Hip Genres & Musical Styles: Which Is The Worst??

Landfill GAPDY

I think improvisation comes from an entirely different outlook than what it is to make industrial music or noise like Merzbow.

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, May 24, 2023 12:47 PM (ten hours ago)

are you talking about free jazz or "improvisation" in the white Euro tradition ... because free jazz (even though there have been some solid musicians who are white and from Europe who play "the music") comes from an African-American tradition where the "outlook" (and idk if you can even just say there is a solitary outlook) is a bit different? I mean, there are certain similarities between what I think of as the free jazz "outlook" and one of the "outlooks" of noise/industrial -- which has to do with a certain amount of "catharsis" (for lack of a better term), though a tendency of free jazz is to see it more of a spiritual "positive" exaltation, whereas noise can be more of an exorcism kinda? Whereas the white Euro practitioners tend to be more cerebral and controlled in how they feel/talk about what they're doing and why ... that's just my off the cuff take on it

Average person would say Charlie Brown music

― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Wednesday, May 24, 2023 2:03 PM (nine hours ago)

or ... Ella Fitzgerald or Louis Armstrong ... in re stuff like this commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQJUpg0vU_I

more jazz that an average person would be familiar with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c4_b5PHWg8

are you talking about free jazz or "improvisation" in the white Euro tradition ... because free jazz (even though there have been some solid musicians who are white and from Europe who play "the music") comes from an African-American tradition where the "outlook" (and idk if you can even just say there is a solitary outlook) is a bit different? I mean, there are certain similarities between what I think of as the free jazz "outlook" and one of the "outlooks" of noise/industrial -- which has to do with a certain amount of "catharsis" (for lack of a better term), though a tendency of free jazz is to see it more of a spiritual "positive" exaltation, whereas noise can be more of an exorcism kinda? Whereas the white Euro practitioners tend to be more cerebral and controlled in how they feel/talk about what they're doing and why ... that's just my off the cuff take on it

― sarahell, Thursday, 25 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Free jazz comes from jazz, as does Euro improv; they are both departures not only because of the "free", but because they pare it down to the act of improvisation. By doing so they can incorporate a lot more "outlooks".

Look at Braxton and the Chicago crowd who did look toward what was happening in European composition. Cecil or Sun Ra were looking back toward Ellington and also forging a path in answer to developments in composition in Europe (Ra played a solo recital; Taylor's unit records and then throwing that vocal poetry concrete record). Alice Coltrane or Ayler has a spiritual dimension but it's their improvising in a group context that allows for the expression of that dimension.

Equally the free improv guys would reject jazz but it's clearly bullshit, they might've been antagonistic but they were clearly developing the music with jazz in the background. Abe and Takayanagi's duos would not have been possible without improvisation. "Mass" projection might go down well with a noise crowd but they might walk off during "Gradual Projection". Only by looking at this stuff as an improvisation can you really join the dots.

"Noise" has a different set of roots: avant-garde electronic pieces from Varese/Nono/Xenakis, Concrete, things like Metal Machine Music, dada's junkyardisms, free jazz and improv too. But in the end -- generally speaking -- it's a lot more sculptured and has a "cathartic" sounding outcome from the off. A noise record will seldom play with the quiet.

my kneejerk reductive distinction is that "free jazz" often seems to implicitly reject notions of linear time and past vs future in a still-pretty-radical kind of way while euro style improv has a tendency to see itself as a some sort of eternally progressive vanguard in the modernist tradition (which i guess is a thing) or at least as some kind of pure postcagean endpoint that lesser music hasn't caught up with yet (even though much of it is a heritage industry at this point)

this is probably unfair to some of the musicians but not to some of the fans

I can't imagine there are too many "euro style improv" fans who aren't also fans of free jazz tbh. I see the same faces at both gigs.

A noise record will seldom play with the quiet.

I guess I am thinking of something different re: "noise" because I very much disagree with this

also this owns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUI26elO_Eg

From an interview with Bill Dixon:

https://jazztimes.com/archives/bill-dixon-veiled-odyssey/

That same year [1951] Dixon met Cecil Taylor, with whom he began to play occasionally and hold long discussions on “the plight of the black artist in America” and the future direction of jazz. At the time he was not consciously trying to create a new music.

“No, that wasn’t it at all. It’s very simple. I no longer felt the need to be playing the standard literature within the vernacular. I felt that you can’t improve on that, so there must be something else. Because how many times can you play ”Round Midnight’ or any of those beautiful tunes? All the pieces that we liked were already heavily identified with someone else’s rendition anyway. What are you going to do? Change a key every eight bars? We tried all of that. We did a lot of crazy things in those days, trying to formulate a way of thinking for yourself. We listened, we analyzed. It didn’t just happen with people standing up and blowing their brains out. This is what a lot of people don’t understand.”

hey xyzzz -- I feel like you have a fairly thoughtful and knowledgeable post re free jazz and the Euro offshoots and some of the main practitioners as far as the improvisation aspect goes. So, I'm not going to get into other things like "swing" and "playing time" and how some free jazz musicians had those jazz basics under their belts and incorporated them / played with/off those, whereas once you move further into "pure improv" territory (generally whiter and often younger) there is a tendency to disown all "gambits" and familiar structures that come from jazz. I know tarfumes knows this stuff too, so if he wants to bring it up ...

But I think you don't have that same knowledge of industrial/noise ... so you are making assertions that those of us who are more familiar are having some "wtf" type responses to ... along the lines of when I accidentally besmirched Tropicalia upthread by assuming it all sounded like The Girl From Ipanema

xp - Dixon was definitely a solid thinker as well as player -- sorry if I oversimplified earlier

euro style improv has a tendency to see itself as a some sort of eternally progressive vanguard in the modernist tradition (which i guess is a thing) or at least as some kind of pure postcagean endpoint that lesser music hasn't caught up with yet (even though much of it is a heritage industry at this point)

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Thursday, May 25, 2023 4:27 AM (two hours ago)

this is well put!

sorry if I oversimplified earlier

No apology necessary! The problem is, a fair number of histories of the music tend to be reductive (e.g., “A BUNCH OF DUDES SAID FUCK IT, WE’RE GONNA SCREAM ON OUR HORNS! AND EVERYONE HATED IT!”) and simplistic, and romanticize things in such a way that reinforces inaccuracies.

yeah, and that point about histories also brings to mind something that has made me struggle with this thread ... that in some of these genres, we are discussing only the "household names" and making generalizations based on a handful of musicians, while there are (or were) hundreds (if not thousands) of others making music in said genres ... as in, perhaps the musicians that are serving as the basis for the generalizations aren't necessarily representative of the genre as a whole?

euro style improv has a tendency to see itself as a some sort of eternally progressive vanguard in the modernist tradition (which i guess is a thing) or at least as some kind of pure postcagean endpoint that lesser music hasn't caught up with yet (even though much of it is a heritage industry at this point)

This is what's so interesting to me about talking to Peter Brötzmann — although he plays with all the Euro improv dudes (the ones who are still alive), he definitely considers himself a jazz musician where lots of them don't or didn't (Derek Bailey telling me that for him, jazz was dead by 1953!), and he considers a lot of their attempts to get "past" jazz and into "pure music" or whatever fairly absurd.

sorry to barge in with a tangential question -and maybe wrong thread- but what is the distinction between "free jazz" and "collective improvisation"? i'm always reminded of this amg review of an old keith jarrett album:

For many years, the trio of Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette has been taking jazz standards and expanding them via improvisation into an entire language that reflects not only the history but also the eternal present of jazz. Many have wondered if Jarrett would ever return to the "free" style of playing he did in the 1960s on releases for Columbia, Atlantic, and Impulse! It would be both impossible and unreasonable to expect a musician like Jarrett -- and his sidemen for that matter -- to return to the fold of an innocence they lost long ago, when they were lesser musicians than they are now. Inside Out, recorded over two nights in July 2000 in London, bridges that gap: It is completely improvised save for one tune -- an almost unbearably beautiful reading of "When I Fall in Love" -- done as an encore. Here are Jarrett, Peacock, and DeJohnette as they haven't been heard from in years, starting from silence, digging deep into the history of jazz, blues and even R&B to invent spontaneously a musical language that is trio-specific, communicative on the deepest levels of nuance, sonances, and spirit. The opening track, "From the Body," begins as a careening trip through the blues, from Memphis to St. Louis back through Mississippi to New Orleans and coming to rest in Chicago. Given how close the dialogue is here, and the expansive harmonic invention at work in the middle registers of the piano and the bass, it becomes a blur -- it's impossible to really know who is leading or following or if such a hierarchy even exists anymore. When the blues disintegrate gradually -- and momentarily -- and are replaced by what is defined in the vernacular as "free" playing, the dissonance is traipsed upon only slightly. It's not as if it doesn't belong or isn't welcome, it's just that it's a minor concern because these guys know where they are going or at least want to go. It's familiar but not well-tread or predictable; it's invigorating, knife-edge improvisation. By the time the title track fades in, listeners know that the entire fake book has been thrown out the window and the standards have been erased (or at least left in the hallmarks of collective jazz memory), in favor of this language that calls upon their dignity and verve while establishing its own propriety and basis of utterance. Does it swing? Hell yes it does, if your definition of that word is something other than cut, 4/4, or waltz time -- though some of the music played here engages those very signatures exquisitely. Most importantly, the trio of Jarrett, Peacock, and DeJohnette offers a new kind of free jazz -- one that is lyrical, tonally accessible, and musically elegant, tailored by the ears and executed with the grace of the heart. Many younger players who believe that the only way to improvise freely is to tear their chosen instrument to shreds and bleat every ounce of pain and suffering that can be extracted from it need to hear this record, badly. In it they may find the true secrets of the masters, and the sheer poetics of the improvisational artistry that is jazz.

does it need to be total skronk in order to be free jazz? or are these just scholarly terms for pedants to distinguish between stuff they like and stuff they don't?

(because honestly, if you had told me inside out was free jazz, it would have been confusing because it sounds like any other keith jarrett trio recording. maybe i'm wrong though and it doesn't need to be skronk in order to technically be free jazz)

"Hipster music" is usually shit that gets to be a pain in the ass and I dunno apart from the pioneers I don't think of dub fandom as a burdensome experience like some genres.

I don't mean the originators are burdensome - I mean that amassing records or knowledge is burdensome.

Entire books have been written, etc., but...

does it need to be total skronk in order to be free jazz? or are these just scholarly terms for pedants to distinguish between stuff they like and stuff they don't?

No, "total skronk" (aka "fire music") is one free jazz mode. But what Ornette Coleman did — highly melodic heads, eccentrically swinging rhythms, improvisation untethered to chord changes — was another. What Cecil Taylor did — piano concertos based on small melodic motifs repeatedly analyzed and reinterpreted — was another. What Wadada Leo Smith does — extremely patient improvisation based as much on powerful silences as individual notes — is another. What Roscoe Mitchell does — extreme juxtaposition, short vs long, loud vs soft, high vs low notes — is another. "Collective improvisation" is what it sounds like; a group of players start from zero. These are to some degree "scholarly terms" in that critics and professors use them more often than musicians do onstage. Young players may describe themselves as "free jazz" players, but older ones are likely to just say they play music, and not want to put labels on it.

These are to some degree "scholarly terms" in that critics and professors use them more often than musicians do onstage.

well, musicians often use these terms or refer to the musicians known for playing music in said styles when they are "offstage" and when they are booking gigs ... as in the conversations that lead up to getting onstage and playing.

i'm hardly an expert but i'd recommend val wilmer's book "as serious as your life" as a solid introduction to the variations of sound within the free jazz umbrella.

cool, thanks all!

also Peacock and DeJohnette are totally canonical free jazz players

Young players may describe themselves as "free jazz" players, but older ones are likely to just say they play music, and not want to put labels on it.

Part of it is not wanting to put labels on it -- Ornette didn't call his music "free jazz," but Atlantic did -- but most of it was the restrictions that came with those labels. As Bill Dixon said, "A 'jazz musician' is a social category. It tells you who you are, what you are capable of doing, when you should do it, how you should do it, and the kind of money you should get." Monk, Miles, Ellington, Coltrane, Lee Morgan, Mingus, and others bristled against the term "jazz" for those reasons, and many of the innovators of the new music felt similarly about the term "free jazz." They didn't think of or approach what they were doing as part of a genre, at least not in the ways genres often calcify into sets of rules and boundaries and cliches (as "free jazz" and "free improv" have since at least the mid-'80s, if not earlier).

Yeah, there's a much, much larger discussion to be had. I'll never forget when I interviewed Cecil Taylor and I used the word jazz in his presence, he practically spit it back at me. "What does that word mean? Jazz? J-a-z-z? What is j-a-z-z?" It's not to say he didn't love jazz as a listener — he would rhapsodize about Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, etc., etc. — and when he was starting out he very much wanted to be considered in that pantheon, but by the end of his life he considered it a very limiting term and no longer applicable to his work. And he was right, kinda! It's something I'm wrestling with as I write about him.

I finally got into free jazz early last year, at the age of 42, it was only after having immersed myself in 10s, 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s jazz that I really felt I could enjoy it. feel like an analog would be how I slowly (accidentally) built up my tolerance to spice and am now one of those fucking people who puts a handful of chilli powder in anything I cook.

With other music, if I'm not crazy about it I'll get bored after a few listens, but there always seems like there's more things to be found in free jazz, every time I listen there's something new. if i were on desert island discs it would be an obvious choice. The histories of jazz I've read / watched / listened to are generally very sniffy and suspicious about free jazz, you can feel them itching to call it "emperor's new clothes". Still waiting for a history of jazz which has respect for both free jazz and fusion, think I will probably be waiting forever.

sorry, extremely basic analysis, esp compared to last 30 or so posts, I'm still very new to free jazz, just feel like I can understand anyone not being into it, and then finally getting into it given the right circumstances.

There's a fine line between transcending a genre and expanding the borders of it, although I can see why Cecil preferred to think of himself as representing the former.

Part of it is not wanting to put labels on it -- Kasabian didn't call their music "landfill indie," but VICE did -- but most of it was the restrictions that came with those labels. Brett, Damon, Jarvis, Thom, Simon Fowler, Ashcroft, and others bristled against the term "britpop" for those reasons, and many of the innovators of the new music felt similarly about the term "landfill indie."

Still waiting for a history of jazz which has respect for both free jazz and fusion, think I will probably be waiting forever.

They're discographies rather than histories, though the final edition is in chronological order, but the various editions of The Penguin Guide to Jazz did this (though maybe less enthusiastically for fusion than free).

At this point in my life I'm comfortable with my position that free jazz/improv is more fun to participate in that it is to listen to.

Also I prefer it as a color in the crayon box, a place that a band can go rather than say a total avoidance of any steady rhythm as a matter of principle. Inside/outside.

i recently got the Round Trip Ornette Coleman box set, amazing, and do prefer this kind of free jazz where they are straining against and exceeding structure but still rooted in structure, to post Ascension type stuff

https://store.bluenote.com/collections/tone-poet-series/products/ornette-coleman-round-trip-ornette-coleman-on-blue-note-6lp-box-set-blue-note-tone-poet-series

penguin vol 4 is good if dated by now, you have to add a couple of stars to anything too funky or poppy for their liking and there's way too much vaguely jazz adjacent euro stuff in there (if you're going to include AMM you might as well include say EW&F) - but their choices esp with the canonical artists are mostly great and not always obvious

I wish there was an updated version that had space for the old stuff as well as recent UK jazz, old and new latin and african stuff, rap/r&b/techno inflected stuff etc but the market for a book like that is probably mostly in this thread

those are a bunch of great and too often underappreciated ornette albums in that set

The best actual critical writing on free/out jazz that I go back to regularly includes:

Amiri Baraka, Black Music (scene reports from the time, some really good interviews and interesting analysis)
Valerie Wilmer, As Serious As Your Life (profiles of musicians more than in-depth musical analysis but she was on the scene and the players knew and trusted her)
various Gary Giddins books (Riding On A Blue Note, Rhythm-a-Ning, Visions Of Jazz: The First Century, Weather Bird) - these are particularly useful because Giddins started writing in the mid 70s so he was covering the loft scene and continued writing about edgier black artists even when that music was extremely critically unfashionable in the 80s and 90s. Lots of writing on David Murray, Arthur Blythe, et al.

those are a bunch of great and too often underappreciated ornette albums in that set

Especially The Empty Foxhole. On New York Is Now I don't think that Elvin Jones understood or appreciated what Ornette was doing.

Empty fox holt absolutely slaps. Love Denardo.

I don’t play free jazz but I love listening to it

The world needs people like you!

my kneejerk reductive distinction is that "free jazz" often seems to implicitly reject notions of linear time and past vs future in a still-pretty-radical kind of way while euro style improv has a tendency to see itself as a some sort of eternally progressive vanguard in the modernist tradition (which i guess is a thing) or at least as some kind of pure postcagean endpoint that lesser music hasn't caught up with yet (even though much of it is a heritage industry at this point)

― your original display name is still visible (Left), Thursday, 25 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

In the end American free jazz musicians played with euro free improv people. Bailey did make that standards album before he died -- which looking back I didn't really like (it's not as if we all know the euro guys can play this stuff in their sleep). Looking back that was an odd episode but Bailey's "standards" album did show how much the "jazz is dead" stuff was talk by him.

So yes that's pretty reductive. Especially at this point.

I guess I am thinking of something different re: "noise" because I very much disagree with this

― c u (crüt), Thursday, 25 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Yes think we are talking across each other here. Alan Licht is an example of someone who has done a range of things within a narrow field. Noise/industrial is a lot more pre-meditated. I'll listen to that YT you posted tomorrow.

Borbetomagus I would say is improv/jazz that could be mistaken for a noise record. It's a distinction that may only exist in my head.

Noise/industrial is a lot more pre-meditated

lol this is also categorically untrue, plenty of folks use process or chance elements

it's weird to me that you aren't familiar with stuff like P16D4 or RLW

(which I think you would like!)

lol this is also categorically untrue, plenty of folks use process or chance elements

― broken breakbeat (sleeve), Thursday, 25 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Sure there's more to it but in jazz or improv there is constant back and forth to what the group is doing.

I absolutely love a lot of processed, noise and music with chance elements btw.

there is constant back and forth to what the group is doing.

oh my god come on, this is also true of many live noise collabs

https://redpoppyarthouse.org/event/emily-hay-thomas-dimuzio-20180810/

I will have a listen to the YT in the link later.