Maximalism *shakes head* nah fam

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forclosure

Well-known member
This was inspired by me deciding to listen to a band that i haven't listened to in YEARS....Spiritualized

i'm sure some people in here have groaned already but hear me out somebody i knows really gotten back into them since they have a new album out this year (their best in years apprently) so for me its like yeah i remember liking them and i remembered i only heard the first song off their album Let it Come Down so i went with that one.

Listening to it now i like it but for a band that was described as being all "neo-psychedelic" and "space rock" it just doesn't come across that way for me and listening to this has just reaffirmed it for me that i just don't like "maximalist" production hell all even now i don't think people who use the word or say they like this kind of stuff can properly put down what it is and to me it just seems like a nicer more theoretical way of saying this music is bombastic n bloated but it uses all the tools available.

Its ambitious sure but like people have been mocking prog rock for the last 50/60 years for the adolescent idea that adding more things in the mix = more ambitious and Phil Spector only really got work again in the 70s because all the guys he worked with and pointed guns at were people who grew up listening to the songs he made but when i see it applied to say the "post-post modern Gen Z breakcore music i've seen talked about or hyperpop charli xcx/grimes and yes of course Kanye its like nah nah man its cool.

Its not me saying these songs suck which such production can have the result of spoiling them but for me i can like these songs and be affected by them but their too wrapped up in their own psychodrama in order for me to get emotionally invested in them.
 
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forclosure

Well-known member
here's what i'm getting at
I've been re-listening to Lungfish after being away from their albums for a long time for a band that stuck to a specific template throughout the whole of their existance they did alot with it and alot of refining of said sonic template aswell, you go from Talking songs to walking up to say The Unanimous Hour and there is a evolution there not just in terms of sonically speaking but even in the way Daniel Higgs moved away from storytelling lyrics to something akin to mantras.

But even when those songs were overwhelming and hypnotising there was room for them to breath one of the standouts on Sound in Time imo dizzying and looping in on itself
 
WashYourHands

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Other Thighpaulsandra projects are some of the more intriguing music to come out of synths since teaming up with Julian cope and Coil
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
one of my sort of jocular ideological clashes with @blissblogger at times and tbf many journalists raised in anglo-american punk culture is this need for a near instant gratification through the maximal. I tend to appreciate a bombastic free jazz, piano house etc etc epic but i also appreciate very minimal house/techno with just a drum machine and a synth. To which people may ask what do you see in austerity, and I always respond with the problem with maximalism as a near constant is that utopian promise always ends up with you falling out of love. Now that's great on occasion, because you have to move on - I'm glad I downloaded a lot of empty fatuous prog like ELP when I was a teenager because I was able to have that as an experience to learn from. But the power in austerity is precisely that you have to learn to love it, you have to find the love according to both your own emotional intuitions and your capability to think critically. Whereas the near instantaneous hit of a Stereophonics yawnfest already tells you to fall in love if you are a fan of that music. So when you do abandon it, you almost have to look upon it with shame. Hence the ironic rehabilitation of E.G: eurodance, trance etc in hyperpop/modern glitchcore etc. It's the perpetual inability to fully acknowledge that as Lacanians would say, you never loved them, you merely experienced the jouissance of thinking you loved them.

In a way then, the undergr0und person who claims that pop is intolerable because it's all utopian is of course wrong, but not wrong in the sense that a crude liberal would have it, of being impervious to joy, abandon, dance, or whatever. They are wrong precisely because they don't see that dystopian, austere pop would enrich the possibility of utopia - this is the strength of traditional soul music, that it is somewhat dejected and melancholic, even when it uplifts. Whereas your carley Rae Jepsen's promise a constant xerox duplication of the present dystopia through the utopian imaginary. It's no coincidence that mdma consumption lessens or becomes more internalised the more a scene escapes the imaginary dream and becomes grounded in more of symbolic reality.
 
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forclosure

Well-known member
@thirdform and this is why "soul" is not only one of the best name for a genres ever its one of the few that really feels on the money,not to get this off topic but it always bothers me even now seeing General Levy putting out a video wondering why none of the yutes in drill are making any music to uplift the community and only want to be on badness but this thing where black people and it feels like especially now are meant to be the ones to "uplift" everybody and it comes from people both in AND outside the community aswell.

The church and the influence of that plays a major part for sure but its another one of those things where like white muthafuckers get to be dour right up until old age even after they acknowledge the fact that the lyrics they wrote for whatever song were terrible and they were 17 so of course they're all over the place
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
It's interesting that in terms of Spiritualised's biggest moments, when they were at the peak of their popularity, came from them nicking the signifiers of gospel but presenting it as total secularised (and depoliticised) form. It reminds me of the Sunday atheist rave churches which sprung up around East London briefly at one point and always struck me as insufferably smug.
 
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forclosure

Well-known member
DannyL said:
It's interesting that in terms of Spiritualised's biggest moments, when they were at the peak of their popularity, came from them nicking the signifiers of gospel but presenting it as total secularised (and depoliticised) form. It reminds me of the Sunday atheist rave churches which sprung up around East London briefly at one point and always struck me as insufferably smug.
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don't remember hearing about those rave churches might've forgotten and yeah you're right and if anything he's still doing that but instead of god its all to do with his inner turmoil with drugs which you could interpret as taking this external thing and making it internal perhaps inspite of how grandiose it is overall. It can come off as smug sure but as i stated before some people can find that kind of thing really powerful in like a give yourself over to the oncoming flood kind of way.

For me the best i can say is that i'm ambivalent on it, never was a believer(neither are my my parents and nan which make us a small anomaly in my family) but because of its conflicting role as a bedrock of inspiration in spite of its historical role i have a smidgen of respect for the black church but its not lost on me that Pierce's interpretation of gospel is of the American branch not the Caribbean African ones (mans originally from Rugby, black people are definitly there but i imagine its a small number)

Its funny cause talking about it yesterday with somebody, even going back to the Spacemen 3 shit him and Kember never made any bones about who or what they were influenced by but the guy i was talking to yesterday took that as them being refferntial whereas for me i see it as them wearing their influences on their sleeves lol not inherently a bad thing but its not hard for me to see a person being put off by that.

That album i was listening to Let it Come down when you think about it, it came out in 2001 so in context that kind of bloated orchestral album that had 100+ session musicians involved was becoming out of fashion and he did pare it down afterwards but this tends to be his main mode.
 
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Benny Bunter

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I dunno, I'll have a think about it. For now I would say the best Spiritualized album is Lazer Guided Melodies by far, maybe as good as Spacemen 3 at their best, the least maximal in terms of not having tons of musicians and overdubs but still a big sound. Not that I've listened to them or S3 for years, but that's probably the only thing I'd go back to nowadays. I like the shimmery farfisa organ sound on that one.

I don't mind the gospel influence too much, but I HATE it when they employ those full gospel choirs though - compare/contrast the S3 version of Lord Will You Hear Me with Spiritualized's.
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
probably just me being an old timer, but I find lots of the AC Cook/PC Music stuff annoyingly maximal. I don't mind maximal when it's an OTT burst of insanity, that can be brilliant. I guess I find it annoying when applied to pop music.
 
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forclosure

Well-known member
Leo said:
probably just me being an old timer, but I find lots of the AC Cook/PC Music stuff annoyingly maximal. I don't mind maximal when it's an OTT burst of insanity, that can be brilliant. I guess I find it annoying when applied to pop music.
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and what example would you give of this?
 
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forclosure

Well-known member
i'm sure somebody has extrapolated that the taste for maximalism as far "current" music and production has some shit to do with like social media speed and the brains inability to process speed at such a rapid clip, responses to late capitalism and its effect on the environment and "Gen Y/Z" being the most gender non conforming and critical of the system in decades.

But to me it just feels like another example of how *ex KGB agent voice* The Americans fail to understand the power of silence
 
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DannyL

Wild Horses
WebEschatology said:
i'm sure somebody has extrapolated that the taste for maximalism as far "current" music and production has some shit to do with like social media speed and the brains inability to process speed at such a rapid clip, responses to late capitalism and its effect on the environment and "Gen Y/Z" being the most gender non conforming and critical of the system in decades.

But to me it just feels like another example of how *ex KGB agent voice* The Americans fail to understand the power of silence
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You've seen all the commentary on the 100 Gecs stuff, yeah? A lot of it just struck me as just wildly reaching but maybe I'm just old and don't "gec" it (boom tish)
 
F

forclosure

Well-known member
DannyL said:
You've seen all the commentary on the 100 Gecs stuff, yeah? A lot of it just struck me as just wildly reaching but maybe I'm just old and don't "gec" it (boom tish)
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not just the but the rest of that whole "scene" if you will

recently it was quite the joy for me to learn that there's actually a few things from that whole soundcloud rap/hyperpop sphere that i do like and this album is one of them
she's got tunes that are more in line with what you expect and when i heard that stuff first i wasn't into it (cheif keef goes to the skatepark is how i put this stuff) but this has more in common with a MIKE/Ade Hakim album
 
V

version

Well-known member
Simon did something on digital maximalism,

pitchfork.com

Maximal Nation

Critic Simon Reynolds dissects electronic dance music's recent switch from minimal aesthetics to the more-is-more sounds of digital maximalists like Rustie, Flying Lotus, and Hudson Mohawke.
pitchfork.com pitchfork.com
 
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