The TIME Barrier.

luka

Well-known member
the time barrier is the invisble wall you hit when tracing music back through time. the historical point at which any pleasure becomes detached and scholarly, or patronising, or simply impossible to access. for instance whenever i allow woebot's enthusiasm for duke ellington to overcome me and i listen to one of his records i just feel im in a nursing home. warm piss turning cold on the sheets.
 

luka

Well-known member
was talking yesterday to the 16 year old sadmanbarty and he was saying how any hip-hop pre 94 is too early for him to enjoy. even sophisticated things like rakim.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
my cutoff is ~1965. a bit earlier for jazz (whenever it starts getting free/weird).

oh big exception for classical music, avant-garde + otherwise.

otherwise ya I don't really like anything til drugs start influencing culture production.
 

luka

Well-known member
I wrote this a while back to put on facebook to be ignored and get no likes and start no conversation. it's about this time question partly


questions to ask when encountering music.
what movements and manners does it map out? what elegances does it encode? what excellencies?
what sophistications of understanding and attainment?
what does it aspire to?
what is the good life?
how is time structured? and what pace does it move at? what does it feel like to be in a body moving at that tempo, and in that rhythm? is this a fairground ride or is it otherwise?
can you imagine talking like that? walking like that? feeling like that? where is the weight centred? are you light on the feet? marching?
do you not like it? what is it to not like it? what is causing the discomfort?
do you like it? what is it doing to you that feels good? why does it feel good?
is it redolent of an era? which era? what is it that ties it to its time? or what is it about its time that is preserved within it?
a comportment? a psychological attitude? a bearing towards the world? how is that enacted in the music?
 

entertainment

Well-known member
95% of Beatles songs are beyond the barrier for me and the later stuff more so than the earlier. I think the down to earth love song writing is more universal than the psychedelic stuff which feels so flat and uninspiring. Hendrix is another one. Any time I see someone doing those cathartic pleasure spasm faces with their eyes closed to Hey Joe, I seriously wonder what that person is doing with his/her life.
 

luka

Well-known member
yeah this is the other aspect, that some things date in a way which doesn't correspond with linear time so that paid in full sounds more modern than dont sweat the technique despite the former being their first album and the latter being their last.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Jimi is a weird one. Simultaneously over/underrated. In desperate need of rescue from college freshman bedroom posters (see also Marley, Bob). Lotta filler to be sure, + the hero worship grates, but he was onto some legitimately great things - granted one needs at least some level of affinity for heavy shreddin guitars. unsurprisingly I think he's best when going the furthest out into heavy feedback proto-noise rock.

this is my favorite thing Hendrix thing ever. idk how to embed vimeo, so just click through

idk why it never gets brought up in a Drexciyan context, philosophically - black musician recontextualizes black experience by escaping apocalyptic America to live deep underwater, turns into a merman (proto-wavejumper...)
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the rest of the Band of Gypsys LP sucks but this is great, full-on shrieking post-60s bad vibes dread heavy guitars ting

I think if he'd lived he might've gone on to make some titanic psychedelic free funk records in the 70s but ofc we'll never now

you also gotta remember at the time he blew peoples minds in a way I can't even conceive of having my mind blown by music now

anyway that's my partial Hendrix defense
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
jazz before the 60's all sounds hokey. it only escapes that once the modality, atonality, suppressed harmonic function, etc. were introduced.

a lot of the 1967 psychedelic stuff completely fails to be psychedelic to me and more generally sounds tinny, nasal and horrible. most of it either sounds like americans being square and thinking they're getting freaky or british public school boys thinking monty python's funny and making music that reflects that. i've grown up with music where synth pads and samplers, etc. can create lush, immersive sound worlds so stuff from that era can't really cut it. who needs syd barret when you've got young thug?

this may well be dissensus heresy but a lot of dub from the seventies is wasted on me because the chords and melodies are too sweet and bubblegum. the idea of a music comprising of bass, drums and snatches of other instrumentation drenched in reverb and delay evokes something far more emotionally complex than the chords and melodies let it be.
 

luka

Well-known member
Jimi is a weird one. Simultaneously over/underrated. In desperate need of rescue from college freshman bedroom posters (see also Marley, Bob). Lotta filler to be sure, + the hero worship grates, but he was onto some legitimately great things - granted one needs at least some level of affinity for heavy shreddin guitars. unsurprisingly I think he's best when going the furthest out into heavy feedback proto-noise rock.

this is my favorite thing Hendrix thing ever. idk how to embed vimeo, so just click through

idk why it never gets brought up in a Drexciyan context, philosophically - black musician recontextualizes black experience by escaping apocalyptic America to live deep underwater, turns into a merman (proto-wavejumper...)

either reyolds or eshun or both have done this havent they? wrt conceptulising the oceanic.
 

luka

Well-known member
no secret that a lot of dub is dull as ditchwater. high chaff to wheat ratio. did always look askance at the valoristation of dub at the expense of roots. like insisting on playing hip-hop instrumentals and flinching from the vocals. mind you the good stuff turns my brain inside out.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
americans being square and thinking they're getting freaky or british public school boys

ya there's a lotta that tbf. otoh, there are different kinds of psychedelic. there some truly fucking weird records from that era + shortly after. couple trends. the traditional arbiters of cultural completely lost touch w/what was cool so you get all kindsa weirdos getting $/studio access. also you get collectives of hippies making freeform music. also trained serious people making freeform records. some of it is unlistenable garbage, plenty is dated + embarrassing, but there are some great things too. Pärson Sound, The Beat of the Earth, The Godz, Baby Grandmothers, the first Amon Düül record, Musica Elettronica Viva, etc etc. there's tons of far out jazz + whatever too but I'm less expert on that.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
In the late-60's hard rock was not once captured in the studio. on live albums and bootlegs there's tons but as far as studio goes it's as hard as warm piss.
 
Top