Beyond Soul.

T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
CrowleyHead said:
He's what all the skeptics think Sun Ra is. Useless pantomime and posture and disguises. Faux-Shamanisms and Elevated Consciousness to disguise the fact that he's sub-Yusef Lateef level.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk has soul. Pharaoh Sanders is a gimmick rock saxophonist. He sucks.
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This is actually a good avenue to go down Matthew hates RRK its in his book. good to challenge the common wisdom here. + on rip rig and panic Jones grooves stupidly hard on them drums.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
"the classic dichotomy of agreeing with the sentiment, but it not being good music. there's no reason why sonically music should be more interesting when it's about stabbing than about positive stuff, but some weird magic happens to make it that way.

bit like how all the best dancehall tracks are violently homophobic or rap about blm isn't as good as someone saying they've got loads of guns, cars and girls."

sadmanbarty.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Re: violent music's appeal, I wrote about this (chief keef compared to metal) in 2012


It’s tricky, knowing the authentically desperate and violent world Keef’s music comes from (and the comfortable, secure world I come from), to feel entirely guiltless about promoting that music for its sheer ENTERTAINMENT value, but this is something I have to face, and to admit: the violence and sexism and aggression of “Back From The Dead” is far from an “unfortunate” obstacle standing in the way of my appreciation for it. The nastiness of it is a big part of why I like it.

Just as metallers like metal for the musicianship of it, the insane double kick-drum barrages, the shredding guitar solos, the guttural heft of a singer’s roar, fans of heavy gangsta rap like the hyperactive drum-fills of trap beats, the dramatic synth/string lines and the quality of a rappers voice (as well as, of course, the ear-catching quality of their lyrics). But metallers also like metal because of the darkness of the lyrical themes, the masculine rage that runs through the imagery and lifestyle associated with it as well as the music.

I think many fans of trap rap (myself included) are – even if secretly, and semi-ashamedly – fans of the violence of the lyrics, the sense of danger and derangement and so on that it evokes. For listeners like me, living worlds away from the authentic danger this music describes, it can be uncomfortable to consider the aspect of cultural tourism/voyeurism going on here. But all that stuff is left aside (at least consciously) when a beat completely fires you up, when a rapper starts shouting about slitting his enemies throats and you start rapping about slitting your enemies throats along with them.

I enjoy the coldness of it (Keef’s delivery actually very calm-in-the-storm rather than shouty, sometimes sing-songy, seemingly detached from the mania of it all, a bit like Gucci’s can be), the hostility of it, even the very misery of it. Misery, egomania and anger – these are all emotional states as strong and intoxicating as happiness, humility and love, even if their effect in the ‘real’ world of human interaction is ruinous and hardly worth celebrating. To have that button pushed by music – is that morally questionable? Or is it just fun? And certainly less dangerous than having that button pushed by punching someone in the face again and again?

This is what metal-heads talk about in “Head Bangers Odyssey” when describing the rush of listening to that music – that this dark side to our natures always exists, and that it can be healthy – not to mention thrilling – to have that side exorcised/exercised by brutal music. Can, then, an analysis of trap-rap (a shit term, but convenient) be safely, or credibly conducted with less emphasis on hand-wringing, and more emphasis on fist-pumping?
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T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I used to have a communist friend from Oxbridge you know. We fell out because of that writing style exactly. maybe there's something in the water over there. unhealthy.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
if the middle classes constantly weren't such little bullying shits I'd work to buy a mansion. even if I attained this result at the age of 60, it would still mean we'd have a sex dungeon and a big ritual room. but then corpsey's grand kid would start guilt tripping me. why are you still listening to Elephant Man?

Even Eden baba rates chancers more than Corpsey jr. jr.
 
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luka

luka

Well-known member
I had a few drinks yesterday and what I realised was the best point made on this thread so far is bartys thing about soul being replaced by funk, emotion for sensation, affect for physical movement. It fits together, jigsaw piece to jigsaw piece, with thirds stuff about actual lived conditions (related to prynnes essay on harmony in architecture etc) which is why pattys invocation of soul seems politically reactionary and sentimental I guess. Why we all recoil from it in horror. (Sorry patty)
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Corpse has some weird notion of himself as posh but his parents are teachers not Lords and Ladies. Give the poor lad a break. Give him some space to work in.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
The nature of contemporary urban experience withits multiple shifting registers its speed its density its synchronisation juxtapositions paranoia alienation.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
luka said:
Corpse has some weird notion of himself as posh but his parents are teachers not Lords and Ladies. Give the poor lad a break. Give him some space to work in.
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nah im cool with him being posh posh (even if he was the child of lords and ladies) but if he's gonna do that then don't have some flagellating self-guilt complex. this ain't no karbala. put yo hood up son!
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Humble hardworking teachers with barely two pennies to rub together. Salt of the earth. Why he thinks of himself as posh is a total mystery.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I was pondering some of what was said in this thread recently and wondering if the fact of where I grew up made it somehow more possible for me to appreciate Mozart than someone who grew up in an urban hellscape. Not just because of my class (as Luka says, I'm on the lower end of middle class, and a lot of people who grew up in London, say, would be as or more well off than I was), but because of the landscape. Open fields, gently rolling hills, clear blue skies, stars at night - some might say a banal landscape, certainly not a hive of cultural activity, but a place where a sort of pre-modern romanticism can still flourish. And what was said in this thread (can't remember by who) - Mozart's music, or any pre-modernist classical music, is about harmony, unbroken melodies, structure, cycles. A slower pace of life. Perhaps I'm able to believe in peacefulness and serenity more than somebody who rarely saw an unimpeded horizon growing up, somebody surrounded by constant advertising, traffic, litter, homelessness, crime, etc.

Is 'soul' antipathetic to urbanity, in particular? (And has the internet made city-dwellers of us all?)
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
Craner literally goes grouse shooting in Scotland dressed head to toe in tweed, I've seen the pictures. Woebot is in Debretts. Corpse is not in that rareified bracket, he just thinks he is.
 
T

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I mean I don't want to be in a position where I fear for Corpsey more than Matthew, you know? Matthew don't have these guilt issues, his issue is that he's soul man patty on cocaine.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I don't think of myself as posh, really, I'm quite conscious of my privileged position, however, particularly when I'm analysing music/art that comes out of a world that's completely foreign to me.

When I'm hanging around with people from Essex I feel posh and then occasionally I'll drift into the orbit of some genuine poshos and I feel like an oik.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
You do realise when you spend a few days in the countryside, how tied you are to artificial rhythms, the synchronised lab rat rhythms of the workplace and the city. It's always horrifying,,that process... ugh, what's happened to me, and then falling into those slower rhythms of sun up and sun down, bird song, river, living rhythms
 
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