FKA twigs

but does she have the worst name ever? She probably does.

She doesn't call herself Pissed Jeans or Diarrhea Planet or Fartbarf, so it's not the worst by any means.

It's a bad name (Twigs is good though) but not the worst name ever.

http://nosnobsallowed.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/hotympackshot.jpg

Rah Digga rules

funny i don't entirely love the song "pendulum" but there is this one vocal harmony that she does i think twice in the song that just sounds like the best thing ever.

Yeah, her name somehow really bothers me as well. Feel really superficial getting hung up on it, but it's the only thing stopping me from loving this record.

tend to think of it as a shortened version of wka fka twigs

anyway it's a good name, alluringly awkward is appropriate

i've lost interest in this alb tho. probably all u ppl's fault tbf

'numbers' has stuck with me, probably because it is the purest most obv lol 90s throwback on there, no fannying about

Heh, that's the one I skip. It's the one that really veers into 'IDM dudes thinking they're doing Aaliyah' territory for me.

yes!! be real with yourselves!!

Or to put it the other way, I like this album because there's so much warmth in the sounds, which I don't get when I listen to, say, Jessy Lanza or Kelela or any other time some jobbing vocalist phones up Kode9 or Bok Bok for their offcuts.

anyone complaining about the name should really be forced by martial law to submit a preferred alternative

i would imagine the process of typing out 'battle angel alita' or whatever would prove to be v rehabilitative

that reminds me actually where is the gareth metford review

"Jobbing vocalists" "offcuts" "IDM dudes"

I mean, fuck this attitude forever.

It doesn't matter how much the artists talk about their involvement with the songwriting process or production process, it's always just PRODUCER DUDES DOIN' THE REAL WORK HERE and the women stand around "begging for offcuts" and just drizzling their little vocals over the top.

Seriously, I do not have enough "fuck you" in the world for this way of thinking about or talking about or projecting onto music, artists and the songwriting process. And if you think it's "rude" for me to put it this way, then GOOD. It's a shitty, dismissive, sexist attitude and fuck it with guns. You're gross for still talking this way.

Nah it was entirely meant to be shitty and dismissive but don't read it as 'PRODUCER DUDES DOIN' THE REAL WORK HERE' because they're the main target - I am shitty and kneejerk dismissive about nearly all Hyperdub/Night Slugs releases that I hear and enjoy being so. I've done both vocalists a disservice there so sorry, fair cop.

FWIW I don't actually like either vocalist or their songwriting but the Kelela album in particular doesn't SOUND like a properly collaborative process, it sounds like the producers doing the same thing they always do and Kelela doing what she can over the top, which I'm totally find with in MC-led genres but is hit and miss when there are actual singers involved. The two elements sound awkwardly grafted onto one another.

One of the great things about this record it that is DOES sound like the work of a properly integrated process with Twigs leading it. I mean I said upthread:

All the "it's really about the producer" stuff upthread is revealed as cobblers by this point. With all the names knocking around - Arca, Dev Hynes, Paul Epworth, maybe Clams Casino - it's remarkably consistent in sound and aesthetic leaving you in little doubt that the person who's actually driving things is her.

Arreet !

Don't think I've posted on ILM for a decade but breaking silence to express my joy upon listening to LP1. Heard Video Girl in a skeezy record shop with a faulty striplight - sublime moment.

holy shit, geordie racer hi

No opinion about Lucki Eck$ yet (a quick google turned up another track he's done with Danny Brown but I haven't listened yet) but has anybody heard/seen this track she produced for him?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZfMhK0vjeg

I just watched the interview with Kelela and Bok Bok where they both basically said that the NS crew sent beats to her and she wrote songs over the top of them, which isn't to diminish her creative input into the tedious album they made together but the artist-producer dynamic is a long way from what's happening here.

I liked the interview where Twigs was explaining that her producers were there basically as technical hired hands to help her execute her own vision, even down to 'find me a chord that sounds forlorn but with a hint of hope' or something in that vein.

The best artist-producer pairings are usually some kind of symbiotic relationship like Katy B and Geeneus but this album feels very much the result one of one forceful vision.

re the name i wonder if the pointless terminal -s in nicknames is a brit thing

IIRC "twigs" was a reference to her legs and she has two of them, so

apparently its a reference to the noise it makes when her joints crack

I think I might buy this purely on the basis that Geordie Racer popped up for the first time in years to rave about it. It's a sign.

Interesting thesis there thomps xp

thomp is right. Twigs is a nickname from her dance classes when she was a teenager. When I interviewed her she stretched her neck at one point and it did indeed make a loud crack.

Closer slays me. Julee Cruise vibes. I think only Video Girl and Numbers are less than brilliant. I can see this topping all kinds of album polls this year.

<iframe width="400" height="500" frameborder="0" src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/emp/embed/smpEmbed.html?playlist=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fiplayer%2Fplaylist%2Fp0265pwy&title=Alice%20Levine%3A%20FKA%20Twigs%20in%20the%20Live%20Lounge%3A%20FKA%20twigs%20covers%20Sam%20Smith's%20Stay%20With%20Me%20in%20the%20Live%20Lounge&product=iplayer";></iframe>

valuable new posters

hey san lazaro, i don't think embeds really work here :/

try this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/ecvhzc

xxpost - i think that scratcha dva song with fatima 'just vybe' is a good example of what was being talked about, it sounds like she got a ready made instrumental (which it was, and the instrumental is great on its own) and just blurted out the first thing that came to mind over it. sometimes a singer working a beat theyve been sent works just fine, but yeah, most of the time theres a sense of no real connection between the vocals and the actual track. doesnt mean that the (female) singer has no input or isnt doing anything important, it just means that there isnt much sense of real collaboration happening. the twigs album doesnt sound like that at all.

The thing is, it doesn't actually matter if the singer has zero input into either the production or the writing process as long as the PERFORMANCE is great and sometimes the performance is what we're all here for. Think about a record like Show Me Love by Robin S, where even the most phallocentric of dance music fans doesn't give a shit who wrote or produced it.

This isn't confined to female singers, I've talked about jobbing male house vocalists on the Disclosure thread and jobbing grime MCs on the Ill Blu thread, sometimes jobbing vocalists are literally just that. Twigs clearly isn't any of these things.

(I think I got Jessy Lanza wrong though, she's clearly part of a songwriting partnership with Jeremy Greenspan, I think the Hyperdub thing just confused me. It doesn't change my view that virtually everyone working in this scene is lame and worthy of my instant pissy dismissal).

dont know how/why anyone would deny that 'jobbing' could be an accurate description of an artist in pop music

A "jobbing musician" is a term for a specific role within the music trade. It's analogous to "session player" or "gun for hire" or, in writers' trade, a hack. Using the term is not necessarily a pejorative, but, like "hack", something which originally simply meant "worker for hire" has taken on a decided pejorative tone. (As in, workhorse, rather than creative.) It means a specific thing, and it's fine when used in the context of that specific thing: a session player.

If MDC was trying to say "a jobbing vocalist is the thing that FKA Twigs is not"; that's fine, we have no disagreement there.

But he didn't stop there, he went on to talk about jobbing vocalists hanging round back doors begging for offcuts from dudes, in which case, why not go whole hog with the sex worker language and just call them "working girls"? That way of talking about musicians, especially female musicians, is really gross, though there is certainly a long tradition of it.

And there's this automatic assumption, right there with Jessy Lanza (and previously with Barbara Panther, and previously FFS even with people like Bjork) that if a female singer is being promoted, she's just singing or doing something decorative over the top of a producer's creative work, rather than being a songwriter or creative driving force or even a collaboration. "Ooh, I got this one wrong" - yeah, this would be an excuse if it wasn't the assumption made with tedious regularity.

You know, in hip-hop, when a rapper spits a lyric over a previously produced piece of music, it's commonly accepted that rapping is still a creative, generative activity in its own right. The verse may fail, but it's accepted that rapping over someone else's beats is still an active creative performance, in which the rapper is a creative agent. (Unless of course it's Nicki Minaj, in which case, someone will point out the number of male co-writers on the track.) But, somehow, get a vocalist (usually female) singing over the top of someone's beats, and that is just assumed to be decoration, "jobbing musician" work, where she has no more agency than the 303 that provided that bassline. It's funny, that. It's really funny, that.

And even when you're allowed FKA Twigs to be the loophole girl, and "clearly, she doesn't work like that" you are still casting this pejorative pall over other kinds of collaborations.

A lot of projection going on here. I didn't actually talk about hanging round back doors and I didn't actually use the phrase "begging for offcuts", which you put in quotation marks upthread and have repeated here, which adds an additional gross dimension even before you go all out with the sex worker language. You shouldn't actually need to resort to this sort of rhetorical dishonesty.

And there's this automatic assumption, right there with Jessy Lanza (and previously with Barbara Panther, and previously FFS even with people like Bjork) that if a female singer is being promoted, she's just singing or doing something decorative over the top of a producer's creative work, rather than being a songwriter or creative driving force or even a collaboration. "

The thing is, you aren't actually listening to me or engaging with what I'm saying, you're arguing with a prevalent attitude (which definitely exists and which I pretty much agree with you about). In the Barbara Panther thread I actually said the exact opposite of what you seem to think I said (and talked about Bjork there as well). I don't actually believe that Aaliyah was just a cipher for Timbaland or any of that stuff, Twigs would only be the "loophole girl" if you hadn't read my posts about Katy B or Beyonce or Jessie Ware or a host of other female artists who aren't seen as traditionally auterish. Even the phrase "phones up Bok Bok or Kode9 for their offcuts" which is dickish (I am capable of acknowledging when I am being a dick, although I reserve the right to be a facetious dick about scenes I dislike) doesn't actually contain presumptions about whether or not the singer writes the songs.

somehow, get a vocalist (usually female) singing over the top of someone's beats, and that is just assumed to be decoration, "jobbing musician" work, where she has no more agency than the 303 that provided that bassline

There's a nuanced discussion to be had around this if you're interested in having one. The extent to which a record is producer-driven or artist-driven (or label-driven) varies from record to record. I don't actually think vocals are ever just decoration, even when the vocalist just turns up and sings what's given to them, because as I said upthread performance is what really matters and performance is as much a part of the creative process as songwriting is. Lots of people think the opposite but these people are basically the worst.

But a lot of the time the producer they're working with is an integral part of the sound as well (eg Katy B + Geeneus) and talking about their contribution is entirely valid as long as you don't pretend it's just a producer's record rather than a collaborative project. Then there are records where there are glaring mismatches between producer/songwriters and singers (ie some Ciara stuff) and then it's worth exploring why something doesn't work. I am more of a sonics person than a lyrics person which does skew my discussion in one direction.

Unless of course it's Nicki Minaj, in which case, someone will point out the number of male co-writers on the track

The number of male co-writers on a track is an entirely pertinent detail to point out in a discussion about whether a track is grossly patriarchal or subversively feminist, as much as it was on the Electrik Red thread when you said "despite all the gurl power stylings, they are still females singing men's words".

or any other time some jobbing vocalist phones up Kode9 or Bok Bok for their offcuts.

― Matt DC, Saturday, September 6, 2014 9:43 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Your word.

You don't keep track of the actual words you use, then accuse me of not paying attention? I'm not really interested in this kind of game-playing.

It's a shame because there is an interesting discussion to be had, but not under these circumstances.

Exactly. I didn't use the phrase "begging for offcuts" that you quoted me as saying, and I don't believe you are unaware of the literal, rhetorical or emotive difference, or you wouldn't have used it.

Words have connotations, though you are playing the rhetorical game of trying to pretend that they don't.

That you say "jobbing vocalist" and bring with it the association of "hack" as opposed to something neutral like "session musician".

You say "offcuts" and bring with it the etymological derivation of offal, rotting meat and begging for scraps instead of using something neutral like "B-sides".

Then try to play this game that they are just ~neutral terms~ instead of pejoratives? "Oh, I didn't mean it that way" is not the same thing as "these words do not have pejorative connotations." Which I'm certain that *you* were aware of, or you would have chosen other, more neutral words.

BRB, just going to phone up and beg for a pizza.

A hack begging for waste products is a *very* different image from a session musician phoning a producer up for a piece of music to work on. The latter implies a partnership; the former implies something gross. Do not try to pretend like the words you chose did not imply a certain relationship and power structure there.

Also I fully accept your point, my post was intended to convey disrespect (although I like offal a lot more than I like Hyperdub productions). And I used "jobbing vocalists" in the same way that I (*rushes for search function*) talk about jobbing nu-disco producers, jobbing pop-grime mcs and jobbing indie bands when I want to convey their unremarkableness.

I am not actually playing games with you, I have been (more or less calmly) responding to your points while quite reasonably objecting to your putting words in my mouth.

i think it's hard to know exactly who is involved with what, and to what extent when we're talking about a collaboration, and this ambiguity leaves the door open to sexist assumptions about the relative roles singers play in the production of their own music. kanye has worked with tons of collaborators on his last two albums but he is still discussed as an "auteur" where people are quicker to dismiss the contributions of female artists. i sat in on an english class for rising high school seniors in philadelphia this summer and the teacher at one point openly expressed skepticism that nicki minaj writes her own music and at the same time chastised the students for not appreciating the greatness of tupac. branwell basically otm.

This isn't confined to female singers, I've talked about jobbing male house vocalists on the Disclosure thread and jobbing grime MCs on the Ill Blu thread, sometimes jobbing vocalists are literally just that. Twigs clearly isn't any of these things.

No I basically agree that female artists get a load more shit from people denying their creative input than male ones do.

This is basically going to come down to whether I see a word as pejorative because of my context, or you see a word as not-so-pejorative because of differing context.

You admit that you used pejorative words because you intended disrespect towards Hyperdub, but in the process (what, with the hacks and the rotting meat) can you understand why someone would interpret that as being disrespectful towards vocalists? (Especially with regards to vocalists who *are* the named artist on the record, such as Jessy Lanza, rather than a session player who barely garners a "featuring" credit.)

With regards to the creative process and collaborations and how they work, look, unless A) you are in the recording studio with them or B) someone like FKA Twigs chooses to tell you in an interview how they work, you are basically just writing fan fiction, if you think you can tell, by listening to a finished record how that creative process worked or who was driving it (and it's possible for more than one writer to drive a project.)

My point is, again and again, people are FAR more willing to interpret a male collaborator as having agency than a female one. And your whole "oh, but I talk this way about ~male jobbing vocalists~ toooooo" sounds really far too close to a #NotAllMen.

And I'm not actually that interested in talking about ~how collaborations work~ because quite frankly, one of the people in this conversation has worked at different times in their life, both as a producer writing for other singers, and as a session player turning up to add bits for money. And the other person is basically writing fan fiction based on records and labels they like or don't like. The answer to how collaborations work is genuinely: IT DEPENDS. But the gendering of who is seen as an agent in a collaboration and who is not, that is a constant, and it's a boring one I cannot believe I am wasting another sunny Sunday afternoon getting into, yet again.

Well, I didn't know 'offcut' meant rotten meat, so I've learned something today. I just thought it meant not prime cut, but the more you learn.

An offcut means the bit you have left over after your other work (be it meat, wood, whatever).

You never know exactly how a recording process works (and talking about the finished product is usually more interesting than talking about the process) but in some cases you can take an educated guess - ie if there are multiple producers with a highly unified aesthetic (like this album) or if the songwriting and production sounds very similar to what the songwriters/producers do for everyone else, or if the producer's usual sonic signifiers are absent (like the Omar Souleyman record produced by Four Tet).

(I really mean the producer-artist dynamic, not the process, I'm none the wiser as to how this album was made)

funny how when I raised the exact same point about pc music it was "the most repulsive thing I've ever read"

Like to shout out all the session musicians, jobbers, backing vocalists, hired guns, hacks, you all made some of the greatest pop music. Waddylyfe

as for "offcuts" I've read enough mixed metaphors that the idea of someone using "offcuts" and intending a pejorative meaning is... rather difficult to believe (plus, if we're going to nitpick offensive metaphors then "fuck it with guns" would come rather higher up on the list than "offcuts," which is why I suggest we don't.) as for "jobbing," it's kind of hard to believe that anyone who's in the business of music writing sees this as an insult given that music writing in 2014 consists almost entirely of jobbing. some things are just jobs, you know? rent must get paid.

In my experience, the gauzy veil is often drawn round the truth of who did what post-recording. As we're getting subjectif and theoretic like, I wonder if FKA Twigs is 'collaborating', as she has a creative agenda to pursue (whoever she records with), 'cause I agree with Janny Wurts who sez:

‘To collaborate, you have to let go. The outcome will not be your work anymore, but something else altogether. You will not control it. It is going to be different. If you can handle the idea that the concept will go its own way, and be other than what you expect, then you're in line for a successful partnership. You need to respect your partner -- know their strengths and also know your own -- and just step in and let the synergy happen. The peril is in getting too attached, or trying to hang on to your private identity. If you can't free wheel and just let things happen, let that juggernaut go its own way, you will be miserable. Sometimes the tightest friction that arises in the collaborative process gives rise to the most transcendent bits of inspiration. The trick is to look for the silver lining, not get sucked into the mire of arguing.’

....and I think that applies to this thread too ;)

No, it doesn't surprise me that a music writer would see "jobbing hack" as non-pejorative, or why.

"Offcuts" dictionary denotation means scraps. In carpentry, it's sawdust and those little odd-shaped bits of wood too small to use for other jobs. But it's definitely picked up a pejorative connotation due to its association with butchery and offal.

And yes, "fuck it with guns" is an offensive term, it is an old ILX phrase with a history as the most offensive thing one can say about something, and was used deliberately to show the height of my distaste for DC's language. So you can stop the pearl-clutching now.

I do actually have a great deal of respect for session players, jobbing musicians, backing vocalists and hired guns. Which is why it really offends me to see their work reduced to the level of sawdust and offal.