theo parrish s/d

"Anyway, pipecock, just so you know I wasn't implying that parties in detroit are like that, I was implying that parties of detroit fanatics outside detroit quite often are..."

that is just another form of people misinterpreting a culture. they may like good music, but if they don't want to get down and dirty then they need to fuck off.

"For me the hinge of this is that I feel that to enjoy dance music, and most importantly to enjoy NEW forms of dance music as they emerge, you have to TRY to enjoy them.

I can quite happily say that I don't enjoy french nu-rave electro because I've been to a lot of parties, listened to a lot of the music, and genuinely tried to have a good time."

i only wish that i could live in a bubble where i never got to experience or hear the music i dont like. unfortunately, that is almost all i get to see. and man, does it suck. that nu-rave crap makes the hipster kids go bananas, it makes me walk out the door.

"I'm happy doing this because I don't believe that what has gone before is a good predictor of what may happen in the future."

now that is an extremely interesting viewpoint, one that i am not sure anyone would agree with.

"That's why I place no value in an Aristotelian approach to "working out" what makes good music. Surprise and innovation is always possible, change is always possible. So if your entire framework for approaching music is based on history, you negate the possibility of change. For example you really enjoy disco you could infer that it's live musicians and gay new york culture that create great music, and therefore shut yourself off from ever enjoying techno."

but of course that is not what happened for me, nor for the culture that created techno music. people seem so willing to assign some kind of closedmindedness to it when in all actuality that culture is what consistantly birthed the hot new shit. and it still is, only on a much smaller scale now compared to 20 years ago.

"So while a shared culture can create a scene and create great music, if LISTENERS adopt too dogmatic an adherence to one cultural interpretation of what's good, they shut themselves off to a huge amount of possible great music and fun/inspiring/emotional nights out in clubs."

but the deep house and techno nights fulfill a much wider spectrum of emotions simply because they encompass such a wide range of sounds. comparing what gets played in a typical mnml deejay's set to what theo parrish plays, how can you say that theo's approach limits anything in any way? it doesnt make sense. in fact i think the argument for SOUL music is that non-soul music excludes a huge amount of possible great music and fun/inspiring/emotional nights out in clubs.

"And despite not having any skills in that area myself, I'd hazard a guess that one of the things that can cause stagnation in artists is this exact same dynamic (e.g. Masters at Work)."

my own theory of MAW sucking is quite different in fact, i think their problem is that they were not content making "only" dance music. they want people to view them as legitimate musicians outside of the culture from which they came, so they hire on all these latin musicians and whatnot to impress people who dont understand shit anyway. and they fail on almost all levels! my favorite MAW track from the past couple of years was "Kiss" because it was simple and banging. though i do like louie's "cerca de mi" as well, that is one of the few exceptions for their newer style of music.

"I'm not sure that's the exact same thing as "subjectivity" but to frame it in terms of positive cliches, you could say that what the two have in common is having an "open mind" and "listening without prejudice". I'd really prefer not to have to rule out 90% of what's out there because it was made in the wrong city, with the wrong equipment and most importantly by the wrong sort of people with the wrong ideas about music.

-- Jacobw"

but that isn't how it is done. the ruling out comes after hearing the music, the pattern it takes happens to fall along those lines for a large group of people. for some (say, a bunch of the usual posters on deephousepage) it seems like they do take a hard line viewpoint like that. but i think their attitude is worthless anyway, and not founded on the principles that made Larry Levan such a captivating deejay in the first place even though all of those guys would say that they are followers of him.

i think it is funny that i get labeled a purist despite the fact that i say anything goes, as long as it is funky and has soul. the eclecticism and mixing style of people like Hardy, Levan, Humphries, etc are what made the music interesting, not some strict adherance to a set genre. theo parrish is unquestionably following in their footsteps, much moreso than many who claim to be doing the same. these are the kinds of artists i am interested in. how is that dogmatic in any way? Shake and Theo play almost none of the same records, but i think they are both very similar in what they do. they GET IT. they know what it takes to be an interesting deejay. "pusists" in techno and house do not like what they do. but what they do captures the original feeling and intent, and THAT is what counts.

"i think the funniest thing about this thread ... i finally got around to listening to this newish theo album and the worst part of the way pipecock talks about the record is that hes really not doing it justice ... its really good, but he seems entirely unable to make it sound interesting or vibrant

like, i want to hear people talk about it and what they like about it! why is that so wrong?

-- deej"

i am against record reviews like that. in fact, i would say almost every one that was done like that ended up being disappointing to me. i prefer someone to just say what it is that they are doing and i base what i want to listen to on that. for examples, i saw a review about the black keys where it basically boiled down to "white guys playing raw black music produced by Danger Mouse" and that sold me. someone could wax poetic about what makes it so great for 3 pages and i wouldnt even give a shit.

can i also state here that i fucking hate lester bangs? is that alright with the ILM crowd? that shit is how not to write about music 101.

let me expand a bit....

when it comes to movie reviews, i don't read them until AFTER i see a movie. and what i do is learn the taste of the reviewer by comparing my thoughts on the film to theirs after seeing it, and thus i form a mental profile of them. when a movie in a genre that i trust their word on comes out, i look at the headline of the review to see if it is positive or negative. that is all i use to judge whether i am going to see it or not. they could describe it however they wanted, and it wouldnt change shit. discussing art for me comes down to knowing the taste of the person who is talking about it, and seeing if they say "good or bad". end of story. if you want to know how vibrant the record is, there is only ONE way to do that: LISTEN TO THE RECORD.

you are fucking bizarre dude

why are you posting on a message board??

i mean really if "discussing art" is just the exchange of "good/bad" between people whose taste you trust why do you waste your time crafting these intricately irrational multi-sentence responses to tim and vahid?

also honestly i dont want to be all that mean but you sound like the least fun person on the planet

with mainstream white audiences who otherwise like "pop" music......

based on purely anecdotal evidence this isnt true at ALL, tiesto fans that i meet tend to be rockist in the exact same ways that you are, just replacing a snobby attitude toward euro-house with a snobby attitude toward top 40 pop

seriously tho if this is true:

someone could wax poetic about what makes it so great for 3 pages and i wouldnt even give a shit.

why are you here? isnt ilm just a lot of waxing poetic about what makes music great??

like i wonder if maybe the reason people call you closed-minded is because you never change your mind about shit because you dont want to listen to other people?

"i mean really if "discussing art" is just the exchange of "good/bad" between people whose taste you trust why do you waste your time crafting these intricately irrational multi-sentence responses to tim and vahid?"

because i like to argue. it is one of my weaknesses.

"also honestly i dont want to be all that mean but you sound like the least fun person on the planet"

you know, just the other day i was wondering whether people found me fun enough. not.

"based on purely anecdotal evidence this isnt true at ALL"

youre right, theyre all inner city black people who also listen to public enemy.

"tiesto fans that i meet tend to be rockist in the exact same ways that you are, just replacing a snobby attitude toward euro-house with a snobby attitude toward top 40 pop"

and these are obviously equal.

"why are you here? isnt ilm just a lot of waxing poetic about what makes music great??"

just like anywhere else, i know whose taste i trust and i use their reccomendations to check out other things. just because i dont post in a thread doesnt mean i dont read them. i post in a bunch of non-dance threads too when it is about music that i like.

"like i wonder if maybe the reason people call you closed-minded is because you never change your mind about shit because you dont want to listen to other people?

-- max"

i listen to people whose taste i trust. if people whose taste is shit call me closed minded i am not exactly crying about it. but when it flys directly in the face of what i am about, it makes me question whether these people only have bad taste or if they just have no fucking brains whatsoever.

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I'm always pleasantly surprised by Tiesto singles when I have to review them. Even the ones with BT singing! They sound so immersive. Not that I follow his music or even really listen to those singles once I've reviewed them, but I always enjoy the process more than I expect to.

Is it worth even noting the boringness of the argument that minimal DJs play too narrow a range of music? Most of the big DJs (Luciano, Villalobos, M.A.N.D.Y. etc.) are very diverse. It seems to me that the range of music DJs in any style play can vary dramatically - there are stylistically narrow deep house DJs and stylistically broad "deep house" DJs (who are playing not just deep house but stuff that chimes in with it). But anyway, even if DJs have a narrow range, what of it? It can be good or bad. I started to write something on this but then remembered that I'd written on this before, so here's one I prepared earlier:

"The problem with eclecticism as a ruling aesthetic is that there's always going to be someone more eclectic, more well-versed, more impossibly enthused about every little crevice of the broad expanse of musical history than anyone else. But these DJs are rarely good because they don't know how to construct a framework within which that eclecticism can be understood, so it becomes meaningless to the audience - I saw a pretentious DJ at a Melbourne International Arts Festival gig thing the other night who thought she was blowing everyone away by serving Brazilian prog-jazz after early 80s jazz funk after ol skool hip hop after pleasant deep house after 60s British pop but in truth the event was utterly vibeless. The music itself was fine but there was no discernible thread, no axis upon which momentum could be built.

By contrast when hip hop "let the world in" it did so by disciplining the world to its own ruling ethos; had it been subservient to the world outside it would not have been nearly as distinctive or exciting. Early 90s ardkore techno was similar: anything with a hook was fair game, but at the same time sampling classical strings or old reggae did not equate to becoming those things, to losing the music's identity as ardkore. And this has always been the creative friction which exists within genres, the struggle (between adherence to genre and transcendence of it) which makes a lot of the best music. This is all really obvious stuff but I'm slowly getting to a point:

The mistake I can occasionally make when thinking about this is in assuming that the music which flings open its borders to the most possible outside ideas while preserving its identity is consequentially the music that is most exciting, most vital - the cosmopolitan sound of current dancehall is a good example of this. But I think this is not necessarily the case; it might be equally true to say that music which has much stricter, more severely defined genre boundaries generates just as much friction in its smaller, more subtle infractions and excursions into the outside world. The friction generated is at least partially based on the balancing of the forces on both sides ("for genre", to keep the music's identity coherent; "against genre", to expand or vary that identity). It's like, in a comedy of manners tension is generated in the ambivalence over how far certain characters can break certain circumsribed rules while hanging onto their reputation; this is less obviously dynamic than a film about war where lives and countries hang in the balance, but the tension generated can be the same.

A good mono-genre DJ set is a bit like that comedy of manners: the DJ lays out a broad framework of expectations - the rules - in the overall stylistic coherence of his set, but said coherence is challenged by constant minor disruptions of this coherency, moments of "letting the world in". However there is usually a natural limit to how far these disruptions can go: if they topple the rules governing the set, they also topple the context in which they can be seen to be disruptive, and that particular tension generated collapses (only to be replaced by a new set of rules in which such major infractions were permitted). Sometimes the ground covered by these rules and the infractions against them can be incredibly small objectively, but to focus on that overlooks the fact that what we're talking about is essentially a game between the DJ, the records and the dancers/listeners, and there's a reason why friendships have been destroyed forever by "mere" games of Monopoly - the stakes cannot be measured by some external arbitration process, they exist in the minds of the participants."

I'm fucked right now after being out seeing Dan Selzer play hours ago, it's Sunday at 12.35, I feel unaffected by this thread I have to say. FWIW.

tonights play list has planetary assault systems, john cooper clarke, johnn d.

that wasn't ronan! it was a cherry blossom

Speaking of critical takes on minimal, I really enjoyed Simon Reynolds' suggestion on his blog that minimal has less "peaktime" moments (or rather, its peaktime moments are less peaktime) than in other dance styles because its audience is made up of people with (relatively) creatively fulfilling day jobs, so the "work hard/play hard" dichotomy doesn't apply to them so much. That compresses the argument a lot so go read the piece before you call him immediately out as bullshitting.

Not sure if i agree with his argument but it's an interesting idea. I wish that more attempts to be critical of entire styles of music were as thoughtful, rather than just lapsing into cliched generalizations.

i think it is funny that i get labeled a purist despite the fact that i say anything goes, as long as it is funky and has soul.

how can ANYONE possible discuss anything with you when you keep using words at the crux of your argument but refuse to actually define them in any meaningful way?? "I say anything goes, as long as it is gooberbunken and has blurnbobbins"

Theo Parrish - Blurnbobbins Control

2008 Rolling Gooberbunken and Blurnbobbins Thread (Finally Fixed for Pipecock)

Gooberbunken: Has it peaked?

gooberbunken house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this [Started by J@cob, last updated 3 hours ago] 9 new answers

gooberbunken isn't something you can define, it's something you just instinctively feel and know. maybe if you were an active participant in the culture of blurnbobbins music, this wouldn't be so hard for you to understand, deej.

get some damn gooberbunken asshole

bitchesdon'tknowboutmyblurnbobbins.jpg

well fuck are you all that stuck on your next retort?

i actually met some people this weekend that would've deserved a pipeock/winston double dragon style beatdown

me: "oh is this on a mix?"
indie longhair: "NO! this is the original VINYL"
ME: "keep rolling that stone up the hill, hypocritical apolitical fuckwit"

same guy gave a nice npr style historical soundbite about sharivari when someone asked him what track was playing

well The Big One will kill all of these skinny longhaired indie guilt ridden hypocritical fucks

i mean, i think they're mostly in california

DNFTT

THE RINK

-- am0n, Sunday, May 27, 2007 11:16 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

norman connors - i dont need nobody else

off 'take it to the limit' album

Excellent find deej.

I was sure it was a Marvin sample. I always pass up the many Norman Connors albums I find and don't recognize at the used store. I'll be grabbing this one if I come by it.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/166958678ad6185e/

smdh @ clusterfuck upthread

thanks. just rejoice that our long digital nightmare is finally over.

So really though, 2008 was a pretty great year for Theo.

5 new releases:
Sound Sculptures 2xCD
Chemistry / Untitled One 12"
Goin' Downstairs Part 1 / Goin' Downstairs Part 2 12"
Love Triumphant / Space Bumps 12"
Kuniyuki - Remixed Vol.1 12"

5 represses/re-releases:
Solitary Flight 12"
Sound Signature Sounds CD
Took Me All The Way Back 12"
You Forgot / Dirt Rhodes 12"
Norma Jean Bell - Do You Wanna Party? / Late Night Show 12"

All somewhere on the scale of great to mind blowing for me. Nothing much else to say. Just bored at work and figured this s/d should be updated. Supposedly the LCD Soundsystem remix is still in the pipeline. Anything else for 2009?

Sound Signature Sounds CD

^this is awesome

iloveokra.blogspot.com/2008/11/theo-parrish_14.html

this guy lovingly puts together 2 (ridiculously poorly mixed) sets of all theo parrish tracks. really great for me as i'd never really listened to him before. there's also a moodyman one on his site.

at a guess 'this guy' might be matt2?

not sure about the rigidly chronological sequencing but can't complain about the selections.

Yep it's me and all complaints about mixing are completely justified. I do those as part of a radio show I do but our turntables have no pitch controls and I'm poor-to-horrific under any circumstances. So it can turn into quite a mess. I probably shouldn't even try or even consider what is done mixing but oh well at least you get to hear the tunes.

uh, ha. oops. sorry. :-[

i definitely appreciate the mixes. maybe just let the songs play or mix one out and start the next instead of letting them play over each other for multiple seconds.

Nah, no need to apologize. I agree. They're even hard for me to listen to sometimes :).

Chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry

chemistry starts off really well, then disappointingly plateaus/turns into an extended coda. can't stand the b side. my least favourite of his 12"s this year.