Sasha Frere-Jones: Really?????

X-post to Alex in SF

It wasn't meant as a quality indicator, just that the slot reserved for "weird not quite dance music" in your average straw man hipster's (whatever that is) Ipod is taken by this.

And slowing down Bomb Squad style production work does not an auteur make re: Portishead.

Vocals are pure miserabilist, one folk step away from Goth. Talent aside, that is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i8fqo_YrFE

How is this not Trip Hop influenced, its Maxinquaye mixed with Dem 2.

Or even Nearly God, the deeply paranoid Tricky that thought acting was a good idea.

Its so weird how everyone forgot about early Tricky, like the Lee Perry-esque caricature he became changes it.

Massive Attack still get play in Fact and at Resident Advisor (mostly because they're getting remixed by Burial) and Portishead releases a Kraut Rock record to raves. And Tricky, I don't even know what his last three albums were called. Last one I remember the name on was Blowback? The critical community went from fellating the man to dropping him like he was radioactive. Story of a lot of criticism I read, people believe in hype.

Even critics, especially critics. Deejays remember this shit.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/B0000247P4/sr=8-5/qid=1256282375/ref=dp_image_text_0?ie=UTF8&n=229816&s=music&qid=1256282375&sr=8-5

bloody hell!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ypgjh4cfL._SS500_.jpg

Who me?

Just a fucking loser. Didn't go to class, Beuler.

no, seriously, you've posted here under a different display name, right?

Just under Siah Alan mostly, posting dubstep mixes back in the day.

Stuck to the ultra friendly dance threads and was tolerated (mostly) by moonship and Tim F.

I've been posting here at least 4-5 years. Just very slowly.

So I kind of know everyone, even if they don't remember me or where I live.

ok, cool--i never pay attention to the dance threads, for the most part (lol, i'm old).

Really not looking to make enemies here BTW.

It just irks me when I see people mouthing party lines. Or lazy half thought out crit.

Time to sleep, I think. I get cranky when I'm this tired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59NNupminV8

geir half the british fart rock bands u rep for like travis and coldplay use super boring chord changes

Actually, if you look further at it, they don't. For starters, they use a lot of minor and not only major. They use a lot of the same tricks that Paul McCartney used, and his harmonic work was always genius (except when he did boring I-IV-V rock'n'roll songs like "I'm Down" and "She's a Woman").

"Stand By Me" may sound very straightforward at first glance, but its chords, throughout verse, bridge and chorus, do actually visit every single of the possible seven steps.

Geir only likes "advanced chord changes" that don't involve any improvisation, otherwise Giant Steps would be his favorite song of all time

I have a lot of respect for the harmonic work done by jazz musicians. But I think the really genius thing in music is to make something that sounds straightforward on the surface, and which is actually quite harmonically complex when you look into it. "Giant Steps" sounds complex from the first moment you listen to it, and has no straightforward surface at all.

Massive Attack still get play in Fact and at Resident Advisor (mostly because they're getting remixed by Burial) and Portishead releases a Kraut Rock record to raves. And Tricky, I don't even know what his last three albums were called. Last one I remember the name on was Blowback? The critical community went from fellating the man to dropping him like he was radioactive. Story of a lot of criticism I read, people believe in hype.

Fact et al reported on the expanded edition of Maxinquaye though. Tricky's problem was being both super-inconsistent after the first couple of albums and a massive cock. One of the two would probably have been fine.

I remember this article on the making of Maxingquaye being really great (for anyone interested in any music prod): http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun07/articles/classictracks_0607.htm

The news we've all been waiting for:

http://flavorwire.com/45316/das-racist-to-sasha-frere-jones-stop-trying-to-kill-rap

And commentary on that reaction (with comments on that)

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/general/2009/10/23/das-racist-goes-after-sasha-frere-jones-for-being-white-n-educated/

das racist are pretty otm i think

i mean the swing vs thump thing was the part of the essay where i *smh* because of all the reasons vasquez lists--regardless of the elephant mane in the room, which is whatever 2 me cause i dont dig gucci all that hard, hes just kind of rong about what constitutes hip-hop musically, both (imo) factually and ideologically

ESPECIALLY because i think sfj kind of ignores the way "swing" gets coded as black and "thump" gets coded as white vis-a-vis blues/jazz vs. euro dance music

SFJ is basically doing high-end google bait where "hits" equals "angry letters to the New Yorker"...but at least I don't have to keep building a straw man when I get all pissy about the myth of disco somehow being emblematic "white" music. Not that I plan on actually reading the SFJ bait so perhaps it's a moot point.

i don't know das racist but i like their thing! both things. even the haikus. might be the most interesting music-related thing i've read in a while! and i agree with them too. and my maria went to wesleyan and she is dope as hell! and so did santogold.

That part might be correct but other part I 'm not so sure about (says this white, college educated guy. Ha). And I did not like the SFJ premise or think it was well stated either.

But notice how SFJ then immediately undermines that credibility: while he could just say “Nas called it three years ago,” he instead claims that while Nas’s sentiment was correct, the proclamation was three years premature, as if to say “Nice try, Nas, but leave it to the professional (white, college-educated) music journalist to make sweeping statements about (black, ghetto-originated) music.”

How would they react to Greg Tate criticism?

well greg tates not white so the power dynamics are a a little bit different

That's kinda my point. Is SFJ not correct because of the combination of factors--white and college-educated and based at the New Yorker versus Nas and his background or versus Greg Tate --black, college-educated and at the V. Voice. I just think they should address SFJ's arguments rather than his power and authority and where it derives from.

but they do address his arguments--theyre just critiquing the power dynamics at play as well

i mean i agree that its the weaker part of the response but that sort of critique is (imo rightfully) par for the course with this kind of thing

on the one hand yeah agree w/this

I just think they should address SFJ's arguments rather than his power and authority and where it derives from.

but OTOH it's helpful & illuminating to raise race/power/class dynamics in these discussions, like I come from a pretty undergrad place with respect to that: always keep pointing out these things, there's not going to be a day when they're not important

but then back on the other hand the way people immediately go for the sneering gotcha! undergrad tone of voice when they engage stuff like this is just very wearying & depressing

if "stuff like this" means stances both intentionally provocative and poorly thought out, i get why immediate sneering would be wearying (i don't need to read 90 pieces on why rush limbaugh is a big fat idiot), but i don't know why its depressing (i get why people want to respond when he's poking them with a stick, and why should they be respectful).

in fairness tho da croupier you have a fondness for the sneering-undergrad tone rite - I know you'll take this as an attack but that's kind of what you're into, right: engagement with something caustic & aggro/"provocative"/"bold" to it - to me, it seems like if a matter's worth discussing, it's worth attempting to do in a productive manner instead of going for the political-blog run-up-the-score style

we have fundamental aesthetic/ethical disagreement on this issue tho I think

what was the issue again?

there are several

sorry, i'm a little slow.

i can see why you'd see it that way, john, but most of the time I just don't like going on about something without throwing in some humor. and when the thing i'm responding to is a rock critic saying "why isn't the arcade fire black like mick jagger?" or "blueprint 3 done and killed rap" i'm comfortable with letting that humor be sardonic. bad link-bait is also noogie-bait.

i used to think sasha was a bright guy. i don't know anymore. or maybe he's still a bright guy, but its not coming through in pieces like this last one. hoo boy. i swear i read stuff like that and all i hear is: "i liked the rap when it went like this. now it goes like this. and i don't like it." in dana carvey's old man character voice.

also john i know dang well you're not above flip dismissal

yeah I mean I think the main issues in these discourses are actually a little less race-oriented than they appear, both from the stance of the author (s/fj) & the designated responders (das racist) - I think issues of youth/maturity-age & control of discursive paradigms are heavily in play. i.e. scott's right: I think s/fj doesn't dig the state of play in rap, a genre which at one point he dug a lot, and for a lot of people, if you don't like the way something changes in art (also in business but that's a diff world), that codes as reactionary, as having aged past the right to comment - "if you don't like [x], it's clear that you don't get the whole deal" has been a popular strategy of dismissing critical claims on popular music for 30+ years, more if you look at jazz crit even in the early bop age. and this is partly the latest iteration of same: "gtfo grandpa, make room for new ways of thinking" which has validity to it, the calcification of a critical stance is just a fact of growth & trying to stay young!!! is a bit worse in my mind than accepting that the growth of your aesthetic will eventually mean actually arriving at an aesthetic, which, like any arrived-at thing, will age & become comfortable. but the hint of a reactionary stance near a question as racially loaded as white critics commenting on the state of play in rap, that's a quick ticket to some lovely unproductive and to-me-incredibly-boring fireworks.

xpost yeah I know anthony but I keep hoping I'll grow out of it & spotting how unproductive it looks in others is a part of that

I remember reading the piece when it first ran and goin "oh great, my Dad has a job writing for the Atlantic now, soon we'll hear how free verse has ruined poetry"

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 12:25 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

xpost!

"my dad" isn't a random "I am young!" stand-in for "age" there, it's my actual dad the english professor who thinks free verse has ruined poetry

i put xpost in there to clarify i wasn't responding to your post above it, you know

i could have just has easily linked to the "fuck this guy" post

I think the bigger issue is that SASHA keeps on race-coding this shit in unproductive ways. "Rap isn't as good" is not the same thing as "rap isn't as BLACK." Well, as much as this paragraph could actually mean that (it's insinuated but not stated):

"The tempos and sonics of disco’s various children—techno, rave, whatever your particular neighborhood made of a four-on-the-floor thump—are slowly replacing hip-hop’s blues-based swing. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the rudimentary digital sound of New Orleans bounce or the crusty samples of New York hip-hop: this music wants to swing and syncopate. On major commercial releases, this impulse is giving way to a European pulse, simpler and faster and more explicitly designed for clubs."

But I do think there's a slight misreading of Sasha's thesis here, which seems to be more this:

"hip-hop is no longer the avant-garde, or even the timekeeper, for pop music. Hip-hop has relinquished the controls and splintered into a variety of forms. The top spot is not a particularly safe perch, and every vital genre eventually finds shelter lower down, with an organic audience, or moves horizontally into combination with other, sturdier forms."

I mean, I don't think this is 100% untrue, there's an impulse or something there, but he doesn't explore it in a very interesting or thoughtful way, starting with the second sentence. I guess he thinks "organic audience" means something self-evident that I'm not understanding (is this those STREETS that teh rappers are always going on about??), or why absorbing new styles is "horizontal" while finding a niche audience is "vertical," or why these things seem mutually exclusive, or or or...

also john, if your goal on sfj-hate threads is to have us respond productively, calling out the inconsistencies of haters is probably less effective in doing so than if you read the piece yourself and productively engaged with it - admitted flaws, pointed out what you liked, etc.

anthony you could always just say "john I refuse to let you post to this thread w/o being a total dick to you," it'd save you some effort

(I mean the real issue, I suspect, is that words like "avant-garde" and "time-keeper" are more useless than usual in pop at the moment; it's not something that's changed in hip-hop but something that's changed in, e.g., how pop music quantified, sold, etc. but then he'd be writing a boring "music is fragmenting!" think piece that not as many people would link to.)

wtg j0hn for shifting the power dynamics by using "undergrad" as an insult

anthony you could always just say "john I refuse to let you post to this thread w/o being a total dick to you," it'd save you some effort

not sure if it was my reaffirmation of the xpost or the acknowledgment that you don't actually talk much about the pieces themselves so much as the nature of people's complaints on these threads that brought this out, but it wasn't my intent to cross a line.