theo parrish s/d

As if, being into mainstream gay culture is the default position for any gay guy, and correspondingly one's distance from that scene is prima facie evidence of a certain level of critical discernment.

Thank you thank you thank you for articulating something I've been mulling over a lot recently.

As if, being into mainstream gay culture is the default position for any gay guy person, and correspondingly one's distance from that scene is prima facie evidence of a certain level of critical discernment.

Well exactly!

if there are really two sides to this debate (and i don't think there are because it's just not that simple), it seems like they could be characterized as "gatekeeping militancy" and "the militancy of being reasonable" (just as radical!). i think the truth is somewhere in the grey area and it's dependent on your own personal experience.

I think you're right about this debate tricky, but what a dispiriting opposition!

In some ways pipecock is the "truth" of nu-rockism - if the general critical position of, say, dissensus, pursues its gatekeeper mentality to its logical end it ends up with pipecock (the recent detroit techno thread on dissensus was interesting precisely for this reason).

I'm not sure why anti-reasonable militancy should have to be about gatekeeping.

Simon Reynolds talks a lot about how music fandom should be unreasonable, should be something like a religious experience that inspires you to be a musical preacherman (hence dividing the world into right and wrong, as pipecock does). But this particular notion of "preacherman" evokes the image of someone on the outside rather than the inside of the gate: it means iconoclasm on behalf of the future, devising new truths that have not been uttered etc. etc. Whereas the sort of gatekeeping that is being advocated here is totally institutionalized, however underpaid some artists from Detroit may be.

And this is the problem about gatekeeping per se: it's not about ripping it up and starting again, it's about defending the city from the barbarian hordes. It is always ultimately conservative and critically regressive.

If "the truth is somewhere in the middle" (i.e. not entirely on the side of "the militancy of being reasonable"), it's because the musical religious experience imparts a truth that cannot be generalized, a truth that often does not yet have an explanatory entry in the glossary of reasonable music crit. Ultimately the "militancy of being reasonable" reterritorialises these truths, can absorb and then reproduce (say) a reasoned (and of course reasonable) argument as to why Theo Parrish is important.

Gatekeeping militancy is what is left of the religious fervour when its truths have been reterritorialised. It is surplus militancy with no viable function except to continually assert whatever unreasonable notions it may have had that could not really be defended (the militancy of being reasonable can prosecute all its original reasonable decisions), or to wax nostalgic about the time when its fervour meant something.

(in political terms, obsessing over the lack of dues paid to detroit techno artists is akin to focusing obsessively on the "spirt of Paris 1968" - certainly useful and interesting and worth thinking about, but relatively limited in its capacity to serve as a basis for contemporary political positions or lines of inquiry)

(to be fair, my argument is kinda Bad-Hegelian in that I'm considering the usefulness of non-reasonable positions as being their potential contribution to reasonable debate - so I'm stacking the odds in my favour a bit here)

i agree that it's dispiriting and it seems like there can be reterritorializing criticism as well as reterritorializing music. the latter is unreasonable per reynold's definition (if i understand it properly), but it's fair because it is based on a kind of pure fandom. and if we're stacking the odds then i am going to vote for the meta/future every time at least until i find something more engaging. it is interesting that reasonable and unreasonable can coexist somewhat harmoniously though it reads like a paradox. and it seems that a lot of the time it is the case that the rhetoric around gatekeeping has less to do with music and more to do with the culture around music (and even american culture writ large -- did you see this?) so my binary doesn't seem to be correct although i am glad it sparked some insightful prose from you.

" it seems like there can be reterritorializing criticism as well as reterritorializing music. the latter is unreasonable per reynold's definition (if i understand it properly), but it's fair because it is based on a kind of pure fandom. and if we're stacking the odds then i am going to vote for the meta/future every time at least until i find something more engaging. it is interesting that reasonable and unreasonable can coexist somewhat harmoniously though it reads like a paradox."

Okay now I'm not sure if I follow! Do you mean music can be reterritorializing insofar as it shores up a bulwark of tradition around something previously radical (or perhaps rather it establishes rules and regulations around something previously lawless/undefined?)... Like, um, the notion of "detroit techno classicism" comes into existence at the precise moment that there are 2nd gen producers making "classic" detroit techno - music as fandom as music crit essentially.

Re stacking the odds: I sort of meant that any attempt to rationally schematize the relationship between the reasonable and the unreasonable in thinking about music is impliedly importing reasonability as one of its standards. The problem with trying to move beyond using the "militancy of being reasonable" as the final arbiter is that if, as you say, "it's dependent on your own personal experience", then it becomes hard to distinguish between admirable religious fervour and "opinions4u".

Conversely, the other thing I was thinking though is that what i might call future-faith (which i want to vote for too) only retains its power and attraction if we think of it as a response to a divine vision or visitation - in fact the term reynolds uses which is even more appropriate than my substitute "preacherman" is prophet - which implies both some kind of miraculous experience (touched by God) and a kind of shutting down of one's own subjectivity - the prophet does not merely see the future, they speak with the voice of the future. Put music into the role of the divine here, and the prophet should be someone whose entire thinking about music is scrambled by the experience of the music they are advocating on behalf of (like a Saul --> Paul transformation).

Whereas what passes for faith-based criticism most of the time (by which I mean pipecock etc, not Christian Music Monthly) reads more like (conservative) theological criticism wherein the truth was always already known. This kind of music fandom may be fervent ("x is genius, y is fake" etc.) but it never sounds surprised... every permutation of good and bad in music can be interpreted in such a way as to affirm the beauty of God's plan as set down in canon law. i.e. more simply put it finds its role model in sermonizing.

I think any music crit which adopts the master/slave dialectic as its starting point is ultimately not going to reveal much of interest. I can appreciate that future-faith almost necessarily involves a certain partiality, but that partiality should be a form of devoted conviction that renders everything else irrelevant, rather than a relational arrangement where by X derives its value from not being Y.

e.g. advocates of Detroit techno are at their least interesting when the advocacy seems to boil down to the circular argument "this is great because European dance music is awful." A partiality that extends from a hatred of other stuff is unconvincing to me because it suggests that the qualities of the good stuff were somehow insufficient to be considered persuasive - the use of the stick inevitably suggests that carrot was not enough.

"And it seems that a lot of the time it is the case that the rhetoric around gatekeeping has less to do with music and more to do with the culture around music (and even american culture writ large -- did you see this?)"

Yeah it's been all over the news here as well - pretty much any news w/r/t to the US election is considered news in Australia.

The broader point you're making is absolutely spot on, I think.

"Do you mean music can be reterritorializing insofar as it shores up a bulwark of tradition around something previously radical (or perhaps rather it establishes rules and regulations around something previously lawless/undefined?)"

kind of. the example i immediately come up with is dfa reterritorializing chicago or nyc house (i mean how exactly did indie transition to house? and what does this mean w/r/t contemporary house (the "real" thing). i said pretty much the same thing about dj t, too). there's also edit culture or contemporary house via trance. it's not just the shoring up, but the literal change in (reterritorializing, maybe i am using the word incorrectly) tradition. i think this is one of the things that bugs the gatekeepers insofar as it steps on (is unfaithful to) the original tradition/culture. changing of the guard and whatnot. if you see what's popular as inferior yet it gets all the props, it is just going to fuel the ire.

"music as fandom as music crit essentially"

yes.

and i think detroit techno was classic from the beginning. :D

"The problem with trying to move beyond using the "militancy of being reasonable" as the final arbiter is that if, as you say, "it's dependent on your own personal experience", then it becomes hard to distinguish between admirable religious fervour and "opinions4u"."

"personal experience" is really quite a bit of shorthand, isn't it?

i.e., when i say that, i am being lazy.

"kind of. the example i immediately come up with is dfa reterritorializing chicago or nyc house (i mean how exactly did indie transition to house? and what does this mean w/r/t contemporary house (the "real" thing). i said pretty much the same thing about dj t, too). there's also edit culture or contemporary house via trance. it's not just the shoring up, but the literal change in (reterritorializing, maybe i am using the word incorrectly) tradition. i think this is one of the things that bugs the gatekeepers insofar as it steps on (is unfaithful to) the original tradition/culture. changing of the guard and whatnot. if you see what's popular as inferior yet it gets all the props, it is just going to fuel the ire."

Okay, I get you now. I guess the problem is this is all perspectival - for me DFA doesn't really reterritorialize anything that hadn't already been reterritorialized, but I guess for many listeners he makes disco/house/etc. explicable perhaps for the first time. I was thinking more along the lines of Faze Action or Danny Wang - absolutely in front of the pack and under-recognized in terms of setting the agenda for the revival of (non-charting) disco, but - for those very reasons - also crucial steps in the setting of the agenda (and impliedly the establishment of limits and boundaries) regarding what was to be revived. They reterritorialized disco insofar as they reintroduced it into dance music discourse as something that belonged there. Whereas DFA perhaps reterritorialized disco for rock music discourse. The process of transformation is smaller for Faze Action/Danny Wang if only because disco and dance music already existed in a clear family relationship, whereas things get more complicated for rock. (These questions get quite complex though: do DFA really change disco or house in ways that are unprecedented? What does DJ T do that hasn't already been done by 808 State, New Order, even Technotronic? And what was left of Chicago house to reterritorialize by the time his first album came out?)

But of course Faze Action and Danny Wang aren't disliked by the gatekeepers by and large whereas DFA probably would be. What are the factors?

- possiby race/nationality/locality: though not really here - Faze Action are white and English aren't they. But perhaps Danny Wang has a higher standing yet again for these reasons. I will guess now that perhaps Faze Action therefore are more reliant on rating well on the following factors in order to maintain their good rep.

- timing: not only in the sense that these guys were all among the first to revive certain aspects of disco, but that often they beat the gatekeepers to it - in many cases would have been the gateway by which the eventual-gatekeepers gained access to the city. DFA - and particularly their fans - seem like johnny come latelys by comparison. They arrive after the gate has already been shut, locked and bolted.

- adherence to tradition: this is an interesting one. These two producers certainly are much more traditional in their relationship to disco than DFA, and would rate as fairly traditionalist generally I'd say. But what about Moodymann/Theo Parrish? On the basis of their records I don't think these guys can really be described as "traditionalist" in the strict sense - they're bringing too many new ideas and techniques to the table. Certainly they seem to be part of some kind of traditionalist context or tradition (in the specific sense of the term), a vibe which emanates from what they say in interviews, what they play in DJ sets, and in certain (not obviously non-cynical) production choices such (particularly their love of lo-fi). There's a certain leap of faith that's required to say that these guys are traditionalists: someone like pipecock wouldn't claim that Theo adheres to tradition, but he would probably claim that the tradition is continued and carried forward in Theo, that something of the tradition inheres in his music. The hard part is pinning down exactly what it is that inheres. Pipecock might say "soul" here, or talk about a jazz sensibility. That seems too vague and mystical to me: I think he is actually getting at something that is there in the music but he's using the wrong language or critical apparatus to describe it.

- acknowledgment of the tradition: this one is very slippery in that it doesn't really matter how much lipservice DFA pay to old disco (never mind that the James Murphy/Pat Mahoney Fabric mix was one of the best of its type) their success alone and implication within rock music and rock discourse will make them seem ungrateful or just ignorant of the lineage from which they partake. Perhaps what is required is a certain musical humility w/r/t to your own position within the tradition - in a certain sense what Theo Parrish and Moodymann do can feel self-consciously "small", like they want to live within certain moments of old disco/soul/funk records, to expand on the stories those records told.

- paying of dues: lack of recognition/fortune always implies that the artist is doing this for the "right" reasons. But this one is a bit circular because there are millions of producers who rate well on it, so it can only come into play when a significant proportion of the other factors are present and correct.

"i.e., when i say that, i am being lazy."

Well yes and no - I don't think anyone here would agree on what components of personal experience "count". So it's a bit like Theo saying some white producers are worthwhile - it's a structurally-required laziness to paper over an area of thought that is very difficult to work out.

"for me DFA doesn't really reterritorialize anything that hadn't already been reterritorialized, but I guess for many listeners he makes disco/house/etc. explicable perhaps for the first time."

he played daft punk to all the rock kids. i think i pick dfa because it's so explicit in the lyrics already, but you are right it is not really new.

i remember hearing daniel wang's album for the first time and it was a serious case of "what the fuck is this? who is this guy?!" because it was so out of place at the time and this was already far later than all of his singles. i bought the cd the next day. i think disco has always been around in underground club culture even in the 90s.

so there's a difference between pop and what i would call underground.

"do DFA really change disco or house in ways that are unprecedented?"

no, in fact it's kind of regressive, going backward to move forward.

i will respond to the rest of your post later.

did you get my email btw?

The only problem with your flowery writing is that pipecock, myself and a lot of other folks you are theorizing about actually rate a lot of the stuff on DFA.

Who are these gate keepers? We are proles in fly over states, there are no gate keepers. Who is going to tell me what the cool shit is in Texas? What ever I do is the cool shit in Texas, it is a vacuum.

hes talking about discourse dude. isnt that the same as a woman saying they are immune from supporting some sexist notions simply from the fact that they are not the empowered member according to the patriarchy or whatever

and I am saying that this isn't how the thought process actually works in the group of people that he is trying to box in with this discourse.

and again, so who are these gate keepers?

Um, it's the internet mike. It doesn't matter which state you're in or what your role is there, as long as on here you can set yourself up as someone who knows shit about music and which music is good and which is bad and which belongs to the tradition and which does not.

Pipecock is pretty much the best example of a gatekeeper ever. Virtually his entire internet persona consists of castigating everyone for not following the true way. You're less of a fit, and certainly less of a fit than you used to be circa 2001. I remember threads from back then where we clashed on this issue a lot, and you were fairly insistent on the link between the quality of a techno producer's work and their connection to/expression of authentic black urban experience. There was one thread in particular on this that I tried to find a couple of weeks ago but couldn't.

"i remember hearing daniel wang's album for the first time and it was a serious case of "what the fuck is this? who is this guy?!" because it was so out of place at the time and this was already far later than all of his singles. i bought the cd the next day. i think disco has always been around in underground club culture even in the 90s."

Yeah absolutely. Wang seems like a pivotal figure in terms of rearticulating what disco means in dance discourse today (although he was doing this a decade ago) as opposed to what it meant for a David Morales or a Masters At Work or a DJ Sneak.

"no, in fact it's kind of regressive, going backward to move forward."

Right. It's so tempting to think about these issues in a linear fashion even after the linearity has broken down. LCD Soundsystem draw from a whole host of points of tension b/w dance and rock, not just disco-punk but also "cosmic", UK post-acid house dance rock (New Order, Primal Scream etc), balearic, Daft Punk. So if they're reterritorializing stuff it's not like they're taking stuff that was outside the borders of rock discourse and making it palatable for the first time; rather, it's like they're drawn precisely to those points where such battles have been fought in the past. They are in effect reproducing past moments of deterritoralization/reterritorialization, albeit then filtered through their overall persona.

Um, it's the internet mike. It doesn't matter which state you're in or what your role is there, as long as on here you can set yourself up as someone who knows shit about music and which music is good and which is bad and which belongs to the tradition and which does not.

The only problem with this is that no one actually does this. Electronic music blogs are a joke, nobody with a decent ear takes them seriously. It is like a million Ronan Fitgeralds trying to convince you that bad music is not bad music. Most people I know just go the record store and play through stacks of vinyl to find new music.

There are no gate keepers for the older guys. At best you can recommend something that I hadn't heard of, but you can't tell me it's cool. I can figure that out for myself and so can the people I respect. I know the types who fall for blog hype and they are usually insecure males 18-25. They want to be down with the hot new shit but they can't actually figure out what that is on their own.

Pipecock is pretty much the best example of a gatekeeper ever. Virtually his entire internet persona consists of castigating everyone for not following the true way. You're less of a fit, and certainly less of a fit than you used to be circa 2001. I remember threads from back then where we clashed on this issue a lot, and you were fairly insistent on the link between the quality of a techno producer's work and their connection to/expression of authentic black urban experience. There was one thread in particular on this that I tried to find a couple of weeks ago but couldn't.

Really Pipecock's persona is making people smile because he says the things they have been thinking the whole time. He is actually saying that crap music is crap. It is refreshing to hear someone say exactly what you have been thinking for years. He has a golden ear but doesn't know how to explain why something isn't good.

As far as authentic black expression goes, the more your Tutti Fruti sounds like Little Richard and the less it sounds like Pat Boone the better your record is.

Right. It's so tempting to think about these issues in a linear fashion even after the linearity has broken down. LCD Soundsystem draw from a whole host of points of tension b/w dance and rock, not just disco-punk but also "cosmic", UK post-acid house dance rock (New Order, Primal Scream etc), balearic, Daft Punk. So if they're reterritorializing stuff it's not like they're taking stuff that was outside the borders of rock discourse and making it palatable for the first time; rather, it's like they're drawn precisely to those points where such battles have been fought in the past. They are in effect reproducing past moments of deterritoralization/reterritorialization, albeit then filtered through their overall persona.

Or you could just say they are rock dudes who listen to records and smoke dope and knick a few bits here and there when they make their own records.

"It is refreshing to hear someone say exactly what you have been thinking for years. He has a golden ear but doesn't know how to explain why something isn't good."

I agree that Pipecock has good taste in music by and large. Perhaps the difference between you and me though is that when it comes to talking about music (rather than, you know, just listening to it), I'm much more interested in and impressed by people who know how to explain why something is or isn't good than by people with a "golden ear".

Reading people who share my general opinion on something but explain it in a totally ridiculous way doesn't make me smile, it makes me doubt myself - at least until I work out where they've gone wrong. If you're saying that, despite being totally unable to explain himself, pipecock nonetheless says "exactly what you have been thinking", shouldn't that give you cause to wonder just how well-formed your own opinions are?

"The only problem with your flowery writing is that pipecock, myself and a lot of other folks you are theorizing about actually rate a lot of the stuff on DFA."

i am glad you said this because i meant to say it earlier (yet another reason why i should avoid ilm at work). it really does change the whole discussion and believe or not, that's one of the reasons i brought them up. and another thing with dfa is that it is unfair to label the label strictly as indie with the mo'wax connection and all. this is the problem with too many concurrent thoughts.

and yes, the writing is flowery, but i prefer flowery writing because it is fun and because it beats "it's good".

"What does DJ T do that hasn't already been done by 808 State, New Order, even Technotronic? And what was left of Chicago house to reterritorialize by the time his first album came out?"

well, the difference is time and though i rate his album, i remember at the time thinking that it was a copy of a copy of a copy, but also simultaneously that it felt new *at that time* (signaling a kind of reorientation at work, maybe in my own listening habits though i do think there was something bigger afoot). i definitely got the sense of over-recycling which is troublesome, but there is also a sense of reverence and respect for the form and a kind of pure functionalism. it is hard to unpack or a kind of tightrope to walk and i think this is probably why talk shifted to "sound design" then because that seems to be the angle (consciously or not) being pursued in a quest for some kind of ideal form. (a silly idea, but not if you allow the tradition of kraftwerk to seep in)

i was listening to the benjamin brun and move d album earlier and thinking along similar lines. yes, it's exemplary and it sounds amazing but it still feels like a bit of a rehash (it is still one of my favorites from this year). and then there is something like newworldaquarium's lp which is exemplary, respectful of the form, sounds amazing, but also shimmers with some kind of otherworldliness and yes, soul. how's that for flowery? (at least i'm not writing poetry)

tbh im not as invested in following the discourse around this shit as a lot of you guys but the sound design is what really stuck out to me about that stuff irrespective of my (lack of) knowledge of the referentialism/rehashing/whatever else going on

not sure how much im adding to the discussion here but i really do think thats what that stuff is 'about' rather than it being, like, 'well theres not much else to say ...'

Pipecock's value is that if he strongly recommends a records there is about a 60% chance that it is going to be something that I am strongly interested in. I don't care about his ideas about the records, I know that I am going to like the music on the records. I am a big boy, I can find my own reasons to like things.

You are an excellent writer but I always wind up scratching my head when I follow through on any of your recommendations. I enjoy reading the posts but I don't look to you for anything other a person with interesting viewpoints on music that do not intersect with my tastes at all.

As far as well formed opinions go, I am more concerned with the content of the record than I am about how well I can talk about it. Music is a language as well. I care about what is being said on the records.

i agree with that. sometimes it's about form which is ultimately a bit empty/emptied out, but in terms of minimalism that is a huge gaping paradox which is part of the pleasure of getting into it. xpost

"Or you could just say they are rock dudes who listen to records and smoke dope and knick a few bits here and there when they make their own records."

Was going to say re this: you could just say that, absolutely. And for the most part I don't sit around worrying about how records reterritorialize and deterritorialize eachother. It becomes an issue at the point when people start raising concerns about the ownership of certain sounds, ideas, techniques (and I mean "ownership" in the loose sense - basically any time people start talking about real vs fake, soulful vs soulless, this issue comes up). I'm impressed that tricky in particular seems keen to engage with these ideas and try to wrest something from them (and from gatekeeper militancy generally) that retains some kind of truth. My kneejerk response normally would be to dismiss the question of realness as misguided, which I don't think is right actually.

"but I don't look to you for anything other a person with interesting viewpoints on music that do not intersect with my tastes at all."

And fair enough - it almost works the same way in the other direction (I think I do follow up on your recommendations sometimes but mostly because something you said or someone else said made me feel more confident that I might like it than I otherwise would be. e.g. it was your comments on Deep Space that made me hang out for the reissue...).

But you're better at describing the why/how of music than pipecock. I imagine that his posts are enjoyable for you in the same way that Lex's more blithe (and blunt) posts are enjoyable for me - on the one hand I basically agree with (most of) them, and on the other hand I envy the way he can inhabit those positions more extremely and self-confidently than I could. And all the while I can see how Lex simultaneously irritates the hell out of anyone who doesn't agree.

"As far as well formed opinions go, I am more concerned with the content of the record than I am about how well I can talk about it. Music is a language as well. I care about what is being said on the records."

On one level of course I agree with this. On another I don't think there's a clear line between how a record sounds and how we talk (that is to say, think) about it.

The soul vs sound design question provides a good example of this. We can reconstruct a position from Tricky's last few posts the proposition that records with good sound design but no "soul" ultimately sound "empty". This is I think a metaphorical criticism: it's based on the notion that the soul fills and enlivens the human body - hence the phrase "hollow man". A dance track that focuses on sound design alone is purely functional, in the same way that a living body with no soul would be. (tricky doesn't have to be consciously drawing this connection for it to get carried along like a stowaway hiding in the terms he's using)

So on the one hand Tricky's potential criticism of DJ T etc. is based on an intellectual projection of soul/body dualisms onto electronic music. And on the other hand I expect that when he describes a piece of music as "empty" he really hears it that way, it's the first word that pops into his head to describe the sensation of the experience and his instinctive reaction. It's not merely an ex facto explanation, because the soul/body dualism interposes itself between the music and yr ears. This is why a really compelling or novel explanation of why a piece of music is good or bad can totally change your (well, certainly my) perception of it - it's providing a new interpretative tool for direct engagement with the music.

I agree with tricky on the DJ T album which i didn't click with, despite loving a lot of his prior work. There is a qualitative difference there that makes the purposeless sound-design-ness of the album an issue for the music where it wasn't before. And "empty" is a good word for my experience of it.

There was a utopian vacuousness to the Get Physical 2nd Anniversary Mix - music so perfect sounding that it couldn't really be about anything, couldn't really express anything beyond its own formal perfection. But the vacuousness I'm talking about is very specific, very narrow, rather than an expression of some general soullessness characteristic of European dance music (e.g. I wouldn't characterize the music's contemporaries - say, Tiefschwarz or Black Strobe - as vacuous).

And yeah it was retro but not in any terribly specific way - italo, disco, electro-house, tech-house and Chicago house all kind of get referenced together in a very seamless, blended manner. And this fit the utopian vacuousness: it wasn't trying to return to any particular point in history but rather evoke the feel of history itself grinding to a halt. It really helped that when I first heard the mix I had no idea who M.A.N.D.Y., DJ T etc. were... Even the anonymity of the names were perfect. This was music that had no backstory.

But then with the DJ T album the referencing had narrowed to Chicago house revivalism, and by virtue of it being a single artist album, there was a sense of a more focused and personified aesthetic. At that point, that perfect anonymity starts to break down, because the music does sound like it's in dialogue with a particular moment of history - the remaining air of anonymity (the purposeless sound-design-ness) passes into contradiction with the very singular sense of time and place that the more specific revivalism conjures up. Or, to put it another way, what tricky describes as the music's quest for "ideal form" becomes complicated and roadblocked by the embeddedness of its content.

I also think that the same dynamic explains why so many people find the current deep house revivalism troubling - whereas minimal circa 2005-2006 has its share of haters, it is not (I don't think) due to some sort of form/content quandary.

Although the difference perhaps is that there was already a lot of deep house throughout the nineties that I think could be described as coming close to "pure form".

"And on the other hand I expect that when he describes a piece of music as "empty" he really hears it that way, it's the first word that pops into his head to describe the sensation of the experience and his instinctive reaction."

yes, that's pretty much it. after so many years of tracks that are just drum machine + samples + fx (calcified form) the question then becomes: what is the musician bringing to the table that makes it less calcified (content-wise as mt says)? and then how big is the change? i think we all like to have our jaws dropped by a new twist on form via content. it is also the case that there are exceptional tracks which do not do anything new via content or form and that is where the metaphors go to die. i think those kinds of tracks are actually either the most difficult to create (you can practically hear the sweat) or the ones that arise from deep knowledge and intuition. (i know when i am mixing, the best mixes come effortlessly always and they are rare! there was no thinking involved...)

and my take is metaphorical because you can swim in empty minimalism if you let the current take you away. that is what makes it still exciting for me, but it is dangerous because of the sloughing off of personal experience (as described above) that has to occur in order to describe that experience in a condensed meaningful way.

assuming it needs to be described at all. :D

MASTURBATION

jack your body

It's time to jack.

sorry guys, but this is abysmal

obligatory youtube link

^^^ cf. contemporary cassy tracks

interesting comments at that link. too bad it's not actually a video.

xpost.

ronan hits nail on head. can we please stop talking about 'territorializing' dance music now?

wtf is ur guys problem

those are good posts by tim and if you really dont want to be a part of the discussion you can, you know, not read the fucking thread, or not respond

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/julesw/ebayimages/dj_sammy_sunlight_pcd.jpg

please let's end it with a flame war. ha, xpost.

the second you hate on tiesto or whomever you are staking out territory whether you like it or not.

I like Tim's posts, what I don't like is people pretending to agree when there are chasmic differences in their position, or people not calling out blatant anti-subjective bullshit, but surprise surprise on ILM lately.

Just as an interesting ILM discussion starter, every record I like is good music and everything else is exactly the same, as is everyone who likes it.

Let's mull over that and give it the 100 posts it seems to deserve.

sry whatever ilm usually sucks i forgot, but lets keep talking about 'territorializing' dance music because its about six thousand times better than boringly hating on tiesto or whoever

j/k lets just be grouchy

do you have any reason to be grouchy?

"Just as an interesting ILM discussion starter, every record I like is good music and everything else is exactly the same, as is everyone who likes it."

it is not that simple and you know it!

no sorry it is that simple...you aren't the one having to apparently represent every single "BAD MUSIC" on planet fucking earth....so go ahead and happily agree

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JhZU5a72HJA

i'm not happily agreeing. both positions are polarizing which is what tim and i were getting at.