Post a controversial music opinion

ALL ALBUMS, ALL THE TIME.

A man after my own heart.

I just have no time for albums in my life now. 3 or 5 minutes can get my complete attention. Why do I then need to hear another 11 tracks from the same artist, of which at least half will be filler? I still love many LPs, but just feel like I've had my fill of them, that is until the theoretical day I get an hour to sit and listen undisturbed, which may never come.

I know you are a good person but that sounds like violence to me.

which at least half will be filler?

life is filler

it's about the notes they don't play

Take "If you are feeling sinister".

...please!

http://greatthoughtstreasury.com/sites/default/files/henny%5B1%5D_0.gif

I just have no time for albums in my life now. 3 or 5 minutes can get my complete attention. Why do I then need to hear another 11 tracks from the same artist, of which at least half will be filler?

I can understand this POV from someone who only listens to pop music, but it doesn't apply to the genres I listen to at all.

'I just have no time for full compositions in my life now. 3 or 5 minutes can get my complete attention. Why do I need to hear another 11 movements from the same composer, of which at least half will be filler?'

I chose to read that post as a surreptitious allusion to György Kurtág's 12 Microludes for string quartet.

Funnily enough, I was listening to a version of Morton Feldman's For Bunita Marcus earlier today that was split into 22 tracks, instead of being a single 75-minute piece. I was idly wondering whether it had been optimized for playlists or something nonsensical like that.

Marc-André Hamelin's record is split into 36 tracks, one for each page. Pourquoi pas?

*recording

This is a bit of a tangent, but having just stumbled on Norman Lebrecht's review of said recording, I am consistently amazed at how insufferable and frankly useless his opinions can be. For instance, quotes such as 'Contemporary composers are not, on the whole, the most considerate members of the human species' would fit snugly in the rolling worst music writing thread.

Music’s fine, I guess. Not great. My imo.

I don't know if I really even believe this but what the hell:

EPs >>>>> albums

Glad to have provided an apparently genuinely controversial music opinion.

But this is funny

grawlix (unperson) at 9:07 26 Dec 18
I just have no time for albums in my life now. 3 or 5 minutes can get my complete attention. Why do I then need to hear another 11 tracks from the same artist, of which at least half will be filler?
I can understand this POV from someone who only listens to pop music, but it doesn't apply to the genres I listen to at all.

If you were listening to popular music of 1909-1921, I expect that much of it wasn't released in album form in the first place?

Very little of it, and none originally on LPs of course.

(Obv, if you mean that you were listening to Ives and Stravinsky, they were mostly not releasing albums either but listening in 3-5m chunks might not always make the most sense.) xp

As it's original recordings only, the only music of that sort I hear is heavily mediated by the limitations of recording media and studios at the time, which doesn't mean there's none, but it's not in the form anyone would expect to hear it now.

György Kurtág's 12 Microludes for string quartet.

― pomenitul, Wednesday, December 26, 2018 3:20 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

somebody reads the new yorker

I always enjoy remembering that an "album" used to be a bound group of sleeves housing multiple 78s
https://strathdee.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/101022.jpg

Lol did Alex Ross recently publish a piece on Kurtág's Fin de partie or something? Nah, I'm gonna play my hipster card and say that I've been into Kurtág since the early 2000s when I first heard the Keller Quartet's ECM disc of his works for string instruments.

xp

i was mostly jk but yeah ross wrote about his new (and first) opera, which uses text from beckett's "endgame" ... which of course reminded me that i've been enjoying kurtág since, well, fine, i actually just learned about him two days ago. joke's on me :)

also yes that album shit is what i came to post about in the first place. i'm so happy CDs exist for classical music. imagine living a million hours from the nearest symphony orchestra and having to settle for the 36 x 10" 78rpm box set of, say, some brahms piece or whatever

xp

his new (and first) opera, which uses text from beckett's "endgame"

...which is called, yeah, "fin de partie"

boy do i feel dumb

I'm just happy people are talking about Kurtág. :)

And yeah, I wouldn't like classical music nearly as much if I could only attend local concerts. Because they're expensive and because their range tends to be fairly limited. We really are blessed to have access to all this stuff, and so readily. Back in the 19th century, Liszt's piano transcriptions (of Beethoven's symphonies, for instance) supposedly served a pragmatic purpose in addition to their aesthetic value, although I can't imagine many people were able to perform them given how fiendishly difficult they are! I guess there must have been cases where only a piano virtuoso was available and not a full symphony orchestra…

Tracks >>>>>>> Playlists > Albums

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, December 26, 2018 12:30 PM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for certain genres--electronic music, rap, pop--totally agree. I'm a huge house / techno fan, but the (admittedly self-imposed) pressure to listen to an entire house or techno album is the pits

rock and jazz, eh, not so sure

playlists are the worst

my playlists are the shit

dx7 electric piano sound is good

the mediums for techno and house is the 12" and the dj set, of course albums are going to be potty

And yeah, I wouldn't like classical music nearly as much if I could only attend local concerts. Because they're expensive and because their range tends to be fairly limited. We really are blessed to have access to all this stuff, and so readily. Back in the 19th century, Liszt's piano transcriptions (of Beethoven's symphonies, for instance) supposedly served a pragmatic purpose in addition to their aesthetic value, although I can't imagine many people were able to perform them given how fiendishly difficult they are! I guess there must have been cases where only a piano virtuoso was available and not a full symphony orchestra…

― pomenitul, 27. december 2018 01:56 (fourteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's this film called Amour Fou, and one of the greatest things in that film is that in the beginning there's this famous soprano that comes to the house of the main character and sings a beautiful piece by Beethoven, and the rest of the film the main character is seen practicing this piece and singing it to people, except that it's a much easier and pared down version of the piece. A lot of the music that existed back then came out in simple versions for people to play to each other.

Love the Beach Boys - especially their '66 to early '70s run. Listening to "WIld Honey" and its sessions right now and, much as I love Carl, maaaan -- he could not pull off these r & b vocals. My vocal cords hurt listening to him strain. The boys were fakin' the funk on this one.

Martin Hannett's famed production. . . is thin and weak, generally : \

He was innovative in some interesting ways, but the final sound just leaves me cold.

For Joy Division in particular--I almost always prefer a BBC session version of a given track to the album/EP/single versions. They may be more conventionally produced, but at least the drums and bass *hit* a little.

I think you have a point there. But Joy Division really started to make sense for me when I discovered the live versions as on Preston and Les Bains Douches. So intense and powerful. I wish I had been there.

I was into the Dead Kennedys before Joy Division so I only knew his name from "..fuck off overproduced by martin hannett, take 4" at the beginning of "nazi punks". When I saw his name later in liner notes my first thought was "martin hannett, that guy sucks!"

Ronnie Milsap is the greatest yacht-rocker of all time.

Man, I love his uptempo hits so much. "Daydreams About Night Things" and "Pure Love" - so tight, both clocking in under 2:25.

"Stranger in My House" and "There's No Gettin' Over Me" are marvelous.

the separation/dislocation of the joy division studio albums is the point which i’m sure y’all know already

yeah I mean, I cannot imagine those records sounding any other way

Joy division would have agreed with the above critique of hannett, a common one, and they too are wrong about it

Here’s mine: talk talks producer should have thrown that damn harmonica out of the window on day one

Ian Curtis: good lyrics, awful voice
Bernard Sumner: awful lyrics, good voice

I can get behind that. This happens to be why 'Ceremony' doubles as the best Joy Division and New Order song.

That is one opinion I will never understand.

I'm glad both "versions" of the band exist - the dislocation & ice cold atmosphere of Unknown Pleasures is remarkable, and they were a great rock band. it's a good thing there's as much extant material as there is considering how briefly they existed.

I definitely prefer (early) New Order to (almost any) Joy Division, so I'm biased in my opinion re: Hannett's production. And part of it probably isn't Hannet's fault, but just the fact that I don't care for Curtis' voice much in general, and also I tend to hate most of the Joy Division "inspired" post-punk bands (i.e. Crispy Ambulance and dozens more, both '78-'82 and rampant in neo-post-punk) and the pallor JD's outsized reputation casts over post-punk generally, to where it's assumed to be a genre of mopey trench-coat darkness instead of an ethos of adventurousness and an explosion of highly varied creativity.

I guess if you're the sort (like me) who thinks "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is Joy Division's best song, when it's really an outlier, you're given to preferring New Order?

In theory, I like the production techniques Hannett brings to the table--in fact, I like his production on a lot of non-Joy Division music. But I guess I agree with JD themselves that the thin/"distant" production doesn't reinforce the isolation and turmoil of JD's songs, but actually just somehow sucks the blood out of them a bit and robs them of their emotional impact a little. Hence, my preference for the nicely but simply-produced BBC recordings...

"Love Will Tear Us Apart" is Joy Division's best song

surely this is not controversial

Yeah a controversial JD opinion would be "their vers of Louie Louie is the def vers"