When Do We Stop Finding New Music?

[dilbert1]

People are most likely to change a generic preference not because they've found a new genre but because they themselves have changed e.g. most commonly in not being able to put up with extremes of speed or volume any more.

Yes. We are changed by all sorts of internal and external factors. The point would be to let yourself become changed also by encounters with new and/or different works of art

 

[shakahislop]

can only speak for myself, but the stuff i listen to, and to some extent the way i listen to it, is totally different now to what it was two years ago. the key difference has been being able to go out to clubs fairly regularly. its restructured how i hear things. probably loads of people on here have had the same experience.

the other thing that has made a bit of a difference has been things like planetarium and present sounds in nyc. they're not clubs but being able to listen to things on very good soundsystems in places designed to make you focus and listen has made some kinds of music make sense. it opens up new vistas. in the same way as first getting an mp3 player also opened up new ways of listening that are normal and mundane fifteen years later

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Good luck accomplishing that complacently jacking off in your jungle hammock

I've already told you I listen to all sorts but it's unlikely I'll be presented with something radically different and if it is radically different the numbers game means there's not going to be much of it.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Yes. We are changed by all sorts of internal and external factors. The point would be to let yourself become changed also by encounters with new and/or different works of art

I've been on the most musically diverse and recondite space on the internet for 20 years and you tell us what's happened to our preferences over this period.

 

[dilbert1]

I've already told you I listen to all sorts but it's unlikely I'll be presented with something radically different and if it is radically different the numbers game means there's not going to be much of it.

Thems the breaks. If you want something, you have to work for it. If you don’t, then you won’t. Whoever said sophistication came easy?

 

[dilbert1]

I've been on the most musically diverse and recondite space on the internet for 20 years and you tell us what's happened to our preferences over this period.

I’m not tracking anyone’s personal journey, more keen on absorbing others’ wisdom here, benefitting from the fruits of their efforts. But I can tell you for a fact, you haven’t put me on to jack shit brother!

 

[shakahislop]

there's an associated phenomenon which is when your ears and beliefs change so much that music that you used to love sounds boring or repulsive. half of what's going on when people talk about music with one another is a totally disavowed but very much present sense of: the fact that you like this music says something about your soul. this machine works on you, it links into who you are in some way and the fact that it works says something revealing. the disdain for indie rock comes from something like that: how could this music do that to you, how can you admit to feeling weak and vulnerable like that. looking back at the music that did something to your own soul is digging into your own autobiography. especially when you can remember the affects it had on you.

 

[dilbert1]

There’s also the experience of previous likes being in some way redeemed or opened up at a higher level by new experiences. Even if some things I used to like make me cringe or I can now so clearly read the contours of the attraction I once had such that it seems transparently the result of adolescent confusion, I can still honor the route along which I traveled to arrive at today and tomorrow and beyond. I’ve never once looked back and thought, “God, what was I thinking?” because I was always searching for something I still haven’t completely found. Statisticians be damned, I refuse to become geriatric at 33 years old. Death and disease be my only obstacle to discovery and development!

 

[shakahislop]

you need little pushes here and there. dissensus is a good one. although the parameters of acceptability are pretty narrow that is a lot better than the boring mulch anything goes approach of almost all the internet. i spent a covid christmas in the bath in 2020 self-isolated and listening to dissensus drill and bennycore dancehall. that was a good nudge. was great feeling the technicolour dancehall sounds flood in through a newly opened door. the wire is a good nudger as well. you need a bit of faith that you're being pushed in the right direction.

 

[dilbert1]

you need a bit of faith that you're being pushed in the right direction.

Absolutely, scenius etc. This is also what I meant by once feeling healthy competition amongst my peers, which absolutely pushed me, and I’m probably still coasting off that same basic impetus.

 

[dilbert1]

@mixed_biscuits you know I’m a fellow hardcore jungle patriot. Just rattling off my convictions! I aspire to know and enjoy life’s manifold exotic pleasures. And the good Lord forbid I ever sound like the wretched anarcho fun police @version

“What within us is anxious to protect the inner chains that bind us, [is] so sick that it clings to our conditions of existence… finds it pleasant to pass the time in hip cafes sipping lattes with jungle in the background while surfing on one’s MacBook—the Sunday of life alloyed with the end of history… is expecting solutions.” - The Invisible Committee, Now (2017)

 

[dilbert1]

@shakahislop maybe hating honey moon is the anarchist in me after all

 

[shakahislop]

@shakahislop maybe hating honey moon is the anarchist in me after all

i think that's just good taste

 

[subvert47]

I posted the article because it supports a common perception: that a lot of people's music tastes begin – and end – with what they listened to as a teenager, when music was important to them.

Of course what he says doesn't apply to me

But having said that, post punk (which is what I listened to as a teenager) is still one of my favourite eras, one I keep going back to – including investigating old stuff to see if I missed anything.

 

[version]

Yeah ive always assumed you read better more interesting books as you get older, there’s so much out there, so much that what you already know leads to.

Or you settle into a Tom Clancy groove.

 

[dilbert1]

Or you settle into a Tom Clancy locked groove.

 

[thirdform]

There’s also the experience of previous likes being in some way redeemed or opened up at a higher level by new experiences. Even if some things I used to like make me cringe or I can now so clearly read the contours of the attraction I once had such that it seems transparently the result of adolescent confusion, I can still honor the route along which I traveled to arrive at today and tomorrow and beyond. I’ve never once looked back and thought, “God, what was I thinking?” because I was always searching for something I still haven’t completely found. Statisticians be damned, I refuse to become geriatric at 33 years old. Death and disease be my only obstacle to discovery and development!

so you never flirted with sasha - xpander?

I'm still horrified @version compared it toBasic Channel. even if I can sort of see the appeal from a 13 year old pov.

Having said that, this one has the roman abramovich 2003 chelsea acquisition vibe written all over it, even if it was released a year before.


I get Augustus didn't want to be known as Bogdan Nicolae Cojocaru in silicon valley, but we see ya!

 

[thirdform]

The other thing is that the well of new genres seems pretty dry, not least because electronic music's possibilities have been exhaustively explored. The mainstream charts are horrifically middle of the road, and the way songs come in and out of popularity ad aeternitatem shows how the music that's around is not necessarily the music of now, new expressions that erupt into our consciousness and shock or bewilder with novelty and surprise.

no they haven't. maqam, (or what the greeks called modes) for instance, has not even been remotely explored enough in electronic music.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I’m not tracking anyone’s personal journey, more keen on absorbing others’ wisdom here, benefitting from the fruits of their efforts. But I can tell you for a fact, you haven’t put me on to jack shit brother!

You just don't like much music.

Look at @Mr. Tea: presented with a daily platter of the most exotic and delectable musical offerings and his favourite style is still turgid antiquated electronica as long as someone is playing a goddamn bass guitar over it as well.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

@dilbert1 you didn't understand the numbers game point: it's that yes, one can find goodies in other genres the likes of which matches anything one likes in one's own genre, but the eye-opener then is not this other genre but it's particular instantiation and one swallow does not make a summer e.g. Shpongle in noodly electronica, Heilung in atavistic folk, Devin Townsend in operatic metal.

I think what it boils down to is that one's favourite genre has more to do with the tolerability of the average stuff as much as the excellence of the rest.