moves of evasion vs. commitment to a direction

how are we supposed to follow up on those two examples specifically, though
once 0pn has gone from arbor tapes to the super bowl what trajectory can his students follow? because there's a sense in which only 0pn can go from arbor tapes to the super bowl
well staying focused on big artists. burial would be interesting because of restirctions enforced by just working with waveforms. sophie would be interesting in being very restrictive in terms of building synths from ground up, no samples, no presets, modelling up from a vacuum. opn takes a very different almost kitschy bad taste historian provacateur approach, very conceptual... he's maybe singular in that goofy blend of high and low culture
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
As everyone knows I don't think eclecticism is a problem because london has always been eclectic, even in vinyl days. It's why jungle could have only hatched in london. the US boys wouldn't be hugely into belgian hoover mentalism and digi ragga.
 

thirdform

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OK though putting my serious hat on I mean of course if intellectuals shoved it down everyone's throats that what makes a good song is three power cords then the stream hole is going to be infinitely confounding and bewildering. There are ways to manage this without resorting to a conceptual approach that either of those artists pursue. One can merely adapt ones listening habits (and context) to be different.

A ligeti concerto still demands your time, as does Miles Davis and even a King Crimson album. These things didn't just go obsolete because the internet was beamed into everyone's houses.

A lot of this can just amount to bemoaning the internet, and it's like, ok, fair enough if you want to be strangled to death by capital fm's top 40.

Why a lot of contemporary music sounds stagnant is precisely because it is either *too senius* or *too genius* if it's easy to destroy house or jungle it's also easy to abscond in a DAW just to compensate for one's lack of actual ideas, resulting in house that might be more technically advanced but compositionally exactly the same as a strictly rhythm dub from 94.
 
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thirdform

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This is why poptimism is ultimately a reactionary project. It's the modern equivalent of the aristocracy exalting the working class over the ignoble merchants, bankers and industrialists.

And the Brits and Americans are very, very good at maintaining this artificial split between high and low culture.

The short shelflife of music is a problem of poptimism as well. It is precisely an inverted snobbery, the attempt of the cultivated intellectual not to think, be that the Oxford don or the organic junglist sampler wizard.

It is essentially narcissistic, it's all about me and never about us.
 
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thirdform

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That's not to say chart music is invalid, just that it must be kept in balance. In fact, people are generally going to desire more as a rule. It's just that can end up being sifened into vivaldi's 4 seasons.
 

thirdform

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The problem, if it is a problem, stems from precisely this though doesn't it?
Paralysis in the face of all these pathways

No in reality there is only one pathway. Terry Riley and @Matthew are right, western music is technically out of tune. I just don't buy Riley's thing about it being a foil for imperialist tendancies. But his mathematics are right.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
There's no reason why you can't have soulful warlike hardcore for the 2020s generation. You just need to make use of those notes between c and c#

Let's fight

 
you cant argue the internet doesnt bring a certain dissociation, detachment, drift that comes from excess of choice. and I think it can relates to a non commital approach and a kind of nihilism

back to the question on evasion vs commitment. its a question of how do you arrive at something to commit to in this environment? to defend.

you mention jungles eclectism but was restricted and contained, by a london focal point, a set of people (yes who wer diverse, but it still had a distinct this is what we are / this is what we arent) there were also technological innovations that focused things - with sampling technology: you could fire anything through the system, but the nature of how it cut up time, and how that sounded had a fixed quality which was another unifier

the three artists mentioned all started underground and crossed over to be very influential, made pop etc have all done a kind of metamusic that responds to this nihilism
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
you cant argue the internet doesnt bring a certain dissociation, detachment, drift that comes from excess of choice. and I think it can relates to a non commital approach and a kind of nihilism

back to the question on evasion vs commitment. its a question of how do you arrive at something to commit to in this environment? to defend.

you mention jungles eclectism but was restricted and contained, by a london focal point, a set of people (yes who wer diverse, but it still had a distinct this is what we are / this is what we arent) there were also technological innovations that focused things - with sampling technology: you could fire anything through the system, but the nature of how it cut up time, and how that sounded had a fixed quality which was another unifier

the three artists mentioned all started underground and crossed over to be very influential, made pop etc have all done a kind of metamusic that responds to this nihilism

I would agree that the internet allows you to abscond down rabitholes. But part of what made jungle jungle was the comparitive liberty of 90s clubbers to now. I mean, heck, ID scanners are becoming the norm now. Of course everything is going to sound regimented when the govt are hell bent to make clubs more like prisons than spaces for debauched excess.

There are still aesthetic limitations to the dancefloor, of a heaving mass of bodies. It's why the london varieties of house are still huge. Certainly this seems daunting when like us (me included) you are atomised in your bedroom. But that's why I'd never really attempt to make dance music for people to dance to because I don't have that feedback loop. This doesn't mean a retreat back to 'IDM' or 'indietronica' though, there are fascinating areas to explore within glitch, experimental speedcore, ambient etc. My point is you have to sod what the critics say to make music because ultimately their audience is different to yours.
 
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