Simon Reynolds - C or D

My favourite anti-eclecticism argument is chuck eddy's in Accidental Evolution, where he points out that since all pop continually reuses and pirates other pop and other types of music the fetishisation of a virtuous eclecticism is a bit rich, and implies an opposition between 'sophisticated' and 'dumb' music which is ultimately rather banal.

well then, great!

i think we're talking about approaches here. lots of music that falls in the rockist sphere is good too! so, its about the lauding of this approach, i dont like this approach, and think it makes for bad music. im sure it makes for some good music on occasion too, i just cant think of many examples

whereas the eclecticism i'm decrying is something that leaves, or attempts to leave, genre, to become something else

Grime acts using live drums, guitar etc. - I can see that this would seem worse too - same as it was with Jungle (altho both Adam F and Reprazent were hot live originally!)

What about the 'eclecticism' of The Avalanches or Basement Jaxx though? These artists are pretty much defined by this approach, both in their albums and their DJ sets. And for me it works perfectly. Maybe for it to be fully convincing you have to set the stall out from the beginning, start as you mean to go on. People knew from the first records that they'd be doing a mixture of stuff.

And then there's big Pop icons whereby it's traditional to release party tracks, ballads and whatever comes inbetween. Nobody seems to complain about this, I guess because each song still fits a particular genre (MOR/power-ballad/pure pop/faux-urban pop etc.).

Point taken, but a couple of lines are a bit too tangential to make for a classic, um, text.

Funnily enough that piece by Tom sounds as if it's from when he was in his most Reynolds-inspired phase i.e. against the 'gentrification' of jungle via its aspirations to a veneer of musical sophistication. (Obviously jungle IS musically sophisticated, but the argument would run that some of its producers aspired to a cultural status which they felt they could only achieve by going 'jazz' or 'progressive').

The funny thing here is, I always felt that Reynolds played more of a part in the gentrification of jungle than he would care to admit. Not intentionally, of course. But he essentially created the belief that jungle is musically sophisticated in the early essays he wrote championing it and hailing it as a radical musical breakthrough. A lot of of people climbed on the bandwagon after that, and this atmosphere was created where I think producers felt like, because they were so sophisticated, what they should be doing is classical music! They missed the point. OK, Goldie was probably always a raging egotist, but perhaps if he hadn't been hailed as Britain's Derrick May, King Tubby and Public Enemy rolled into one, he might not have felt like Mother was a good idea...

Youn, I have maybe always associated his move to NYC with Lloyd Cole's; it was perhaps at a similar time? Or perhaps later. He interviewed Lloyd, terrifically, in Lloyd's early NYC phase, so I think I will maintain that he got the idea from Lloyd.

What The Avalanches/Basement Jaxx have is a certain sonic aesthetic/vibe/etc. which persists regardless of the specific style they're working in, same goes for Saint Etienne too. And M.I.A.! And Andre 3000!

So what makes the first three examples of great eclecticism and Andre 3000 (post-Outkast) an example of bad eclectism? Perhaps it's that what I sense as being the aesthetic/vibe at work within The Love Below is nothing but this idea of a restless pan-genre eclectic genius, i.e. it literally becomes eclecticism for its own sake. Of course others may not sense this at all, or they may sense something different - but a lot of ideas about eclecticism or purism exist primarily in our heads, which is where they do the most damage. If I hadn't read so many articles about The Love Below being a genre-surpassing work of genius, would i still feel this way?

For me a key transition from good eclectic to bad (or at least less good) eclectic is the move from Moby's Move EP to Everything Is Wrong, for which he rerecorded his "All That I Need Is To Be Loved", transforming it from a stomping dance track as hard as a thrash metal track into a "proper" faux-thrash-metal track.

Am I crazy to think the two are really the same thing or is someone willing to make the case for a distinction?

Did the British press not refer to anything as "new wave"? Was that just a U.S. phenomenon?

I'd appreciate some well-informed perspective on this.

One thing that sticks out is Reynolds lumping in the US indie-rock movement as part of postpunk, that whole axis of bands (husker du et all) saw themselves in opposition to "the second British invasion," rejecting the futurism and fashion-consciousness of new wave for a recherche avant-garde primitism. Hence the birth of "alternative."

i like his recent posts. it's funny, though, he admits to listening to mary-anne hobbes' 'breezeblock' for the *first time ever*, and notes how fresh it sounds... i stopped listening to it about seven years ago i suppose, but, well, fi you're going to make calls on the voice of the streets...

http://69.93.254.120/G/storage/site1/files/24/84/77/248477_012789581bd154y3o9qr06.jpg

Plus surely Reynolds =

http://www.uktv.co.uk/images/standardItem/L1/529996_L1.jpg

http://bringthenoisesimonreynolds.blogspot.com/

That Pat Kane piece was one of the best things he (Reynolds) ever wrote.

Probably better to wait for the Blissed Out reprint.

he should work at NME with all his stupid gerne titles

f off mr neuronfunk

He's pretty positive about Chicago/Nu Groove/early Strictly Rhythm and of course first wave Brit acid house (esp. "Voodoo Ray") but he seems to lose interest the moment house stopped being the leading edge. I seem to recall mid-nineties US garage, tribal house, deep house and progressive house all being grouped together and dismissed in one paragraph.

Then he got back into it in 1998 or so. And then dropped it again in 2001 or so.

however if you've read a lot of reynolds' work this decade, but not EF, it sounds very accurate indeed

iirc it's good.

he [Reynolds]says he quite liked dance music but didn't "get" it until '92 or so. He mentions how he described the second Bomb the Bass album as "progressive dance", a term which made him cringe when he remembered it later on.

overdetermined. similiarly, the only part of Generation XTC I didn't like, the part that made me cringe, was the self-flagellating intro where he copped to liking dance music for the wrong reasons. gasp!

xpost