luka

Well-known member
Music doesn't exist any more just a simulation of music just as emotions don't exist any longer just the simulation of emotion.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I just don't bother listening to new stuff anymore, for whatever reason.

I'd love to be excited by new music, to be following a scene, downloading every radio show, etc.

But I need pointing in the right direction.

Crowley posted a great top 50 rap tunes of last year I think and I realised how much good shit is still around for those willing to make the effort to listen for it.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I've been listening to what Ian Penman tells me to. That does include a smattering of Solange and Lana Del Rey, but it's mostly dead black males.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Never a good sign when music needs an explanatory caption, like a pile of bricks on the Tate Modern floor.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Music doesn't exist any more just a simulation of music just as emotions don't exist any longer just the simulation of emotion.

This was actually just the beginning of a 12 hours LSD trip, luka managed to press send just before his mind folded like an origami
 

chava

Well-known member
Lee Gamble
Exhaust


'Exhaust’ engages in a world well and truly with us right now – explosive, chaotic, unpredictable, contradictory, intoxicating, hyper-colourful, blown-apart and disturbingly engaging in its surreality. It’s Gamble’s ‘Gully Automated Music Concrète’, sounding out from a high rise overlooking the Ballardian motion-sculpture of a collapsing motorway system.

"‘Flush Real Pharynx’ is the title of sound designer/artist/composer and DJ Lee Gamble’s new three-part album for Hyperdub. The triptych loosely explores three stages of the Semioblitz – the aggressive onslaught of visual and sonic stimuli of contemporary cities and virtual spaces. From ‘In A Paraventral Scale’ (the first part of the triptych released at the start of 2019) the coil springs out into the straight-up choked semioblitz of part 2 — ‘Exhaust’. Gone are the serpentine dopplers and seductive supercar engines. ‘Exhaust’s neon-charms coalesce into an MDMA rush of Boston Dynamics dog barks, hypnotic voices and imploding motion sculptures. From the backfiring splinters of ‘CREAM’ through disorientating photo shutter snare patterns of ‘Shard’, ‘Exhaust’s sultry voices take you for a 300mph ride down the psychedelic high street stitching together clashing strands of club soundscapes on its way."

https://boomkat.com/products/exhaust-34b62acb-1815-447e-b408-44818c25b069

Always lol'ing at boomkat blurbs. Another record 'commenting on the world today' I 100% will never check out.
 

Leo

Well-known member
Always lol'ing at boomkat blurbs. Another record 'commenting on the world today' I 100% will never check out.

more times than not, boomkat blurbs are lifted directly from the record label's PR sheet about the release. once in awhile they include some of their own opinions, if it's something they feel strongly about, but not usually.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Here's a question - has the internet made this sort of conceptualising of music more rampant, or is it much the same?

It occurs to me that the nature of the web is demanding the generation of more and more "content". Not to mention that a techno EP has to fight now to be heard in the midst of a billion memes and viral videos.
 

mrfaucet

The Ideas Train
I think it has, 100%. As you say, partly it's to try and cut through all the noise, then maybe for others it's a realisation that you can just be an art school thesis with some mp3s attached and that alone can get you hype. The hollowing out of the music press also plays a not unimportant role. Related to this is the visualization of music - if you have a strong aesthetic it can take you so far/much further. Of course, there's been a connection between music and imagery for decades, but it's so much stronger now I think.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I also think musicians feel more existential dread about their purpose, what with streaming and downloading cutting the financial legs out from under them. Not to mention that more and more music only exists as mp3, perhaps this is something connected to Dematerialisation? Particularly at this time of great political upheaval. You want to make music that means something, that could help topple the Tories, but you're making instrumental techno music like 20,000 other ppl in bedrooms, what is to be done?

N.B. I've not listened to the music being described so perhaps it's actually extremely effective.
 

version

Well-known member
You can tell when Boomkat are trying to push something because they start using 'thru' instead of 'through', sticking 'hyper-' in front of things and talking about the internet.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
To me it seems as though music meaning something, or saying something is less and less important to the makers. At least in the contemporary Western sphere. I spoke about this before when I asked why, despite the fact that we can be profoundly moved by say, dostoyevsky (or any profound writer/lyricist etc,) are we as contemporary music makers or whatever it is you make shying away from things which observe the state of the world? I know part of this is obvious and we're living in post post modern times or whatever you want to call it. But the fact that we can, and still seek to be moved by astute observers such as dostoyevsky says to me that the market is still very much there but there is some invisible force stopping us from crossing a certain threshold. I saw chava's comment before and while I got what he meant in the context of that particular blurb, it feels to me like this is an epidemic of sorts in the majority of people now. If it's trying to preach = fuck off.
 

version

Well-known member
I think it has, 100%. As you say, partly it's to try and cut through all the noise, then maybe for others it's a realisation that you can just be an art school thesis with some mp3s attached and that alone can get you hype. The hollowing out of the music press also plays a not unimportant role. Related to this is the visualization of music - if you have a strong aesthetic it can take you so far/much further. Of course, there's been a connection between music and imagery for decades, but it's so much stronger now I think.

This seems essential if you want any sort of coverage these days. You have to have some sort of political or conceptual angle to play up and give people something to write about. Perhaps everyone's just bored by music and can't face it without something non musical to make it appealing.
 
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