Reynolds' Pazz & Jopp essay

[gek-opel]

True enough. Though that leads to another question: does music criticism affect the marketplace/industry at all? I would say, especially in the last few years, that criticism has very little if any effect on who buys what music.

What's more of interest to me is the critic-musician interaction in terms of influencing what is produced. This is relevant as the Reynoldsian perspective is inherently tied up in not just the mapping of generic shifts and movements and the way they interact with external social phenomena, but also in terms of influencing the actual music being made (which clearly comes from Mr Reynolds' growing up in the time of post punk where this kind of interaction was most fertile...) Mostly this kind of theory-creative relationship seems to be pretty irrelevant nowadays... however it seems to be working somewhat in dubstep, unlike elsewhere (ie- all the talk of minimal crossover appears to be creating a feedback loop esp in the Bristol dubstep scene).

 

[dHarry]

that's a 17m mp3 you got through in less than 10 since i posted it

further proof of the destruction of newtonian space time, in new york at least

d/ling now, but where did it come from? is it good quality (cf destruction of newtonian space time; I haven't even heard it yet!)?

 

[nomadologist]

that's a 17m mp3 you got through in less than 10 since i posted it

further proof of the destruction of newtonian space time, in new york at least

no, i just put it on for a while--can't listen to things very loud/long at work, but i got the gist of it as well as i can for now (the first 5 min sounded pretty repetitive)

 

[nomadologist]

What's more of interest to me is the critic-musician interaction in terms of influencing what is produced. This is relevant as the Reynoldsian perspective is inherently tied up in not just the mapping of generic shifts and movements and the way they interact with external social phenomena, but also in terms of influencing the actual music being made (which clearly comes from Mr Reynolds' growing up in the time of post punk where this kind of interaction was most fertile...) Mostly this kind of theory-creative relationship seems to be pretty irrelevant nowadays... however it seems to be working somewhat in dubstep, unlike elsewhere (ie- all the talk of minimal crossover appears to be creating a feedback loop esp in the Bristol dubstep scene).

Good point. But when you talk about dubstep being partially influenced by journalists writing now--how much of that is actual influence rather than simple circumstance. If you're writing about your friends' music and they read your writing and take it into consideration, enter into a dialogue with you about it (via email or however) that's a little different than, say, Franz Ferdinand reading SR's blissblog and taking his criticism to heart, letting his opinion influence their process/product.

 

[gek-opel]

Tis true that the more proximate the two parties the less notable the effect. But I suspect indie bands in the uk very much areinfluenced by the NME say... almost undeniably so...

 

[nomadologist]

Maybe they are--I haven't read NME for years and years. My impression of that absolutely filthy rag from afar has been that they are intent on trying to ride the crest of any new wave first, to make sure they beat everyone to the punch in trendspotting. I always see them trying to declare the Next Big Thing!!!!!! on their covers, in a way that seems kind of sychophantic. They seem to mourn the days when rockstars were idols and are always trying to claim that some crappy new rock band is the new Stones or whatever.

Am I wrong? I don't know if it's worth actually looking at in order to find out...

 

[mms]

Maybe they are--I haven't read NME for years and years. My impression of that absolutely filthy rag from afar has been that they are intent on trying to ride the crest of any new wave first, to make sure they beat everyone to the punch in trendspotting. I always see them trying to declare the Next Big Thing!!!!!! on their covers, in a way that seems kind of sychophantic. They seem to mourn the days when rockstars were idols and are always trying to claim that some crappy new rock band is the new Stones or whatever.

Am I wrong? I don't know if it's worth actually looking at in order to find out...

its not worth looking at.

 

[nomadologist]

Can't imagine how constructive their criticism would be, heh.

 

[gek-opel]

its not worth looking at.

Unless you want to make yourself very very angry, very very quickly...!

 

[mms]

Unless you want to make yourself very very angry, very very quickly...!

well its utter desperation but it's popular, and a strong brand, one that cynically perpetuates the status quo in the worst way possible tough.

 

[nomadologist]

what's funny is that the U.S. equivalent to NME is Rolling Stone, and almost NO ONE here would give RS the time of day...everyone here sees RS as sort of a dinosaur whose monolithic time in the sun is over...don't know why RS bothers, except that it's a franchise now so Brenner makes tons of money from the peripherals

 

[zhao]

yay! I've caught up! finally! (when I started reading it was up to page 6, and now that I've caught up it's up to 12... but the time it takes me to type this will likely see another few pages added on...)

my little point for now is that I'm not sure that traditional metal heads like the new "hipster metal". I think most of them don't even pay attention to it, or don't get it.

 

[gek-opel]

my little point for now is that I'm not sure that traditional metal heads like the new "hipster metal". I think most of them don't even pay attention to it, or don't get it.

"Hipster metal" as a term is innately pejorative, and has been coined by journalists within the metal scene. These people are not exactly trad metal heads, but those into the full range of post-80s underground metal subgenres (ie death, black, doom, grindcore, metalcore etc etc)... these are people who are attempting to police the membership of their culture from outsiders- those who are not fully invested into metal. From what I can tell some people in metal appear to quite like the stuff which has been termed "Hipster metal", others detest it. This dramatizes nicely a fundamental conflict between patterns of consumption and identification- between those invested in a stable generic identification, and those who are more promiscuous/omnivorous, and either use it as a fashion (dress up in corpse paint) or alternatively draw no cultural identification from it whatsoever.

 

[zhao]

do people think the sounds made by the gyoto monks as "rockist", " "post phallic" or whatever? any number of recordings I have from Tibet certainly fits all 3 descriptors: difficulty, danger, and dark as hell.

 

[zhao]

I guess I'm a traditional metalhead (first concert ever attended: clash of titans - slayer, megadeath, anthrax), and I've always loved Sleep and Sunn o))) and all that... eyehategod was maybe a transitional band.

but the new noise... at this point I stand with the noise purists / traditionalists. the new wave seem like aberrations... sounds like a bunch of kids messing around and descovering this pallette for the first time... while the grand monolithic temples of the genre were erected long time ago (80s).

 

[Chris]

"Hipster metal" as a term is innately pejorative, and has been coined by journalists within the metal scene. These people are not exactly trad metal heads, but those into the full range of post-80s underground metal subgenres (ie death, black, doom, grindcore, metalcore etc etc)... these are people who are attempting to police the membership of their culture from outsiders- those who are not fully invested into metal. From what I can tell some people in metal appear to quite like the stuff which has been termed "Hipster metal", others detest it. This dramatizes nicely a fundamental conflict between patterns of consumption and identification- between those invested in a stable generic identification, and those who are more promiscuous/omnivorous, and either use it as a fashion (dress up in corpse paint) or alternatively draw no cultural identification from it whatsoever.

Aggressive subgenres (metal, punk, drum n bass, gabba) seem to take rockist ideals of the "true" (as black metal heads call it), and their underground, us-against-them spirit to the most literal, extreme ends, investing so much importance and dedication into their particular cult and it's rigid guidelines, that they rarely even venture to somewhat similar styles... punks getting into metal, etc. True, proper metalheads could never be dilettantes.

I like doom and drone, but "true" metalheads would never accept it, I group it in more as prog/psych/artrock with metal imagery/ornamentation.

 

[timellison]

I think the popularity of metal with hipsters lately can be attributed to the oh-you-didn't-expect-me-to-like-that-but-ahhhh-actually-I-do factor, and the fact that nobody wants to be seen dead liking indie-rock anymore.

Nice strawmen.

You know, the first Champs (later known as the Fucking Champs) record CAME OUT IN 1995. It was a little ironic, I suppose (or perhaps it was just a curious development) but pretty genuine even then.

(I mention the time frame just to point out the strangeness of the phenomenon being noted and addressed, as though for the first time, twelve years after it began.)

 

[shudder]

mbv))))

http://www.zshare.net/audio/my-bloody-valentine-you-made-me-realize-live-mp3.html

wow, I just got through that. wow. that ten minute noise freakout was righteous!

 

[Guybrush]

Can I just, once and for all, return to the ‘hipster’ vs ‘a hip person’ subject? Thanks. That marketers call hyper-consuming early-adaptors in the 18-35 bracket (or whatever the definition was) ‘hipsters’ does not mean that we have to use the word the same way, there are plenty of words that have different denotations in different fields. More to the point, my impression is that it is very seldom used with the meaning above, rather it referes to some turbid stereotype of a vaguely sophisticated, hip (another word! = in-the-know, see below), and cosmopolitan person. Here is what Wikipedia writes:

Hipsters is a term used to describe those individuals devoted to retro fashions, independent music and film, alternative comics, and other forms of expression that are popular in hipster subculture The term is sometimes used as a blanket descriptor for fans of indie rock music. More generally, trendsetters in fashion are sometimes called hipsters, though this use is distinct from the hipster subculture, whose fashion sensibilities are specific and not usually destined for the mainstream.

Here is what Wikipedia says about the adjective ‘hip’:

Hip is a slang term, an adjective meaning "fashionably current", referring to someone who is conversant with or deeply involved in a particular trend or subject. "Hip", like "cool", does not refer to one particular quality. What is hip is in constant change.

And, yes, Wikipedia has more gravitas than grapevines and hearsay.

 

[shudder]

guybrush: when I use the term hipster in a non-music context, I'm usually referring to how someone dresses/looks (i.e. vaguely williamsburg brooklyn circa 2003 ).

When I use it w/r/t music, I usually mean something like early adopter, or up on the latest cool music, or something like that.