Sex and sensuality

[infinite thought]

nina, i am now officially sort of scared of you.

ha ha! I wondered if anyone was going to spot the fact that my list consisted almost entirely of paens to paedophilia/guilt-ridden homosexuality/the rape and murder of sexual partners/militaristic beats and other various forms of flirtation with fascist iconography (plus Bach!).

so it was a little bit of a joke, tho the cold electro tip is true (tho not the cold jungle thing with Baby D - that track is just too melancholy, as others pointed out). Anything warm or soupily guitary is way mulchy, like rubbing yourself against a towel. Or a kitten. Euw.

Wire/Magazine probably more likely the case if we have to write proper lists!

 

[dominic]

(tho not the cold jungle thing with Baby D - that track is just too melancholy, as others pointed out)

actually i think the baby d track is very "warm," though again, not oriented to sex

if you need a sexy jungle song, maybe something like bad girl's "bad girl" on ibiza?

or desiya's "comin on strong"

 

[infinite thought]

actually i think the baby d track is very "warm," though again, not oriented to sex

what do people mean by warm and cold here? sort of curious like. I mean, I think I know what I mean when I say that a track is one or the other, but then again, maybe not.

 

[D84]

I had to think about this one...

and my vote is for "The Passion Continues" by Zillatron (Bootsy Collins) - makes me wanna pick up the phone

 

[oli]

soft cell

memorabilia

 

[dominic]

there's no precise definition, at least not in my use

but i associate certain sounds and qualities with "warm," and others with "cold"

so i associate cold with . . . .

electro/techno
machinic/robotic
punky singing
distance
irony
europe
hardness
starkness
edginess
angularity
minimalism
aggression

i associate warm with . . . .

broken beats/nu jazz
soulful singing
africa
consciousness
grooviness
cosmic
love
consolation
bongos
depth
oceanic
hippy dippy

 

[zhao]

there's no precise definition, at least not in my use

but i associate certain sounds and qualities with "warm," and others with "cold"

what about Warm Leatherrete. is it "warm" or "cold"

 

[infinite thought]

I'd be in more or less total sympathy with Dominic's lists (in which case, there's no comparison...angularity or bongos....tough call. not.)

but then Grace Jones messes everything up! perhaps warm leatherette is either absolute zero cold, or heat death of the universe warm. er, or both at the same time. anyway, you'd have to be pretty f-ing glam to do the wild thing to it.

 

[labrat]

The genre with the most explicit Death and Sensuality modes is Goth, practicaly all goth records have eroticism as a referent;

off the top of me head;

Sisters of Mercy- Kiss the Carpet
Gene loves Jezebel- Cow
March Violets-Crow Baby
Sex Gang Children-Sebastiane
Specimen-Beauty of Poison
The Birthday Party-Release the Bats (obv)
Siouxsie and the Banshees-Love in a Void

etc etc

 

[k-punk]

Warm Leatherette = cold, surely

There's hot and cold Goth:

Birthday Party - always hot

Banshees - The Scream - cold

Kiss in the Dream House - hot, or as Jon Dale had it, humid

(interesting how hot/cold crosses with dry/wet actually)

 

[stelfox]

yeah, but you can have sexy coldness, whereas it difficult to have sexy dryness - and i'm not being disgusting here. brittle, dessicated textures aren't that alluring, but icy cold ones can really do it for me sometimes.

 

[blunt]

[...] so i associate cold with . . . . [..] electro/techno [,] europe [and] minimalism

Interesting (particularly the part about "Europe"). In my earlier posting, I forgot to mention "Life's A Gas" by Mike Inc., and there's too much Chain Reaction lushness to mention here - once I start, I won't stop. And I think they cover off all three of the above quite nicely. Can something be glacial and warm at the same time? "Life's A Gas" definitely pulls it off, I think.

(I know you said it's not a precise definition - I just thought I'd use this as an excuse to add some more tunes to the sexy list )

 

[adverb]

ooh - sunday morning by moodyman - in fact the whole of silent introduction really works. and theo parrish, especially his rotating assembly stuff and that edit of jill scott.


lil' louis - "beat that bitch with a bat" doesn't seem to do the trick however.

 

[owen]

yeah, but you can have sexy coldness, whereas it difficult to have sexy dryness - and i'm not being disgusting here. brittle, dessicated textures aren't that alluring, but icy cold ones can really do it for me sometimes.

well ice- being not far from water, yes? so hence adult.= sexy, autechre= not sexy

must confess dominic's cold list encompasses everything i like and the warm list everything i don't...(spose 'oceanic' can be fun)

 

[stelfox]

that's not to say brittle, dessicated stuff doesn't sound good on occasion. i can totally enjoy something like xenakis's persepolis - i just can't imagine getting especially jiggy to it.

 

[mms]

yeah, but you can have sexy coldness, whereas it difficult to have sexy dryness - and i'm not being disgusting here. brittle, dessicated textures aren't that alluring, but icy cold ones can really do it for me sometimes.

thomas koners stuff is really sensuous - also some of aphex's early cold echoey ambience

 

[shykitten]

hmm, fab thread to discover at 2.31am while susceptible to some sort of abreaction...

i find Goldfrapp very sensual. interesting trying to plot them on the cold/wet, warm/dry grid, as i always think of Felt Mountain as like ice, which then melts in Black Cherry. possibly then FM is for me a kind of between-text, cold, smooth, fragile (maybe somewhere between 'soft' and 'hard' as well, more possible co-ordinates?). BC is more warm and lush although its stomping electro-current is ambiguous...

Siouxsie and the Banshees are another favourite. i hear The Scream as less erotic than bruising, in the Ballard Crash mode; sex-as-trauma/mechanical-operation etc. (see also 'Warm Leatherette'). A Kiss In The Dreamhouse in contrast is a real heatwave, with 'Slowdive', 'Melt' and of course 'Obsession', which seems to come from some very dark, breathy place... and i have a weird thing about 'Cocoon' on there, although i don't know if it's strictly sexual except in the bodily sense of gestation or amniotic rhythms, but it is like a lyric straight out of my unconscious... the later Peepshow is more like sex-as-performance/carnival, voyeurism, dressing up, and tiptoeing along the sex/death boundary.