

Average person would say Charlie Brown music

― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Wednesday, May 24, 2023 2:03 PM (nine hours ago)

or ... Ella Fitzgerald or Louis Armstrong ... in re stuff like this commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQJUpg0vU_I

more jazz that an average person would be familiar with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c4_b5PHWg8

are you talking about free jazz or "improvisation" in the white Euro tradition ... because free jazz (even though there have been some solid musicians who are white and from Europe who play "the music") comes from an African-American tradition where the "outlook" (and idk if you can even just say there is a solitary outlook) is a bit different? I mean, there are certain similarities between what I think of as the free jazz "outlook" and one of the "outlooks" of noise/industrial -- which has to do with a certain amount of "catharsis" (for lack of a better term), though a tendency of free jazz is to see it more of a spiritual "positive" exaltation, whereas noise can be more of an exorcism kinda? Whereas the white Euro practitioners tend to be more cerebral and controlled in how they feel/talk about what they're doing and why ... that's just my off the cuff take on it

― sarahell, Thursday, 25 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Free jazz comes from jazz, as does Euro improv; they are both departures not only because of the "free", but because they pare it down to the act of improvisation. By doing so they can incorporate a lot more "outlooks".

Look at Braxton and the Chicago crowd who did look toward what was happening in European composition. Cecil or Sun Ra were looking back toward Ellington and also forging a path in answer to developments in composition in Europe (Ra played a solo recital; Taylor's unit records and then throwing that vocal poetry concrete record). Alice Coltrane or Ayler has a spiritual dimension but it's their improvising in a group context that allows for the expression of that dimension.

Equally the free improv guys would reject jazz but it's clearly bullshit, they might've been antagonistic but they were clearly developing the music with jazz in the background. Abe and Takayanagi's duos would not have been possible without improvisation. "Mass" projection might go down well with a noise crowd but they might walk off during "Gradual Projection". Only by looking at this stuff as an improvisation can you really join the dots.

"Noise" has a different set of roots: avant-garde electronic pieces from Varese/Nono/Xenakis, Concrete, things like Metal Machine Music, dada's junkyardisms, free jazz and improv too. But in the end -- generally speaking -- it's a lot more sculptured and has a "cathartic" sounding outcome from the off. A noise record will seldom play with the quiet.

my kneejerk reductive distinction is that "free jazz" often seems to implicitly reject notions of linear time and past vs future in a still-pretty-radical kind of way while euro style improv has a tendency to see itself as a some sort of eternally progressive vanguard in the modernist tradition (which i guess is a thing) or at least as some kind of pure postcagean endpoint that lesser music hasn't caught up with yet (even though much of it is a heritage industry at this point)

this is probably unfair to some of the musicians but not to some of the fans

I can't imagine there are too many "euro style improv" fans who aren't also fans of free jazz tbh. I see the same faces at both gigs.

A noise record will seldom play with the quiet.

I guess I am thinking of something different re: "noise" because I very much disagree with this

also this owns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUI26elO_Eg

From an interview with Bill Dixon:

https://jazztimes.com/archives/bill-dixon-veiled-odyssey/

That same year [1951] Dixon met Cecil Taylor, with whom he began to play occasionally and hold long discussions on “the plight of the black artist in America” and the future direction of jazz. At the time he was not consciously trying to create a new music.

“No, that wasn’t it at all. It’s very simple. I no longer felt the need to be playing the standard literature within the vernacular. I felt that you can’t improve on that, so there must be something else. Because how many times can you play ”Round Midnight’ or any of those beautiful tunes? All the pieces that we liked were already heavily identified with someone else’s rendition anyway. What are you going to do? Change a key every eight bars? We tried all of that. We did a lot of crazy things in those days, trying to formulate a way of thinking for yourself. We listened, we analyzed. It didn’t just happen with people standing up and blowing their brains out. This is what a lot of people don’t understand.”

hey xyzzz -- I feel like you have a fairly thoughtful and knowledgeable post re free jazz and the Euro offshoots and some of the main practitioners as far as the improvisation aspect goes. So, I'm not going to get into other things like "swing" and "playing time" and how some free jazz musicians had those jazz basics under their belts and incorporated them / played with/off those, whereas once you move further into "pure improv" territory (generally whiter and often younger) there is a tendency to disown all "gambits" and familiar structures that come from jazz. I know tarfumes knows this stuff too, so if he wants to bring it up ...

But I think you don't have that same knowledge of industrial/noise ... so you are making assertions that those of us who are more familiar are having some "wtf" type responses to ... along the lines of when I accidentally besmirched Tropicalia upthread by assuming it all sounded like The Girl From Ipanema

xp - Dixon was definitely a solid thinker as well as player -- sorry if I oversimplified earlier

euro style improv has a tendency to see itself as a some sort of eternally progressive vanguard in the modernist tradition (which i guess is a thing) or at least as some kind of pure postcagean endpoint that lesser music hasn't caught up with yet (even though much of it is a heritage industry at this point)

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Thursday, May 25, 2023 4:27 AM (two hours ago)

this is well put!

sorry if I oversimplified earlier

No apology necessary! The problem is, a fair number of histories of the music tend to be reductive (e.g., “A BUNCH OF DUDES SAID FUCK IT, WE’RE GONNA SCREAM ON OUR HORNS! AND EVERYONE HATED IT!”) and simplistic, and romanticize things in such a way that reinforces inaccuracies.

yeah, and that point about histories also brings to mind something that has made me struggle with this thread ... that in some of these genres, we are discussing only the "household names" and making generalizations based on a handful of musicians, while there are (or were) hundreds (if not thousands) of others making music in said genres ... as in, perhaps the musicians that are serving as the basis for the generalizations aren't necessarily representative of the genre as a whole?

euro style improv has a tendency to see itself as a some sort of eternally progressive vanguard in the modernist tradition (which i guess is a thing) or at least as some kind of pure postcagean endpoint that lesser music hasn't caught up with yet (even though much of it is a heritage industry at this point)

This is what's so interesting to me about talking to Peter Brötzmann — although he plays with all the Euro improv dudes (the ones who are still alive), he definitely considers himself a jazz musician where lots of them don't or didn't (Derek Bailey telling me that for him, jazz was dead by 1953!), and he considers a lot of their attempts to get "past" jazz and into "pure music" or whatever fairly absurd.

sorry to barge in with a tangential question -and maybe wrong thread- but what is the distinction between "free jazz" and "collective improvisation"? i'm always reminded of this amg review of an old keith jarrett album:

For many years, the trio of Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette has been taking jazz standards and expanding them via improvisation into an entire language that reflects not only the history but also the eternal present of jazz. Many have wondered if Jarrett would ever return to the "free" style of playing he did in the 1960s on releases for Columbia, Atlantic, and Impulse! It would be both impossible and unreasonable to expect a musician like Jarrett -- and his sidemen for that matter -- to return to the fold of an innocence they lost long ago, when they were lesser musicians than they are now. Inside Out, recorded over two nights in July 2000 in London, bridges that gap: It is completely improvised save for one tune -- an almost unbearably beautiful reading of "When I Fall in Love" -- done as an encore. Here are Jarrett, Peacock, and DeJohnette as they haven't been heard from in years, starting from silence, digging deep into the history of jazz, blues and even R&B to invent spontaneously a musical language that is trio-specific, communicative on the deepest levels of nuance, sonances, and spirit. The opening track, "From the Body," begins as a careening trip through the blues, from Memphis to St. Louis back through Mississippi to New Orleans and coming to rest in Chicago. Given how close the dialogue is here, and the expansive harmonic invention at work in the middle registers of the piano and the bass, it becomes a blur -- it's impossible to really know who is leading or following or if such a hierarchy even exists anymore. When the blues disintegrate gradually -- and momentarily -- and are replaced by what is defined in the vernacular as "free" playing, the dissonance is traipsed upon only slightly. It's not as if it doesn't belong or isn't welcome, it's just that it's a minor concern because these guys know where they are going or at least want to go. It's familiar but not well-tread or predictable; it's invigorating, knife-edge improvisation. By the time the title track fades in, listeners know that the entire fake book has been thrown out the window and the standards have been erased (or at least left in the hallmarks of collective jazz memory), in favor of this language that calls upon their dignity and verve while establishing its own propriety and basis of utterance. Does it swing? Hell yes it does, if your definition of that word is something other than cut, 4/4, or waltz time -- though some of the music played here engages those very signatures exquisitely. Most importantly, the trio of Jarrett, Peacock, and DeJohnette offers a new kind of free jazz -- one that is lyrical, tonally accessible, and musically elegant, tailored by the ears and executed with the grace of the heart. Many younger players who believe that the only way to improvise freely is to tear their chosen instrument to shreds and bleat every ounce of pain and suffering that can be extracted from it need to hear this record, badly. In it they may find the true secrets of the masters, and the sheer poetics of the improvisational artistry that is jazz.

does it need to be total skronk in order to be free jazz? or are these just scholarly terms for pedants to distinguish between stuff they like and stuff they don't?

(because honestly, if you had told me inside out was free jazz, it would have been confusing because it sounds like any other keith jarrett trio recording. maybe i'm wrong though and it doesn't need to be skronk in order to technically be free jazz)

"Hipster music" is usually shit that gets to be a pain in the ass and I dunno apart from the pioneers I don't think of dub fandom as a burdensome experience like some genres.

I don't mean the originators are burdensome - I mean that amassing records or knowledge is burdensome.

Entire books have been written, etc., but...

does it need to be total skronk in order to be free jazz? or are these just scholarly terms for pedants to distinguish between stuff they like and stuff they don't?

No, "total skronk" (aka "fire music") is one free jazz mode. But what Ornette Coleman did — highly melodic heads, eccentrically swinging rhythms, improvisation untethered to chord changes — was another. What Cecil Taylor did — piano concertos based on small melodic motifs repeatedly analyzed and reinterpreted — was another. What Wadada Leo Smith does — extremely patient improvisation based as much on powerful silences as individual notes — is another. What Roscoe Mitchell does — extreme juxtaposition, short vs long, loud vs soft, high vs low notes — is another. "Collective improvisation" is what it sounds like; a group of players start from zero. These are to some degree "scholarly terms" in that critics and professors use them more often than musicians do onstage. Young players may describe themselves as "free jazz" players, but older ones are likely to just say they play music, and not want to put labels on it.

These are to some degree "scholarly terms" in that critics and professors use them more often than musicians do onstage.

well, musicians often use these terms or refer to the musicians known for playing music in said styles when they are "offstage" and when they are booking gigs ... as in the conversations that lead up to getting onstage and playing.

i'm hardly an expert but i'd recommend val wilmer's book "as serious as your life" as a solid introduction to the variations of sound within the free jazz umbrella.

cool, thanks all!

also Peacock and DeJohnette are totally canonical free jazz players

Young players may describe themselves as "free jazz" players, but older ones are likely to just say they play music, and not want to put labels on it.

Part of it is not wanting to put labels on it -- Ornette didn't call his music "free jazz," but Atlantic did -- but most of it was the restrictions that came with those labels. As Bill Dixon said, "A 'jazz musician' is a social category. It tells you who you are, what you are capable of doing, when you should do it, how you should do it, and the kind of money you should get." Monk, Miles, Ellington, Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Mingus, and others bristled against the term "jazz" for those reasons, and many of the innovators of the new music felt similarly about the term "free jazz." They didn't think of or approach what they were doing as part of a genre, at least not in the ways genres often calcify into sets of rules and boundaries and cliches (as "free jazz" and "free improv" have since at least the mid-'80s, if not earlier).

Yeah, there's a much, much larger discussion to be had. I'll never forget when I interviewed Cecil Taylor and I used the word jazz in his presence, he practically spit it back at me. "What does that word mean? Jazz? J-a-z-z? What is j-a-z-z?" It's not to say he didn't love jazz as a listener — he would rhapsodize about Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, etc., etc. — and when he was starting out he very much wanted to be considered in that pantheon, but by the end of his life he considered it a very limiting term and no longer applicable to his work. And he was right, kinda! It's something I'm wrestling with as I write about him.

I finally got into free jazz early last year, at the age of 42, it was only after having immersed myself in 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s jazz that I really felt I could enjoy it. feel like an analog would be how I slowly (accidentally) built up my tolerance to spice and am now one of those fucking people who puts a handful of chilli powder in anything I cook.

With other music, if I'm not crazy about it I'll get bored after a few listens, but there always seems like there's more things to be found in free jazz, every time I listen there's something new. if i were on desert island discs it would be an obvious choice. The histories of jazz I've read / watched / listened to are generally very sniffy and suspicious about free jazz, you can feel them itching to call it "emperor's new clothes". Still waiting for a history of jazz which has respect for both free jazz and fusion, think I will probably be waiting forever.

sorry, extremely basic analysis, esp compared to last 30 or so posts, I'm still very new to free jazz, just feel like I can understand anyone not being into it, and then finally getting into it given the right circumstances.

There's a fine line between transcending a genre and expanding the borders of it, although I can see why Cecil preferred to think of himself as representing the former.

Part of it is not wanting to put labels on it -- Kasabian didn't call their music "landfill indie," but VICE did -- but most of it was the restrictions that came with those labels. Brett, Damon, Jarvis, Thom, Simon Fowler, Ashcroft, and others bristled against the term "britpop" for those reasons, and many of the innovators of the new music felt similarly about the term "landfill indie."

Still waiting for a history of jazz which has respect for both free jazz and fusion, think I will probably be waiting forever.

They're discographies rather than histories, though the final edition is in chronological order, but the various editions of The Penguin Guide to Jazz did this (though maybe less enthusiastically for fusion than free).

At this point in my life I'm comfortable with my position that free jazz/improv is more fun to participate in that it is to listen to.

Also I prefer it as a color in the crayon box, a place that a band can go rather than say a total avoidance of any steady rhythm as a matter of principle. Inside/outside.

i recently got the Round Trip Ornette Coleman box set, amazing, and do prefer this kind of free jazz where they are straining against and exceeding structure but still rooted in structure, to post Ascension type stuff

https://store.bluenote.com/collections/tone-poet-series/products/ornette-coleman-round-trip-ornette-coleman-on-blue-note-6lp-box-set-blue-note-tone-poet-series

penguin vol 4 is good if dated by now, you have to add a couple of stars to anything too funky or poppy for their liking and there's way too much vaguely jazz adjacent euro stuff in there (if you're going to include AMM you might as well include say EW&F) - but their choices esp with the canonical artists are mostly great and not always obvious

I wish there was an updated version that had space for the old stuff as well as recent UK jazz, old and new latin and african stuff, rap/r&b/techno inflected stuff etc but the market for a book like that is probably mostly in this thread

those are a bunch of great and too often underappreciated ornette albums in that set

The best actual critical writing on free/out jazz that I go back to regularly includes:

Amiri Baraka, Black Music (scene reports from the time, some really good interviews and interesting analysis)
Valerie Wilmer, As Serious As Your Life (profiles of musicians more than in-depth musical analysis but she was on the scene and the players knew and trusted her)
various Gary Giddins books (Riding On A Blue Note, Rhythm-a-Ning, Visions Of Jazz: The First Century, Weather Bird) - these are particularly useful because Giddins started writing in the mid 70s so he was covering the loft scene and continued writing about edgier black artists even when that music was extremely critically unfashionable in the 80s and 90s. Lots of writing on David Murray, Arthur Blythe, et al.

those are a bunch of great and too often underappreciated ornette albums in that set

Especially The Empty Foxhole. On New York Is Now I don't think that Elvin Jones understood or appreciated what Ornette was doing.

Empty fox holt absolutely slaps. Love Denardo.

I don’t play free jazz but I love listening to it

The world needs people like you!

my kneejerk reductive distinction is that "free jazz" often seems to implicitly reject notions of linear time and past vs future in a still-pretty-radical kind of way while euro style improv has a tendency to see itself as a some sort of eternally progressive vanguard in the modernist tradition (which i guess is a thing) or at least as some kind of pure postcagean endpoint that lesser music hasn't caught up with yet (even though much of it is a heritage industry at this point)

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Thursday, 25 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

In the end American free jazz musicians played with euro free improv people. Bailey did make that standards album before he died -- which looking back I didn't really like (it's not as if we all know the euro guys can play this stuff in their sleep). Looking back that was an odd episode but Bailey's "standards" album did show how much the "jazz is dead" stuff was talk by him.

So yes that's pretty reductive. Especially at this point.

I guess I am thinking of something different re: "noise" because I very much disagree with this

― c u (crüt), Thursday, 25 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Yes think we are talking across each other here. Alan Licht is an example of someone who has done a range of things within a narrow field. Noise/industrial is a lot more pre-meditated. I'll listen to that YT you posted tomorrow.

Borbetomagus I would say is improv/jazz that could be mistaken for a noise record. It's a distinction that may only exist in my head.

Noise/industrial is a lot more pre-meditated

lol this is also categorically untrue, plenty of folks use process or chance elements

it's weird to me that you aren't familiar with stuff like P16D4 or RLW

(which I think you would like!)

lol this is also categorically untrue, plenty of folks use process or chance elements

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Thursday, 25 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Sure there's more to it but in jazz or improv there is constant back and forth to what the group is doing.

I absolutely love a lot of processed, noise and music with chance elements btw.

there is constant back and forth to what the group is doing.

oh my god come on, this is also true of many live noise collabs

https://redpoppyarthouse.org/event/emily-hay-thomas-dimuzio-20180810/

I will have a listen to the YT in the link later.

what about free jazz guys who play solo though

maybe in that case there is a constant back and forth with ~the spirit of jazz~

speaking of which i recently got a great solo trombone record by albert manglesdorff called Tromboneliness. I love it. It's great. I'd even call it jazz.

was it free jazz or did you pay for it

i paid for it but it was at a flea market so it was cheap.

Borbetomagus I would say is improv/jazz that could be mistaken for a noise record. It's a distinction that may only exist in my head.

― xyzzzz__, Thursday, May 25, 2023 5:34 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

See, I don't feel that Borbetomagus - who I like, and have seen live, on purpose! - has anything to do with jazz

exactly, like their collaborative work with Voice Crack who are also very much in that "improv but using noise" zone

Moslang & Guhl (of Voice Crack) are a particularly good example of these blurred lines as they started out in the euro improv scene before mutating into a "noise" group

I saw Voice Crack live once here in Eugene, OR, at an afternoon matinee, maybe 1998? there were four people there. I bought two records, still have one. they were definitely doing a constant back and forth as a duo, playing with their broken machines and electronics

They're as much jazz as someone like Evan Parker, but I guess that's what you're all arguing about?
I file those records with my jazz records; maybe not everyone would, but that's okay.

i should have put in this poll:
-italo disco
-black metal
-disco rap
-instrumental acoustic guitar music (here's a fun one to argue about)
-house music

house is not a genre

Ok sorryv

house is a feeling

oh i definitely would have voted black metal in that case.

xp sorry couldn’t resist ;-)

Sure there's more to it but in jazz or improv there is constant back and forth to what the group is doing.

lol, sometimes there isn't ... sometimes it's just a handful of dudes doing their micro-repertoire simultaneously or taking turns playing and sitting out (or doing cymbal swells), or just one person playing over everyone else and going on too long and just not gaf ... which is something you also will see in sets by noise groups with more than one member ... I mean, there will be differences in approach based on the instrumentation, as in, it's easier to be "in the moment" and "responsive" with a drumset or a sax compared to a laptop or sampler ... though there are some laptop dudes (and femmes) that can really bleep-bloop well with others in an improvised setting ... shout out to Tim Perkis and the aforementioned Mr Dimuzio

"or just one person playing over everyone else and going on too long and just not gaf"

Not everything in improvised music is good.

--

exactly, like their collaborative work with Voice Crack who are also very much in that "improv but using noise" zone

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Friday, 26 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Improv does not have to have jazz instruments. Those records with voice crack are improv. There are noises but noise music is something else.

I think you just don't want to admit that noise can be as varied as improv

i should have put in this poll:
-italo disco
-black metal
-disco rap
-instrumental acoustic guitar music (here's a fun one to argue about)
-house music

I think if you're gonna go into dance music balearic is a no brainer, had thought of bringing it up before but the fact that it's more of a revisionist attitude towards a bunch of music than a genre itself makes it a bit complex. Def need to specify with House imo, so many countries you can hear very not-hip house (not hip-house) on mainstream radio.

I'll admit I'm not hip to disco rap, d'you mean old school hip-hop with disco beats? "Personality Jock" and stuff like that?

Instrumental guitar music def a good shout. Think maybe Afrobeat should be on here? Or perhaps more the dancefloor oriented Nigeran disco stuff that Soundway and such compile, to distinguish from not-hip NPR listeners?

i guess i mean stuff like early sugar hill records and such? i dunno, it's not something i've really listened to much of, just heard the term tossed around

i mean i don't listen to dance music at all so i have no idea what i'm talking about.

yeah "disco rap" makes sense to me when talking about those old Sugar Hill records

jeez, why don't we just poll everything except mainstream pop (which critics and hipsters also embrace, maybe more so than anything else in this poll) and praise music

Follow the fuck along Paul!!!! I like all the music in the original poll. It’s more interesting to me to choose the worst of a bunch of things than the worst of the worst. There are plenty of other threads to read.

"worst of a bunch of good things" sorry.

ian what exactly is "boogaloo"?

Lady if you have to ask

A type of Latin soul music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iNUI--_sOw

boogaloo defined here

Hip Genres & Musical Styles: Which Is The Worst??

Yes it's the third time it's been tackled itt, thought sleeve was maybe doing a funny.

I don’t get jokes a lot

no I just can't read, carry on

oh i definitely would have voted black metal in that case.

― my beard exists more than i do. (Austin), Thursday, May 25, 2023 8:13 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is basically the only genre of music about which i think "hipsters just pretend to like this to be annoying"

i would be really annoyed if somebody made that accusation about me and any number of my musical interests. but, i just feel like i'm definitely right about this

No microtonal metal no credibility.

Black Metal surely hasn't been hip for a decade?

ten years isn't very long

I'm sure it would be if you didn't like it and were forced to listen for that time!

i'm definitely thinking of a particular era c. 2010, that's true

What year was The Wire's Subterranean Metal issue?

2005. I thought it was later.

'Subterranean Metal' primer in the Wire

Improv does not have to have jazz instruments. Those records with voice crack are improv. There are noises but noise music is something else.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, May 26, 2023 1:43 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

and what, do you think it is? I mean, when you get to stuff like the Borbeto/VC collab and the those Sonic Youth experimental records (and many more), the "improv vs noise" distinctions are totally arbitrary in terms of what "genre" they sound most like as well as cultural associations

I think you just don't want to admit that noise can be as varied as improv

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Friday, May 26, 2023 6:25 AM (two hours ago)

sleeve otm

blows my mind that P*tchfork ever had a regular black metal column

Hipsters can jump straight to the "fascism" part without making a stopover in black metal fandom.

wow a reductive black metal take, now I've seen it all

take that stuff here:

No thread for hipster fascism, surely some mistake!

yall think black metal has more nazis than industrial and noise music? I'd be curious.

we definitely need a poll for genres with the most nazis

fascism more like trash-ism amirite ppl

you mean landfill fascism?

ok lol

the industrial/noise fascists of old always seemed like they started out doing an offensive bit, became actually fascist, and then completely forgot what they were doing and are now an unintentional bit themselves

mh - loltm

if every interview or live music appearance turns into "let me tell you why I'm not racist and this is a provocateur thing" then you're just tiresome and need a new shtick. especially when every show's been this way for decades!!

losing the plot and thinking "provocateur" means "irritating to everyone"

speaking of an unintentional bit, i remember the first time i heard abt death in june and how scary and edgy they were. then i saw a video and it was dudes dressed for paintball (ghillie suit, maybe?) doing "white dude in the old man hat" comedy folk

so true

neo folk more like clown folk amirite

death in june is literally the worst music I've ever heard I cannot fathom why hipsters ever went for it except for whatever frisson they got from the crypto fascist associations

and what, do you think it is? I mean, when you get to stuff like the Borbeto/VC collab and the those Sonic Youth experimental records (and many more), the "improv vs noise" distinctions are totally arbitrary in terms of what "genre" they sound most like as well as cultural associations

I think you just don't want to admit that noise can be as varied as improv

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Friday, May 26, 2023 6:25 AM (two hours ago)

sleeve otm

― sarahell, Friday, 26 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

It's pretty distinctive because improvising doesn't always lead to the results you think you do. Noise leads to a pretty specific set of sonics a lot of the time. That's why those born collabs with voice crack sound different to the rest of Borbeto's work, or Sauter sounds different at times when playing with Rudolph Grey and Beaver Harris than he would with Borbetomagus.

Improvisation isn't even a genre. It's the other side of playing something composed on page or improvising on a theme. If you want to think it's all arbitrary then that's you thinking Girl from Ipanema is Tropicalia ;-)

Noise leads to a pretty specific set of sonics a lot of the time.

and a saxophone doesn't? do please go on parading your staggering ignorance of an entire genre itt, I'm enjoying it

I forgot that you are ILM's self-appointed improv gatekeeper, so your willfully obtuse nonsense makes more sense now

I would rather step on a 20 sided die than listen to death in june

the four sider is the one u gotta watch out for

and a saxophone doesn't? do please go on parading your staggering ignorance of an entire genre itt, I'm enjoying it

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Friday, 26 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

There are very different styles, players, tones, histories you are erasing here.

I'm just thinking you all want to say some of these records we talked about are noise records but to me they are working within an improv context. It's not a big deal. If you want to tell me SY are improvising on some odd record that's good for you.

"to me" is doing a lot of work there but I hear ya. to me, you sound like a rockist, privileging "real" instruments over electronics in a way that can't actually be articulated

"no big deal" otm, I am enjoying this thread and our disagreements even tho I cannot for the life of me figure out where you are coming from with some of this

This recent discussion reminded me of goole's "if you sing about forests, you are a Nazi!!" post which always cracks me up

one of the local improv/noise acts I've seen includes a saxophonist

something for everyone

lol ums

to get back to the poll, framing this another way, if I had to listen to something in these genres that even aficionados agreed was third-tier or less, my preference would be:

1. noise
2. private press SSW (my vote)
3. free jazz

I didn't vote for free jazz b/c on the whole I enjoy more of it than the SSW stuff, especially if we add in the "improv" scene i.e. AMM who I prefer to, say, Coltrane's "Ascension"

gah that i.e. should be an e.g., sorry

ascension actually sounds like it was made by people which is a plus in my book

"to me" is doing a lot of work there but I hear ya. to me, you sound like a rockist, privileging "real" instruments over electronics in a way that can't actually be articulated

"no big deal" otm, I am enjoying this thread and our disagreements even tho I cannot for the life of me figure out where you are coming from with some of this

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Friday, 26 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I like a lot of electroacoustic/laptop improv. I think that's the thing you are calling noise. Ultimately it could be a small confusion between five people on a thing that about five thousand people in the world think about so no sweat. If it's a big confusion the numbers thinking about it are still small.

noise is when someone pulls out a weird device with wires coming out that just says PAIN BOX on the side and immediately blows out the ear drums of anyone not wearing class 3 ear protection

well, one type is

xp yeah I was wondering if you thought stuff like the Erstwhile/Sachiko M/nu-Keith Rowe stuff fit in here, and yes I would generally classify that as noise and not improv to the five people who care lol

xp isn't that power electronics?

AMM who I prefer to, say, Coltrane's "Ascension"

Me at an AMM show: "Stop dusting the instruments and fucking play them!"

ascension actually sounds like it was made by people which is a plus in my book

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Friday, 26 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

No rockism on the thread

xxp well it's not an unplugged session for sure

AMM at their most delicate > RLW's "When Freezing Air Stings Like Ice" >>>>> any free jazz blowout ever

:D

Rather listen to AMM "dusting" their improvements than Ascension (I love Coltrane's later groups btw)

the four sider is the one u gotta watch out for

the four sider is the one u gotta watch out for

Ascension is both a) not the brick wall of screaming people claim it is and b) not all that great, actually. Meditations is much better late Coltrane, and for the truly hardcore face-melting experience you gotta go with the 4CD Live in Japan set.

Yeah Live in Japan is incredible. It's an amazing group and must've been incredible for those lucky enough to witness it.

I do dig Meditations

ascension actually sounds like it was made by people which is a plus in my book

So does AMM.

... they did actually have a sax player at various points!

Meditations is indeed great — one of my favorite records ever — and Ascension has great moments, but doesn’t quite cohere. It’s something of a missed opportunity, as Rashied Ali was asked to join Elvin for the date, but Ali turned down the offer. And as Bill Dixon said, “Freddie Hubbard had no business being on Ascension!”

As large-scale works in this music go, Alan Silva’s gargantuan Seasons (3LP BYG/Actuel dealie, 1970), and Cecil Taylor’s Alms/Tiergarten (Spree) (FMP, 1988) are much fuller realizations than Asdension, showing what can be accomplished in that kind of format. And the recently-issued Göttingen (1990) by the Cecil Taylor Ensemble — with nary a “name” musician in the lineup — is near the equal of the 1988 set, one of my favorite albums of his, or anyone’s.

Yeah, my go-tos for big blaring Sixties blowouts are, in order:

The Jazz Composers Orchestra, s/t (the one from 1968 with Pharoah Sanders, Larry Coryell, and Cecil Taylor)
Don Cherry, Eternal Rhythm
Alan Silva and the Celestrial Communications Orchestra, Seasons
The Baden-Baden Free Jazz Orchestra, Gittin' To Know Y'all (conducted by Lester Bowie)

I liked the AMM album with the guitarist who sounded like a guitarist. I guess I'm glad they existed

I really love that don cherry album though

and meditations is definitely better than ascension (free jazz is also one of my least favourite ornette albums) and frankly so is om

"I liked the AMM album with the guitarist who sounded like a guitarist. I guess I'm glad they existed"

Was not expecting Keith Rowe's guitar playing to get a conservative mindset out of you lol.

I feel like Free Jazz is as much of a missed opportunity as Ascension in terms of the potential of that grouping of musicians. But both feel like necessary missed opportunities, if that makes any sense. They were in relatively uncharted waters.

The Bill Dixon Orchestra’s Intents and Purposes is not often talked about with those other records, but it should be because of how much more fully realized it is as a large-ensemble work, and how strikingly it avoids the typical theme-plus-solos format. And there are tapes of Bill’s 30-piece ensembles from the mid-‘70s (students, but they don’t sound like students) that are far beyond what we would normally associate with this music, with guests like Jimmy Lyons playing against purposely-distorted recorded telephone conversations and a rhythm section with four Fender bassists and three drummers. If those recordings had been released at the time, the overall curve of the music may well have changed direction.

Intents and Purposes

#onethread

I've heard a lot of these records apart from Dixon and that Cherry which has been on my radar and now I should check out. I should add Sun Ra. Guess they are not as big, and maybe not the same idea, and there's that big personality on top of it all, but you really get to see a large grouping developing over a long period on those records. You get a sense of how large numbers can be organised to improvise.

Ra’s The Magic City is all-time. That’s the great thing about Sun Ra: he kept a fairly large organization together for so long that, at any given performance, something more fully realized than Ascension could (and often did) break out at any moment.

"space chords"

Alan Silva and the Celestrial Communications Orchestra, Seasons

this one is real good but for me the canonical blowout is dave burrell's "echo"

both conveniently included on the jazzactuel 3cd set from 2000, which was my entry point to "real free jazz"

at that point i was already into stuff like "thembi" and "cosmic tones for mental therapy" but the jazzactuel set was my entry point to music by dudes who built their careers around free music (vs ppl like ra and sanders who made it part of their careers but also did lots of stuff in other modes)

my gateway into "real" free jazz was the free america reissues from 2004. i was working at tower and got them all on employee discount. all i knew going in was ascension and clifford thornton's the panther and the lash blew my mind. by the time i got that jazzactuel set, i was intermediate and it was very satisfying.

The JazzActuel box was amazing. When they reissued the individual albums, I bought almost all of them, and a bunch of the Free America ones, too.

I prefer illusionary free jazz tbh

The Free America CD reissues are ironically now very expensive. Good liner notes.

I used to own the Cecil Taylor In Berlin box set and loves the music but never read the book that came with it. If anyone has a line on a pdf of it I’d be grateful.

I have it - write to burningambulance at gmail dot com and I'll send it to you.

xp yeah I was wondering if you thought stuff like the Erstwhile/Sachiko M/nu-Keith Rowe stuff fit in here, and yes I would generally classify that as noise and not improv to the five people who care lol

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Friday, May 26, 2023 12:22 PM (six hours ago)

i would classify that as improv because it's erstwhile and that's the lineage and the branding/culture. stuff like members of Sonic Youth doing an improv/experimental record with musicians that are on improv records and other things, I would categorize as "noise" ... like, noise, to me, (how heavy is this "to me" lifting, you tell me) is often coming from a "rock" background but minus a lot of the idioms associated with rock, in a somewhat similar way that improv did with jazz, and in some cases, classical music.

Me at an AMM show: "Stop dusting the instruments and fucking play them!"

― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, May 26, 2023 12:24 PM (six hours ago)

wease1 walter referred to this aesthetic as "ashtray rattling"

idk rattling an ashtray seems a little loud compared to what I prefer

a main reason for that tangent itt was xyz's contention that noise doesn't engage with silence, which compelled me to bring up some fave examples of what is now called "lower case music" i.e. very quiet noise

i get it, i just felt like contributing my opinion ... which is that the output is often similar enough that the categorization is less about what the music sounds like and mostly about who made it, what other music they made, what label it's on, and where they play gigs and who else is on the bill

idk rattling an ashtray seems a little loud compared to what I prefer

to be clear, the ashtray is not amplified, and the rattling is intermittent without an obvious rhythm

Take it to the cultural studies seminar folks

yes, the external signifiers and not the actual content'

lol xp sorry ian

obv I am fascinated with the (somewhat arbitrary imo) delineations between noise, improv, and free jazz

It’s a Venn diagram of sorts

also sarahell is otm regarding external signifiers like label etc, it comes down to association/chosen branding to a degree

thank you sleeve! I've seen the back and forth quite a bit over the years -- the code-switching, appropriation, wanting to be seen as serious and intellectual, wanting to be less stuffy, etc.

This discussion reminded me of Steve Lake's liner notes to Last Exit's Iron Path:

self-expressionists with no background honed in on the music. "Free" drummers adopted an ambiguous shifting sands approach on which nothing of substance could be built, and gestured more than they played, flicking cymbals with towels, rattling spare change on drum heads, shuffling around in heaps of metal junk. The sound of surprise at a barely diverting level, it lost its appeal over twenty years.

Ultimately it could be a small confusion between five people on a thing that about five thousand people in the world think about so no sweat. If it's a big confusion the numbers thinking about it are still small.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, May 26, 2023 12:18 PM (six hours ago)

idk if i should feel good or bad about the fact i know at least 15% of them?

Good!

Good for you that you know people, Sarah. Bad for you it means you choose to do less listening.

You’re listening all the time, even in a coma iirc

Does anyone want to talk about how to organize my British folk records. I got done with the traditional global folk music section but others in that rock&pop section and since a number of artists worked in both milieus I am conflicted at times. Looking at u Shirl.

Feel like even the rockier end of British Folk Rock fits in the Folk section no problem.

Ok but my sticking point is that into, if you’re writing your own songs, it changes from folk music into something else. I realize this is a hardline position.

Sorry I’m typing on my phone but you get the drift I hope

Just have one very big folk section and one relatively small horse singing a song section

The animal sounds section is not the issue

Ok but my sticking point is that into, if you’re writing your own songs, it changes from folk music into something else. I realize this is a hardline position.

It rules out Pentangle, Fairport Convention and the Albion Band. Which leaves Steeleye Span I suppose.

I have one big ol country and folk vinyl section, maybe to overcompensate for my confusion on how to file several artists. There are a few of those artists where itisamystery as to where they'd be filed in any random record store.

“It rules out Pentangle, Fairport Convention and the Albion Band. Which leaves Steeleye Span I suppose.”

That’s what makes it all so hard, Tom. I don’t like that those more uhhh progressive.. groups are separated from their peers who chose a more traditional repertoire. It’s a conundrum I’ve made for myself, I suppose.

genre filing leads to madness. I tried it for awhile but gave up and went back to alphabetical

Also the physical limitations of my shelving come into play 💁💁

I only have a few genres of styles separated from the main pop-section; just that global traditional music is one of thrm.

I def have those separated, it's true, the Folkways/Nonesuch Explorer/Lyrichord stuff

but Shirley and Steeleye would def go in my main stacks

You got your pop section, your jazz section, your old-time, blues, world music, and academic composition section. And the animal sounds section.

So where would you file a folkways lol of Scottish ballads?

in the trad/ethnic section for sure, esp if there are different artists

Exactly. But what if it was a single artist? Would it bake a difference if it was vocal or instrumental? Does it not seem wrong to keep it away from the hipper more rock oriented stylists?

1. I would prob do that in the main stacks like with my County LPs that have single artists
2. no
3. yes

More trouble than it's worth. The only genre I have that's got its own section is reggae, everything else is mashed in together.

Oh yeah I have a reggae section too lol

I have a section incorporating rock, pop, and techno(?), a soul music section, "world music" for the Frenchies and reggae lps and African comps, country/folk, blues, jazz, and box sets. I'm probably going to reorganize it.

my records are organized by avg bpm

the dance ones anyway. the non dance ones are organized by vibe

organizing records by some arbitrary yardstick is not only fun and interesting, the more arbitrary it is the more incentive you have to keep reorganizing, so you get to extend the fun

i hope to die crushed under a shelf of records someday.

fail my dex roll.

lol

One of the local record stores in LA was tipped off to what looks to have been a record hoarder's Malibu beach house, the photos from inside are alarming, I feel like there must be an old man buried under there somewhere. Like maybe tens of thousands of records all boxed up and also tossed about.

Anyway, they clearly had poorly thought out categories and genres

i've definitely been in hoarder homes before -- it's a really grim scene. one guy had records in the bathrooms, under the sinks, everywhere.

I have anxiety about my current overflow, which is maybe twenty records. Having just spent a year cleaning out my wife's parents' hoarder nightmare home I've decided to cap it at a certain point. Records have to go out before records can come in.

yes I have successfully gotten rid of my ridiculous overflow and confined everything to three large shelves (plus six boxes of "for sale" records for shows that live in the basement)

20 records overflow is nothing to worry about! i definitely have a lot to get rid of, but most of it is comparatively worthless marginalia so the reality is i just put it out on the street a lot of the time. especially the 78s.

I kind of want to separate out all my uk82/klangpunk stuff, it would just look nice all together

sometimes i think about organizing certain sections (jazz & world music mostly) by label and have to fight the impulse.
but the fact is, i already separate out stuff by label in my old-timey and blues sections, so i've already lost.

think how nice all those impulse spines would look together......

I don't know how people have the patience, the time, or the will to organize records in anything but alphabetical order (and even that is a headache). I sorted alphabetically for years until I moved a few times, after which I started listing my collection on Discogs. Now everything is sorted somewhat randomly inside numbered crates and boxes so I can at least know the general location of something if I need to find it. I rarely need to find anything though, as I typically always have a stack of recently acquired records that get lots of play until they get demoted to the numbered boxes, rarely to be played or even thought about again. Yes, this is a bad habit

some of us are just autistic my dude

I like sorting things it’s fun

brimstead otm

Haha I think I have a reasonable handle on my twenty records overflow but I probably just have house clean out PTSD 😕

xp to paul ponzi

maybe if you organized yr records more often you would see the old ones more and then be reminded to play them. also reorganizing your records is an opportunity to move them around so they don’t get too dusty

those are two reasons i’m constantly reorganizing, anyway

Northern Soul 3

Three of yall are crazy.

maybe if you organized yr records more often you would see the old ones more and then be reminded to play them

This is absolutely true, and I will admit that during those rare times I do a cull or a major move of some sort, I rediscover things I'd long forgotten about

i took out some records for dusting today and it spurred me to listen to taj mahal travelers “august 1974”. i’ve decided to move it from the “experimental” crate (where it was next to “catch wave”) to the “krautrock” one.

i also gave steve lacy / yuji takahashi / takehisa kosugi “distant voices” a listen. prime ashtray rattling! it’s moving to the “free music” crate, where it will sit next to roscoe mitchell sextet and human arts ensemble

Industrial/Noise - is a wide spectrum of sounds ranging from amazing (Cabaret Voltaire are one of my favourite bands - surely this isn't what people were thinking of when they voted?) to terribly amazing (I saw Whitehouse once, the whole audience was screaming abuse at them, encouraged by Bennett; he dragged a particularly gobby audience member on stage, pulled his trousers down and spanked him like a naughty child. It was a spectacle) to amazingly terrible (there's an ocean of acts in this style littering discogs, RYM and Bandcamp that I have no desire to listen to or even know about).

Private Press Singer-Songwriter - I've never knowingly heard any private press Singer-Songwriters. As an aside: I find the phrase 'singer-songwriter' a bit confusing. Like, anyone who sings and writes songs in any style is a singer-songwriter. Sometimes if I Google someone I like, a soul singer or something, it'll declare them a 'singer-songwriter'. But I guess it tends to refer to solo artists who mainly play one instrument (probably a guitar, maybe a piano) to accompany their songs, which isn't something that particularly interests me. Get a band together ffs.

Free Jazz!!/Hard Bop - I got harrumphed at on the Maligned Genres thread for a throw away comment expressing my distate for free jazz, so let me elucidate: I like some jazz, I really like a lot of styles influenced by jazz (funk, afrobeat, latin). And I know people who think this means I should like Bop and Free Jazz, who think that these styles are objectively the best music due to complexity and technicality, who think my failure to like them is a personal failing on my part, that I've not tried hard enough, that I just haven't found the right 'in' to make me like it. I've been given books on Jan Garabek, I've been made to watch YouTube videos on the mathematical relationship of notes in 50s Jazz recordings. I've been recommended all kinds of things and I've tried. The history, the theory, the passion inspired is interesting, but whenever I hit play, the noise coming out of the speakers makes me cringe.

Garage - 60s garage rock = great. Music played by Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage = great. The early 90s Jersey Sound that gets called Garage in the UK = okay. UK Garage = great.

Country Blues - I know nothing about Country Blues.

Northern Soul - amazing.

Classic Indie Rock (1980-2000???? argue w me here please) - indie rock in 1980, 1990 and 2000 are so different, what counts as indie rock is so varied, that this category is almost meaningless. It ranges from excellent to awful.

Ska (original only) - is amazing.

Dancehall - I love a bit of dancehall.

Psychedelic/Acid Folk - not for me, but I've no problem with it.

Japanese - was this supposed to be Japanese psych-rock? What little I've heard is fine.

Dub - is one of the greatest creations in human history.

Salsa - I guess I count as a hipster Salsa fan. For years Salsa meant to me dance classes that the nice but boring woman in accounts went to on a Thursday evening. It didn't even register as a style of music worth investigating. It hadn't occurred to me that it could a vital, influential, political, force of nature every bit the equal of funk or reggae. Then I heard a Salsa comp on Strut records and it opened my eyes. I dived into Fania and Vampisoul reissues. So much amazing music.

West Coast Psychedelic Rock - is never psychedelic or rocking enough.

Musique Concrete - I like the idea of musique concrete. I never want to actually listen to it.

Tropicalia - I've never dug deeply into this, but the two Gal Costa albums Ive heard (her second one, Gal, and Índia) are both excellent.

Boogaloo - is great. Not as great as the similar Latin-Soul, but still great.

Krautrock - the best, well know stuff (Can, Neu!) is great. Beyond that is a world of variable quality. I know someone who's really into this and he loves loads of awful stuff.

English Folk - not for me, but i don't hate it if i hear it. My aunt and uncle were into folk festivals in the 60s, and still are in their retirement, so I've heard plenty. There was a bloke with a mandolin who used to sing sea shanties outside the library - he was amazing.

And since these got mentioned:

Italo disco - is, at its best, all kinds of fantastic.

Black metal - I was a metaller in the 80s. NWOBHM. Hair metal. The arrival of black metal is where I got off the metal train.

Disco rap - for all its musical limitations, if I get in the zone I can listen to this for hours.

Instrumental acoustic guitar music (here's a fun one to argue about) - I doubt I'd like it, so I've never listened to it. I may be wrong. I may be missing out. Maybe one day I'll discover it but there's too much music I know I'll like and so little time to listen to it all that it'll have to wait. Probably forever.

House music - all night long

Salsa - I guess I count as a hipster Salsa fan. For years Salsa meant to me dance classes that the nice but boring woman in accounts went to on a Thursday evening. It didn't even register as a style of music worth investigating. It hadn't occurred to me that it could a vital, influential, political, force of nature every bit the equal of funk or reggae. Then I heard a Salsa comp on Strut records and it opened my eyes. I dived into Fania and Vampisoul reissues. So much amazing music.

Which comp are you referring to? Do you mean this one?

https://www.discogs.com/release/2471818-Various-Salsa-Explosion-The-New-York-Salsa-Revolution-1968-1985

I don't think this one is strictly salsa but I remember a friend playing this one a lot and thinking I should investigate further. I am almost totally ignorant about Latin music

This is one of the best salsa compilations I've ever owned. Not a lot of instantly recognizable tracks but a bunch of amazing ones, especially the first, which has some incredible production from the fake "live audience" at the beginning on down.

https://www.discogs.com/release/3605291-Various-NYC-Salsa-The-Incendiary-Sound-Of-Latin-New-York

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXDRz1JXzYI

Which comp are you referring to? Do you mean this one?

https://www.discogs.com/release/2471818-Various-Salsa-Explosion-The-New-York-Salsa-Revolution-1968-1985