Lindstrom & Prins Thomas are the shit

mine is the same. the mix is part of a series of four mixes from playhouse. the idea is that you buy all of the mixes separately, and then they go into this nifty limited edition box.

So I can't stop listening to "II" but boy, when the final minute and a half of "Gudene Ve & Snutt" (third to last track) kicks in, I *really* *really* can't get enough! That's the kind of music there that'll drive me crazy for months.
So... what else sounds like that bit? I feel like it really reminds me of other music I love, but can't quite figure out what I'm thinking of. I thought maybe it was something off of that Jackson & His Computer Band album, or a Boards of Canada moment, but no dice so far. Anyone have some better mental connections?

So I suppose next you're gonna try and tell me that "II" is "house" or something.

This is prog. This is just out and out prog. If you'd not told me when this was from, I'd have said it was made by beardy Germans in 1973. But, like, coz it's got bongos on it, you're gonna try and tell me this is "house" right?

This is, seriously, a Steve Hillage record sped up a bit.

this is prog

hillage is disco

didn't you hear e2-e4 was the first "space disco" record?

Hillage is P.R.O.G. with a capital GUITAR SOLO.

He was in Gong, FFS. he wrote a concept album about SALMON FARMING.

You cannot get any more prog than that.

Actually, yes, you can. This record, for a start. :-D

Isn't Steve Hillage that guy from techno group System 7?

OK, before Steve Hillage invented techno, he was in a prog band. Which is what this sounds like.

gong were the first ambient techno group - see "master builder" / "a sprinkling of clouds"

this is prog

oh and btw as further proof in my record collection GONG is filed next to GONZALEZ, DELIA & GAVIN RUSSOM of black meteoric star fame, so there is further proof of shared techno lineage

oops actually scratch "master builder" ... i just put it on and realized i was hearing the yamantaka EYE remix in my head instead of the original

this is prog

house, too

Yeah, well, Steve HILLAGE is next to HAWKWIND in my record collection so nyeah! (and don't you dare bring up their ill advised 90s foray into ambient techno)

I give up with this genre game. I just give up.

I'm D/Ling a Patrick Cowley album right now. I suppose you're gonna tell me that's not disco at all, far less Space Disco - that's actually .... acid jazz or something? :-P

(this is NO house in this record. None. Tiny bits of disco, but not a drop of House)

patrick cowley is hard rock (i know because scott seward likes it)

see kate, this is the thing you're just not getting. the whole idea of "beardo" is not fucking bongos. it's being able to play a prog record next to a patrick cowley record next to a farley jackmaster funk record and it all seems to work

did someone say "II" was house music??

this is one reason i like L&P; they are basically going for "late 70s prog/new age band does a disco record", which is basically the sweetest shit ever.

Maybe it's because I don't have a freaking beard, eh? ;-)

entirely possible :)

I think people just invent increasingly convoluted "genre" names for essentially saying "stuff I like".

And it doesn't matter whether that genre name is "dronebobbins" or "beardo" - it's kind of a lazy shortcut. But hey, without it, how would you know what to listen to at all?

Spoken like somebody who has never had buying duties at a dance record shop.

OH SNAP!!!!

lindstrom often reminds me of abba

xxp, or shopped in a record store. sometimes you want the digging experience, but sometimes you just want to get your shit and get out, so genre labels help.

I think people just invent increasingly convoluted "genre" names for essentially saying "stuff I like".

And it doesn't matter whether that genre name is "dronebobbins" or "beardo" - it's kind of a lazy shortcut. But hey, without it, how would you know what to listen to at all?

― Violent In Design (Masonic Boom), Saturday, July 4, 2009 3:20 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thats fundamentally wrong. i like lots of stuff that isnt beardo, and i dislike lots of stuff that is beardo. and vice versa.

Getting into an area of music for the first time and complaining "I like all this stuff but all the genre names you people use for it are bullshit!" is like the primordial challop.

The ILX FAQ ought to be expanded to include a list of "daring thread interventions" that should be avoided.

hey tim check the old gina thompson remix is just posted to autogoon

totally unrelated but yeah its XD

new lindstrom 12" with a couple of unreleased tracks on it snuck out to little fanfare, anyone heard it?

samples sound nice

No, it's not just genres I'm new to, I find many sub-genre names - even within fields of music I've listened to longer than some of you have been alive - often deliberately obscurantist.

It's fine when it's used to be a sort of shortcut of "oh, well, if you like this, you'll like that..." but so often it's NOT used in this way, it's used as this kind of exclusionary tactic of "oh, you don't know a thing about sub-genre X so you're not worth wasting my time talking to" - which I have utterly NO time for.

This kind of attitude comes up again and again, especially on dance threads on ILX, perhaps because of the kind of cultural capital associated with assigning the correct 30 miliseconds ahead of the trend dance artist to the correct sub genre.

Not accusing you of doing that, Tim F, you've often been incredibly helpful, but this attitude certainly exists, on ILX, and on other boards. And when people start pulling shit like that, yes, I will go into kneejerk mode and start playing deliberately dumb to play on their worst fears of OH NOES UNCOOL PEOPLE LIKE MY MUSIC.

And you're right, I've never had buying duties at a record shop. I have, however, waded through 20 different sub categories trying to figure out where someone has hidden the CD that I want to buy - and then give up and go buy it online from somewhere with a good search function.

Kate you're building a strawman and accusing people of doing things that no one is doing, possibly because you start by defending yourself against attacks that haven't been thrown at you and work from there.

II is pretty fucking prog though, it can't be denied. But then L&PT's music isn't the sort of dance music that gets neatly shoehorned into micro-genres anyway. And in any case 'Balearic', 'beardo' etc aren't actually microgenres as much as broad umbrella terms. Balearic can include folk and easy listening and house and, yes, prog. It's not just 'add bongos'. </hippy>

I'd actually go as far as to say that being some kind of sub-Pipecock genre fascist is incompatible with the whole idea of Balearic, new or old.

Sorry, did I imagine those "if Kate starts listening to dance music, I'm stopping" and "oh noes, gentrification" (when I mentioned liking a Patrick Cowley song) comments, then? Did I hallucinate that entire thread where I got a beatdown for saying that Black Meteoric Star sounded like dronerock to me?

I mean, my first comment on this thread was kind of a joking reaction to that BMS thread. But I do think that a "genre" that has stretched so far as to include things as disparate as folk, easy listening and prog is not really a genre per se, but just a handy labelling tool. As you say, an umbrella term, and as such, totally meaningless really.

Anyway, I'm done here.

I am probably "not getting it" but hey, that's nothing new is it?

You didn't get "a beatdown". You got people disagreeing with you, pretty politely as it happens.

Marissa Marchant is gone off the net because of you

Not helpful, dude.

Yeah, seriously.

At the end of the day everyone is welcome at Lindstrom and Prins's giant polysexual prog disco yacht party.

I heard 'II' on a café terrasse by an industrial canal last night. It was sweet

Well, I might like to go to that if Lindstrom didn't look so freakily like HSA that I'd spend the entire weekend feeling vaguely paranoid. ;-)

I dunno. I'm always more attracted to music that makes mincemeat of genres, or treats them like playthings rather than rules or guidelines to be adhered to.

^^ Yes but how much music that treats genres like "rules or guidelines to be adhered to" is actually talked about on ILM?

As Matt says (or in addition to that), the entire notion of "beardo" is:

a) half-joking and not even official (it exists outside of ILM, but not to any great extent)
b) an idea that "treats genres like playthings"; and
c) has basically no rules anyway

This is precisely why it's interesting to talk about as a kind of mental exercise. The question "is this or is this not beardo" or "is this or is this not balearic" is not a question that can yield a definitive answer, but it facilitates the teasing out of qualities of certain records or the interconnectivity of certain records, or the social "vibe" that makes certain older records suddenly sound more populist and current than they did previously.

Saying "this is prog" is totally part of that (though for the record I think the dance term most people would associate with L&PT is "disco", a term nearly as old and hoary as "prog" is) and the resonances you pick up in this music are spot on. But I don't think that's opposed to other kinds of genre term-based commentary.

I'm sure that somewhere someone is rigidly policing dance genre definitions but I rarely see it happen; most discussions of what genre terms mean and where records fit is much more about building meaning than it is about asserting some predetermined version of it.

personally as a lover of drone-rock and of house and techno i hear so much more of the latter in the BMS record - the sound palette is analogue synths and pretty heavy drum machines, these have been the building blocks of dance music for the last 25 years. kate, coming onto a thread and insisting that it's straight-up dronerock doesn't make you wrong per se, because you can draw a thread from it back to the same stuff that inspired a lot of drone-rock - 'e2-e4' and ashra are two sides of the same coin, from the same guy. but it sounds like a bunch of late-80s jack tracks, and gavin russom has said that BMS as a project is his way of exploring dancefloor culture... i mean, i honestly don't see why techno fans saying "this techno record sounds like a techno record" is such a problem.

i believe we've been quite unfair to kate here - she's obviously using "drone" the way some people use the word "funk"; i.e. a record doesn't have to be a scratchy 45 with a brass section for someone to say "this is pure funk".

well yes but it came across like you haven't heard much of the dance music canon, much of which is spectacular, life-affirming music, and much of which sounds like the BMS record. it's not some major crime to have not heard all this stuff. but does it get you curious to delve further?

Dude, why on earth else do you think I've been getting my arse (politely) kicked all over these dance music threads for the past few months, except to try and explore?

At some point last autumn, I went to an indie gig, saw a dance DJ (who used to be an indie kid) playing a bunch of Silver Apples and Can and dodgy psych records next to a bunch of new records I'd never heard before - but captured more of the *spirit* of what I liked about those old records than the current rock scene supposedly inspired by them. So off I go to find out what this stuff is.

TBH, I'm not that interested in "canon". I have very distinct tastes, and I'm looking for stuff that hits mine own personal sweet spot, and I don't care if it comes from an Aeroplane remix or a Stereolab B-side; from Lindstrom or from T.O.N.T.O.'s Expanding Head Band.

It is a bit weird for me, as a Dirty Dronerock Girl - who pretty much hasn't listened to dance music on any serious level since about 1996, who hasn't even set foot in a club since 2001. Imagine the last time you heard dance music, it was either mindless eurotrance or drum'n'bass (or something equally inpenetrable) - now imagine with that background, that you hear that BMS record or a Lindstrom record. Is your first thought going to be "this is techno" or "this is drone/prog/spacerock?"

It makes sense to me, however, that BMS is a "project exploring dancefloor culture" - and why that would then appeal to me, as an outside to this kind of music. Because it does read, to me, like a drone/space/prog/person who owns too many Tangerine Dream records making a "dance" record, rather than an actual House record. (and having, to my ignorant ears, as many if not more of the signifiers of the former rather than the latter.) Ditto LPT.

(But this kind of "umbrella" genre terms just seem nonsense to me. It's like every ten years or so, a new generation of kids discover the same set of records and rework them in a new setting. And of course, that has to have a new "umbrella" term like "beardo" or whatever because that makes more sense than "we're just playing a bunch of old records we think sound good together." I dislike "beardo" for the same reason I dislike "new rock revolution" or whatever. Maybe this is because I'm a cynical old person and feel like I've heard it all before. Maybe because I am completely ignorant about dance/club culture. Couldn't tell you.)

Maybe I should really have started mine own "A Dirty Dronerock Girl's Adventures In The Dance/Club Scene" thread instead of just randomly reviving threads to go "wow! this is great!" on them. Too late now I suppose.

I think some sub-genres are very much of a time and place, though, so reusing 'post-punk' to describe early 00's bands like Interpol doesn't really work, which leaves people scrambling. iirc, and I might not be, Beardo was used to differentiate from 'cosmic' or 'space disco', the terms being bandied about when Lindstrøm's "I Feel Space" came out, because those were separate genres from a period in the past. Beardo was meant to catch that cosmic/hippy vibe as well sound completely ridiculous (i assume that was intentional?). fwiw, I think you're pretty spot on with the prog thing (L and PT together love to noodle), and I see where you're coming from with BMS.

All that said, I really don't know shit about dance music. It's been a slow conversion from indie gigs for me as well, hence my love of the accessibility of Lindstrøm, Aeroplane, Studio, et al, and probably for the similar reasons you give for getting into it in the first place (notable similarities in style to aforementioned genres and bands).