"Pay to Cum" 7" was June 1980, so at least give it that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thnb3UlH2zE
― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 14 January 2020 00:57 (four years ago) link
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
― babu frik fan account (mh), Tuesday, 14 January 2020 01:24 (four years ago) link
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
― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 22:06 (four years ago) link
country songs: about 501s and heartbreaks
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 14 January 2020 22:07 (four years ago) link
oops, better link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/opinion/neil-peart-rush.html
― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 14 January 2020 22:07 (four years ago) link
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
― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 15 January 2020 00:00 (four years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXvYdnQraBc
― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, 15 January 2020 00:01 (four years ago) link
most heavy metal songs are about disembowled goblins ime
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Wednesday, 15 January 2020 00:02 (four years ago) link
I guess you could fuck them
― papa stank (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 15 January 2020 00:03 (four years ago) link
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.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 10:25 (four years ago) link
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/
― One must put up barriers to keep oneself intact (Sund4r), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 12:24 (four years ago) link
And there's this: https://youtu.be/7SLAQdEiWhU
― One must put up barriers to keep oneself intact (Sund4r), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 12:25 (four years ago) link
It still wasn't as dumb as this, though: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/01/kenny-g-gorelick-jazz-blues-criticism-analysis-music
― One must put up barriers to keep oneself intact (Sund4r), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 12:26 (four years ago) link
Jacobin is spotty at the best of times but their pop culture writing is the fuckin pits.
― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 12:45 (four years ago) link
"Art music hot takes" might actually be the worst emerging strand of contemporary music criticism.
― One must put up barriers to keep oneself intact (Sund4r), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 12:45 (four years ago) link
It's a genre I'm only beginning to discover, to my great dismay.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 12:56 (four years ago) link
Re: that Kenny G piece, 'weasel-toned saxophonist' is otm.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 12:59 (four years ago) link
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)
― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 13:02 (four years ago) link
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?
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 13:15 (four years ago) link
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.
― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 13:19 (four years ago) link
yeah had a 'getting mad at google results based on your own previous searches' type vibe from this one
― wot's the tea mum? (not beef again) (DJ Mencap), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 13:36 (four years ago) link
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.
― sarahell, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 13:36 (four years ago) link
Challop disclaimer should the author of that piece be an ILXor: Xenakis and Oliveros are both awesome.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 13:40 (four years ago) link
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
― sarahell, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 15:57 (four years ago) link
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.
― Muswell Hillbilly Elegy (President Keyes), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:01 (four years ago) link
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.)
― Montegays and Capulez (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:11 (four years ago) link
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 ...
― sarahell, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:15 (four years ago) link
And Diamanda Galas, who is (in my experience) one of Xenakis's more ardent proselytizers
― Montegays and Capulez (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:19 (four years ago) link
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.
― sarahell, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:29 (four years ago) link
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?
― sarahell, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:32 (four years ago) link
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
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:36 (four years ago) link
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.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:46 (four years ago) link
"this smacks of gender!" I holler as I upend the table and dump all my compact discs on the floor
― babu frik fan account (mh), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:48 (four years ago) link
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."
"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
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:52 (four years ago) link
there are plenty of Oliveros-influenced bros too
― sarahell, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:53 (four years ago) link
Yeah, I've certainly met more Oliveros bros -- or, if you will, Oliverbros -- than Xenakis bros.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 16:56 (four years ago) link
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
― sarahell, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 17:02 (four years ago) link
There's some worthwhile insight in that piece, for sure, it's just asphyxiated by the binary premise.
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 17:06 (four years ago) link
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.
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 17:11 (four years ago) link
it's just so icky and like "she was a woman and down with nature and her feelings"
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 17:12 (four years ago) link
I thought das Ewig-Weibliche was peak feminism?
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 17:16 (four years ago) link
accordions are not natural
― j., Tuesday, 21 January 2020 17:19 (four years ago) link
But… it breathes!
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 21 January 2020 17:21 (four years ago) link
Lol
― Montegays and Capulez (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, 21 January 2020 18:44 (four years ago) link
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
― babby bitter (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 15 February 2020 12:45 (four years ago) link
bet this person actually thinks "Happy Together" is a song about a couple being happy together
― sorry for butt rockin (Neanderthal), Saturday, 15 February 2020 15:15 (four years ago) link
^I skimmed it, and that seems to be exactly how their analysis works!
― You have seen the heavy groups (morrisp), Saturday, 15 February 2020 15:20 (four years ago) link
Look buddy I've seen lots of TV ads for soda, bubblegum and adult diapers and that's definitely what that song means
― Evan, Saturday, 15 February 2020 15:21 (four years ago) link
analysing lyrics alone to judge the emotional content of music is maybe the stupidest fucking thing i’ve ever heard in my life
― Homegrown Georgia speedster Ladd McConkey (bizarro gazzara), Saturday, 15 February 2020 15:30 (four years ago) link
Wait so what is Happy Together actually about
― Οὖτις, Saturday, 15 February 2020 15:31 (four years ago) link