The Chap "Ham"

Woebot

Well-known member
Anyone else picked this up? I was a little disappointed, but its not bad. What it does have in it's favour is that they're actually making a sound. Does anyone else know what I mean by this? Its as if Wire music is so nebulous and intertextual that bohos are actually afraid to strike out, be direct, not be determined to make record-collection music.

Actually I reckon its not as difficult as people make out to be original, people have just become used to being toadies. Theyv've got used to the emotional security that comes with not being original. Original may even be the wrong word (thinking out loud) cos this isnt that startling innovative, praise the lord, its just direct. Unfussy.

Also the other thing I thought was that maybe this signals the end of "The Dominating Hegemony" of ambience or post-ambience over Wire music. By that I mean that the mag, since Toop's "Ocean of Sound" has pretty much explored every cul-de-sac leading out of the market phenomenon know as Ambience. Avant-Garde Classical music, Free-Jazz, Glitchtronica etc all this I reckon, in its purest essence, is consumed and construed as a form of Ambient music. OK you say Keenan and his post-Bangs Rock-into-Free music trip, hmm, I dunno if that would be sustained by a Rock market. I reckon that's been sustained by a post-Ambient market. Certainly thats how most people I know ended up with a taste for the Avant-Garde....
 

Rachel Verinder

Well-known member
"There is a lot to be said for originality. But not originality alone, for there is originality in stupidity."

(Mingus, from sleevenote to Let My Children Hear Music, possibly the greatest sleevenote in the world)
 

mms

sometimes
WOEBOT said:
Has no-one else picked this up? Tut tut, not very hip of you all!

i wsn't that into it on first listen but it seemed better than most of the other stuff out now with guitars.

no one has really talked about the isolee or ark albums on here - most interesting and enjoyable they are.
 

nonightsweats

Active member
i've got the chap (and isolee) and they both really lack some undefineable thing for me to make them great. each have 3 really good tracks and the rest are permutations of these with lessening impact on each listen. at least neither over-stays the welcome.
 

bun-u

Trumpet Police
I haven't got this...but now like the isolee album (after several listens and moving from indifference)
 

mms

sometimes
bun-u said:
I haven't got this...but now like the isolee album (after several listens and moving from indifference)


i quite like the lumpy funk thing, the sort of unsmoothness and inventive optimistic amateurism of both this and the ark lp. the records have personality and a kind of mistakes are part of the process humanity.

you've got that on one side then you've got horrible obviously accidentally good in parts stuff like vitalic that people are going nuts over. irony at its worst, thats what you get when too many students are getting taught about postmodernisim.

and then the dry studio expertese of the latest monolake which is too boring to talk about. weird how wire got on their dicks.
 
Last edited:
Top