Marketing does a bit more than get stuff on the radar, I think, although that is perhaps a large part of its functionality...
The AMs are hermetic CREATIVELY. They aren't building bridges ARTISTICALLY, merely COMMERCIALLY-- they sell more records. As this is not an indicator of quality (either way) they remain just as hermetic.
And how ARE the audience reacting to AMs then? Many (younger ones) say they are exciting, they say something about their lives, and they are good music to go out to etc. Many (older ones) perhaps say they are nothing special, but have some good tunes. Why is this interesting? Qualitatively?
― gekoppel (Gekoppel), Thursday, 25 May 2006 18:55 (eighteen years ago) link
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 18:57 (eighteen years ago) link
No, it means it resonates in the kul-cha. It might not resonate in any particularly deep way. But why it does is worth teasing out, because it might tell us something about our society. (And that's what makes, say, Tom Ewing's Popular blog interesting.)
Aside from that, I find Arctic Monkeys far more vivid, entertaining, and complex on a straightforward musical level than Burial. I don't think you do need to know the references to enjoy them. But that's by the by.
Urban Tribe don't pick notes at all! Except maybe like one for every tune.
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:00 (eighteen years ago) link
"THIS song has MORE emotions than THAT song""THIS song has BETTER emotions than THAT song""THIS song has MORE MEANINGFUL emotions than THAT song"
without actually being able to point at the emotions are in this song or that. you will probably fall back on "well, i just FEEL the emotions" - which is ironic, considering you're accusing people of solipsism. you can't have it both ways - implying overreading or overreaching in other's interpretive skills and then taking a strong subjectivist viewpoint.
also these miles davis vs arctic monkeys vs urban tribe vs burial arguments revolving around fanbase are just idiotic!
did urban tribe spend years touring and playing clubs as support for better-known bandleaders? has burial been relentlessly playing shows and making the press? i don't think it makes sense to compare arctic monkeys and urban tribe when they're working w/ two very different infrastructures - and surely you're not going to argue that the infrastructure just sprung up overnight around the monkeys because they connect that much better w/ the fans!
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:03 (eighteen years ago) link
These are legitimate arguments... but need more clarity perhaps?
― gekoppel (Gekoppel), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:03 (eighteen years ago) link
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:03 (eighteen years ago) link
so i can't point out your wack use of rhetoric without being accused of indulging in "technical meta-debate"?
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― )alex(, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:06 (eighteen years ago) link
oh and AMs aesthetically=death in my mind, it is true (probably as death as Burial is in yrs...)
― gekoppel (Gekoppel), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:06 (eighteen years ago) link
This adds up to the following: Any kind of qualitative comparison is impossible. Which is one big smokescreen that has been played out on a million threads before this one.
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― gekoppel (Gekoppel), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:08 (eighteen years ago) link
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:08 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't think your dad 'proves' anything. I just think his assessment is correct.
But that's not what you're doing. Instead of responding to the specifics of what I say, you're just jumping straight into a really tedious objective vs. subjective debate that could be applied to anything at all as a way of cutting the legs out from under me.
you shouldn't compare burial and arctic monkeys
There's no shouldn't about it. I'll compare anything I like, thanks. It's a lot more fruitful than pretending that everything exists in it's own... hermetic... little universe.
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― gekoppel (Gekoppel), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:16 (eighteen years ago) link
And whilst examining their impact and what that means is interesting (I've done it- it was interesting yes) I don't see why this means that this impacts on the music. You yourself seem to like them for the music they make, whereas I don't...
― gekoppel (Gekoppel), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:17 (eighteen years ago) link
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:18 (eighteen years ago) link
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― DJ Martian (djmartian), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:23 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't think they're culturally hermetic, because a lot of people like them. It's a pretty simple point, although one you seem to have trouble with. Formally, sure, they are--although I think an obsession with form is one of the most obvious blinkers worn by people who think from the dance music context. In terms of attitude/content, I don't think they are hermetic.
For the record, I don't think they're the greatest thing since sliced bread either. They were just a good... comparison... point with Burial in terms of the level of reference to a larger tradition in the music.
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:23 (eighteen years ago) link
Of course, these things are not finally proveable. But the interesting thing is in attempting to argue about them, and thus attempting to articulate how and why a piece of music works.
What is not interesting is immediately jumping to the conclusion--this is not proveable! it's green eggs and ham! Because then what do we do? Stop talking and go home to our little universes.
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:26 (eighteen years ago) link
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:27 (eighteen years ago) link
i would not call this "articulate"
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:28 (eighteen years ago) link
And on that note, I have to go to a meeting.
a lot of people like burial and urban tribe!
yeah, must be at least 10,000 worldwide. Lots.
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:28 (eighteen years ago) link
Of course, articulating how and why a piece of music works is the really hard part that takes lots of time and thought and struggle... and thus rarely makes it onto internet message boards.
I don't exempt myself from this.
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:31 (eighteen years ago) link
you have to compare "number of people who heard UT" vs "number of people who loved UT" - i'd say the number would be high, better maybe than even the arctic monkeys!
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:32 (eighteen years ago) link
ah, there's always a conspiracy theory. poor urban tribe. if only they had the marketing, they would be topping the charts!
lol
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:34 (eighteen years ago) link
And I would question whether examining music on the level of form is any more blinkered than yours...
"content"- is this lyrics to which you refer? "attitude"... well I guess my criticisms would again be along the lines of formalism there too! I get yr point, they reach a wide audience therefore they are non hermetic--- but why does this give them value on any level other than a socio-anthropological one?
― gekoppel (Gekoppel), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:34 (eighteen years ago) link
I think this is the more relevant motivating factor behind any sense of disappointment with Burial's music: as per Junior Boys, it's tempting to assume that Burial is/are just being lauded for providing a neat composite of different music-crit strands of thinking popular within a certain bracket. The fact that it is a sonic composite makes me disinclined to argue that the music is hermetically sealed (surely it's less so than most of the dubstep it's played alongside?), or that this is the main issue at any rate.
Having said that, the novelty factor is much lower than for Junior Boys - almost certainly every person who'd be inclined to listen to Burial has already made the 2-step/dub-techno connection in their head. In fact the overwhelming majority discussion about Burial could all easily apply to Horsepower Productions' early work but for the historical developments of the past five years (the decline of 2-step, the rise of grime and its increasing drift towards hip hop, the increasing distance between 2-step and 90% of dubstep)allows people to add this whole elegiac "ghost of the hardcore continuum" dimension which didn't apply in 2001.
I don't think such a move is illegitimate: when you're deeply into a scene or group of inter-related scenes, then the shifting dynamics between different stylistic impulses can make certain approaches seem startlingly relevant even when they're effectively reiterations of what has come before. The "ghost of the hardcore continuum" dimension is something which people who are deep into jungle/2-step/dubstep/grime will pick up on a sensual level even if they've never read Reynolds. And it's not hard to see why people who've been slightly frustrated by dubstep's recent stiff-jointed grooves and inward-looking construction (the obsession with club-focused bass production mirroring precisely the same obsession which overtook drum & bass in the late 90s) might be overjoyed by the flickering reappearance of pre-dubstep sonic manoeuvres like vocal samples and 2-step beats.
(my private quibble with Burial, or at least Burial-type music, is that it uses these gestures-to-past-glories in the most obvious manner possible, they really are gestures rather than a meaningful engagement with the logic of 2-step, but there's other music that I like which does similar things vis-a-vis other past genres, so I'm aware that my issue here is partly motivated by my history as a 2-step lobbyist)
If Burial was being held up as particularly futurist or progressive, well, that would definitely be a step too far, but I don't think people like Reynolds/K-Punk etc. are actually doing this (in fact Reynolds noted on his blog that Burial's music was hardly surprising). If anything hauntology is a Dissensian crit-obssession explicitly designed to give people something to talk about while waiting for the next golden child of futurism to emerge.
(but I do think the "Omni Trio of the 00s" accolade is ridiculously off-base - surely this is based on a misreading of the media by people who haven't actually heard Burial (or Omni Trio, or both)?)
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Thursday, 25 May 2006 22:09 (eighteen years ago) link
okay resume speaking eloquently (hell of rush post) :|
― fandango (fandango), Thursday, 25 May 2006 22:10 (eighteen years ago) link
Boomkat called it "groundbreaking" but you know that's their style ;)
― fandango (fandango), Thursday, 25 May 2006 22:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Thursday, 25 May 2006 22:39 (eighteen years ago) link
not. saying. much!
... allows people to add this whole elegiac "ghost of the hardcore continuum" dimension which didn't apply in 2001.I don't think such a move is illegitimate
it's definitely not illegitimate. it's just the discourse itself is as exhausted as the music.
really, i'm just very tired of the hardcore continuum, and also constantly stunned at how tiny the musical world of Dissensus is, in contrast to the open-minded talk that's thrown around there. combine small world, grandiose rhetoric, and dead-end tradition...
― boy child, Thursday, 25 May 2006 23:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Thursday, 25 May 2006 23:54 (eighteen years ago) link
― boy child, Friday, 26 May 2006 00:03 (eighteen years ago) link
but you say lots of stupid things.
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Friday, 26 May 2006 00:06 (eighteen years ago) link
If this is true it's only because of its specificity. One of the problems with talk of the hardcore continuum is that we know the origins of the idea, the inventors, the subject-matter, the music, the forums, the spruikers...
Most music crit discourse is no less exhausted except insofar as it's vaguer and less self-reflective, so we don't tend to notice it so sharply. Obviously most of the crit surrounding (them again) the Arctic Monkeys is much more tired insofar as it feeds off tired ideas about music which themselves fed off tired ideas etc. going back forty years. But because this forms so much of the general background of our lives we don't notice it so much.
In music crit terms perhaps ideas like "the hardcore continuum" are like the schaffel beat while more generalised music crit ideas (e.g. the tenants of rockism etc.) are like the house beat. Obviously the house beat has been "done to death" in the sense of sheer repetition much more blatantly, however the attention which the schaffel beat attracts to itself causes it to have a built in lifespan, beyond which it seems creatively exhausted.
― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Friday, 26 May 2006 00:59 (eighteen years ago) link
Sorry, but the time when four square beats, some pianos and an exhortation to dance had the power to signify an incredibly deep, poignant, and moving meditation on alienation, sexuality and the feeling of being lost on the dancefloor is long gone for me.
I mean really, this thing practically markets itself to people who still idolise Larry Levan and David Mancuso. It's a symptom of how inward-looking and -thinking a certain strain of American music has become "
― Jacob (Jacob), Friday, 26 May 2006 02:10 (eighteen years ago) link
if burial is anything like omni trio, i need to hear this stuff now.
― breakfast pants (disco stu), Friday, 26 May 2006 03:08 (eighteen years ago) link
can someone do a dubstep POV or X? i've been listening to a lot of breaks music lately and i think i would like dubstep, but i live mostly in the hermetically sealed world of minimal and therefore don't hear much of this stuff. the breaks album i have been enjoying the most lately is calibre's second sun which is one of the best drum and bass albums i've ever heard.
― breakfast pants (disco stu), Friday, 26 May 2006 03:14 (eighteen years ago) link
― breakfast pants (disco stu), Friday, 26 May 2006 03:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― renegade bear shot by cops on frat row (vahid), Friday, 26 May 2006 03:33 (eighteen years ago) link
― breakfast pants (disco stu), Friday, 26 May 2006 03:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― breakfast pants (disco stu), Friday, 26 May 2006 03:44 (eighteen years ago) link
I don't think this is true at all. There are plenty of great music critics writing about what's actually going on now as opposed to obsessively shoring up a tiny little corner of the past. Sasha Frere-Jones. Kelefa Sanneh. Jody Rosen. Frank Kogan. Just to pick really obvious names.
No idea what the schaffel beat vs. the house beat means. (Speaking of obscurantism, who the fuck cares about the schaffel beat?) Also not really sure what Jacob's point is supposed to be (although surely it muse rise above "you're stupid.") Christ there are some lame comebacks in this thread.
― boy child, Friday, 26 May 2006 03:56 (eighteen years ago) link
― boy child, Friday, 26 May 2006 04:01 (eighteen years ago) link