those hairshirt -wearin' Dissensians

[labrat]

Man 1 and Man 2 enter a greasy spoon

Man 1: "What you got then?"

Dinner lady: "We've got egg, bacon, sausage, and grime-spam. Sausage fried bread mushrooms and grime-spam. Grime-spam, egg, fried tomatoe, grime-spam and grime-spam. Egg, bacon, sausage, fried bread, tomato, mushrooms, and grime-spam. Grime-spam grime-spam grime-spam grime-spam grime-spam grime-spam grime-spam fried egg and grime-spam."

Man 1: "Haven't you got anything without grime-spam in it?"

Dinner Lady: "Well you could have Sausage fried bread mushrooms and grime-spam--that's not got much grime-spam in it."

Man 2: "I'm 'avin' grime-spam grime-spam grime-spam grime-spam grime-spam grime-spam grime-spam fried egg and grime-spam. I love it"

[sketch continues in this vein, Vikings singing 'lovely grime spam' etc...]

John Cleese walks into Rhythim Division with a Kano record in his hand
"I wish to register a complaint....."

 

[blissblogger]

John Cleese walks into Rhythim Division with a Kano record in his hand
"I wish to register a complaint....."

Man: "This genre has deceased. It's past its prime. It's lost its edge."

Shopkeeper: "Nah nah, it's not dead--it's.... it's resting"

 

[k-punk]

My suspicion (stolen from somone in a more forgiving mood on an ILM thread) is that Dissensus has yet to expand to the point where you, Simon and Matt no longer exert a substantial influence over its collective sense of identity.

This might be true in some sense, although I get the impression that most threads (GRIME SPAM!!!!!!!!) have little to do with Matt, Simon or my interests or approach... I think the board could do with some more 'heavyweight' posters, not so much for pop, but for politics and theory... my experience on alt.movies.kubrick suggests that 10 or 15 regular, serious posters is more than enough to carry a board...

where someone disagrees, they articulate their disagreement as being a sign that <i>they are outside</i> the debate, rather than trying to weigh in and send the debate in another direction (hence the "you guys think too much, shame on you"/"maybe this message board isn't for you?" exhanges).

Surely those 'discussions' are going nowhere though... any substantive disagreement would have been taken seriously, but it's difficult to see how meta-level judgements of the type 'this thread shouldn't even be happening' could be uh 'included'. There's clearly an area between embattled 'debate' and bland consensus that is where any interesting discussion happens.

I think if I (over)react to some of the central arguments put forward on Dissensus, it's due to a desire to see people <i>make their case</i> in the same fashion, to take on board the dissenting opinions offered and to refine their argument in the process. This will happen, but it needs the <i>dissent</i> to be of a sufficiently high calibre, which in turn requires that dissenters feel a level of ownership over the board such that they can really engage in the arguments.

Most of the threads I've particularly enjoyed here have involved your contributions, I think. This, partly in answer to Joe's claim that 'we don't understand each other', or are 'talking past each other', which I think is obv true to a certain extent, but such misunderstandings, or partial understandings etc are what makes the conversation an interesting one to have. There's a sense in which I don't 'understand' my own position before I have to articulate it; also, that many positions exist only on the most condensed level of virtuality until they emerge through an interlocutor's interrogation. So, yes, more dissent please...

 

[Tim F]

"Surely those 'discussions' are going nowhere though... any substantive disagreement would have been taken seriously, but it's difficult to see how meta-level judgements of the type 'this thread shouldn't even be happening' could be uh 'included'. There's clearly an area between embattled 'debate' and bland consensus that is where any interesting discussion happens."

No I agree there's little to gain in trying to engage with such comments - I meant more that these comments seem to reflect a certain split in the identity of the board b/w "heavyweights" and, er, grime spam. Most of the people who want to debate already have a level of broad consensus (housing private disagreements), and few others appear interested in getting involved. I think this will change though!

 

[Woebot]

i like being called rabble!

good, cos it WAS a compliment!

 

[bassnation]

No I agree there's little to gain in trying to engage with such comments - I meant more that these comments seem to reflect a certain split in the identity of the board b/w "heavyweights" and, er, grime spam. Most of the people who want to debate already have a level of broad consensus (housing private disagreements), and few others appear interested in getting involved. I think this will change though!

just because some people choose not to get involved with intensely inward-looking discussions such as, this doesn't mean that we are a bunch of thickies, if thats what your inferring.

i've got no problem with people discussing things i have zero interest in, providing that people don't start thinking this somehow makes them special or a cut above others who just want to discuss the latest grime releases.

debate something other than "how we see ourselves in relation to ILM" and think you'd be suprised how many people come out of the woodwork to contribute.

dissesnsus is what it is. i'm being a bit unfair really, because i don't have to read this thread. its just sometimes i like to be irritated, know what i mean.

 

[Tim F]

Bassnation your response couldn't have illustrated my point better, surely?

 

[Tim F]

Perhaps I should have said "sense of identity" - I think the division between heavyweights and grime spam is a false one. i.e I agree with you Bassnation... for all that I am guilty as charged w/r/t navelgazing.

 

[owen]

debate something other than "how we see ourselves in relation to ILM" and think you'd be suprised how many people come out of the woodwork to contribute.

heh i actually kind of agree, at least wrt to this thread- there could have been a quite interesting discussion of aesthetics and politics here, and it kind of degenerated into mark, reynolds and tim honing their positions, which while it is diverting, is a little hermetic.

 

[DJL]

Why did people leave ILM and set up Dissensus and what is its perceived purpose/goal/role amongst the "heavyweights"? A bit of pre-Dissensus history for the unenlightened would be really interesting.

 

[Grievous Angel]

History

Why did people leave ILM and set up Dissensus and what is its perceived purpose/goal/role amongst the "heavyweights"? A bit of pre-Dissensus history for the unenlightened would be really interesting.

As I remember it, Matt (in combination with Mark K-Punk as co-administrator) wanted to set up a discussion board for two reasons... first, to provide a focus for the emergent community of bloggers beyond just blog-rolling. And second, as an attempt to create a forum that would be interesting and stimulating without descending into the kind of back-biting and personal vitriol that too many fora desended into. It's not quite right to say that Dissensus was an out-growth from ILM -- that's not how it was started. I was certainly never an ILM regular.

Rather, I remember ILM being held up as an example of the kind of forum that just didn't have an adequate sense of comradeship.

I quote : "It's pretty much established wisdom that ilm has become at once monstrous (the largest music forum on the web?) and not as fun as it once was. I for one have always been a bit timorous of posting there, it's roamed by some well-known savage egos, unchecked by the even the slightest formal beauracracy. Two recent threads spring to mind as examples of it's corruption, where individuals have been needlessly picked apart by vultures." I for one do not want Dissensus to be a hyper-intellectual killing floor and I've always loved the powerful ethic that underpins Dissensus. Nevertheless it should be pointed out that Mark is an avowed fan of the somewhat combative ILM style of discussion. To quote again from Matt's original announcement of Dissensus on his blog, which you should definitely read for historical context, "if people don't treat others with a certain amount of respect they will be unceremoniously struck off the register".

 

[k-punk]

heh i actually kind of agree, at least wrt to this thread- there could have been a quite interesting discussion of aesthetics and politics here, and it kind of degenerated into mark, reynolds and tim honing their positions, which while it is diverting, is a little hermetic.

Well why not DO IT then? Surely meta-meta critique of thread content is at least one meta too far...

You'd have to have read the thread in a very cursory way to think that it's about how we're seen in relation to ILM... it is, in fact, a discussion about politics and aesthetics, but how it would be possible for Tim, Simon and myself to have such a discussion on those topics without 'honing our positions'? It's for others to get involved if they want to prevent 'hermeticism'.

I'm happy to say that yes, I do think such DISCUSSIONS are several cuts above Grime spam, which is not to say that the PEOPLE posting on those threads are lesser people, that's a whole different claim... and yes, it's true, people don't have to read threads they're not interested in (which is why I ignore grime spam), still less do they have to POST on those threads...

On Paul's comments... a clarification: I'm not at all a fan of ILM. But that's because of any combativeness, it's because of one-upmanship and one-linerdom, which aren't the same thing at all. alt,movies.kubrick, which I certainly very much was a fan of, was combative, and also quite forbidding, in the sense that you really had to feel that what you were posting was worthwhile.

 

[owen]

Well why not DO IT then? Surely meta-meta critique of thread content is at least one meta too far....

fair enough, i was just feeling a little aggrieved that what i thought were interesting points (by myself, i.t, martin and some others) were falling by the wayside a little...

viz, tim earlier-

The idea that T.O.K.'s "Chi Chi Man" is about homophobia is difficult to refute - one need simply refer to the lyric sheet. But the idea that M.I.A.'s music is definitely about a project of post-colonising class tourism, or Kylie's music is definitely about mindless consumption, are much more tenuous (if not, for that, automatically untrue) - both seek to seize control of meaning within a field of interpretation that is contested. I'd be interested in seeing an example such as this where a nu-rockist opted not to trust their own reactions, e.g. despite the fact that they enjoyed Kylie in a way they felt had nothing to do with mindless consumption, they recognised that, "objectively speaking" (i.e. because someone clever had said so), the only way one could enjoy Kylie was through mindless consumption, and therefore they decided to reject their enjoyment.

this is precisely what i was rejecting earlier, the idea that the actual fabric of the music itself carries particular messages. So for instance MIA (who i rather like) exemplifies this not through the media verbiage on the tamil tigers or whatever, but in the sense that her music is a centreless and arguably glib mishmash of various semi-pop forms (rio funk, dancehall etc) and that this has an effect on actual musical (as opposed to lyrical content)

similarly there is the argument about Triumph of the Will. What is 'pleasurable' in that film is not necessarily the interminable speeches, the actual 'content', but the order, the clean lines, the sense of spectacle. hence also what is worth investigating in say, grime, is not 'ah so they say bad things about girls' but more 'why is this aggression and machismo (in grain of voice, in the metallic clatter) so enjoyable

though i concede this all might be a side issue

 

[Rambler]

Forgive me if this is a mis-reading on either part (and if it is, any clarification is welcome!), but from the point of view of a living breathing music theorist I find it odd that Mark should categorise Tim F's position as the objectivist-formalist one. On a scale of subjectivism--objectivism in music theory I've always felt Tim to be on the (good) far reaches of subjectivism. For most of the last 100 years music theory has been extremely, dogmatically, formalist, and it's only in the last 20 years or so that the idea of a listening subject has even been admitted - and that was to bitter debate that still rumbles on. I'm not advocating a turn to formalist approaches to music at all, but I am suggesting that there is a well established discipline (that even the most subjectivist academic acknowledges and deliberately draws upon) of studying musical 'objects' as distinct in themselves. I don't agree with this positivism, but the techniques developed by it are legitimate and valuable when turned to more productive, flexible ends.

Although actual musical meaning (this piece means 'homophobia is bad'/'Tamil terrorists are good', etc.) is impossible, in the sense of direct correlation between music and real life, meaningful (semiotic, etc) structures aren't difficult to draw out in music, and when sensibly applied can be used to speculate on why certain music elicits certain reactions. The whole MIA thing encapsulates this: taking her music and her personal pronouncements at face value (whether you like the purely sensual feel of the music or not), it's difficult to sympathise much with her; but when the music is prodded, just enough, it quickly undermines any attempt to project a consistent, coherent political message onto MIA and her words/actions. What you are left with are a bunch of jumbled up slogans, riffs, cliches, hooks and images. It's from this jumble that people are able to project their own convictions of what her music is actually about. (One legitimate projection is that this is a cheap trick, a po-mo cliche, but that's not a criticism that is often floated.) It is possible, of course, to reject a close reading of the music when forming (and defending) a detailed opinion of MIA, but that would be to reject great swathes of theory and method that can be enlisted to assist in forming that opinion, which would, I believe, be thus incomplete.

Side note - no, as an academic you don't need to enjoy the music that you study: it is, on the whole, an object of professional interest. But on the other hand, if you want to do anything worthwhile with it, you have to have some feeling for it, and be prepared to spend a lot of time with it. For the sake of personal sanity, 'pure' enjoyment certainly helps!

 

[blissblogger]

As I remember it, Matt (in combination with Mark K-Punk as co-administrator) wanted to set up a discussion board for two reasons... first, to provide a focus for the emergent community of bloggers beyond just blog-rolling. ... It's not quite right to say that Dissensus was an out-growth from ILM -- that's not how it was started.

i wasn't privy to the decisions that led to dissensus forming but i always imagined that if it was an outgrowth of anything it was more an attempt to resurrect in a more structured and administrated environment all that interesting energy that had developed in k-punk's comments boxes, which got really crowded and active and for a good season or two was very much the place to be -- and then almost inevitably succumbing to the same syndromes as elsewhere of trolls, bad blood, fixed adverserial roles etc --

in terms of people coming into threads and dropping "loada theorywank this" stinkbombs and then exiting, bottom line is that it's just a bit rude. the grime spam crack was witty, but the other interjections--and this sort of thing generally--seem inappropriate given that the two people who set up the whole joint are both theorists in their own different ways.

 

[droid]

No I agree there's little to gain in trying to engage with such comments - I meant more that these comments seem to reflect a certain split in the identity of the board b/w "heavyweights" and, er, grime spam. Most of the people who want to debate already have a level of broad consensus (housing private disagreements), and few others appear interested in getting involved. I think this will change though!

It seems curious to me that this split (evident I think in many of the comments relating to grime spam) seems to be between the heavyeight 'theorists'and their inspiring/heremtic/masturbatory (depending on your perspective and the size of the chip on yer shoulder ) threads, with an (almost) purely academic involvement to music - and the 'rabble', which is made up mainly of commentators who are in some way involved with the practical side of music: Production/Promotion/Djng/Events etc... it seems that those who actually make and are involved in music on a practical level, dont neccesarily have the time or the will to engage with those who theorise about it - and that those who theorise about it have little interest in hearing the opinions of non-theorists. Obviously some of this is down to context/personal associations etc... some of the issues mentioned in the 'Bloggers anonymity' thread over in thought, but it is still a (slightly) worrying development....

in terms of people coming into threads and dropping "loada theorywank this" stinkbombs and then exiting, bottom line is that it's just a bit rude. the grime spam crack was witty, but the other interjections--and this sort of thing generally--seem inappropriate given that the two people who set up the whole joint are both theorists in their own different ways.

Spot on - If you aint got nuthin constructive to say - dont say it. And it should go both ways - whether you think a thread is over your head or beneath your contempt, just keep shtum. Its just rude - plus it says more about the commentator than the thread IMO...

I for one do not want Dissensus to be a hyper-intellectual killing floor and I've always loved the powerful ethic that underpins Dissensus.

Big up yourself Mr Meme - couldnt agree more.

 

[Buick6]

I like music that sounds good when you smoke drugs.

But I also like songs/trax that can uplift or pacify my moods.

And I appreciate music that has density sonically ie psychadelic (which can work with OR without drugs in perfectly equal measure, it's based on yr attention span, really). I really, really enjoy and LOVE music where you discover things around the 10th listen, which is part of the reason I have problems with alot of UK music post mid 80s - it was sonically, and still is - all SURFACE. That 'instant pop, smashing ooh-la-la bliss hit'. It's actually like a wank or a heroin fix, really....

If those things are in place I get pleasure, the rest is all fucken the biggest load of bollocks, bullshit, horseshit, navel gazing, wank, get a fucken life mate etc!

 

[droid]

If those things are in place I get pleasure, the rest is all fucken the biggest load of bollocks, bullshit, horseshit, navel gazing, wank, get a fucken life mate etc!

Cmon now - thats a bit OTT. Each to their own - and as Blissblogger pointed out, this is/was intended to be a place for slightly more intellectual discussions about music, so perhaps the odd bit of respect to that principle (and to the people who run this place) wouldnt go amiss?

You may not agree/like or enjoy discussions like this, but they are certainly just as valid as any other threads on Dissensus, and even If you dont want to engage - its bad form to dismiss them in the manner in which youve done so above (notwithstanding the smiley )..

Less of the Diss - and more of the Sense(us) please!

 

[Tim F]

I think it's illuminating that my comments re the identity split have been interpreted as a decisive taking of sides! When what I was trying to say was that it seemed unfortunate that, to use droid's formulation, threads are split between non-practical theoretical engagement and non-theoretical practical engagement (not sure if i'm entirely comfortable with this binary but it's useful for this discussion). Much better to weave in and out of the two modes surely?

 

[droid]

I think it's illuminating that my comments re the identity split have been interpreted as a decisive taking of sides!

I think this might be down to the slight undercurrent of tension that seems to be running through the board at the mo. Unresolved issues tend to sour things a bit - and Its easy to misinterpret and make assumptions about your fellow posters in the heat of indignance!

When what I was trying to say was that it seemed unfortunate that, to use droid's formulation, threads are split between non-practical theoretical engagement and non-theoretical practical engagement (not sure if i'm entirely comfortable with this binary but it's useful for this discussion). Much better to weave in and out of the two modes surely?

Much much better IMO - and one of the things that makes (made?) this place so interesting is when the worlds collide and both 'sides' are compelled to engage in dialogue - which can (occasionally) be sparked either by a mix/ tune/grime (spam ) thread, or by an accessibly phrased theory (wank ) thread...