OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

I think its a fun mental exercise/argument starter to pinpoint where rock ended a certain progression of ideals, but to end it before American hardcore is wack

"Pay to Cum" 7" was June 1980, so at least give it that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thnb3UlH2zE

so many statements on artistic intent or lyrics (“phony Beatlemania” in London Calling) that are just interpreted lazily in a way to make the writer’s thesis work out

bret stephens, rock critic:

Most pop songs are about love. Most heavy metal songs are about sex. Most country music seems to be about hard knocks and heartbreak.

nytimes.com/2020/01/13/opinion/neil-peart-rush.html

country songs: about 501s and heartbreaks

oops, better link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/opinion/neil-peart-rush.html

Most heavy metal songs are about sex.

Has this dude heard a heavy metal song released since like 1993?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziL2FyIg1_I

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

most heavy metal songs are about disembowled goblins ime

I guess you could fuck them

https://thequietus.com/articles/27692-xenakis-pauline-oliveros

Not the worst piece of music writing ever but certainly one of the most counterproductive zero-sum-game, either/or premises I've seen in a long time. Because if anyone is in dire needed of a critical takedown in 2020, it's Iannis fucking Xenakis.

Yeah, that's a very weird apples-and-oranges comparison between two very different and seemingly randomly chosen composers. Moreover, I am not at all sure that Xenakis DOES get more widespread recognition and acclaim than Oliveros. Siepmann cites plenty of praise for Oliveros; he just keeps asserting that these are exceptions while all the noise guys who namecheck Xenakis are somehow the rule. Googling Oliveros's name alone turns up loads of reverential discussion in the mainstream press.

I mean, he seems to be referring to this piece, which quotes eight artists on her influence: https://www.google.com/amp/s/thevinylfactory.com/features/pauline-oliveros-legacy-deep-listening/amp/

And there's this:
https://youtu.be/7SLAQdEiWhU

It still wasn't as dumb as this, though: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/kenny-g-gorelick-jazz-blues-criticism-analysis-music

Jacobin is spotty at the best of times but their pop culture writing is the fuckin pits.

"Art music hot takes" might actually be the worst emerging strand of contemporary music criticism.

It's a genre I'm only beginning to discover, to my great dismay.

Re: that Kenny G piece, 'weasel-toned saxophonist' is otm.

just as "sociopolitical context" is often the scourge of pop-culture criticism, political magazines trying on pop culture is almost never a good idea (I have not read / will not read this Kenny G thing)

The funniest thing about the Kenny G piece is that the author posted it on his own blog in 2017, then talked Jacobin into re-publishing it two years later. Like, did you really need the $75 that badly?

maybe it's just the company I keep/shit I read but I'd guess I hear five mentions of Oliveros for every one of Xenakis. She's a much larger figure, imo. I think this article's take might have been a good one in, say, 1985.

yeah had a 'getting mad at google results based on your own previous searches' type vibe from this one

maybe it's just the company I keep/shit I read but I'd guess I hear five mentions of Oliveros for every one of Xenakis. She's a much larger figure, imo.

This is definitely true for me as well, but almost up until her death 3 1/2 years ago, she was still teaching/lecturing/performing, and probably at least 10% of my social circle has been her student at some time or another.

It's total apples and oranges, that comparison, though geez.

Challop disclaimer should the author of that piece be an ILXor: Xenakis and Oliveros are both awesome.

And today, artists more diverse (in both style and identity) than the early industrial kids see themselves traveling in the wake of Xenakis, from jazz pianist and composer Craig Taborn, to Battles' Tyondai Braxton,

the dude who wrote this article knows who Tyondai's dad is, right? ... this article is really awkward

Braxton: It’s certainly relative to electronic music and dance music, it’s certainly relative to generative music and musique concrète. A lot of my heroes are composers like Iannis Xenakis and Pierre Schaeffer.

It's a well-written piece with a terrible (and vaguely sexist) thesis. There's a fucking paragraph where the author tries to posit that Pharmakon must be influenced by Xenakis, despite having never acknowledged the influence? Why are these two completely disparate composers being compared like this?

If an "I wish I was in a Ph. D. program" dude wants to stencil "it's misogyny" on to comparative pieces about "why [x] and not [y]?" composers, he should write Cage vs. Olivieros and/or Xenakis vs. Ustvolskaya-- at least do a study where the composers have similar theses, bodies of work, outlook. (I would read either of these theoretical pieces, both Ustvolskaya and Olivieros deserve equal props as their more-established male counterparts.)

So the writer brings up gender, and how Xenakis' work has been portrayed as hyper-masculine and bro-y, but he doesn't seem to take note that the examples of contemporary music he is using to support his thesis are also way heavier on the bro-factor than others? ... of the musicians he cites, all are dudes, except for Russell Butler, Black Madonna, and Pharmakon ...

And Diamanda Galas, who is (in my experience) one of Xenakis's more ardent proselytizers

yeah that bit about Pharmakon is a real stretch -- I could bullshit that Holly Herndon must be influenced by Oliveros because she took a class from her in grad school.

also lol at citing the Nurse with Wound list as some evidence of the primacy of Xenakis -- I mean, Lemon Kittens are also on that list, and they are such a massive influence on like, a couple dozen weirdo arty noise bands that play to audiences of 30?

Contemporary women composers who cite Xenakis as an influence on their music are bros by association. To wit:

I’m also inspired by the abstraction of the late Beethoven string quartets, the power and uncompromising nature of the orchestral music of Xenakis, and the acoustic city landscapes of Varèse.

http://www.internationalartsmanager.com/features/qa-with-rebecca-saunders.html

Not to mention Chaya Czernowin and Unsuk Chin. And Natasha Barrett:

http://usoproject.blogspot.com/2009/01/interview-with-natasha-barrett-pt2.html

I am now ready to write a corrective article.

"this smacks of gender!" I holler as I upend the table and dump all my compact discs on the floor

But the biggest Greekbro of all is Oliveros herself:

Her many years of involvement in new music have given her an informed and open-minded perspective. Although her interests have changed, she continues to write music for other performers, such as a piece for violinist Malcolm Goldstein, and her interest in pure electronic music didn't end in the 60s either - she contributed to a computer music compilation in 1990. She has praise for artists who seem at first very different, such as Iannis Xenakis (although perhaps with Oliveros's interest in space and Xenakis's interest in architecture, the difference isn't all it seems).

"There is tremendous expansion in the so called new music scene. What used to be a village is now a metropolis. It's complex and asymmetrical. I like it. You never know where you will find a gem or in what style this gem will manifest."

http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/intervs/oliveros.html

there are plenty of Oliveros-influenced bros too

Yeah, I've certainly met more Oliveros bros -- or, if you will, Oliverbros -- than Xenakis bros.

the part of the article where he writes about the aesthetics and processes and how the ascribed masculinity is a bit arbitrary in that Xenakis' process is super nerdy -- i feel like that's kinda interesting

There's some worthwhile insight in that piece, for sure, it's just asphyxiated by the binary premise.

idk i can't really excuse this

Yet whereas Xenakis sought to apply complex formulas to emulate the stochastic rumblings of the natural world (human agency be damned), Oliveros sought similar affects from an opposite angle. To tap into these ecological systems, she privileged the very intuition, vulnerability, and receptivity to our surroundings that Xenakis's superfans find so mewling and weak.

it's just so icky and like "she was a woman and down with nature and her feelings"

I thought das Ewig-Weibliche was peak feminism?

accordions are not natural

But… it breathes!

Lol

https://aeon.co/ideas/why-are-pop-songs-getting-sadder-than-they-used-to-be

ok, i can't be arsed to read this, i don't care, it's probably terrible, but choosing to illustrate your "pop music used to be so much happier" argument with a picture of ABBA is so fucken stupid that i think we can save ourselves the time and effort

bet this person actually thinks "Happy Together" is a song about a couple being happy together

^I skimmed it, and that seems to be exactly how their analysis works!

Look buddy I've seen lots of TV ads for soda, bubblegum and adult diapers and that's definitely what that song means

analysing lyrics alone to judge the emotional content of music is maybe the stupidest fucking thing i’ve ever heard in my life