Keeping Up With Music

why no interest in Shabaka?

I strongly dislike most vocal jazz, and spoken word is a complete turn off for me. There are exceptions, though, but if I start thinking about that, I'll never conquer my FOMO.

but this dope magic spirit quartet album you just turned me onto is vocal jazz!

Indeed. :) But I love Arabic-style singing and am able to appreciate it in any setting.

I know Dua Lipa because my kids like her. That's the stage of not keeping up I've hit.

Re: Shabaka, I wasn't too keen on The Comet Is Coming either, whose repetitions felt a tad sterile to me. I'd be a fan if improvisation played a more significant role in his idiom.

i like the shabaka but it's not one of my top albums of the year so i'm not imploring you to spend time with it i was just curious bc based on what i know of yr taste it does seem up yr alley (i love the marling album, the sawayama too, but not as surprised by you not being interested in either)

Not everything you listen to and enjoy has to be a long-lasting relationship, you can have a fling with an album too. When I go clubbing I hear stuff once that I might never hear again and while I enjoy the music that fleeting ephemerality doesn't bother me. I carry that into my everyday listening habits - a lot of stuff only gets one or two plays but it doesn't mean I don't enjoy it plenty when it is playing.

i understand what lj is talking about itt but it's not an issue for me - i mean i assume i'll miss stuff but i try to hear as much as i can that is somewhat in my wheelhouse of interest. i do still struggle with albums that are interesting enough that i want to spend more time with but aren't immediate "free lunch" albums that i can sort into a best albums playlist (or shuffle away into an archival genre playlist)- so i do sorta get clogged up on an album that i'll even hear 3-5 times and still not be sure what i think of it.

i've been struggling with this question for a while. i've developed a listening process that prioritizes discovery. it works, i hear a lot of new stuff and old stuff that's new to me, filing away the best stuff in various playlists. and i do get a thrill from discovering something that's new (to me) and incredible. but i've been having second thoughts about the whole thing--plowing through new releases in an effort to hear as much as possible limits the type of emotional connection to music that i had when i was a kid and i'd play the same album 20 times in a row.

idk, i don't feel like i'm listening wrong, but i do worry that the way i'm listening fosters widespread awareness, but not deep understanding.

anyway, back to my listening list (30 hours 51min right now, getting longer every day lol)

If you listen above and beyond a certain point you're not absorbing the records properly anyway, it just becomes ticking something off before moving onto the next thing. It's not homework.

I don't remember too much spoken word/vocal on the Shabaka album, maybe just a couple tracks? Mostly what stuck out was his beautiful sound on the ballads, which is not what I normally associate with him.

Alright, alright, I'll check it out.

I don't really try to keep up anymore. I mainly just read sites like ILM which put me in a position to be exposed to things, and then trust in chance or whim to pull me in this or that direction. It's enough to find a few things which reward closer listening.

If you listen above and beyond a certain point you're not absorbing the records properly anyway, it just becomes ticking something off before moving onto the next thing. It's not homework.

― Matt DC, Wednesday, July 1, 2020 11:41 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i feel that. this is a process that's gotten a bit more mechanical for me during the pandemic, since i'm home all the time, and that's when i want to listen to new (to me) music. travel/subway time is gone, and so is group/social listening, and therefore the context for all my listening is either "me sitting at my desk" or "me sitting on my couch."

'They Who Must Die' is sounding pretty good so far, the vox don't grate on me at all.

I listen to a minimum of 20 and more like 30 jazz albums a month to come up with 15 to write about for Stereogum, plus I have at least 1 or 2 reviews in each issue of The Wire and maybe 1 or 2 in a couple of other outlets. And I try to write two reviews a week for Burning Ambulance, though I don't always have time.

What all that mostly-jazz listening has done, though, is made listening to other types of music a chore and an imposition. I used to love metal; now I don't listen to it hardly at all. If I'm out for a walk with headphones on, I'll listen to something old that I know I like - Metallica, Eyehategod, Incantation, Black Sabbath, Slayer... I don't really like much of the new metal I hear these days, anyway.

I try and listen to more chamber music and modern composition than I once did but I tend to go down tunnels, for example listening to everything that comes out on Sono Luminus, which leaves little time for any further exploration. I stumbled on an awesome album of harpsichord music recently, though.

I am consciously rejecting a lot of music out of hand, too, though. Pop, including country, is completely off my radar now. I no longer have any FOMO with regard to stuff that's "in the charts" or trending on Twitter or being discussed by my so-called music critic peers, and won't even click on a link to a review if I already know it's something I won't like or care about - something that will not in any way reward me for listening to it, in other words.

What all that mostly-jazz listening has done, though, is made listening to other types of music a chore and an imposition

Substitute classical for jazz and this was my experience for almost 15 years. I'm at a point where I feel like I've mapped out the tradition reasonably well in my head, so an nth recording of Beethoven's Violin Concerto or the complete works for violin and piano of a neglected late 19th century composer who turns out to be as middling as you'd expect don't really excite me all that much. Contemporary classical is a bottomless wellspring, however, and I generally know where to look for new material that's likely to pique my ears, as well as what to avoid (at least 80% of the North American scene, for instance) based on my personal preferences.

I don't really try to keep up anymore. I mainly just read sites like ILM which put me in a position to be exposed to things, and then trust in chance or whim to pull me in this or that direction. It's enough to find a few things which reward closer listening.

This might be a separate question (and I'm sure it's been discussed here many times), but I'm assuming most of you who listen to hundreds of new releases every year mostly stream or play downloads. Does having/not having a physical collection impact your listening habits? I find my physical collection has gravitational pull for listening more lately — the stay-at-home mandate has actually reduced the amount of streaming I've done, and thus I've listened to more relatively neglected items in my collection (of which there are many). So I've investigated little new music. And I tend to only play two or three albums a day.

I do feel the need to "get out more" a bit and plan to listen to a few things mentioned above. I'm glad there are people still getting excited about new music. It gives me hope.

I couldn't care less whether I'm listening to a physical copy or mp3s, as long as the bitrate is good enough (I aim for 320 kbps). In fact, I tend to prefer the latter because managing a CD/tape/vinyl collection is a chore more than anything.

Does having/not having a physical collection impact your listening habits?

I download a shit-ton of promos and Bandcamp purchases, but if I really like something (or if it's not available any other way), I'll buy it on CD. Yesterday, for example, I pulled out a 4CD box by Derek Bailey, Han Bennink and Evan Parker that I bought a year or two ago and then kinda forgot about, and threw on one of the discs, and followed that with a disc from one of several King Crimson live box sets I own. In fact, I've been buying a lot more physical music in the first half of this year than I did last year, probably as a psychological effect of being "stuck at home" (even though I have technically been "stuck at home" - i.e. no office job, working entirely freelance - since 2017).

I find it especially satisfying when an album gets a ton of plays these days, since I basically don't mess with physical media at all anymore. This only happens when 1) it's something my wife is into too, so it makes it into the weekend coffee/evening cooking rotation (see Sault, Moses Sumney, Dirty Projectors). Or 2) it just hits and I keep going back to it, of course.

Keeping my Google doc of releases I've listened to and liked really helps, otherwise it's so easy to forget these days.

I can't be arsed, I basically listen to whatever Spotify tells me to which is a bottomless well of 1970s/80s singer songwriters. I've gotten into contemporary Irish trad music and classic ECM boring bastard jazz like Don cherry and Horace tapscott (without any delusions that I 'get' it). I've also fallen back in love with some of the 'classic' albums from when I was a teenager (transformer, horses) and I care far more about them now than I did then (they seemed like homework at the time, now I could listen to the guitar riff on 'wagon wheel' forever). My primary exposure to contemporary pop music for years came from working in a school but I really came to hate the sound of modern pop music, it's default vocal performance styles, the production clichés that make everything sound like the free music you can use to jazz up your YouTube tutorial. I know this is what everyone says when they lose interest so I'm not claiming that this is any sort of insight into the music itself, just that its receded in my interest into ambient irritation to be ignored.

I've also realised that I consume music at a very slow pace now, so it will take me a long time to notice say that iris dement has released a new song on YouTube and weeks before I remember to listen to it again and start to enjoy it. Sometimes something will jump out at me and cut through, for example a couple of weeks ago I was reminded of a counter tenor I was blown away by when I saw him at the ENO and looked to see if he had released anything, his album came out a couple of years ago and it's Handel and glass lieder. I've never liked glass aside from his solo piano but I love the performances on this of the glass pieces as much as the Handel and I've been listening to it obsessively. I'd recommend it were the world not overstocked with recommendations.

I don't need to see all the trees in the forest, or walk down all of the paths until there are none new left. I don't need to eat all chips in the barm, much less all the barms in the shop.

I will listen to more music this year than I ever have but maybe only a fifth of it will be new.

I am listening to music chronologically, currently up to 1937, I devote December each year to new music. Don't know if this is a good idea TBH, makes me too reliant on end of year lists, which have various issues.

classic ECM boring bastard jazz would be like idk Jan Gabarek or something. not Don Cherry!!

fp'ed plax for dissing Horace Tapscott. Fucking disgraceful posting!

thread was always destined to turn into ignorantly taking a shit on music I'm not inclined to investigate space!

listen to The Dark Tree while kneeling on hard rice on a stone floor as a penance

Does anybody else feel the sudden and enormous profusion of music even compared to a few years ago?

Most certainly. And to answer your original question: there is no way to keep up. Over the past ten years I'd say I've gradually found it harder to keep up, whilst simultaneously seeing that what I would like to keep up with growing exponentially. There really is only one way to somewhat come to terms with this, to not implode or go insane trying to keep up while you know you can't, and that is to stop worrying and love as much music as you can.

Like one individual can't keep up with everything, communties can't either. But a small community like ILM is doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting, covering pretty much all shades of music; whether not always as deep as sub-communities, it does cover nearly all the bases. I don't believe bigger communities do a better job: RYM, or Reddit, or what have you, may be bigger in numbers but that has its own downsides. Of flattening out niches, for one; of having to learn the specific social norms and vagaries.

Music has really gotten much, due to technical advancements, the internet as a place to network, share and collaborate, the demise of the Big Labels etc. These are all very good things. The only way I can cope is acknowledging I'll miss out on stuff, all the time, as there's not enough time to read about, track down, and yes, listen to everything. I'm here for the ride, and treasuring what I can, it's a beautiful ride.

fp'ed plax for dissing Horace Tapscott. Fucking disgraceful posting!

― calzino, Thursday, 2 July 2020 09:41 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Lol I didn't mean this as a diss of tapscott, it was intended more as a mea culpa for wasting these records on my fairly half assed low level engagement.

I appreciate the sentiment of yr post however

I know I can't keep up so I mostly listen to older releases I haven't heard yet by artists I already like or well-known artists/well-regarded albums that I've wanted to check out. I know that a lot of music I would love slips through my grasp with this approach - I basically never listen to new releases unless they are by artists I already love. but I reliably find a lot of great music this way. the past two years I've had more time than usual to listen to music so I have heard a few of the more hyped releases as they come out (like Dua Lipa - very good!)

I would expect at least some drop off in quantity of some kinds of music (i.e. those involving muktiple people rehearsing or recording in small rooms) in the second half of this year.

oh god, they're so gifted!

The future is infinite singer songwriters playing "lockdown" albums live on Zoom to nobody. And chiptunes. Always chiptunes. Until the EMP event anyway.

I feel weirdly guilty having given up almost entirely on new music. I feel like I have to justify it to myself!

According to Discogs, there have been 144,527 ambient albums alone released in the 2010s, with 7437 releases so far in 2020. God knows how many for more popular genres.

1,112,782 rock albums in 2010s.

Ilm is probably the best curator we could hope for. A body with a hundred heads

I've always felt the presence of all the stuff I didn't know and found it energising. as my tastes have broadened, so have the boundaries of my ignorance. it's great!

I also think it's fine to treat 2020 as a hiatus of sorts, because most of the music that's coming out doesn't exist in any societal context out there bar those imposed by lockdowns, which is kind of interesting in its own right but there's a wider question of what new music means when it can't be properly performed, or experienced in the usual ways, when people can't throw parties, when they can't go out and dance.

sorry for Geir but partying and dancing are tbah a very specific and not at all predominant mode of music consumption imo

having Despacito on in the background is hardly listening to music anyway

My takeaway from this thread: there's a new Hail Spirit Noir, and it's probably rad

partying and dancing are tbah a very specific and not at all predominant mode of music consumption imo

^^^

For me, a show is more appealing when it's not tied to an album, when it's "If you don't come down, you'll have missed out." For example, I saw a band at the beginning of this year deliver an awesome show at the Jazz Gallery - three tenor saxophonists (one of whom doubled on soprano, and another on baritone), bass, and drums - and I know they're never going to make an album; they just came together to play that music, two sets a night for two nights, done and gone. If you weren't there, you missed it, period. That's the appeal of in-person music for me now.

partying and dancing are tbah a very specific and not at all predominant mode of music consumption imo

This is absolute nonsense fwiw, if you were to write any kind of serious history of popular music, including jazz, then dancing and social functions would be absolutely central to it. There's the personal, private side as well obviously, but most forms of music are rooted in people being able to congregate together in social situations.

The meaning of what is and isn't social has changed in the last decade or so but the sudden removal of in-person social contact is as profound a contextual change as anything that has happened in the history of pop, even if the sonic results by and large haven't reached our ears yet.

xp I took a class on history of American popular music during my undergrad, and one of our assigned texts was Elijah Wald's excellent How the Beatles Destroyed Rock & Roll, which some people on this board are doubtless familiar with. It does a very good job of highlighting how histories of popular music (jazz, rock) have been distorted by the biases of collectors and critics, who overvalue records and a small subset of 'innovative' artists, and give short shrift to the 'business-as-usual' of the working bands playing crowd-pleasing music in ballrooms, on radio and TV broadcasts, etc.

xp
ah got it, and no need to feel shame--I probably do listen to more than 41 album's worth (~50 min.) of music in a year, but not all in album form (and when I had an office job I listened to way more than that, but that was when I was a lot less invested in current music).

anyway, I was more just struck by how the number was both arbitrary and high, like I wonder if their analytics show that 41 brings in more clicks than a round number

They could have removed the PE album (is anyone really anticipating that?), and made it an even 40.

both the new PE singles are very good!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQvDRe79F8k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNUl8bAKdi4

Where’s the upcoming Afropop list ? and the reggaeton one? Not that I am up to date on what has come out already this year.

Wizkid is perpetually upcoming

^ that was me being sarcastic/bitter/frustrated: Wizkid has been dangling his Made In Lagos project in front of us for at least three years now. I suspect he has several discarded finished versions in his vault. I’m secretly hoping (still!) for Oct 1, Nigeria’s Independence Day.

To further answer (part of) your question:
On the Nigerian side of things, there have been recent releases by Burna Boy, Tiwa Savage, Fireboy DML, Adekunle Gold, Patoranking and Kizz Daniel. Niniola will have an album out soon (that’s something to be excited about!), and so might Davido.

As for South Africa, Sun-El Musician has promised a new album in (Southern Hemisphere) “spring”, and Kabza De Small will undoubtedly drop (yet) another album, with or without DJ Maphorisa. I’m also looking forward to De Mthuda’s new album.

But there will be much more than just these obviously.

This is absolutely the first year I can remember where not only did I struggle to keep up with music, but I totally forgot about albums I liked from bands that I love. For example, I totally forgot that X released a good record this year. Or, the Dua/Jessie/Roisin glossy nu-disco trio, for example, all albums I really enjoyed and enjoy listening to yet keep forgetting to play. Or Fiona Apple and Kathleen Edwards, two artists I love that released great new comebacks that I love that I just keep forgetting to play. Looking over year-end lists, there is just so much I haven't heard or even heard of, and of the stuff I have heard it's just downright impossible for me to keep straight in my brain, let alone fore of mind. So much music!

Weirdly, I wonder if this has been inadvertently pandemic related. My family is around all the time, but I'm a speaker guy, not a headphone guy, and just haven't been free to blast stuff on the stereo when the mood strikes. Hmm ...

i've struggled a bit too tbh. combination of (1) leaving my desk job means i spent far less time sitting in front of a computer and reading reviews and mailing list emails and ilx or whatever when i should've been working, (2) being at home means i'm more inclined to listen to the records and cds i already own rather than scouting for new stuff on spotify or bandcamp, and (3) too much other crazy shit going on to worry about it all that much

I binged even more than usual on new releases this year and I kind of regret it. I should probably stop trying to understand what the fuss is all about when it comes to genres I *know* I don't care for at least 95% of the time. I think part of the reason I do that is because just having so much as a vague sense of what other people are into makes me feel less alienated (except it also has the exact opposite effect, concomitantly).

Took me 9 months to realize I could secretly listen to music on zoom calls

— vijay iyer (@vijayiyer) December 15, 2020

After a gap from 2004-2009 I managed to keep up with music from 2010-2019.
This year I can think of about five tracks which have been released.

as long as you're aware of "wap"

WAP is one of the five, yes.

Actually if Minecraft and Among Us parody songs count, real total is maybe 20 or 30.

'WAP' is pretty good, as are the ensuing Ben Shapiro self-owns.

I think I was arguing to deej elsewhere that the predominance" of "WAP" in 2020 feels almost like it has less to do with the song itself and more that it's maybe the only song this year that inspired both a massive tiktok dance craze and lots of political memes (via laughing at Ben Shapiro et. al) (though my favourite WAP meme was one about the despondence of the writers of KidzBop versions when they first heard it). So it feels like it sums up 2020 in that it captures a lot of the changing context in which music is situated now.

that's as good an explanation as any for why such a gleefully ridiculous sex jam will be the first song that people remember from the roughest year of American life since the depression

lol, i mean it will also be remembered for being a gleefully ridiculous sex jam, but I'm not sure that an equivalent song in say 2009 (which was also a pretty rough year for many) would have gotten equivalent critical traction.

the way I listen to music has changed - I live in a small flat with my boyfriend and it's harder to listen to stuff that he wouldn't want to because we are both always indoors now. When I'm physically going into work, I take a bus that's approx 40 mins each way and that's my time to listen to new music on my headphones.

We have listened to a lot of ambient and new-age adjacent stuff this year, more than any other. I don't think we'd have managed without Gigi Masin and Jonny Nash.

xpost should have qualified "predominance" as "critical predominance" in the first post (i.e. being p4k's song of the year)

lol I'm pretty sure I still haven't heard WAP but honestly haven't particularly connected to anything I've heard from Cardi B. *or* Megan Thee Stallion yet. Haven't even given the new Dylan the time and attention it deserves!

I consciously decided at the beginning of the year that I wasn't going to actively try keeping up with new music this year.

What that really meant was that I wasn't going to put in all the work that I usually do for the sake of creating a long best-of-the-year playlist: scanning Album of the Year for new albums every week, dragging them into an "new albums" playlist, listening to them repeatedly until I have a favorite track (or else I've decided the album isn't for me), scanning unperson's monthly jazz column to see if there are any albums I've missed, occasionally scanning The Singles Jukebox for songs with high scores and maintaining a playlist of those songs, aggregating songs that show up on major publications' year-end lists into yet another playlist and finding more favorites, etc. etc.

I've still heard a bit of new music this year, when I've happened to notice that an artist I like has put something out. But I haven't been systematic about it at all, so a lot has slipped through the cracks.

To be honest, it's been kind of relaxing. I've ended up just listening to a lot of old stuff. At one point I worked on a 1999 playlist. But as the best-of-2020 lists have been coming out, I've found myself wanting to...get a handle on all of it. So I'm not sure yet whether this year is a permanent break from Keeping Up or just a temporary one.

xp The first time I heard WAP was the other day, when I listened to Pitchfork's top songs of 2020 list!

lack of commute has killed my primary listening mode - has been tough to replace it tbh. podcasts have suffered this year too for me.

around the house i put on stuff i already know - too distracting to listen 'actively'

This is absolutely the first year I can remember where not only did I struggle to keep up with music, but I totally forgot about albums I liked from bands that I love. For example, I totally forgot that X released a good record this year. Or, the Dua/Jessie/Roisin glossy nu-disco trio, for example, all albums I really enjoyed and enjoy listening to yet keep forgetting to play. Or Fiona Apple and Kathleen Edwards, two artists I love that released great new comebacks that I love that I just keep forgetting to play. Looking over year-end lists, there is just so much I haven't heard or even heard of, and of the stuff I have heard it's just downright impossible for me to keep straight in my brain, let alone fore of mind. So much music!

Weirdly, I wonder if this has been inadvertently pandemic related. My family is around all the time, but I'm a speaker guy, not a headphone guy, and just haven't been free to blast stuff on the stereo when the mood strikes. Hmm ...

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 15 December 2020 21:59 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I feel this post. I was reminded yesterday of the existence of the Eddie Chacon album, which I loved when I first heard it and then promptly forgot about. Dylan too!

I think this year I have listened to as much new music as ever, but in the same way that I struggle a bit to keep track of what happened in which month this year (like, all the jokes that currently it's the 247th of March or whatever), almost all experiences of music have felt more transient, and less amenable to ordering and recollection.

one of the reasons i think tiktok has struck such a nerve and created so many big hits this year is that it helps people create those associations with songs that they aren't having in IRL

Right!

Including that we can't dance to these songs at a club but we can perform/watch tiktok dances.

Dancing at bars, albeit in small numbers, is starting to be allowed again in Australia for the first time since mid-March, and it's amusing to see teh-gays in particular express this sense of pent-up release at finally being able to dance in public to the broadly-recognised gay anthems of 2020 ("Physical", "Rain on Me", "WAP"), almost as if the very existence of these songs and their impact was somehow quasi-spectral until it could be properly acknowledged in that way.

my real name rhymes with and has the exact same number of syllables as "a savage" and the fact I haven't been able to do a karaoke performance of Megan & Beyoncè with my personal spin on it is killing me

xp great post, Tim

this year, probably more than any other, i've listened to the same 10-12 new or new-to-me albums hundreds of times. they were all very good at giving me what i needed in particular moments, and i kept coming back to them. i just didn't feel the need to adopt more, though i did scan through a few new releases here and there. my music listening experience is more and more becoming this reader response thing where every time i listen to the same thing my experience is a little different but no less rich. but the thing has to have sort of passed a few tests for it to get there, lol.

Dancing at bars, albeit in small numbers, is starting to be allowed again in Australia for the first time since mid-March, and it's amusing to see teh-gays in particular express this sense of pent-up release at finally being able to dance in public to the broadly-recognised gay anthems of 2020 ("Physical", "Rain on Me", "WAP"), almost as if the very existence of these songs and their impact was somehow quasi-spectral until it could be properly acknowledged in that way.

very jealous, i miss hearing music in a room with friends. some music just needs to be embodied and shared in social, physical space.

one of the reasons i think tiktok has struck such a nerve and created so many big hits this year is that it helps people create those associations with songs that they aren't having in IRL

Possibly the first thing I've read that's helped me understand tik tok!