I don't believe in the 100gecs project as an aesthetic roadmap. Yet it is undeniable that there is an innovation here, formally speaking. In that there is literally no music. What I mean by that is not kind of elitism or snobbery about proper music but this: that when you play 100gecs, what you are listening to is the musical equivalent of silence, as the brain struggles to adequately process silence, hence you can start to feel humming or constants of varying kinds in your brain when you meditate. This is where ambient has its failing, in that it can only really serve as background music, but it still ostensibly necessitates true listening to microtimbral variations. the technicians behind 100gecs are completely aware of this, being part of the hyperfocused internet generation without actually being 19 year old tiktokkers (same goes for ms. Polachek in some ways.) What 100gecs have perfected in this sense is ambient par excellence, despite the nu metal riffs, pitched up vocals, gabberised kicks, its all refracted through this disjointed mirror of half-dead sounds and subcultures (and by half dead here we are not speaking of nonexistent but with no material referant) by small town American kids. Whilst deconstructed club generally sounds achingly parodic to UK continuum ears because it corresponds to physical semiotics, 100gecs just abandons that entirely. You get songs but only inasmuch as they are discernably 100gecs, they don't operate within the economy of songcraft. But there's more: what is so fascinating about this is not the sound collage but that the sounds they appropriate bear the stigma of compression characteristically optimised for TV and computer speakers. It's definitely not a hoax, but they are not really operating in a discourse apparent to journalists with political commitments and sympathies. There is a deep nihilism there, which is afraid to be mentioned.
100gecs
- Thread starter thirdform
- Start date
100gecs themselves represent an implicit criticism of the poptimist project, or at least its logical endpoint. all you end up becoming is a routinised pleasure machine wacking that button for dopamine release. Hence a concealment of any collective desire. Whilst Deleuze and Guattari may have feared Drugs, it was somewhat misplaced in retrospect, their real fear should have been politics per se. Because politics, and the need to represent oneself politically to survive only reflects the total disintegration of class solidarity. Class struggle has been in an alltime retreat since the 1980s. Now all we have is individual trade union struggles. This doesn't mean we should abandon the proles. That is in fact the mistake many postmodernists made, which merely reflects that they wanted to see within the proletariat a safety valve for their own redemption. A bad habit! History does not progress in such a linear fashion like that.
in this sense it is not fair to see post-dubstep as a reactionary project so much as a project which closed its eyes to the reality it was faced with. Same with nightslugs. There was a quote I think @john eden ? where music as a conscious artistic activity lags a good 30-50 years behind the impersonal changes in the mode of production of daily life. Todays music is yet to be written.
Might have been in the drone thread. This is the sense (and it is specifically in this sense) that I see futurism as an imaginary @mvuent
Might have been in the drone thread. This is the sense (and it is specifically in this sense) that I see futurism as an imaginary @mvuent
john eden
male pale and stale
Yeah I think nicked from Gysin or Burroughs saying the same about writing lagging behind painting, probably. If it was me, anyway.
Yeah I think nicked from Gysin or Burroughs saying the same about writing lagging behind painting, probably. If it was me, anyway.
I'll find it in the drone thread and paste it here.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
good stuff
woops
is not like other people
Watch out for those zer0 books talent scouts @thirdform
sus
Moderator
Thy gecs consumed
i'm not even a fan off the rip and it baffles me that people have any kind of strong opinions on but know what i'm sure you lot have something to say about 100 gecs So is this stupid hipster bulshit or the real counter-culture? gwan den
www.dissensus.com
I have many thoughts on this topic actually, e.g. that Paul (From Bible) is doing the VizArt equivalent, but very busy atm so will have to wait.
I'm not interested in its musical qualities, which are bastardised autechre with a bit of venetian snares, grunge samples and trance synths throne in the blender to create this kind of mixed pickle fusion cuisine. So let's not do that in this thread. The music is the least interesting part, the semiotics for once are more interesting.
What I'm saying essentially is let's talk about this stuff like journalists, because it is the only post-music which deserves that, whereas music proper as an activity to concentrate on with historical time must be rescued from this perilous fate. The 100gecs project at its core is something the likes of Ben Watson should utterly despise vigorously, the collapsing of all time into an undifferentiated slush. It's the ultimate music of the defeat of organised labour. Jungle, techno garage etc were still fordist, in that sense.
What I'm saying essentially is let's talk about this stuff like journalists, because it is the only post-music which deserves that, whereas music proper as an activity to concentrate on with historical time must be rescued from this perilous fate. The 100gecs project at its core is something the likes of Ben Watson should utterly despise vigorously, the collapsing of all time into an undifferentiated slush. It's the ultimate music of the defeat of organised labour. Jungle, techno garage etc were still fordist, in that sense.
this stuff can be compared with Bartys music, which is still music optimised to a social reality, it is still intended for a community of youth - black America, Jamaicans, Trinidadians (to go out and cop off to.) It still has dance music tropes, alkaline still couldn't have existed without the global dominance of dance music. 100gecs are something else, they are unintent on creating songs, their understanding of logistics is practically nil, the only logistics they do have is to mash sounds you hear on the internet into a stew. That is effective, but that is why it is silence, once you pearce beneath this veneer.
woops
is not like other people
I'd say its more a criticism of his project meself. He's saying look at all this wow stuff, and I'm like ok, but on the terms of your project, you can only engage my wow faculty for 30 seconds.
woops
is not like other people
i thought 100 gecs songs, were only 30 seconds long anyway.
2 minutes, but they contain sounds from 10 different genres, which means they're not exciting.
It is not plunderphonics, if 100gecs were a proper plunderphonics band that created 30 second songs with 5 samples per second all from different sample sources then they will have truly pioneered a colossal quantum revolution in music. But that has not happened yet.
It is not plunderphonics, if 100gecs were a proper plunderphonics band that created 30 second songs with 5 samples per second all from different sample sources then they will have truly pioneered a colossal quantum revolution in music. But that has not happened yet.
Needless to say that is against the aesthetic of 100gecs. You don't listen to 100gecs, you just take them in as noise, and hence silence.