berlin is where he's at nowdays.
"Hello Obama, goodbye meaningful music"
- Thread starter Alfons
- Start date
berlin is where he's at nowdays.
shiels
_
Fuckin right i was the whitest, weasliest person for a 20 mile radius. i was well surprised at the lack of good house music in chicago, scoured the internet and asked about for ghetto tech stuff etc and found nothing. Most of the dance music i heard about was european actually.
I saw some great dancers in america, black girls especially. WTF!. Everyone could do the Soulja boy dance, they tried to teach me n all but i was too embarassed.
I saw some great dancers in america, black girls especially. WTF!. Everyone could do the Soulja boy dance, they tried to teach me n all but i was too embarassed.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Yes people here I would say are very good dancers, they mostly do the sort of hip-hop bump/grind bootyshake thing that I think is very fun. It takes some doing but especially the more you live in a neighborhood where that's done everywhere, the more natural it becomes.
wat
exactly, first thing I thought. Meaning and significance?... This decade?
I mean, I'll sometimes think about music's relationship to the times too, I'm not going to fault him for that, but this is one of the most backwards think-pieces on music I've ever read. There are different kinds of escapism. There's escapism that hides its head in the sand or gives up and gives in, and then there's escapism that creates, dances, freaks out, experiments... despite it's surroundings... maybe to create, embody, or provide something that's needed, to restart or reify better potentials. What good are stale protest songs that change nothing and convince no one? And yeah, even if art does react, who says it has to be done lyrically, it could be in the mood, in the aesthetic, in the gestures.
I'm guessing the guy just doesn't listen to very much music. Gets an E for Effort I guess.
exactly, first thing I thought. Meaning and significance?... This decade?
I mean, I'll sometimes think about music's relationship to the times too, I'm not going to fault him for that, but this is one of the most backwards think-pieces on music I've ever read. There are different kinds of escapism. There's escapism that hides its head in the sand or gives up and gives in, and then there's escapism that creates, dances, freaks out, experiments... despite it's surroundings... maybe to create, embody, or provide something that's needed, to restart or reify better potentials. What good are stale protest songs that change nothing and convince no one? And yeah, even if art does react, who says it has to be done lyrically, it could be in the mood, in the aesthetic, in the gestures.
I'm guessing the guy just doesn't listen to very much music. Gets an E for Effort I guess.
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This is a very good point! All critics look for one thing most of all in anything that they turn their eye too - material to write about. Forms of art or music which don't lend themselves so easily to that tends to get underplayed in the press as a result.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Do you think that's why so many people in the blogosphere write about music in terms of theory, like k-punk, et al? Because otherwise you're either going to be describing sounds as they strike you sonically with words that are stabs in the dark (I kind of like this sort of music writing), doing a very tedious and dense technical analysis, or writing about lyrics/social/political significance.
scottdisco
rip this joint please
i've not read The Wire for ages but some of their capsule writers i really enjoy for the sort of journalism of the first type you identity Nomad: Dave Tompkins, Hua Hsu, Clive Bell, Steve Barker, too many to mention etc.
(actually i remember the first time i started seeing short reviews from our very own Si Silverdollar in the capsule pages and he had some beautiful turns of phrase.)
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scottdisco
rip this joint please
also, if JB Steane still writes about classical vocals (anybody?) in Gramophone (another mag i've not touched for ages) then he is one of the few writers i would regularly check for fairly dry, well, drier, breakdowns.
littlebird
Wild Horses
i spent a lot of my youth studying music theory. that said, i'd much rather read the "stabs in the dark" as you describe anyday.
or anything in regards to lyrics.
littlebird
Wild Horses
and then there's escapism that creates, dances, freaks out, experiments... despite it's surroundings... maybe to create, embody, or provide something that's needed, to restart or reify better potentials. What good are stale protest songs that change nothing and convince no one? And yeah, even if art does react, who says it has to be done lyrically, it could be in the mood, in the aesthetic, in the gestures.
I'm guessing the guy just doesn't listen to very much music. Gets an E for Effort I guess.
or needs some E.
experimental sounds and form, bending genres, or freak outs (as you mention) are a protest in themselves, are they not? at least in protest of expectation, style, the mundane.
or needs some E.
yeah, the man could definitely use some E
Yeah, I think so. "They" expect "us" to come at them with Woodie Guthrie-style protest ballads at this point (maaaaan
). We have to continue to throw curves.I'm half joking I guess, right now I'd rather have a revolution of unity as opposed to more us-against-them protest. The difference or revolution could maybe be just in the difference from the past, through bold, strange forms, but not any kind of antagonistic difference from each other.
....(maaaaan)
littlebird
Wild Horses
Yeah, I think so. "They" expect "us" to come at them with Woodie Guthrie-style protest ballads at this point (maaaaan
I'm half joking I guess, right now I'd rather have a revolution of unity as opposed to more us-against-them protest. The difference or revolution could maybe be just in the difference from the past, through bold, strange forms, but not any kind of antagonistic difference from each other.
....(maaaaan)
everytime i read (maaaaan) above i hear "the Dude's" voice in my head ("this aggression will not stand, man"), blended with some Guthrie-esque protest singer.
but yes. throw curves, change the expectation, EXPRESS. but it doesn't have to be an us-against-them. we don't need one big bad to sing/dance/drop out/roll/fling our bodies into, do we? there is plenty of bad to go around, and barriers to kick down (man).
littlebird
Wild Horses
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
plus UR & Drexciya, Moodymann, etc. plus on the Cabs tip 23 Skidoo at their most disco not disco, PIL at the their most death disco, the Flux of Pink Indians LP that John Eden's blog shares a name with. Fela. hell Soul Brother #1 & Funkadelic.
"Sensoria" is that jam though.
littlebird
Wild Horses
'Sensoria' is a favourite of mine.
haven't heard mention of Flux of the Pink Indians in ages.
wondering now if i still have Neu Smell anymore...
riiiight. cos the bush years inspired so much meaningful, good, protest songs in popular music. :slanted:
tbfair, bush was just such an obvious villain that it made it hard for anyone to make a decent protest song without making you want to roll your eyes at the artist for stating the bleeding obvious. so that made it harder. but still, this type of argument is over simplified.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
DJ Mag used to have a nice line in straight-down-the-line descriptive reviews: the ever-present bpm count and a liberal use of onomatopoeia to convey all the burbling, squelching and zipping of the latest trance and techno. Almost saved you the job of listening to the stuff.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Another band on my extensive should-check-them-out-at-some-point list...any particular recommendations?
Too true. I love the little guitar sample on that track ('Isolation', Joy Div?).