I'll give it another chance now/this evening
― imago, Friday, 2 November 2018 16:12 (five years ago) link
fgti was otm upthread when he compared this to Scott Walker's late works, a far apter point of comparison than Talk Talk.
― pomenitul, Friday, 2 November 2018 16:16 (five years ago) link
This is going to be fun to explore. I feel like this is the music I've been waiting to hear this year.
― jmm, Friday, 2 November 2018 16:55 (five years ago) link
vinyl feels like the right format for this record, the chunking helps it feel less oppressive
also just on a selfish consumer level, I appreciate a double LP that's actually the length of an old-school double album
― wayne trotsky (Simon H.), Friday, 2 November 2018 16:59 (five years ago) link
May have to double down on some of my criticism. Chaitius which I'm enduring right now is basically high-budget muzak with some terribly affected echo-mumbling on top. I cannot begin to see why she'd release this. And the the big melodic change-up is...an ascending scale. The melodies are just nothing
― imago, Friday, 2 November 2018 17:54 (five years ago) link
I think the Scott Walker comparisons stem from the horns bit in Everyday Is An Emergency ripping off that one bit in Clara. The comparison sort of tanks after that though as Walker was all about vivid juxtaposition whereas this all feels like its trying to goo all its textures together
― imago, Friday, 2 November 2018 18:08 (five years ago) link
YOU'RE a gooey texture!
― Greta Van Fleek (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 2 November 2018 18:15 (five years ago) link
ILM's biggest Jyte Gyte fan: sorry guys, this is too much for me.
― Duke, Friday, 2 November 2018 18:17 (five years ago) link
I feel that misrepresents my criticisms
― imago, Friday, 2 November 2018 18:24 (five years ago) link
I'm only joking. No insult intended
― Duke, Friday, 2 November 2018 18:33 (five years ago) link
OK the first song to save me from distress is maybe In Gardens' Muteness
― imago, Friday, 2 November 2018 18:40 (five years ago) link
the beginning of the bangers
― princess of hell (BradNelson), Friday, 2 November 2018 18:41 (five years ago) link
imago is a pointilliste.
― pomenitul, Friday, 2 November 2018 19:03 (five years ago) link
I had to pause due to work but I did like that song. It ditched all the gooey echoey muzak nonsense and tried to actually yknow be a song or whatever rockist pointillist thing I believe in
Will listen to the rest presently
― imago, Friday, 2 November 2018 19:49 (five years ago) link
So yeah, there are (imo) two good songs, and they both sabotage themselves because JH has seemingly no sense of momentum, or when she has a good thing on her hands. In Gardens' Muteness is really good for about five minutes, then the climax of the song is this clunky one-note piano thudding that sort of works but I'm sure wasn't the best way for it to go. And then - worse - Les Jeux To You (these fucking TITLES) actually hits an awesome art-rock groove - like, after so much flimsy muzak, something with purpose! - and then instead of riding with it to the stars as she threatens to, she just abandons it and returns to the muzak for no apparent reason. I just can't deal with it. If it was just those two songs then I could deal with it as a good but flawed single but today I've sat through this album for three full hours and gawped at its RYM average score and wondered how everyone's brain is wired up compared to mine with increasing alarm. What is wrong with me/you?
― imago, Friday, 2 November 2018 20:42 (five years ago) link
idk man maybe it's bc you keep referring to it as muzak
― princess of hell (BradNelson), Friday, 2 November 2018 20:44 (five years ago) link
TS: clocks or clouds.
― pomenitul, Friday, 2 November 2018 20:44 (five years ago) link
Chaitius which I'm enduring right now is basically high-budget muzak with some terribly affected echo-mumbling on top.
idk are you listening to the bass in this track? the tightly turning strings that make up the first part of it? the silence it drops away into leaving her uttering clipped unintelligible syllables in empty space? "muzak" feels intentionally distancing
― princess of hell (BradNelson), Friday, 2 November 2018 20:57 (five years ago) link
extremely LJ titles on this (e.g. les jeux to you)
― ||||||||, Friday, 2 November 2018 21:24 (five years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNOTz3M-gbQ
^ this film is useful if you haven't seen it and are wondering what holter's intentions were
― Herb Achelors (NickB), Friday, 2 November 2018 21:46 (five years ago) link
imago, what's your opinion on I Shall Love 2? That's the hit for me.
― Frederik B, Friday, 2 November 2018 22:04 (five years ago) link
sounds like spiritualized badly covering joy division but then the last 30 seconds are good
― imago, Friday, 2 November 2018 23:49 (five years ago) link
also if you can get through that video with a straight face then i don't know how to help you
― imago, Saturday, 3 November 2018 00:10 (five years ago) link
I love Have You in My Wilderness a lot, but I’ve never really gotten into any of her other albums. I think I will not be in a hurry to give this a listen.
― o. nate, Saturday, 3 November 2018 00:36 (five years ago) link
Oh Icarus.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 3 November 2018 10:09 (five years ago) link
It is both hilarious and predictable that after literally years of playing musicological pin-the-tail on the donkey every time you want to elevate an artist you like over one you don't, when you're confronted with an artist at least adjacent to the indie rock mainstream making highly composed, ambitious, dense and yes in places microtonal music - and a classically-trained artist who knows what she's doing at that - all you can think of to do is term it "muzak" or reach for the most off-the-peg "art-rock" reference points imaginable.
It's almost like your entire schtick was hot air all along and now you're trying to belittle the music to try and deflect that. It was better - and more honest - when you just admitted you didn't understand it or didn't like it. (I don't understand it either but happily I at least I like the noise it makes).
― Matt DC, Saturday, 3 November 2018 10:31 (five years ago) link
His dislike of ambient music is remotely relevant here. I also get the sense that 'atmosphere' is not a category he's interested in for its own sake – it ultimately boils down to narrativity (albeit of the bizarre and non-linear variety), hence his insistance on 'songwriting'. Anyway, props for your commitment to genuinely unpopular opinions, imago, I'm personally a fan even when I disagree (p.s.: Black Dresses are quite cool on the purely instrumental front, but I can't stand the singing at all, at least in the absence of fountains of youth).
― pomenitul, Saturday, 3 November 2018 10:42 (five years ago) link
Maybe but I don't get the sense (at all!) that this record is about atmosphere for its own sake. There's clearly a narrative here, the songs keep moving forward and rarely revisit previous territory, in a way that is obviously going to frustrate a lot of listeners who were brought up on pop or rock music and like repetition and easily identifiable structures.
What it isn't particularly interested in offering are those cathartic rock moments (and even most of what is usually termed 'art-rock' tends to rely on those moments as well) where everything *kicks in*, probably the big thing that someone would get out of These New Puritans or even later Radiohead and not this, for example. It shares that with a lot of ambient music obviously but also a lot of post-war notated music.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 3 November 2018 10:58 (five years ago) link
I could provide literally hundreds of examples of non-linear unrepeating music that I love - and just as many examples of music that offers non-obvious catharsis. And it's not like this album doesn't have builds or climaxes. I'm just not sure it handles any of those things in a way I like.
― imago, Saturday, 3 November 2018 11:04 (five years ago) link
It's also I suspect why he gets frustrated when the banging bit in Le Jeux To You gallops off into the distance never to be seen again, even though the ghost of that refrain continues throughout the last section of the song.
I dunno, a lot of the time it basically comes down to whether you've heard enough to convince you to meet the music half-way and treat it as a puzzle to be solved rather than one to be railed against. I wouldn't blame anyone for not being arsed with this record but defaulting to a Richard Keys level of criticism doesn't benefit anyone.
(xpost)
― Matt DC, Saturday, 3 November 2018 11:04 (five years ago) link
'Atmosphere' can also be Ligetian…
There is, of course, narrative in all things. I just don't think it's especially foregrounded here – if anything, there's a fragmentary logic at work, as if all of it were dénouement, from beginning to end. I do agree that there is precious little release from the aviary (but it's not completely lacking, either).
xps
― pomenitul, Saturday, 3 November 2018 11:07 (five years ago) link
As for 'muzak', well obviously I wish I had the theoretical chops to explain why the melodies here are dull and even maddening (with the two exceptions given) but I don't. SAVE US SUND4R, basically. What I'll say is that In Gardens' Muteness is basically just her + keys, and I think that having that sonic limitation forces her to think more creatively about the melodies and the song-structure, as opposed to the more 'composed' songs, where she's going for a sort of grand ensemble sound-feeling that while skilfully put together with classical training or whatever has a deadening effect on me (again, I've acknowledged that I may be the problem here).
The 'ghost' of that refrain in LJTY (lol) is too cryptic! It's too denying! Too astringent!
― imago, Saturday, 3 November 2018 11:08 (five years ago) link
I'm just not sure it handles any of those things in a way I like.
Dude that's fine but don't try and reduce it to the level of hold music just because you don't like it! You're doing it again here, you're trying to appeal to classical qualities you don't know or understand in order to 'prove' your argument when it's obvious to everyone else that it can't be proven.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 3 November 2018 11:10 (five years ago) link
Literally no musicologist would be able to explain why "the melodies are dull", I mean they could but it would be a completely fraudulent exercise even if you accept that melody is the point here.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 3 November 2018 11:12 (five years ago) link
I have a sneaking suspicion that the underpinning chords and progressions are mostly quite basic and ARGUABLY uninteresting, but I'd need to listen and relisten to confirm this.
― imago, Saturday, 3 November 2018 11:18 (five years ago) link
Everyone should read @jennpelly's fantastic review of @JULIA_HOLTER's Aviary today. It's one of the finest albums of the year, and Jenn did an incredible job of translating what makes it such an achievement (and a pleasure to listen to). https://t.co/vZCdSqnLtc— Philip Sherburne (@PhilipSherburne) November 2, 2018
― Jeff W, Saturday, 3 November 2018 15:22 (five years ago) link
gotta pick this album up. i'm not overly familiar with her music, but I saw her (and the other musicians) perform a version of that cover of Condemnation I posted upthread at a mutual friend's memorial service, and it was so genuinely moving. It was later released as a 7" via Domino w/proceeds going to a mental health service.
That friend spoke highly of her and her process and craft, it's kind of impossible of me to think of her without thinking of him playing one of her records for me.
― omar little, Saturday, 3 November 2018 15:56 (five years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnKwro7dO0c
stumbled across this lovely cover of That's Us/Wild Combination she did
― ufo, Saturday, 3 November 2018 16:00 (five years ago) link
This album is made for playing loud and on headphones. There's so much texture and depth, it's wonderful.
― jmm, Saturday, 3 November 2018 16:32 (five years ago) link
Ha, I put it on for the first time last week. At first, it seemed almost like it was incapable of reaching me or making any impact, although I could see that there were interesting things going on. Then I turned it up and it sounded like the greatest thing.
― The nexus of the crisis (Sund4r), Saturday, 3 November 2018 16:35 (five years ago) link
(I doubt I can save anyone, though, given that i) I only listened to it once and not that analytically and ii) even the analytical presentation that I did put time into seems riddled with holes right now.)
― The nexus of the crisis (Sund4r), Saturday, 3 November 2018 16:38 (five years ago) link
Then I turned it up and it sounded like the greatest thing.
This was my experience with "Chaitius" in particular. It didn't make sense until I turned up the volume and could take in all of the detail.
I'm not sure which track I like most yet. One of "Underneath the Moon," "In Gardens' Muteness," or "Turn the Light On" probably.
― jmm, Saturday, 3 November 2018 18:05 (five years ago) link
One of the major stumbling blocks for Julia's music, that I still have to kind of mentally ignore, is her tendency to rely upon kick-snare-kick-snare kind of straight-ass patterns, from Ekstasis onward this became a real part other language, this rhythmic squareness that seems at times deliberately static and numbing. On the new one, this "Polka setting" sound is only really a feature in a couple songs-- "Les Jeux To You" has a knees-up-Mother-Brown moment. It is not my favourite thing about Julia's music, it reminds me of St. Vincent's over-reliance on "straight-4 kicks on almost every song", and seems to (to my ears) often keep the music grounded instead of allowing it to take flight. That's my only perennial criticism about her stuff, she's one of my favourite musicians otherwise. It's great to hear (on this album) a return to the more formless stuff that first attracted me to Tragedy
― fgti is for (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, 3 November 2018 18:13 (five years ago) link
that rhythmic squareness is something that really bugged me about her music previously and always prevented me from really getting into it up until this album. on the rare occasion it does show up on Aviary it doesn't bother me though because it actually works with the songs it's used on
― ufo, Sunday, 4 November 2018 01:57 (five years ago) link
Yeah I agree
― fgti is for (flamboyant goon tie included), Sunday, 4 November 2018 16:38 (five years ago) link
"Colligere," what a beautiful track.
― jmm, Monday, 5 November 2018 15:38 (five years ago) link
― Ich bin kein Berliner (alex in mainhattan), Monday, 5 November 2018 22:14 (five years ago) link
She's playing the Funkhaus? Ooh!
― Duke, Monday, 5 November 2018 22:20 (five years ago) link
Just booked tickets. Thanks!
― Duke, Monday, 5 November 2018 22:31 (five years ago) link
I have never been there, are you supposed to sit? I saw her in the Berghain on the Wilderness tour and it was great.
― Ich bin kein Berliner (alex in mainhattan), Monday, 5 November 2018 22:43 (five years ago) link