sadmanbarty

Well-known member
It's very very difficult to exclude timblaland from a discussion of r&b although granted the bulk of his output comes from the 00s. The 90swas more the decade of new jack swing and later, hip-hop soul. What's quite interesting is that r&b doesn't become global pop music until timblaland and missy arrive. Here it is the most innovative form of the genre that finds mass success. I don't know what that means. I don't know how to fit it into whatever argument might be taking shape here.

'you really got me', 'i feel love', 'tomorrow never knows', 'one in a million', etc. are all innovations that happened in the mainstream.

so again saying 'pop' isn't innovative is wrong. instead it goes back to this top down thing. georgio moroder trying to appeal to dancers or satisfying his own interests in krautrock. timbaland indulging his rhythm nerdery. etc. there's a bottom up impulse for all these things even if they're pop.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Who are the right wing deconstructionists? Are they related to the curator conneseiur elite? Do they operate in the same way? Is this related to poptimism as an argument an ethos or is it something separate?

A comment about postmodernists who mush everything in a sea of cultural relativism (different to multiculturalism) so value judgments themselves are disowned and music is spoken about if a government report, although this time there is a superficial literary gloss all over it.

What does extract from its condensation a very specific set of time sequences mean? What exactly is the murder of dead crystallised historical labour? How can you murder something which is dead? Is it possible to clarify this for me?

I thought this was obvious with ISIS? using human labour to destroy already crystalised, and thus not living labour. the murder of the dead is that.
 

vimothy

yurp
pop music is postmodern, it belongs to a different historical epoch in which the possibility of revolution does not exist. pop music is hyperreal, which is why authenticity is so keenly sought after, why individuality is so keenly sought after, why all of these subcultures are gutted-out with a remorseless inevitability: a continuous assembly line of novelty is required to feed this highly prized image of intensity and authentic creativity.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
salvation was initially religious, then it became political throughout the 20th century (facism, communism, anti-imperialism, revolution, etc.).

pop is the closest thing we've got to it now.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
It's very very difficult to exclude timblaland from a discussion of r&b although granted the bulk of his output comes from the 00s. The 90swas more the decade of new jack swing and later, hip-hop soul. What's quite interesting is that r&b doesn't become global pop music until timblaland and missy arrive. Here it is the most innovative form of the genre that finds mass success. I don't know what that means. I don't know how to fit it into whatever argument might be taking shape here.

Only because it got played alongside dancehall though which of course could be geneologically linked to soca and then later afrohouse. otherwise it would only be successful in an anglo context. and of course the bollywood affectations were definitely a cynical pivot.
 
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luka

Well-known member
this is what i’ve picked up so far:


bottom-up culture is able to produce innovation, is able to express a broad gamut of emotions and able to reflect lived experience. so even when kartel literally does a song advertising his products, the bottom-up nature of it means that it’s still human and relatable.

top-down culture is incapable of producing innovation, of reflecting lived and experience and due to it’s promotional nature limited emotionally (it can’t be convoluted, ambiguous, highly aggressive, etc.). this can have it’s benefits. there’s an aesthetic potency in the stepford wives element of it; something haunting and creepy about it for example aaliyah. likewise there’s the whole animistic component of trying to imbue inanimate objects with cultural and emotional resonance, what i call “psychedelic materialism”.


so luke, what else do we need to add to this picture or unpick? what's missing?

Well my initial response is a kind of uneasiness about, as I said earlier, recapitulating the rockist position after the battle has been lost. I think we need to accept the validity of much of the poptimist position and not fall back into the old oppositions. What I want to be able to do is to have my cake and eat it. I want to be able to mourn the defanging of genres like grime and uk drill and of artists like Dizzee and Russ. But I also want to be able to acknowledge that, for example, pass out by tinie tempah is a good song (albeit no compensation for the cooption of an entire genre)

I think how and why this process occurs is probably straightforward. I think we all understand how it actually works. the logic of the market intrudes on the logic of musical development, the mapping of the possibility tree. We all understand the pressures and temptations at work.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I don't think it's necessarily correct to conflate innovation with possibility. An oud player is not always innovative in the technical sense (though they can be) but there are infinite variations and colours they can conjure through the act of improvisation. when I say pop has been neutered, I'm not saying innovation doesn't take place, I'm saying the definitions of what the possible are ever more restricted.
 

vimothy

yurp
the experience of nostalgia for a time when music was "real" -- which most people probably experience at some point -- is really nostalgia for a time when music's unreality wasn't so obvious and could be enjoyed in an unselfconscious way (e.g. when you were 16 and could fully buy into the intensity of the image without cynicism or self-knowledge).
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I'm a bit worried about making innovation an absolute yardstick. that way we tend to capitulate to the logic of accelerationism (not the left version which is a non-starter to begin with, I mean the far right version.)

But then will people in 20 years be mourning Kendrick? almost certainly so.
 

luka

Well-known member
the experience of nostalgia for a time when music was "real" -- which most people probably experience at some point -- is really nostalgia for a time when music's unreality wasn't so obvious and could be enjoyed in an unselfconscious way (e.g. when you were 16 and could fully buy into the intensity of the image without cynicism or self-knowledge).

This would maybe hold water if it wasn't for the fact that me and Barty are talking about a music that was real about six months ago.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
the experience of nostalgia for a time when music was "real" -- which most people probably experience at some point -- is really nostalgia for a time when music's unreality wasn't so obvious and could be enjoyed in an unselfconscious way (e.g. when you were 16 and could fully buy into the intensity of the image without cynicism or self-knowledge).


Well this is why happy hardcore is still relevant to an extent.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Well my initial response is a kind of uneasiness about, as I said earlier, recapitulating the rockist position after the battle has been lost. I think we need to accept the validity of much of the poptimist position and not fall back into the old oppositions.

so you're largely after a paradigm through which to absorb this kind of culture.

as someone who's more comfortable doing so than you (to the point i can actively venerate a certain north atlanta rap trio), i'd say acknowledging it's cultural place doesn't necessarily preclude engagement with it.


so hat adidas one we always talked about that inspired this thread:

1) you first reaction is to distance yourself from it. it's a lie. it's condescending and it's gross. (this is as it happens the position i took)

2) some people might try and acknowledge as if it wasn't adidas music, but that's a bit dumb and pointless. it's meritless on it's own anyway.

3) so i'd suggest that you embrace it's potency as a part of the adidas thing. it is this weird, ostensibly innocuous mantra that follows you round every youtube video you click. it is a completely fictionalised representation of peckham. so embrace the aesthetic of those things; it is scary music. it is uncomfortable. lean into that.


so it's that third perspective that allows me to relish in psychedelic materialsim for example.
 

luka

Well-known member
I'm a bit worried about making innovation an absolute yardstick. that way we tend to capitulate to the logic of accelerationism (not the left version which is a non-starter to begin with, I mean the far right version.)

But then will people in 20 years be mourning Kendrick? almost certainly so.

To a degree, yes. But also important to remember that accelerationism, in the sense of a speeding up of history, is objective fact. It's not just a Nick Land ideology. It's part of the nature of our experience. Thousands of years of grubbing up roots and spearing mammoths, then the whole of recorded history in an eyeblink.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
It's just fucking trainers. what is there for me as a blind person to see? like i only ever see trainers as totally utilitarian. I don't get nudity as an aesthetic tbh. like im not embarrassed to have my testicals and cock dangling when im out in public, it's just like why the fuck would i want to keep contracting colds and welts on my feet?

It just seems awfully boring. give me the comically cartoonish any day, give me the camp.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
To a degree, yes. But also important to remember that accelerationism, in the sense of a speeding up of history, is objective fact. It's not just a Nick Land ideology. It's part of the nature of our experience. Thousands of years of grubbing up roots and spearing mammoths, then the whole of recorded history in an eyeblink.

hang on... I need to piss and then I'll come back to this.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
*jabs finger in air*

music was NEVER real

the incentive structure of the culture shifted. it's social currency changed.

we're not banging on about some new age thing. we're saying there was a time digga d wanted 12 blokes on his council estate to like his song, now he wants product placement from coke.

coke and those 12 blokes might have somewhat different things they want him to do.
 
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