Communist music reviews

luka said:

I thought this was literally the tacit manifesto of dissensus?

Click to expand...

Well you'd hope so certainly. 🔥

john eden said:

There are some obvious pitfalls with this Leninist privileging of ideology over art:

1. Cardew's pop songs. He apparently moved to Leyton to be nearer the workers (lol) and wrote a bunch of Maoist folk/pop songs which are so direly awful I have inevitably developed an affection for them. Like Mvuent's bit about Nono above there is a seismic gap between what is being attemped and the outcome.

Click to expand...

They are awful as lyrical songs but melodically they are great, proper hooky, which is probably why you have an affection for them. In fact I actually prefer that music compared to his great learning simply because he managed to achieve what most western pop musicians are unable to. You didn't have this problem in the East during the 60s and 70s, pop music was made by professionally trained working musicians.

this is a bop if you can just treat the posh birds voice as just another instrument and filter out the maoist lyrics.

john eden said:

c. Free improv with more than that people will inevitably turn into drone music which is inherently reactionary as it conjurs up visions of some kind of pastoral idealised world of the past.

Click to expand...

There's some truth in this. the drone elevated to a principle unto its own is an attempt by american minimalist composers in search for the timeless as a rebellion against their comfortable existence. The drone is best when it is the root note from which all melodic development builds upon, be that in Turkish, arabic or Indian musics.

in fact @droid put it quite succinctly when he made a juxtaposition between the academy and the ashram. I am not a huge fan of drone music. I like Elianne Radigue, but mainly for her use of the arp2600.

But then I wouldn't consider Merzbow as drone, which Watson probably would.

But it is also important to remember that both Lenin and Luxemburg sighted Tolstoy as one of their favourite writers, who was a reactionary mystic. So it's not as clear cut as Oxford university anti-gimperialist jockying. Our main battle is not that of culture, and never has been.

@luka have you read this

luka said:

im stupid.

Click to expand...

Rubbish. You're the cleverest person ever.

This was of the first things I read by him as a sophomore in undergrad, I think you’d find it more or less accessible. It convinced me to pursue making pop music by demonstrating that, when done successfully, one would be wielding certain dark powers that have a special purchase in our society

At first it may come across as merely “Beethoven good, pop bad” but if you read on its more complicated than that