teengirl fantasy, miracles club, mi ami, 100% silk and the rise of HIPSTER HOUSE: S/D

lol my ma is in visual cultures, i take a class w someone who claims to
have invented it

haha i wanted to get your take on that post!!!

i mean i feel like it kind of reiterates a bunch of stuff we talked about on the chillwave thread already but the longevity of like inverted crosses and triangles and vhs is kinda interesting to me too

hey do you know what else endless self regenerates?

the punchlines to bad jokes?

i was gonna say machine elves

why are you so full of hate, man

cuz no one on ilm cares about lee noble like i do...

also i was hoping youd bring so serious science teacher info about echinoderms

also i think a sort of sense of the density and impossibility of history that sees all this stuff as neither old or new but sort of outside of time an accumulation of signs w/o significance

Yeah this feels right to me.

It's also why I think it's a mistake in the case of 100%Silk et. al. either for the artists or the listeners to get too hung up on the influences and source material, this stuff works much better when it codes as kind of obliviousness or indifferent (in a "too high" sense) to the need to genuflect to past masters.

dude i have been to a party with judith and kaja, i can bring you so serious info

anyway, isn't this all just a fancy way of saying some of these bands might have been to art school?

lol yeah def some happy hardcore - and jpop and anime soundtracks - in seapunk

yeah, having qualities of both the old and the new I think has always been a thing with psychedelia for whatever reason. there's a referential component to this stuff but also a chaotic, improvisational aspect, constantly transforming old signifiers into freshly charged technology for ecstasy/transport

that use of old cultural and religious signs I've actually been seeing as a self-conscious return to ritual in art - there's this sense of trying to disorient onself from media-programmed use of the sign, yet also a continued interest in it (all that totemic/nostalgic/media/pop imagery), maybe out a need to hold onto some sense of cultural ritual or constancy, but taking control of, and realigning, the sign to one's own uses, or something

xxxxp

judith that's rad. I study visual culture myself

transforming old signifiers into freshly charged technology for ecstasy/transport

doesn't like the strokes do this too though?

or even like zz top?

it seems like you're ascribing a lot of stuff to this music that isn't particularly novel

for example "spreading through visual culture" - isn't this like punk and hip-hop 101?

i mean i agree with your general conclusions about how culture works but just because this music is marketed to eggheads doesn't mean it's the only music that functions on an eggheadscribable level

there's more emphasis on rapture/ecstasy with this stuff I think than with the Strokes, plus a more self-conscious sense of 'we are magically invoking the __ totem to create an aura of ___' kind of vibe to it all

I guess a heightened sense of the ritual/ecstatic is the emphasis here, plus more interest in fucking with the code and turning it into something more out there/fresh

but yeah, what I am describing is how culture works, I think this stuff just likes to emphasize certain 'universal'/ritual elements of that process and trip out to it more

i see where you're coming from w/r/t certain aspects of this scene but i also don't think honey owens is magically invoking the totem of robert owens if that's what you're getting at ... it seems like that's maybe a useful way to demarcate the more "witch house" end of the scene?

yeah, more just trying to grasp the seemingly ongoing 'witchy'/mystical theme there's been in freefolk/drone/post-noise/witchhouse/chillwave/post-whatever/seapunk/trianglewave/etc

i can bring you so serious info

haha

witch house stuff is more overtly concerned with the sort of visual symbols and rituals that chris is talking about but theres still an aesthetic continuity btw h1pster house and other kinds of post-noize underground music. largely in terms of self-presentation/articulation, the appropriation of old technology and the soothing of the same anxieties

def a continuity, witchhouse takes it to an extreme, putting the symbols even into the band names, but it's the same kind of aesthetic and approach I see at drone shows, and used to see scribbled all over freefolk tapes.

I dunno, I don't really have a problem with the 'egghead' aspect of this style of house. The references to cultural theory and avant-gardism dropped by Ital and Maria Minerva come across as the kind of thing that smart young people do. Maybe it has a cringe factor for being pretentious, but somehow it also strikes me as kind of naive and even charming.

What's maybe weirder is how retro some of their intellectual points of reference are...

That said, I'm glad they don't take it to John Maus levels of embarrassing shout outs to Agamben, Badiou, Deleuze and whoever else...

tell me about #icepunk

I think that 100% Silk feels more outsider than it would have 10 years ago precisely because a lot of contemporary house is quite conservative and purist.

― Tim F, Monday, 13 February 2012

totally disagree with this, think 100% silk fit far more into house in 2012 than 2002...hardware, analogue, basementy, more rough than sheeny

Agreed. Authenticity by other means, there's a reason why pipecock likes this kind of stuff.

think 100% silk fit far more into house in 2012 than 2002...hardware, analogue, basementy, more rough than sheeny

Well I agree with this but I don't think it contradicts my point, which is that 100% Silk is the "outsider house" of its time, in part because it actually reflects the values of typical contemporary house music such that it allows people then to focus on what they consider to be the points of difference.

i.e. there is a difference between strict sound and the way things are framed in terms of their social position vis a vis other musics.

In 2002 100% Silk would have been lumped in (by dance music fans - let's leave aside its position within the noise community for a moment) with other emerging dance-not-dance retro-fetishist movements (Disco Nouveau, electroclash, Metro Area, DFA/Playgroup/etc. New York revivalism, Kompakt to some extent) and in that context it wouldn't have been singled out, I think, as particularly more hipster or anti-dance or etc. than any of the others. In fact its interest in Chicago house as opposed to the eighties would have made it seem more traditionalist possibly (as I noted upthread, dance music has been reviving first wave Chicago house since the early 90s, it's not just a post-electroclash thing).

Whereas now that first wave Chicago house values have been so thoroughly (re)absorbed and (re)entrenched, I think people are more apt to immediately jump to what distinguishes 100% Silk from the more traditional back-to-Chicago imperatives that rebound through typical house like pond ripples, and consider those differences more important than they would have at an another time.

But yes, it doesn't surprise me that pipecock likes this stuff (though that also may be in part because it's all US and collectable and uses synths he recognises; I think these count as much towards ideas of "authenticity" as anything else).

i dont have time to post now but
a. who is the late great?
b. chris where are you studying

i'm just this guy, you know

but did you say we partied together once?

no i was kidding about judith butler

are you judith butler

judith butler could never be that concise.

i mean i was kidding that you were judith butler

i went to a party once, JB and KS from the same dept were there ... not a particularly memorable party by any other measure and i was out on the deck for most of the party (they were not on the deck)

end of joke

it was just my way of saying that i have love for cultural and visual studies too even though i'm very skeptical of its application

this was in the 90s, by the way

wow, you were there.

i was theeeeeeeere

'some of these band may have been to grad school'

now someone else say it in the fancy way

am i right in thinking you're at goldsmiths, ms butler? i was there this weekend and think i met some of your lot alongside cultural studies people, u r an intrstn bunch.

really enjoying Sacred & Profane Love, maybe because i'm kind of exhausted the dreamy droning quality is hitting the spot

I think people are more apt to immediately jump to what distinguishes 100% Silk from the more traditional back-to-Chicago imperatives that rebound through typical house

which people? the people in the early part of this thread sure, but who else?

I caught Ital live this weekend, he was ok. Wouldn't call it house. It sounded a bit like My Bloody Valentine being remixed by Moby at times.

(This thread... It used to be about HH music).

lol merdeyeux who were you hanging with? its a pretty small program, i know most people.

btw i am really enjoying the ital album

or well the tracks off heard off it anyway

i really like that ital remix of peaking lights that was posted upthread

i can't actually remember who! for once i did too good a job of 'networking' and met too many people to remember. i think there was someone doing a phd supervised across cult studies and visual cultures?

btw btw how much is ital guy keeping up his other stuff? i saw him do both sex worker and ital a few months back, but the latter seems to be getting major priority just now, and i'm not plugged in enough to keep up with it all.

yea i mean i am not aware of any upcoming mi ami or sex worker full lengths, but i'm not exactly 'in the know' either. i've listened to that ital album a bunch lately and it's definitely a solid house/techno lp with all sorts of modern references. (to echo other arguments itt) it definitely feels of a piece with other recent genre full lengths and doesn't seem to be cultivating any particular sense of 'outsider'-ness at all - dude's just a solid producer, it turns out.

ps - i'm curious as to what these strawperson arguments from the beginning of this thread were that people keep referring to as so misguided. iirc we were basically just trying to parse the music from the promo rhetoric at first, noting that *something* was different but not necessarily because of any valuation of 100% silk et al as being dance music made by outsiders, or even anything really based on the music itself. i thought we were talking more about the marketing - those horrid interviews, the preoccupation with hardware/gear, the 'live' performances, the retro-fetishist sleeves, other 'objective' hipster criteria tim was talking about, etc etc - and how that played into perceptions v reality of how this music is being consumed.

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