Kelley Polar - Love Songs of The Hanging Gardens (Environ CD05)

I can't get over how good the record sounds. I'm wondering if this was years in the making.

does anyone have the other 12"s on Environ digitized? are they for sale as MP3's anywhere? YSI/Gmail requests implied.

i started listing great metro area tracks and then stopped when i got to five realizing how silly it was.

i love that the quartet is one dude.

sure, some creative googling would answer it for me, but.. If I want to listen to Metro Area on my turntable, do I have to buy all the 12"s? Cos I would much rather get them all together in one package, like that CD they did two years back. Does that exist?

The Metro Area CD compilation/album you mention was also issued on vinyl and should be available on Gemm or whatever. You miss a few tracks from the singles though.

I really wish Environ would start selling high quality downloads through Beatport or Bleep or whatever; I'd buy most of the catalog in a heartbeat.

what I heard of the Kelley Polar LP was astoundingly beautiful.

I started working on the album after the last 12', around last november, but a couple of
the tracks (including the one that seems to be most popular) were previous attempts at dance tracks that were deemed too odd for the floor....as you can imagine Mr. Geist's quality control is high and the bleached bones of many an attempt were littering the morose grey bit-dunes of my audio drive...so those gave it a bit of a jumpstart but basically we just busted ass..this is still all rather new for me, but I'm fairly efficient at least with being able to do the arrangements and play/record everything in...wish I could play drums, I've put a set in another one of the old shacks in the woods, it's going to be one of my winter projects...early on Morgan did turn me on to the Junior Boys CD which I liked alot, I wish I could sing as "sexy" as that dude, but it doesn't really work for me-- the product of 20 years of classical-music repression...but perhaps like him (and Erlend) singing is way more possible for me at soft volumes, I can kind of twist my body into some kind of shape where the notes will come out...anyway thanks, here's hoping it doesn't get too bootlegged and shared around and does alright so my environ exploits will continue to be subsidized. Advance twelve of a Moroder-y track and the abovementioned one that people are liking (with lyrics that were originally copped from an old star wars comic book circa 1983 and then got slightly changed because they were just a little too over the top homoerotic) should be out soon, and the CD in november. Also, I thought I remembered MG saying that the whole MA catalogue got put into iTunes....but maybe that's just the CD... -kp

oh p.s. thanx again D. Selzer for helping me with listening research

Rhythm Touch is so perfect in every way. CAN'T. WAIT. FOR. ALBUM.

"Zeffirelli's Romeo & Juliet as scored by the Free Design, Martin Rushent and Klein & MBO. Orchestra pit meets dance floor, bedroom meets... hanging garden."

"Baroque new wave melts into orchestral-synthetic post-disco, songwriting procreates with production."

"John joins Richard and Karen in the Carpenters."

"Like Bobby 'O' plus real strings, albeit neither as gay nor as homophobic."

"Wistful... heartache... party/celebratory!"

"Shiver me timbers! Kelley Polar is BRRR-illiant!" -- Jean Shallot, Carrots & Beats Monthly

xp

Soz Kelly, looking forward to the LP though.

(x-post)

I will expect all of you to call Bjork "Ms. Gudmumdsdottir" now.

love the vocals stylings.

Chelonis

This is definitely accurate.

Mike OTM. I'm surprised by how much I'm liking this, given that I either don't know or don't flip for most of the artists that Mr. Polar is being compared to.

I also don't know who Chelonis is. So wider reach by one.

2. Here In The Night

3. Tyurangalila

4. My Beauty In The Moon

5. Vocalise (From Here To Polarity)

6. Ashamed Of Myself

7. Rooms In My House Have Many Parties, The

8. Matter Into Energy

9. Black Hole

10. In Time

Xpost x 4

didn't they have a semi-big (indie "big") rec?

Ha, I know who he is, in the sense that I've read articles about him and seen his name listed on bills around Chicago, but I've never actually heard his music.

ha, I'm breaking my brane trying to think of what the vocals around 0:47 in "my beauty in the moon" remind me of, but I keep getting distracted by the awesome "empire state human" beat!

There was a lot of laughing going on. It was very difficult to stop.

environ = still batting a thousand

Get it from Fluxblog if you haven't yet, it is the business. It's settled, I am buying this the day of release. I will knock over nuns and the elderly in my haste.

I'll confess I had Metro Area lumped in with that Italo-disco revival thing as a name, I had no idea they were even contemporary! How's the Morgan Geist solo stuff (been having a quick lookup on discogs y'see) should I ever happen to bump into it?

Geist's solo stuff is fantastic, and 90% of it sounds nothing like Metro Area. The stuff he's done since starting Metro Area, I sometimes like more then Metro Area, because Darshan ruins everything he touches. Seriously though, the Super EP is, well, self-explanatory.

i was quite enjoying it in the rain yesterday, but i'm curious about how the people who are OVER THE MOON are listening to the record... How do you hear this? Something sexy for when you're with your boy or ladyfriend? Something close coolhot and reassuring in the dark/rainyness? wax-faced dancefloor stunna? Something else? It seems similar in -function- to the Junior Boys record, but the enthusiasm here seems rather more, I don't know, active. I'm wondering not about what appeals to people, or what the precedents/sound-alikes are, but whee/when/how it's bringing you the crazydeep pleasures.

please elaborate?? I don't think Geist's solo stuff post-Metro Area differs much at all from the Metro Area itself. I've always been curious to hear some solo Darshan stuff to sort of pick out his influences in the Metro Area sound. But honestly, I'm curious to know what your talking about. What's ruined on the M.A full length!?! shit is perfect to me.

"stick it in yr ears" (trad.)

I don't mean that as a criticism either, but the Kelley Polar Album is definitely more song based, and also I think the vocals make it alot more pop and catchy than Metro Area.

(it's actually way closer to the Unclassics mix than the Metro Area album, which I also prefer!)

In response to Sean, I think the reason I had a very over the moon response is because the record has an instant impact, I mean, I am still pretty much bowled over by the first track. The best answer I can give you is that I think it's a brilliant pop record, and people are still kind of smacked across the face by that kind of thing in a weird out of leftfield way, especially when it's an artist they haven't heard of or heard before, and again this is all speculation on my part.

I hate characterising people as newbies based on their enthusiasm so hopefully that won't happen here if it's not too late.

there's a large chunk of your second to last graf there that i think makes a very interesting question on its own, but i dont feel like subjecting it to the ilx idiot hounds today.

no seriously... i like this a lot, so far, but like most people i'm not quite sure what to make of it, and not sure whether it'll grow on me or whatever the reverse of that is (which is kinda what happened with the jr boys album, which i technically "like" but never ever have the urge to listen to)

please elaborate?? I don't think Geist's solo stuff post-Metro Area differs much at all from the Metro Area itself

re: darshan, I was kidding

re: Geist solo...I think there's definately a different quality, but it's not extremely different.

Meanwhile, the Kelley Polar record features vocals, songs with choruses and verses, and tempos that aren't always meant for dancing. It's pop to me the same way meloncholy synth-pop is pop, or I Need Someone to Love by Sylvester is pop.

?

i have to confess that i was rather drunk when i made my "speechless" posts.

i am coming around to the idea of environ as an IDM label (in the way detroit-purist labels like ann aimee or delsin or defocus are IDM, or the way italo-centric labels like creme or bunker or clone are IDM labels too)

i really like how this has two very distinct sides...looking forward to hearing it on nice heavy vinyl.

also re: my "making electrohouse impotent" hyperbole, i think it's the pop element i'm referring to too. to me this is just better than being beat over the head with obvious buildups. the hookiness is there, but everything else is more mysterious, less functionalist and reduced.

and to wit, this may not be functionalist dance-oriented, but it's still fundamentally a dance record. metro areas "pina" is 112bpm, but i can still dance to that one! i mean that's what pitching up is for too....i think "miura" is 118.

the somewhat less functional, more intellectual cousin

And while I believe Geist was heavily influenced by the early IDM sounds (think Artificial Intelligence volume 1), I don't really see how Environ, or any of the italo-centric labels are IDM, which I thought has been defined for the better part of a decade by it's experimentalism and the fact that it doesn't aim for the dancefloor.

OK now how is that NOT kelley polar / environ?

if not kelley polar.

i am listening to a basement jaxx mix right now and they just busted out a george duke record and a latimore record right in the middle of a set of US garage and speed garage. and i DON'T think they were trying to clear the floor. (ever heard of a slow dance?)

you're talking about this shit like they're on some sort of axes - which they're not

xxxpost

haha!!!! i'm still right though. listen to the lyrics.

but is that idea completely underground and unpop? I'm not so sure.

My point about IDM is that while it initially was all about the references to past club musics and dancefloor sounds, it quickly moved away from that. I'd think most IDM fans wouldn't even recognize something like Autechre's Low Ride as IDM. While those early Autechre or Black Dog or B12 tracks were an extension and experimentation with detroit techno, electro, bass etc, pretty quickly IDM became something else.

As far as pop/experimentalism being on a axis, I don't believe they are all mutually exclusive, and in all the music I most enjoy, I enjoy the mixing of pop with experimentalism. But I do think at some point you can tell the difference and I do think some music, at it's heart, is "pop" or not. I think there is a difference between a dance song that is pop and a pop song that you can dance to.

*uncontrollable diarrhea*

Which mix and can I have a copy?

but "inspired by synth-pop" is very different from "accomplishes what synth-pop accomplished" or "functions as synth-pop functioned" or even "appeals across the board to people who like synth-pop for the same reason"

in the same way that bunker records or creme are aimed at people who dig italo but who come to it from a techno/electro/IDM background, these environ records (or saint etienne) are aimed at people who appreciate disco/boogie/italo/synthpop (or in SE's case, different aspects of british pop) but who come at it from a very specific (and somewhat marginal) position.

The coordinates (for me, at least, after a few listens) include Yukihiro Takahashi's Neuromantic, the good parts of Jan Hammer's Melodies, Free Design as produced by Klein & MBO and imaginary Beach Boys re-writes of "O Superman." (Junior Boys are bound to come up as well.)
-- Andy_K (doubtbea...), August 30th, 2005 4:29 AM. (Andy_K)

ok here are some questions

laurie anderson = pop or IDM?
late brian wilson = pop or indie rock?
jan hammer = jazz or IDM?
YMO = dance-pop or IDM?

This makes sense to me, I was just confused by calling Environ and Creme IDM, which I discussed above. My point is, like many genres, IDM is mostly a sound now, and it has a large set of qualities attributed to it. I think when people talk about IDM these days, they're talking about more "experimental" electronica, music that more often then not, tries to distant itself from pop or the dancefloor in a way the first wave of artists didn't.

it's probably not the best idea to use film as a metaphor for music anyway. one thing i will say is that i don't find this album to be nostalgic at all. if it was, i wouldn't like it nearly as much. i think this uses elements that may appear nostalgic to come up with something new.

...and keeping it in the family, my little brother Mike, aka Kelley Polar, has a new album coming out on Environ....!

http://www.environrecords.com/

KELLEY POLAR
"Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens," Kelley Polar debut CD album, is out 15 November and is preceded by a limited 12" sampler in October!

the fuck? no place for hermeneutics in thinking about music?

i guess i am looking for answers about broken beat? in that kelley polar reminds me of broken beat? ie, as jerry the nipper (sort of) puts it, "with the addition of bongos, rhodes keyboards and afro-positive divas, this drum + bass track is now a JAZZ FUSION MASTERPIECE"

No Vahid I wasn't saying that you can't make these sorts of comments, i was just honestly curious about whether you thought anything flowed from whether we think of Kelley Polar as IDM or pop or dance or [x] - it's precisely because I think there is a place for hermeneutics in thinking about music that I ask these questions, because I think these sorts of decisions can have effects on what we think of a piece of music, whether it is "good" or "bad" etc.

I don't have an opinion yet because I haven't heard the album.

the genre confusion is one of the things that makes it interesting to me. (just like our mammoth "what is deep house" thread)

actually that's not entirely true. when i listen to this, i do not think of genre for a second (well now i probably will). it is in the context of this thread and our discourse here that i find the genre confusion interesting.

speaking of splitting hairs, morgan geist is from new jersey not detroit, but point taken.

xpost, completely agree dan - "idm" is now largely shit and a completely moronic genre name.

no dummy, because my mom knows what disco is and if i played her kelley polar she'd just say "oh, more electronic noise?" she can tell the difference between disco and other music but to the 99% of the populace that don't listen to minimal electronica this simply isn't disco, or nu romantic or pop or whatever.

that nagging vocal bit in "my beauty in the moon" . . . andrew suggested "wood beez" or limahl's neverending story theme, ha.

I love how it's neuromantic but w/out the emotronica quality that the junior boys/superpitcher/&c have - it's so urbane! both baroque/choral AND on a great gatsby jazz age tip! i'd argue that there's no indie in this record's DNA.

wait, I see the point, we've all been hoodwinked! we love broken beat!!!!!

every song I dance to is magic,
every room I'm in keeps on moving,
when I sleep my dreams are filled with motion
it never gets, never gets, never gets...
oooo, oooo, oooo . . ."

= some of my favourite lyrics of the past few years - the implication & deferment of "you" in the first verse is up there w/phil oakey also avoiding "you" in "love action".

hmmn, possible convergent evolution w/indie - magnetic fields' "all the umbrellas in london"/"rats in the garbage of the western world", if they'd actually sounded like the NY discos stephin merritt has undoubtedly hung out at.

it's nice to see you have such a nuanced defn of IDM!

Not a trick question! If I ask the same question while listening to Luciano, the answer is "Yes!"

re: the comments on the review about the "laziness" of the artwork. They found a cool picture they liked and used it. They didn't know it had been used by the Shalabi Effect, and shockingly didn't know it was used on the insert to a Pearl Jam CD. I don't see why the hard time.

mike powell, 2005

Aphex Twin has continually re-imagined and reinvigorated the minor genre known as intelligent dance music, or I.D.M.—essentially a type of electronica fit for bedroom listening

random slate writer, 2003

The legend was this: Aphex Twin was a mad inventor from Cornwall who built his own synthesisers. Surfing on sine waves, he would lead a pack of young boffins out of the computer screen glow of their bedrooms, into the public domain of clubs, shops, and charts, then back in and out of more bedrooms in a feedback loop of infinite dimensions

david toop, 1994

the interview up at http://www.kelleypolar.com/press/press1.html is k-grebt! he pretty much wishes he was AQUAMAN!
also, this album is still fantastic.

Uniting (or negotiating the space between) the bedroom and the dancefloor is a cliche, but it's a building block cliche for pretty much any dance music which is not marketed directly as "club fare", and I think you're actually making the same point (negatively) when you say that this record is not dance music or pop music, but IDM (which implies all sorts of things about how this music might or might not be useful and useable).

I tend to bristle at the suggestion that "club" music isn't really suitable for private use in a home setting, but I can't deny that when I listen to it at home my enjoyment comes from imagining responding to it in a club setting (and, if no-one can see, perhaps acting that out a bit). Whereas there is other music whose relative gentleness/spaciness/quietude etc. seems not only more suitable for bedtime use, but also more suitable for imagining "the inner space of the dream or the terrestrial space of the country yard" - it's almost as if I'm in my bedroom listening to this music and imagining being in my bedroom and listening to this music, only in a way more romantic than any fly-on-the-wall camera in my room would actually pick up.

The issue with this cliche is how sensitively it's used: is it applied unthinkingly, uncritically, prejudicially to one side (usually the dancefloor), sloppily, boringly, or in a way that seems to bear no relationship to the record being discussed?

I can't tell any of that from the quote from Mike's piece. It's a little bit purple prosish yes, but less so than I would probably be if trying were I to try to make the same point...

I still haven't heard this record BTW, but from what everyone has said I can imagine enjoying it more than the Metro Area CD simply because it sounds like it has fuller, lusher melodies. With Metro Area I find myself returning to the "big hits" - "Miura", "Caught Up", "Strut", "Pina" - and often skipping over that long spell of disco minimalism that characterises the middle part of the record.

IDM is back bitches!

because i disagree

this is what i am getting at...claro intelecto has released stuff this year. i could name others from the "housey idm" group with current releases as well: andreas tilliander, the narita label, more artists from the AI label, matthew herbert (when he actually made music before he entered the conceptual zone of no return), donnacha costello's colour series....

And yes, I also think Kelley Polar has more in common with Larry Heard then Aphex Twin.

no, but at the same time IDM is not only autechre. it can have pop or retro elements.

with turntables behind our backs.

and no headphones.

anyway, biz, you say try mixing Hammer/Anvil with Can You Feel It? as if by default, as though you are taking it for granted it would sound right. i think maybe "hammer/anvil" would sound better mixed w/ "windowlicker" than w/ "can you feel it" (and sure enough, kelley polar shows up in way more "eclectic"/"downtempo" (read: IDM for people who don't aren't aggro/pimply) sets than house sets.

"can you feel it" would prob sound better mixed w/ LFO or something or monolake or juan atkins than it would w/ a morgan geist production.

about your parenthetical statement "((and sure enough, kelley polar shows up in way more "eclectic"/"downtempo" (read: IDM for people who don't aren't aggro/pimply) sets than house sets.)

did you do a search for this info? it's the "sure enough" part that makes me think you did a comparative analysis of dj set lists and discovered KP in more downtempo/eclectic/IDM sets...cuz i only know of KP appearing on Bents' Fabric (where it's mixed into Chicken Lips, another classic IDM act), Chicken Lips NRK mix (another IDM staple). Yes Bent make Downtempo (or IDM in your world) but their mix includes House Music! Even if "Intelligent" people "Dance" to this "Music", it's still House.

let's have a mini competition. I'll mix Can You Feel It with Kelley Polar or Morgan Geist and you mix it with LFO/Monolake/Juan Atkins/AFX/IDM of your choice, post a YSI to this thread in 3 days time and let the citizens decide what sounds better.

You do mix right? Cuz you know alot about what sounds good with what...so is it a deal?

um ... hello? boards of canada? morr music? isan? plone? carpark? all that "idylltronica" garbage?

(anyway, I think it's the other Chicken Lips mix - Body Music - which has the Kelly Polar track on it, yeah?)

Defining all dance music which might get a review in Pitchfork as IDM makes this a lot easier.

The problem I have with Vahid's contributions here is his tendency to link together a string of reasonable propositions in order to create an overall argument which seems to have powerful persuasive and shaming force but is actually linked together rather tenuously. Here that seems to be:

- IDM-related discourse privileged certain aspects of music
- Kelley Polar-related discourse privileges some of the same aspects
- historically, IDM-discourse sneered at dance music, and ended up missing what was really good about dance music
- therefore, Kelley Polar fans are inevitably fated to make the same mistake, and their Kelley Polar-fandom is but one example of this mistake.
- Kelley Polar's music can be deduced to be inferior by reference to the above observations.

This all hinges on the assumption that the Pitchforkization of dance music discourse (or the dancification of Pitchfork discourse) has done something awful to dance music discourse and, consequently, dance music itself. This itself rests on the assumption that Pitchfork's pitchforkiness (i.e. corny indie fuxxiness) perserveres despite its critical warming toward dance music, and in effect "conquers" dance music under the banner of corny indie fuxxx.

This ignores entirely the fact that Pitchfork really have changed, that there is a world of difference b/w ignoring all dance music except for Mille Plateux (Pitchfork circa 2000) and simply ignoring Vahid's favourite deep house and tech house producers (Pitchfork circa 2005).

http://carparkrecords.com/acute_US.html

Electronic music genres are pretty liquid. Their sounds evolve and take cues from various other genres over time. Jungle starts by appropriating Reggae and Dancehall, then takes in avant-jazz then changes to incorporate techno influences. Other genres have developed in the same way. House and techno are starting to look to IDM for cues and tricks, and repackage those exciting elements in a cozier box. This does not make House and Techno synonymous with IDM because it appropriates some defining elements of IDM.

on a brighter note, does anyone have the Morgan Geist Re-Edit from the Promo 12"?

no, not at all! i think the KP album is good music, maybe even good dance music. furthermore, at this point, i trust lots of the reviewers at pitchfork.

i'm not really sure what liking an IDM album (KP quintet) for the wrong reasons (thinking it's disco-house) says about the listener or kelley polar, i think it says a lot more about their relationship to pop and especially disco than it does their relationship to electronic music (house, IDM or otherwise)

(flash back to ethan a few years ago, complaining about ilm "disco" "fans" : "how come all you corny fuxx have arthur russell and larry levan CDs but no chic or village people albums?)

Not having heard the album yet, I had just assumed that people referred to the album as "pop" in relation to Metro Area (who could afford to be a bit more pop generally, i think), and disco because of Metro Area.

Do people really like arthur russell but not Chic? I find it hard to fathom I guess, why would you bother trying to cherry pick the indie fuxx approved disco? There's so many other generally-approved-by-fuxx genres - reggae, krautrock etc. - where the danger of populist trash is much less everpresent. Is there fuxx-aproved eighties funk-pop a la SOS Band yet?

(When I've played Unclassics at home my boyfriend has asked me what type of music it is and I say "disco, sort of" and he flat out refuses to believe me. But he sees the disco in French house v. obviously)

But if the Kelley Polar record is IDM, then so is Sylvester's I Need Somebody to Love Tonight, and Ultravox and OMD, and YMO's Behind the Mask, Gino Soccio's Remember, etc.

when is this out?

hahahahahaha...and i thought i was an arrogant asshole! First of all, I like Kelley Polar because I was working in a record store when the first Metro Area 12"s started coming out. I had been playing Morgan Geist's "I Want You" since 97?ish and was already a convert to his skills. When I saw the KPQ record come in, I picked it up and loved it. The sound on that record is undeniably "House". I like Kelley Polar because his music SOUNDS GOOD, and that's enough for me. Second, who the fuck are you to say anyone likes anything for the "wrong reasons"? If they like it, they like it, regardless of their reasons. You are in the minority here thinking that Kelley Polar is IDM. I think that's your point, though. You want to be edgy and unique in your opinions, i assume to try to carve out some space in the bloated critic circle jerk.

So, your highness, what are the "right reasons" to like Kelley Polar? I bet Mike (Kelley) would like to know too.

I guess if you can't support your theory with specific tracks from KP that are IDM, then this argument is pointless. Go ahead and post a segment of a KP track that sounds like IDM. I'm willing to listen to your reasoning.

cos i like the packaging, cos i saw a photo of someone involved who looked cute, cos i read in a magazine that that genre was cool, cos someone wrote a really ewnthusiastic review on a blog that got me hyped. etc etc

i think what that says about me is that i am a bit of a knob, but not really any more of one than anyone else.

i havent heard this, but the other kelley polar stuff on 12" always sounded like lush symphonic....disco-house. this is obviously wrong, but for some reason, this thought will perturb not one jolt throughout the whole time i buy or listen to the record.

oh, i agree entirely. sorry about the unfortunate phrasing.

frankly, biz, i am not particularly interested in why YOU like KP, at all. you are free to like kelley polar for whatever reasons you want, and that's cool with me, because i like kelley polar, too.

i am more interested in what the public critical response is going to be - and i think i have a right to be, because that's what critics do - they put their reasons for liking or disliking things into the public record, for the rest of us to pick over and agree with or disagree with.

(if you want to ask who i am to judge other people's reasons for liking/disliking things then you can start calling every university humanities department and every newspaper and start calling for the resignation of all their art critics and lit critics and cultural critics, good luck)

when i say "wrong reasons", i guess i am interested in how the critical response (haven't read the pitchfork review yet, can't wait to) is going to pan out. i have a suspicion that a lot of reviews are going to make a big deal of the disco/pop elements, and make a big deal of KPQ's place in house / microhouse when really it's another record pushing the same IDM buttons as the junior boys was a year or so ago.

if my suspicion doesn't pan out, well, then i'll look like a jerk and you won't have any reason to get all het up under the collar.

i don't know? i'm not trying to be normative or anything here - i'm just wondering what it means - how people end up w/ larry levan CDs instead of chic CDs. why don't people start w/ the canon? should we resist the formation of an alternative snob-disco canon? of an alternative snob-house / snob-techno / snob-electronica canon? didn't we already fight this battle years and years ago with "intelligent jungle", and is microhouse just "intelligent jungle pt 2" or not?

i'm not sure why the question offends so much.

also dan, i gotta disagree w/ you about placing the KPQ and sylvester on the same plane. it just wouldn't work for 95% of the populace (or more). you are just saying KPQ = disco (when most people would probably say something like "this sounds like soundtrack music ... you know, like for a videogame or movie or something ... is this like orbital?") because you understand KPQ's specific place in the continuum/flux of the evolution of house music / electronic music and not because of any sort of really strong formal similarities.

The SPIN Alternative Record Guide was my bible for a couple of years, which means I heard a Captain Beefheart album long before I heard a Led Zeppelin album. Led Zep not being in the book mistakenly indicated to me that they weren't that interesting.

I think everyone should give the canon a try, if they like a specific genre. But for some people, perhaps these pitchfork readers, what they like about Arthur Russell is his qualities that are divergent from the more mainstream disco. It sounds like you want to berate someone for liking "Let's Go Swimming" but not "YMCA".

But there's already a well formulated alternative disco canon, at least as of the release of Disco Not Disco.

The Sylvester comparison isn't specific to disco in general, but that song in particular, a meloncholy electronic disco song that is more of a late night ballad then a dancefloor stormer. And I think there are very strong formal similarities, if you don't know that song, check it out.

-- Ronan

Ha - it's like, how many books does he has to be the focus of until he gets there?

But then, I guess it gets back to "Disco as a widespread mainstream pop phenomenon" vs. "Disco as a precursor to later developements in underground dance music."

yes! except what i wonder is: how divergent is arthur russell really? is there more melancholy in "let's go swimming" than in "i will survive"? is "kiss me again" more minimalist-psychedelic-dub-freaky than (the temptations) "papa was a rolling stone"? more hermetic?

i have been browsing meltzer's "aesthetics of rock" lately and am wondering when the companion volume for disco/rap/house will be written.

anyway i want to ask the similar questions about kelley polar.

the very definition of "INTELLIGENT" music?!?!

i guess what is fascinating about kelley polar is that it plays w/ genre in an unexpected direction - instead of the usual IDM tricks (electro w/ references to musique concrete, jungle w/ references to gabba + grindcore) we have this sort of mid-tempo electronic album (the reference to PLAID upthread was spot-on) that references disco in the way autechre integrates influences like xenakis or zoviet france, or arthur russell integrates terry riley - i guess a corollary to what i am saying is that this is different in the way that early jungle artists incorporated ragga and the way deep house artists incorporate gospel + jazz music.

i think i agree with this. but for some reason it doesn't seem interesting to me. i feel like he got there by doing a relief of what's already been done when you can't always turn things around. there's a reason why you can pull genres together in certain ways. he's using stuff as a base when they don't have the appropriate qualities for that. he could do it, but he doesn't know how tweek it or relate it. the effect is stuff its not transformed, just misplaced and you can feel exactly where it should be. everything about this feels miscalculated to me. and i feel like i can tell what he's going for, but maybe I just don't get it or it is truly novel and gotta get used to it.

my favorite tracks (maybe revealingly) are the least "dancey" - i think if one song on this album is truly exceptional, it's "matter into energy". i like the way the drums in the first third sound like sensitive jazz-drummer comping, suddenly, when the keyboard trills show up at 1:20, the drums resolve themselves into this widely-spaced electro smurf, same thing happens at around 2:45, where the song really really begins to sound like incunabala-era autechre, except w/ romo references.

I'm not really sure what liking an IDM album (KP quintet) for the wrong reasons (thinking it's disco-house) says about the listener or kelley polar,

jeez, i don't know why you've been wrongly accused?

you're talking about "mood" and I'm talking about sound. I Will Survive is a wonderful and heartfealt song, and great fun to dance to. Let's Go Swimming is a total mind-fuck of a production. The fact that these both come from something called "disco" goes a great distance to showing the breadth of "disco", but I couldn't imagine two more dissimilar songs.

Let's agree to disagree and bask in our co-love for this album.

Who has the Morgan Geist Re-Edit from the Love In..Promo 12"? Please, for the love of god, YSI that bitch.

I think this thread's sort've undervaluing stuff like SINGING and LYRICS and and and

tho I dunno, maybe people should start talking about luomo again. I'm the present, the true lover . . .

1) neuromantic! (ha ha yes of course I'd say this); and

2) late-period 4 Hero

I think if you combine the two you're given the precise latitudinal and longitudinal co-ordinates for this album (including the Plaid resonance, which is like an unacknowledged genetic stain on both sides, like a scoundrel whom both your great-grandmothers had an affair with).

Tim's 4 hero comparison is a good one, especially on "Cosmological Constancy".

I realize that this adds nothing to the discussion about how this album should be classified, but I feel the need to register how bonkers I am going over this album.

Cred Disco
----------
Giorgio Moroder
Chic
Larry Levan
Donna Summer
some Soul Jazz comp...

Pop/Mainstream-to-cheese Disco
------------------------------
Saturday Night Fever OST
Boney M

Leftfield/Rediscovered Disco (& Italo-Disco)
--------------------------------------------
Disco-not-Disco compilations
Arthur Russell (rereleases)
I-f - Mixed Up In The Hauge
Morgan Geist - Unclassics

Tim, there's absolutely a disco canon, but nobody talkes about "albums". Sure there were great disco albums, but that was never the point. Hell, I'd say many disco canon albums are just compilations anyway.

re: fandango's list...

I'd say Unclassics is absolutely anti-canon. That was the whole point. Songs that never made it, that weren't necessarily hits, either big hits in the 80s or retro hits today so much.

Because I think these issues - which records to buy, where to start - are the reasons that fewer people check out the canon w/ a genre like disco.

That was probably the question I was answering (in a roundabout way) :)

http://disco-disco.com/
http://www.discomuseum.com/

But you have to think about the way people think about disco as well, how much of it is based on the label, and therefore I come back to what I said about compilations. And I'm not talking about recent compilations, but even of the moment stuff from Salsoul or Prelude, "special full length versions for DJs" double LPs are pretty standard fare.

An album like this might give you a lot of hits, but how many people would think that it represents a "canon?" "Canon" connotes that the music has a general critical approval and I don't know as that many people would associate a mainstream disco hits comp with this.

These are ubiquitous comps with massive critical approval. I'm sorry Tim, maybe I don't get at what you're getting at. I mean, here's a weird analogy...which is more "canon", the Count Five or Music Machine's LPs or their hit singles as compiled on (and "canonnized" by) Nuggets?

If anyone asked me about the disco canon, I wouldn't suggest the Phreak LP or a Change LP or something, but send them to any of the many defining compilations, as mentioned above some vintage, and some new.

when did disco ever have general critical approval?

ha! of course Tim was there first. But yeah first thing that came to mind when I put this on "I got to words for you: Two Pages!" I tend to think of these sort of albums as dead-ends but sublime dead-ends.

same thing with any genre though, no?

re the idm question: one of mark mac's recording aliases is nu era and he put out the "broken techno" ep under that name, the sound of which is not so far off from idm. it's also maybe a better name for the whole genre anyway!

my favorite tune on the aforementioned ep is called "1979" which shares sample source material with morgan geist's brilliant "lullaby" so there is some connection there (although if you know the sampled tune in question it would be pretty easy to connect every musician ever together through six degrees of kraftwerk). :D

This whole discussion has been interesting to watch unfold. It seems to me like there are competing understandings of what a genre is that underlie this thread; maybe what some people are treating as a *categorical fact about the music* should really be thought of as a *way of listening* to music. To be specific: I think there are "IDM-ish" things to listen for in the early disco canon (the dubbier and more effects heavy the better, the more detuned the synths get the better, is there a phaser on the hihat, if so rad etc) just as there is a "tech-house" ish way to listen to early reggae (extra feedback in the delay, weirdly eq-ed hi hats, white noise hiss during dropouts). It doesn't mean that all along early disco was just waiting to evolve into IDM or that all along the end point of Keith Hudson was Rhythm & Sound. I know genre serves a purpose (where does it go in my library? where does it go in my record store?) but it has limits, and often the interesting cases are the marginal ones. When it started up as something people talked about "IDM" occupied a fluid, negotiable, marginal space between other, older genres (not industrial, not dancefloor, not ambient) and arguably IDM died once it took on enough of a family resemblance to actively attempt to constitute its own genre. Long live confusion / mutate or die . . .

Not to drop a dime and be all old timerish but it reminds me of a club night at Static in San Francisco years ago, I think 98 or 99 or so; Matmos played and Morgan Geist Djed. Morgan played amazing music but he was just way ahead of the stuck up IDM kids in the crowd who were like "what is this diva disco stuff, I want Autechre etc. blah blah blah"- they weren't able to make the connection, they weren't hearing what Morgan was hearing in the classic early disco he was playing.

4hero were paying lots of attention to the geist/curtin/titonton school of fussy, busy, bubbly techno just before they went broken beat ("the deepest shade of...")

i like drew's comments on the IDM *way of listening*, sadly, i think that another thing that happened "when IDM died" was that (concurrently) there developed an IDM *way of consuming* dance, a sort of joyless snobbish collection-polishing, an anxiety about skimming only the cream from the top of the dance heap.

the deepest shade comp always seems to come up in these discussions...

i am listening to the new electric institute comp as i type and it's pretty great. it is too bad that it is so obscenely priced. some tracks do indeed remind of kelley polar via the mid-period plaid commentary on this thread.

Did this way of consuming not exist before 2002 ("when IDM died")? And isn't it the sort of accusation that we can all make of eachother till hell freezes over?

And by the way, "Mambo y Coro" by La Banda Chula is awesome!

If you really just mean people who wait for e.g. Soul Jazz to retrospectively legitimise a genre like house music, then fine, yeah, I think a little bit of cynicism is allowed. But only because house has already been retrospectively legitimised (and, indeed collated and canonized) so many times that waiting for Soul Jazz to come on board seems like the imposition of absurdly high "standards" (we may as well wait for Marshall Jefferson to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame).

But if you mean something broader - like following buzz or looking for good comps that people agree are trustworthy - then I think it's a bit of an unrealistic criticism.

We all use tactics of discrimination, both to prevent ourselves from going broke and to allow ourselves to focus on the stuff we like. The question is not whether we discriminate or not, but whether our specific tactics are sound or not.

you know you're buying too much music when you have to start using music itself as currency! (the electric institute comp was worth every penny, BTW. i've been listening to it nonstop since i bought it. it is one of the best non-mixed comps i have heard this year. the track selection and flow are perfect together; melodic stealth and song forms that get weirder and trackier as the comp progresses. it has ace unreleased 69 and mayday remixes to boot.)

if we're not constantly questioning and reevaluating how we hear and classify music then something is missing IMO. or maybe it's when genre ossifies, eventually shatters and gets mixed up to restart all over again.

Haha, but does Jess Harvell like her?

Word! It's like Chanticleer!

In terms of the comments above w/r/t press coverage of dance, etc., this one is top shelf, front and center on the new release wall at Amoeba, with a little "BUY THIS NOW!" card in various color magick markers under it. I also heard it at Urban Outfitters the other day....

Well it is a disco album of sorts, so what do you want?

Not nearly as gay as Brian Wilson's Smile, though...

"Forget what it sounds like- What does this all MEAN?"

Heresy!!!

OTM

I was going to add to my above post that this album is kind of like Natalie Portman in that pretty-though-not-sexy way, but I figured I had it covered referencing 10000 Hz, which is by far Air's least sexy record.

This is also a problem I have with Metro Area and said fans- I don't really understand what's so fantastic about their music. Sure, none of it is really BAD, but it's kind of par for the course with every new release.

I'd argue that Lifelike & Kris Menace's "Discopolis" has more heart, soul, longing, joy, originality and thump than any Metro Area track released to date. It's undeniably disco, but you've never heard any disco track like it.

Metro Area tracks are the same thing every time, and in most instances are simply re-hashed sounds and structures milked from well-known songs produced 20-30 years ago.

And my whole point with "Discopolis" vs. any Metro Area : quality vs. quantity

in the event that wasn't clear....

It's kinda half-way to something really great, yet I find it hard to verbalise or imagine what the other missing 50% would actually consist of when it sounds so dazzlingly complete & 'full'. It feels like a mirage. I was thinking earlier it reminded me of Anthony & The Johnsons that way, gone 'dance'. Anyhow I shouldn't post any more about something I'm not even intending to purchase!

I mean, if I'm right in suggesting there is a distrust there.

i also think the kelley polar album is full of sex so i'll have to disagree there too. maybe it is so ingrained that it's easy to overlook. the mirage of the shiny exterior is distracting i suppose.

Uh oh.

This is a totaly valid question, btw, though I just caught a whiff of Ricardo Villalobos's sweat in the air....

And hence the utter lack of sexiness. No I'm with you if you're suggesting that it's too polished, too predictable, too ovbious. And with this not being a typical Metro Area release, I find that a little disappointing. I still like the album, quite a bit, but again- pretty, but not sexy....

i also think the kelley polar album is full of sex so i'll have to disagree there too. maybe it is so ingrained that it's easy to overlook. the mirage of the shiny exterior is distracting i suppose.

-- tricky (tricky@), November 29th, 2005.

This is interesting, but that sheen still hasn't worn away for me with multiple listens. Can you elaborate on what it is you find sexy about the record? Anything that comes close to suggesting as such seems vapid to me (noting that sexiness is not necessarily a qualifier for disco records).....

i think it's the beats and the low-end (OTOH, "the rooms in my house have many parties" is a good example of this). also, a lot of the lyrics are all about being full of desire, sometimes desire so strong that it's dysfunctional and stalker-ish which admittedly is not exactly sexy...i think i noted it upthread, but i hear two-sides to this album. the first half kind of sets up the second half and it's the second half that is more sexy/groovy. also, nerdy exteriors are kind of hot.

Ok this I have noticed just a bit, but nerdy exteriors tend to ring a little false for me, hence my suggestion of it being too obvious. Nerdy interiors, on the other hand, are what it's all about- I want more quirkiness in the depths of this, more surprises.

Surprises = most sexiest!

there's a fair bit of proselytizing going on here, it's true!

Surprises = most sexiest!

agree...and the sounds like metro area commentary is definitely spot on.

also, ronan, i get where you're coming from. i think this music is very insider-y stuff. it's may sound poppy, but it is not populist.

what if your not really looking for this in dance music?

or that youre specifically looking for pastiches of these elements, facsimiles?

the bits of this album i have heard, i wished things like the melodies and stuff were more obvious,like their chord progression. i wanted it to be more cheesy and lush. it breaks into a lush swell and then cuts it out. i finsd that with metro area stuff as well. in other music that tension can be exhilirating but weith this i find a little disappointing. but i havent heard it properly yet. and i lost patience with bleep about half way thru anyway.

OTM!

I think the nay-sayers are severely underestimating the impact of the first four Metro Area releases, and the criticism that "it's always the same" is really unfair considering how much ground they've covered over the course of six records. Sure, there's a sonic "signature" there, but that has much more to do with a production aesthetic than any sort of compositional rut.

What songs exactly? While the references and feel are distinctly retro, or at least, refer to timelessly good stuff, I think that statement is a bit harsh.

Exactly, which brings us back around to the IDM question. My understanding of IDM is that one of its foundations is the ability to stay somewhat fuctional while exploring unconventional structures and/or aesthetics in the music. Metro Area, clearly not IDM, is very much functional music. The Kelley Polar record is also functional, though I don't really think the vocal variance nor layering of strings, etc. really make in any more unconventional than a Metro Area record. I'm hearing a little IDM in "Vocalise" and "My Beauty In The Moon", but otherwise not really.

I think the nay-sayers are severely underestimating the impact of the first four Metro Area releases, and the criticism that "it's always the same" is really unfair considering how much ground they've covered over the course of six records. Sure, there's a sonic "signature" there, but that has much more to do with a production aesthetic than any sort of compositional rut.

No, I agree that there was some valid impact with their initial releases, but the first part of this statement is absurd.

What songs exactly? While the references and feel are distinctly retro, or at least, refer to timelessly good stuff, I think that statement is a bit harsh.

Come on, guys- even The Rapture has the good sense not to use the cowbell in every single track.....

Clap-Clap!

http://www.jefferymac.com/images/1018599.gif

Fightin' words!

And you are way under-appreciating the amount of care and attention they put into the production, compared to most dance music made these days. Remember when it was shocking to hear a live instrument on a dance record?

oh shit I'm listening to caught up right now and will ferrel is just about hitting the cowbell on beat. close enough to be funny anyway. I'm sure it works with anything...try it.

(heightened lushness and obviousness being among the key achievements of Get Physical's earlier, more discoid efforts vis a vis Metro Area)

But semantics aside, Tim, are you suggesting the record would benefit from more Metro Area, or less of it?

one of my favorite things about metro area is the way they capture what is to me a kind of urban american street vibe, an urbanity that is not so polished, but still very pretty: multicultural, multiracial, multisexual, gritty, vacant, wide streets with buildings so high they obscure the sun during the daytime so it's perpetual twilight (the streets are like tunnels you can get lost in), anonymity, trash and sleaze, glitz, hardness, tighly knit patchwork neighborhoods, all of the people down or up on their luck, flustered eye contact on the subway, graffiti, men and women in suits, kids in the street everywhere, the guys selling drugs on the corner next to the homeless dude with one shoe, the rivers and bridges and the ocean, endless traffic and noise, a kind of hopeful sadness, the pressure of all of those other souls around you, the masks people wear, the madness and rush of modern capitalist culture, the release of nighttime...

also, scratch "time out" and replace it with "freemind"

Ha! Yes.

are you suggesting the record would benefit from more Metro Area, or less of it?

Wouldn't that be the the three Quartet 12-inches? (which I really don't feel as much as the album. But then Ronan really nailed my feelings re. Metro Area.)

On a more practical level: why oh why no vinyl version? It's perfect for an old-school two side pop-LP, Cupid & Psyche '05. Jeezzzz.

and yes: I like Herbie Hancock.

Obviously not stuff like "Time Out" or "Mandarine Girl" or "Jah"...

Justus Kohncke and then the whole Lindstrom "space disco" axis are other obvious "metro area but maximalist" practitioners - has anyone noticed how "Kreig" is Kohncke's obvious (and awesome) Lindstrom nod in the same way that "Station 17" was his obvious Metro Area nod?

I'm with you on this one.

lindstrom + prins thomas = freak-folk

please, tell me you can understand the difference between "tired of the relentless Soul Jazz Records compilation machine" and "devoted fan of Soul and Jazz records".

not that i know of. the tune they play in the BIS mix is "world turning" and it's awesome.

lindstrom-freakfolk Is this supposed to be a put down?

i didn't read it that way...

yep, tim, idealism> was reissued. recently, i think, too.

nope.

i guess the way i look at it, the IDM approach (from the artist perspective) is to revivify "played out" forms by introducing new formal elements from outside. in the case of (what most people on this thread are comfortable w/ calling) "real" IDM, this means granular synthesis and other MSP patches on top of what is basically electro or lite-industrial w/ xtra-convoluted rhythms. the trick here is getting the listener to accept that the forms being revivified (dance music, drum & bass, more lately hip-hop) are played out to begin with, often this involves rejecting the inherent modernism of streamlined, "functional" musics (european techno club bangers, mainstream jungle, street rap, etc)

this trick works surprisingly well - note how much column space gets devoted to kelley polar's juilliard training vs how much discusses how the non-disco elements basically boil down to the same tricks a whole host of other electro-pop acts that didn't make the juilliard have been pulling, ie postal service, junior boys, the gentle people, etc ... this sort of suspension of disbelief of in the inherent sameness of music is pretty important in these experimental/connosseieur music circles (see the breathless IDM music reviews weekly on boomkat + aquarius records ... "ABSOLUTELY KILLER!" "MUST BUY!" "THE GREBTEST ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC ALBUM SINCE ... LAST WEEK!")

what i guess really pulled the rug out from under "proper" IDM was the eventual reification of one set of tricks (autechre, funkstorung, skam, schematic and all the rest of the clones) (or two sets of tricks if you want to count drill+bass) under the title "IDM" ... that really pulls the rug out, because it makes implicit the assumption that a new set of formal tools is going to revitalize genres that are supposedly moribund because of formal constraints ... placing way too much stock in things like "production technique" (not surprising for a producer-oriented genre, i guess) instead of looking at how these albums + singles work in a culture (not surprising since the hallmark of people who buy dance albums + buy into genres like IDM is their relative lack of engagement w/ dance culture)

(cue the naysayers whining "b-b-but i've been buying moodymann records since 1996 ... i have basic channel ON VINYL")

freak-folk (and the acts on the "space disco" axis) are also playing similar tricks and games w/ genre, using it to pull ideas and associations backward and forward in time ... but here the crucial difference is that i guess they are using it, in a sense, backwards ... devendra banhart is starting w/ a set of concerns as equally modern as any singer-songwriters (questioning the mores of the day ... that's what singer-songwriters do, no?) but using folk-rock (a supposedly "outdated" genre) to throw the contemporary-ness of his lyrics (and his fucked-up-ness) into relief ... i guess this sort of action also resituates our ideas about folk-rock?

idjuts / lindstrom / metro area / faze action / paperclip people have been doing the same w/ disco for a minute now ... their concern remains relentless modernism: increasingly-tight circles of groove music looping round in dubspace towards a vast drug-fuelled emptiness at the center (the same thing the spacier ends of microhouse / electrohouse / k-house have been promising, right?) ... but reaching backwards, using the constraints and conventions of "emptied" genres to do this ... i guess on the whole, i find it to be a more affirmative approach than what kelley polar is up to.

i suppose you might think i am saying the same thing two different ways, i would argue not, because on the one hand you have however many metro area reviews saying "metro area makes disco boogie relevant again", i doubt you will find the same thing happening with kelley polar, instead the reviews will be all "kelley polar brings intimacy and warmth back to microhouse" or some nonsense like that.

when you talk about emptiness, reaching backwards, above, you're really onto some interesting critical shit. but why mire yr arguments in so much internicene sniping and assumptions about what people (especially other ILMers) "really mean"? i mean, look at your last paragraph, it's all about guessing about all sorts of hypothetical reviews, and basing yr frustration on those! why not just quote real sources and start from there?

"quoting real sources" = hurting feelings?

internecine sniping = what makes it a scene, i guess (haha punny)

also i guess it is what separates amateurs from pros and music board bitchery from professional work?

finally, just so you understand my intent, i'm more about invalidating the glommings than the music, phil.

(cue the naysayers whining "b-b-but i've been buying moodymann records since 1996 ... i have basic channel ON VINYL")

I hate to burst your bubble, but you're describing yourself here. Let's reality check that a) you live in a country with an extremely marginal interest in dance music, and b) for those cultures that do pay some attention, you don't really live in one of the states/cities/areas recognized as such.

I'm sorry, but please explain your engagement with dance culture outside of what you buy at the record store, what you read here, and the massive amount of personal social critique you consider in the process.

(I actually think you have a respectable answer to this, but I have to call you out so you'll flex some muscle and stop all this whiny shit...)

as far as the rest of what's being said, I can barely think that hard at this point. I would like to say that I do think Mike's Juliard training is apparent, or at least, I think his stuff sticks out above those others because I can hear the attention paid to harmony and theory, Beach Boys level harmonies, all multi-tracked, key changes, all the music theory stuff I studied in classes I failed. It doesn't sound academic to me, but compared to some of the other recent pop/electronic pop/electronic dance music albums, it certainly sounds thought out and purposeful.

Also, you talk of IDM and dance culture and I don't even see them in the same realm. IDM comes on CDs and people play it on headphones, in record stores and at pretentious coffee houses, while dance music, at least where I sit, is Prince, New Order, lately Disco, bad british rock bands and the latest Hip-Hop.

Blurs b/c it's not quite so obvious as to whether broken beat producers are trying to revivify old genres with new tricks, or trying to speak their "modern" concerns through the spectrum of the past - in fact I suspect it's v. hard to draw a distinction b/w these two approaches w/o specific reference to the discourse of a particular scene - which doesn't mean that there is no difference b/w the two positions, but it might mean that the difference is predominantly perspectival, that it resides more in what we encouraged to perceive in this music than some property of the music itself (this comes back to yr focus on the glomming not the music I guess).

I sometimes think that broken beat and micro/electro/k-house exist as equal opposites to one another insofar as both teeter on this line, and both are sort of retro-modernist responses to the collapse of an obvious narrative of sonic progression in dance music (the distinction b/w the two is in their dividing up of sonic/culture signifiers to achieve similar goals in v. different ways)

(i note that any value we might attach to micro/electro/k-house via this realisation is pre-emptively undercut by yr use of "promises")

Most OTM

http://www.americanapparel.net/presscenter/dailyupdate/dailyUp.asp?d=12&t=175

Early on when very few people were there I put on My Beauty in the Moon off the 12", which I got my hands on the night before for this exact purpose. It created the only response I got all night from some uber-hipster dude who came over and was like "what the hell is this?, it's totally hot".

another problem w/ what i wrote up there is that it seems to imply that everything is on a continuum between those two approaches, when in fact there are many other ways to relate to the past.

broken beat is probably off-topic because it's "hardcore continuum" music, which has a much less complicated (more arbitrary) relationship to the past than house or techno (i think ... is that right?) in that it never offers seems to be trying to offer either a radical break or an unbroken line ... also broken beat is tough because there's just so many approaches: on the one hand you have amp fiddler (who seems to be saying "the past becomes future in the present", ie "everything relevant exists in the always-now which always sound like stevie wonder") next to total head-shock almost-dubstep labels like soulja and bitasweet and public demand, which exist in constant presentness...

ronan - that is a sideswipe

i'm still going with best john hughes movie soundtrack ever.

"in that it never offers seems to be trying to offer either a radical break or an unbroken line"

I dunno, I think you could say it doesn't or it does with the same level of certainty as per house and techno (e.g. house vis a vis disco is both radical break and an unbroken line - the space for the genre to exist is within that contradiction...)

(still not IDM though, at all)

and if it was phil's review you specifically had a problem with then why not say so to start with.

btw i'm sober tonight (well, for now) so i'm predisposed to play nice.

no, honestly tell me, spare me from reading the whole thing... i skim the thread and it seems like lots of micro-micro-genre-positioning.... there must be something that resonates about it

let's just say it's got a good beat, and i can dance to it.

what else makes it great: it's hummable!

i hate genres. i really could give a flying fuck what genre something fits into and whether its politically correct to like that genre based on its imaginary relation to some other genre at this point...

i hate the way genre words are endlessly used in music criticism like no other criticism

-- justsaying (jus...), December 5th, 2005.

I posted my frustration with ILMers about this exact issue on the Richie Hawtin thread, but you have to understand that this is I Love Music, and therefore identifying genres and picking apart the music as it applies to such is part of a valid discussion.

That said, it is annoying that the tendency here with posts discussing dance/electronic music, which contain enough absurd esoteric genres (folktronica, microhouse, etc.) to drive one batty, is to dismiss the content of an album in favor of academic muscle flexing intent on proving that the author's argument is superior, whether or not it's correct.

But it's still fair game in this arena. If you want to know about what an album sounds like exclusively, check allmusic or amazon or one of the many dance record store sites that offer up snapshot reviews. Or jump in the fite with a good argument.

Or just trust everyone here (these people know better than most) - it's a fantastic record, regardless of what genre it falls under...

I know when I talk about IDM I'm thinking way more about early Warp stuff than anything else, because that's where all my reference points (stuff I've listened to enough to internalize) lie. I stopped buying when it got boring, and a lot of other people did too - more people understand IDM in terms of the Richard D James album than in terms of Chocolate Strawberry Fuckstick or whatever Venetian Snares' new one is called.

People tend to anchor to the golden age of any genre. When people talk about "classical music" in generalities, would you assume they're talking about something more like Beethoven or more like Philip Glass? When you say "punk", do more people think of Rancid or the Ramones?

i don't get it.
-- vahid (vfoz...), December 5th, 2005

=

I, being among said culprits of this exact tendency in the last several 200+ post dance threads will now attempt to mask guilt and throw subtle wink/nudge to my accomplices by inserting dismissive comment.

Get that, smart-ass.

but the golden age of IDM as you talk about it lasted about 6 albums worth. I go with whatever the largest amount of people agree on. The difference between Rancid and Ramones, sonically, isn't really enough, your analogy would work better if you asked "when people think of punk, do they think of Television or do they think of Blink-182" and unfortunately, the answer is Blink-182. You can even replace Television with the Voidoids and it still works.

Not really. Odd dichotomy here: pure sound description vs. genre classification. Still leaves plenty of other stuff to talk about, in my opinion.

Of course I'm fine with hearing about genre. And hey, I like retro-disco too. One would just imagine that, with a 500 post thread, the album must have touched some nerve. I guess the nerve it touched was the classificatory one. What this says about dance music right now I won't dare to speculate.

"In a year when electronic dance artists such as Jamie Lidell and Roisin Murphy have made a good fist at innovative pop, along comes Croatian-born Kelley Polar to steal their thunder."!

+ omg "nefarious rave rumble"!!

(um, & anyone have any suggestions on what I could stick on a mixtape between "Here In The Night" & Pulp's "Seductive Barry"?)

Have any videos been released?

but now I love it

;-)

it's f***ing rude to retitle the thread when KP is actually posting, joining in the conversation. Can a mod change it back?

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d148/jonwilliamspwn/JonWilliams.jpg

-- ha (idon...), December 27th, 2005.

i disagree

I AM KELLEY POLAR

I AM KELLEY POLAR

no offense intended to vahid but will someone please change this thread back to it's orig title? who the hell changed it anyway?

I have a music crit friend Darren here in Melbourne who subscribes to the "deep house forever/death to the false electro/german-house idols" pov; I'm quite keen to get his opinion on this album.

xpost - yeah, just as Scritti's C&P'85 was way too OVERproduced and camp for it's own good. The music/production remained its saving grace however, whereas here I'm left imagining a version of this with less lyrical abandon and lush chamber orchestra arrangements instead.

If there is an electro-house backlash I don't think it will result in a return to deep house (too recently the hipster music of choice, at least in Australia), I suspect it'll all go detroit techno or something. But we'll see. Anyway I'm wandering off-topic now so please ignore...

Kelley Polar! I will say of this album that nothing grabs me quite as much as "The Rhythm Touch" did.

my pick on this album is "in time", but it only really works if you've heard the preceding songs...and it's the last song. "ashamed of myself" is also awesome like a disco matias aguayo with a breathy chic vocal section. and cowbells!

-- jed_ (colin_o_har...), December 29th, 2005 6:04 AM. (jed)

if this happens I AM QUITTING ILX FOREVER

fabric 26: global communication

You can tell KP has a trained voice and knows exactly what he's doing with it, but the unaffectedness and general passionlessness is what grates. Not that I demand singers to emote and growl and moan all over the place -- far from it, in fact -- but there's a difference between unaffected and passionless in an interesting way, and unaffected and passionless in an uninteresting way. I think it must be the "indie good voice" thing -- that from-the-throat, very careful pronounciation, slightly hushed way of doing vocals you find with singers like, well, Sufjan Stevens and Ben Gibbard (who I hate to use as a point of comparison because it seems both forced and obvious, but the point stands). It's a very "modest" way of singing that I don't generally enjoy. Furthermore, KP's voice sounds as if he intends it to be modest, tuneful and unobtrusive, but the way the vocals are layered so thick with harmony prevents that effect from ever being achieved.

Also, I don't think the vocal melodies themselves are particularly memorable or tuneful -- which is why the "pop" talk above doesn't quite make sense to me. I find them too tightly chained to the underlying production (especially in terms of their rhythms) for my tastes. Just because electronic music has a vocalist over top of it singing actual notes doesn't mean it's pop.

That said, I've only listened to the record a few times, and I will certainly give it more time... I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt, not least because of all the praise for it on this thread from people whose tastes I respect, and even more because of how much I love the "Audition" EP. I've done far more drastic 180s before, that's for sure.

Clarke makes a good point about the "modesty" of the singing and "the way the vocals are layered so thick with harmony [which] prevents that effect from ever being achieved." i guess that could either be the thing that doesn't make the album work for you or the thing that makes you love it. i change my mind about the record every time i hear it. i think i love it but yet i can't listen to all of it in one go - does that mean i don't love it enough?

see what i mean about changing my mind about it on every listen?

01.08.06: Kelley Polar Live Debut
Live debut: Knitting Factory NYC on March 8, 2006.

(& #145 in Pazz&Jopp (inc 3 #1 votes); two votes for "My Beauty In The Moon" & one for "Here In The Night".)

Kelley Polar @ the Knit

i really hope there are going to be more shows, i'm very, very keen to see how this works live.

Please note the early nature of this event, and the lack of any other bands on the bill. This is Kelley's special night.

i'm really excited for this. live debuts can be a mixed bag, but the live string section, kelley's julliard training, and the general awesomeness of his record have me thinking this'll be great.

oh wow, that's pretty sweet. the canal room site lists a 10 PM start time so yeah, making both probably won't be too hard...

Rhys Chatham: Performing his original 70s "guitar army" pieces for the first time in two decades, RHYS CHATHAM'S "Die Donnergotter" ensemble features rock legends ERNIE BROOKS (MODERN LOVERS) on bass and JONATHAN KANE (LA MONTE YOUNG, SWANS) on drums; the guitarists include CHRIS BROKAW (CODEINE, COME), BILL BROVOLD (LARVAL), DAVID DANIELL (SAN AGUSTIN), DAVID BICKNELL, JON CRIDER and PAUL DUNCAN (JONATHAN KANE'S FEBRUARY); of course RHYS himself is front and center

!!!!!!

BUMP.

Pulling out records to play while people stand around waiting for the actual show. Some nice New Wave oddities and Italo...unclassics if you will.

Haven't heard more about the schedule for Tonic other then there's a few other acts so I'm assuming Rhys is going on later.

As far as requests, any requests for the Feelies would've been promptly shot down, as I only brought mostly new wave/synth stuff, more slow/atmospheric stuff for the pre-show segment, and then a chunk of my typical new wave/italo/disco dance stuff for my post-show spinning, which was pretty hit-or-miss, but people seemed to like most of it.

I have to say I was 100% sure nobody would stick around, as I'd never seen anyone stick around after a show like that, esp. in the middle of the week, and had a contigency plan of seeing Rhys Chatham. Perhaps because people were expecting Morgan, a few people did stick around, not a ton but a nice enough amount for us to have a little dance party for over an hour, first me then finally Morgan, who spun an amazing set to about 20 lucky people!

As far as the crowd, I was psyched with the turnout, it definately seemed full enough if not sold out. The balcony was packed as well (esp w/ the local dj contigent!). It's always a strange thing, when a kind of dance kind of pop band performs at a place like that. Certainly they put on a show worth watching, but at other times, they were delivering dance music and I was suprised more people weren't dancing. But who knows, if you were dancing you may have missed the space larva creature. But the constant talking at shows, I just never get that. And despite being "loud" dance music, I think the harmonies and strings and vocals were subtle and I was straining to hear over the chatter.

The sound was hit-or-miss. Word behind the curtain is that they had serious problems with the in-ear monitors which could be a certain death for many vocalists. I think they still did great, but that may explain variances in Kelley's volume.

All in all I had a great time and got home at a reasonable hour! What more could I ask for?

And about the musician's not dancing, I think, at least with the vocalists, it was pretty clear they were going for a different thing. They did have some choreography, it was all just very minimal and still. Maybe 2 back-up dancers would've been a nice touch, but the stage was crowded as it was.

So thanks to everyone who came...

and dan selzer and morgan geist were great last night as well! a crackin' dj selection.

and kelley covering hi-NRG classic "i'm so hot 4 you" by bobby o as his last tune -- classic!! and then selzer seamlessly picking up with the original as soon as kelley ended-- double classic!!

The whole performance thing was... well, a lot more *performative* than I expected, almost campy in a way. A really great way. The strings sounded beautiful live. Only real quip with the show itself was his vocal shyness -- you could tell he was struggling with it for a while (though again, chatty people didn't help at all).

rad!!

the corny indie rocker dudes in the audience who weren't dancing and just stood there stone-faced like it was a slint concert could do with some of bobby o's timeless advice: 'how to pick up girls--learn to dance!'

Lesson learned: don't tell people to shut, they'll only talk about how you told them to shut up.

double rad!!

man, the talk of campy outfits &c&c&c makes me so very very happy. would've killed to have been there & dancing.

HOLY CRAP.

I was wondering if you knew if they were gonna play it...or you just had it!!!!

That voice article is funny, obviously Tom missed the first time the space larvae crawled on stage. But for the last time I will mention it's likely some of the quietness of Kelley's voice was due to monitor problems. Anyone who's ever stood on stage behind the speakers with little or no monitors knows how difficult it is to gauge those things.

yeah the 'wanna be your lover' segue was brilliant--i liked that that it told a story: first kelley was 'hot 4 you,' and then you responded with 'wanna be your lover.' aww!

i like tom's blog for the voice, but i'm frankly mystified as to how he thought what kelley polar was doing sounded like kompakt--the beats sounded very different to me. and i don't think that he sounds at all like the postal service, except perhaps on the most topical level. but maybe that's just me.

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