Orbital - Wonky

I'm increasingly feeling that this album is content rather than music

This is a meaningless statement.

Only cos I didn't add context; my feeling is actually drawn partly, I think, from the same feeling that caused you to say that New France was "so obviously there for the radio", which you may not have meant as a pejorative, but which I inferred as such.

Yo this album is great!!

Yeah, finally (at last) heard it today myself and love it.

Sorry Nick I still don't know what "content rather than music" means.

Sorry Nick I still don't know what "content rather than music" means.

Did some scribbling to try and explain. http://sickmouthy.com/2012/08/27/four-tet-and-some-thoughts-on-music-as-content/

Ah, I read this as you complaining that it's too functional (within the parameters of how Orbital's music functions).

This strikes me as a particularly odd criticism to make of Orbital (and also Talabot) - I hope I don't sound condescending when I say it sounds like a criticism made by a person who doesn't listen to (or appreciate) much actual dance music.

It's not so much "how dare you complain that music is too functional" - more that I think when you listen to a lot of music that is pretty explicitly functional in that manner then its functionalism no longer exists at the opposite end of a continuum from art/creativity/etc. for its own sake - hence saying "it's too functional to be art" begins to seem as nonsensical as saying "it has too many beats to be art".

More generally I think the idea of wanting music to "transcend its purpose" is a really bad one, not because music should not transcend its purpose but because the idea that it can and should is only propogated by people who are wary of (and hence do not have a good handle on) the alleged purpose to begin with.

What I would say, and I think it gets at roughly the same ballpark feeling, is that Wonky feels like an album purposely designed to "tick all the boxes" for an Orbital box except the box of "creates at least one new box". Its problem is that it's precisely as functional as Middle of Nowhere, and as such feels like a retreat into safe territory.

More specifically the entire idea of transcension here is really saying "I think this purpose is better than that one."

Oh I don't dance these days and I don't DJ and I'm the first to acknowledge that (and there's nowhere round here where I could dance to this kind of music anyway); that's not been a barrier to me enjoying huge amounts of dance music, though, and especially and particularly Orbital in the past (and also plenty of stuff that was compared to Talabot when Fin came out, which piqued my interest). I'm not saying one "purpose" is better than any other, just that one isn't mine, and there's not enough "whatever it is" to quite satisfy what my purpose might be.

Yeah that's fine, I just think the content vs music opposition makes it seem like you're drawing a more concrete distinction than that.

Yeah it was a bit flippant putting them as opposite ends of a dichotomy; the Cistene Chapel ceiling was a commission and arguably "content", and huge, huge reams of other great art of all mediums and genres and stripes.

Maybe you're just expecting something out of it that others aren't; I for one am happy to get nothing more than just a pile of great tunes

Orbital, at least for me, has a specific feeling of being composed, more so than most sequenced, functional dance music. It's a ridiculous statement on its face, to feel more composed than the next act with quantized beats and layers of samples that build up and roll off like clockwork, but it's the most succinct way of expressing that quality of their music.

This isn't a problem when it works - I appreciate Tim's point about it being a continuum, rather than an opposition. It applies just as much to the Orbital albums I love as those I don't. But when it doesn't hit, that feeling of functional composition is grating.

hot slag otm.

And I love them so much, too, that when something doesn't quite work, it feels like an affront. Which I know is ridiculous on any kind of "artist owes you nothing" perspective, but fandom doesn't work like that.

I don't see Orbital lapsing back into making "just" dance music (at least not from Snivilisation onwards) - pretty much all of their stuff retains the "composed" feeling, it's just that some tunes sound more rote or uninspired than others. So I think trying to equate Orbital's less inspired moments with non-Orbital dance music is a misnomer.

Unless you're applying some qualitative threshold to the application of "composed", which I think would be a kinda dodgy step really. Especially when it's being used so vaguely.

A good example of this is "Are We Here?" - an amazing tune and one of my favourites by Orbital. But by removing almost all of the melodic information and focusing on jungle rhythms it also revealed how much of Orbital's "signature sound" relies on their melodic (and harmonic) sensibility; there's nothing about it that is categorically different from A Guy Called Gerald or Neil Trix (the two jungle producers I could imagine doing something similar had they wanted to) - each sound as"composed" as Orbital when all three are working in the same style.

This is not to say that there's nothing special about Orbital, but that what is special is not some kind of magical, transcendent distinction from other dance music techniques, so much as a kind of sensibility that regularly pushes their music into territory that others pass through any fleetingly. And it's really only across an entire album (or their oeuvre as a whole) that this sensibility becomes obviously their key distinguishing feature.

But that sensibility remains the motivating factor on Wonky and even The Altogether. The fact that the former is largely content to repeat past glories and the latter is for the most part awful doesn't change that.

So I think trying to equate Orbital's less inspired moments with non-Orbital dance music is a misnomer.

who was doing this? neither was i saying that Orbital was better than other dance music. that sense of the music feeling "composed" isn't a positive, it just doesn't bother me if the track works. it bothers me if the track doesn't work, and i have that experience with multiple tracks on Wonky.

each sound as"composed" as Orbital when all three are working in the same style.

not familiar with neil trix, but all i'll say is that AGCG doesn't make compositional structure so salient in his work. that's not to say it's not at all salient, and it's nothing to do with how much compositional ingenuity went into the track. it's just a question of what the listener notices.

some kind of magical, transcendent distinction from other dance music techniques

sigh

I read you as saying that good Orbital feels composed rather than functional and sequenced like other dance music, but when they're not so good they just sound functional again (like other dance music).

Is that not what you're saying?

But my comment re "transcendent" is in response to Nick who in his blog post uses precisely that language - I'm not assuming you believe that Lukas.

What I meant to say was that when I'm listening to Orbital I can never quite forget that the music was deliberately composed. This is not really a compliment. There is a sense of of marionette strings being pulled and mechanisms chunking through a predefined path. At best it's part of the charm (The Girl With The Sun In Her Head), but at worst, if the track as a whole doesn't work for me (several tracks on Wonky) the music just ends up sounding contrived.

Of course now that I've restated it a couple times I've said it maybe more strongly than I would like. This is not something that applies only to Orbital, it's just something that I specifically associate with them.

but when they're not so good they just sound functional again (like other dance music)

but I love dance music! *sob*

What I meant to say was that when I'm listening to Orbital I can never quite forget that the music was deliberately composed. This is not really a compliment. There is a sense of of marionette strings being pulled and mechanisms chunking through a predefined path. At best it's part of the charm (The Girl With The Sun In Her Head), but at worst, if the track as a whole doesn't work for me (several tracks on Wonky) the music just ends up sounding contrived.

This makes absolute sense to me - i.e. that they always sound "composed" but it can occasionally work against them rather than for.

Lots of music, of all stripes and genres, can either feel transcendent or sound functional; I'm not limiting that scope to just Orbital being transcendent or just dance music sounding functional.

Guys, everything sounds composed

Even improvisation is on-the-spot composition

Lots of music, of all stripes and genres, can either feel transcendent or sound functional; I'm not limiting that scope to just Orbital being transcendent or just dance music sounding functional.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 29 August 2012 7:18 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Difficult for me to overstate how much I dislike this term and by extension your use of it.

Guys, everything sounds composed

I keep mentally interpreting the use of the term here as meaning "sounds like it was written out on a stave beforehand".

Which term? Functional? Transcendent?

Transcendent.

Probably the only time I've ever really resented a review edit job was when I tried to explain how an album was good even though I disbelieve in the notion of transcendence (in this context) and the edit changed it to (effectively) "the album transcends its genre".

Why do you disbelieve in the notion of transcendence?

In the context of music I think that it implies a hierarchy of forms of enjoyment without substantiation, and elevates a certain stance vis a vis established musical forms as categorically superior rather than simply differentiated (in many cases rather predictably so).

In the contex of metaphysics, I believe the transcendent can only be conceived of negatively.

What about the notion of the sublime?

You can be sublime within genre.

This is a particularly weird argument to be having with regard to dance music because in house and some techno in particular, "functional" and "transcendent"/"sublime" tracks are interdependent. In a DJ set you need more functional tracks to make a big anthem or an injection of melody or a collection of astonishing sounds work properly. This stuff is hardwired into the structures of dance music.

Assuming that everyone agrees that the 'best' way to listen to and enjoy dance music is through a DJ set, though.

That's neither here nor there - I was making a point that idea of transcension or the sublime or whatever you choose to call it can occur within genre (and always does to a greater or lesser extent). Especially within dance music.

The DJ set thing was merely an example, this is an artist album we're talking about after all.

Fair enough; I'm a bit defensive after being lawyered by Tim again.

And as if by magic, Halcyon+on+on comes on in the office.

FWIW I think you have to respect the intentions of the producers and how the records were intended to be heard, but that's neither here nor there in this conversation.

See I'm torn on that, coming from a structuralism / semiotics POV where Barthes looms large and the 'death of the author' is a big thing. It's also incredibly difficult to expressly know someone's intentions with direct access to them, and inferring them through content, history, and other assumptions is dangerous. The music I like best, of whatever kind, is the stuff that I as a listener can find the most use for and draw the most positive experiences from, and if I use something in a way unintended by the author, so be it.

I'm a bit defensive after being lawyered by Tim again.

TBH I'm a bit over having this thrown at me when I'm not even using legal terminology.

I wasn't aware it was something that gets thrown at you that often, but I'm not on here all that much so may have missed that. It's not about legal terminology, though, not at all, it's about a certain approach to argument and logic that feels, when you're on the end of it, as if it's about finding loopholes and faultlines and proping them to the point where they collapse an argument (or someone's engagement with an argument). It's about a way of thinking, and turning that thought into discourse.

Well it gets thrown at me because I'm a lawyer.

I have no issue with the basic distinction you're drawing, I just think that talking in terms of the transcendent is an unhelpful way to make that point. I really don't think it's possible to use the term in a way that helps rather than hinders understanding. The nature of the word, and its baggage, means that it implies a lot more than the speaker really means.

When we say that an artist "transcends" a genre, typically what we really mean is that they're taking aspects of that genre and then reframing them within articulations that cannot be reduced to that genre.

But that is like saying mixing blue with yellow to make green results in a transcending of blue. This seems like an odd way to express the relationships of colours because we don't think of colours as existing in hierarchical relationships with one another.

And I think once we recognise that hierarchies aren't the best way to think about music, then we begin to feel that the language of transcendence is no longer appropriate.

'Wonky' is an attempt at the kind of dance album you used to get a lot of in the nineties - that "throw everything in, let's make a bangin' dance-pop album like 'Music For A Jilted Generation'" kind of thing, which is fine in my book. But what seemed to make 'In Sides' so good at the time was that it was a nineties crossover dance album that felt like a complete "piece" in six movements.

It was maybe one of the first times for a lot of rock-orientated fans looking to get into electronic music that they could access it in a way that didn't follow the typical 12-song rock album format - to be immersed in a complete, neatly-bound aural experience without having to have the "oh here's the hit", "oh here's the collab with popular singer of the moment", "oh, here's the ambient fillery bit" etc... 'Insides' just feels so satisfying, so concise, no wasted moments - a slick, well oiled engine with all the components in place. I get that this is the antithesis of 'Wonky''s sparkling maximalist all-star comeback record, but it's not what I personally was hoping for.

'In Sides' largely precedes that sort of dance album though, Jilted Generation aside (and even that is way more cohesive than, say, a mid-career Chemical Brothers album).

'Wonky' is actually considerably more concise and tight than 'In Sides' - not really a judgement, 'In Sides' is a much better record, but the tracks have so much time to build. It's not a case of "wasted moments", more "we have loads of time so let's be patient" and it works in its favour.

In the contex of metaphysics, I believe the transcendent can only be conceived of negatively.

board description

They're both different records entirely though. Obviously In Sides wouldn't work as a bunch of single edits, and Wonky probably was good to cut these tracks off when they did.

I don't mind the "composed" element of it at all. I love how it feels like an electrified orchestra in places. Outside of "Straight Sun" (which is too straightforward and sounds like something from The Altogether) all the hooks work for me. I never really bought into the idea that an album couldn't be truly great if it didn't think outside the box or "transcend" its genre.

Orbital is performing with Stephen Hawking at the London Paralympics! Like, right now!

"content rather than music"

vs

In the contex of metaphysics, I believe the transcendent can only be conceived of negatively.

battle of the sentences whose meaning i cannot fathom even a tiny bit

if you've not studied western philosophy then I wouldn't worry re the latter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_(philosophy)