Reynolds hardcore continuum event

L

Lichen

Well-known member
craner said:
Unlimited accessibility, downloadable tracks, re-issues and mp3 blogs and other archivists, live-streaming online pirate radio stations and all sorts of endless digital radio stations and digital TV stations, the constant barrage of pop culture everywhere, a neverending, suffocating soundtrack to everything that happens at any time, apart from in the Gobi desert or Amazon rain forest or something (if you're not in a van) has effectively killed music. I mean don't you feel sick off it, glutted? No one ever looks forward to listening to music anymore because it's never switched off.

This is apart from the fact that pop music has turned out to be meaningless shorn of context and narrative (always both imposed and created as well as existent). I mean, even something as small and apparently unimportant as losing the concept of Side A and Side B of an album has been aesthetically debilitating. All the best music has been produced working against limitations, not without them. It's more than inertia, it's a terminal condition! I feel like I've been living without music for the last 8 years, precisely because I've been suffocated by it. I don't even like stuff I like anymore.
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You've spoken my mind.
Music has become pabulum to me
My ears hurt from all the MP3's.
I hate my iPod and my laptop.
I hate the jukebox at work.
I hate the fact someone just gave me every Kompakt release ever in 2 minutes.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
craner said:
Unlimited accessibility, downloadable tracks, re-issues and mp3 blogs and other archivists, live-streaming online pirate radio stations and all sorts of endless digital radio stations and digital TV stations, the constant barrage of pop culture everywhere, a neverending, suffocating soundtrack to everything that happens at any time, apart from in the Gobi desert or Amazon rain forest or something (if you're not in a van) has effectively killed music. I mean don't you feel sick off it, glutted? No one ever looks forward to listening to music anymore because it's never switched off.

This is apart from the fact that pop music has turned out to be meaningless shorn of context and narrative (always both imposed and created as well as existent). I mean, even something as small and apparently unimportant as losing the concept of Side A and Side B of an album has been aesthetically debilitating. All the best music has been produced working against limitations, not without them. It's more than inertia, it's a terminal condition! I feel like I've been living without music for the last 8 years, precisely because I've been suffocated by it. I don't even like stuff I like anymore.
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Only just seen this.

Pure genius.

Especially the last line (altho i can recommnd listening to loads of really anonymous rubbish all the time. that way, the occasional good ones stand out)
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Corpsey said:
I agree with a lot of this, or at least sympathise. Music can become something of a background hum, especially if you're obsessed with it... In the age of the shuffle, sometimes it seems like each piece of music is just another option to add to the playlist (or, if you're a nerd/'hipster', to the tick-list). I think listening to music (as well as making it) on a PC for so long has led me to associate it too much with visual media, its almost only when I listen to my mp3 player while I'm out and about that I really listen intently to things and hear them properly. I've found all this writing recently about the ways we listen to music very interesting...
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I think one solution for this - at least it was for me - is to impose some of those limits that Craner's talking about yourself. deciding what I really liked - for me, mainly jungle (with a few side excursions), doing away with the kind of obsessive compulsion of unlimited downloading, that mentality that you've got to know & have everything.

to relate this to the HC that SR piece on wonky (which was kinda eh but much better than I'd expected) brought up on his familiar tropes - that there's a certain power to scenes, to specific sounds, that wanton eclecticism lacks (he's got some great old stuff where he savages drill n bass on this point plus its' simultaneously condescending/parasitic relationship to jungle proper) - limits are still imposed in some ways on producers, the limits of meeting dancefloor demand. more than ever I think functionality is an important element in music.

ah well I guess this got a little meandering.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Lichen said:
You've spoken my mind.
Music has become pabulum to me
My ears hurt from all the MP3's.
I hate my iPod and my laptop.
I hate the jukebox at work.
I hate the fact someone just gave me every Kompakt release ever in 2 minutes.
Click to expand...

absolutely no offense & I mean this in the best possible way - so stop listening. or listen selectively. delete the Kompakt discography.

or don't, whatever. I just mean that listening time is the one limit that you can still impose yourself, how much, how & what.
 
mos dan

mos dan

fact music
padraig (u.s.) said:
absolutely no offense & I mean this in the best possible way - so stop listening. or listen selectively. delete the Kompakt discography.

or don't, whatever. I just mean that listening time is the one limit that you can still impose yourself, how much, how & what.
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yeah i agree completely padraig.. while i feel your respective pain, craner, lichen and crackerjack, if it's getting too much, be more assertive. stop downloading. go for a walk. listen to an old record you know and love. it's easy to feel swamped but at the same time there's no need for despair... this pessimism about creative slow-downs or this internet 'glutting' us all isn't strictly necessary imho.
 
L

Lichen

Well-known member
padraig (u.s.) said:
absolutely no offense & I mean this in the best possible way - so stop listening. or listen selectively. delete the Kompakt discography.

or don't, whatever. I just mean that listening time is the one limit that you can still impose yourself, how much, how & what.
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None taken. I'm going to slow right down.

It feels like I have a junk food habit.

And stop downloading....absolutely. It's big part of the problem.
 
hucks

hucks

Your Message Here
Following on from the Drexiya thread I downloaded half a gig of their stuff, and then thought - what did I do that for? I don't have time to liste to that kind of quanitity of one artist.

That is the first time that has happened to me. Hopefully the last, too.
 
C

craner

Beast of Burden
I don't download either. That wasn't really my point. I was trying to say that with all periods and genres and obscuraties all equally available in exactly the same way, everything is levelled out, the narrative ends, mystery and epiphany, as well as the immediate moment, which is what pop music is all about really, all disappear.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
craner said:
I was trying to say that with all periods and genres and obscuraties all equally available in exactly the same way, everything is levelled out, the narrative ends, mystery and epiphany, as well as the immediate moment, which is what pop music is all about really, all disappear.
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& my point was, create the mystery, impose the obsurity, yourself. create the immediate moment (though, frankly, that's one of those things that sounds cool but I dunno if it means anything) yourself. you're saying there's no more context. that's not true, there's still a context, people are just bypassing it & that's a choice. one can choose to stop & pay attention again.

all this (not from you, just generally) "pop music has lost it's context", SR's piece on music's seeming disconnection from the economy, I call bullshit on it. this is still actual people doing actual stuff, it's not just internet thought experiments.

whatever, end of history qua music, eh. not to be a jerk but I'm sure people will continue making/performing/perhaps even trying to sell pop music even as it's immortal essence or whatever evaporates.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
craner said:
Youtube destroyed Drexciya's mystery for me, there you go!
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exactly then don't watch YouTube videos of Drexciya or about them. I mean Gerald Donald wasn't holding a gun to your head was he:)?

it's a little bit like a smoker complaining that cigarettes gave him lung cancer.
 
mos dan

mos dan

fact music
padraig (u.s.) said:
all this (not from you, just generally) "pop music has lost it's context", SR's piece on music's seeming disconnection from the economy, I call bullshit on it. this is still actual people doing actual stuff, it's not just internet thought experiments.

whatever, end of history qua music, eh. not to be a jerk but I'm sure people will continue making/performing/perhaps even trying to sell pop music even as it's immortal essence or whatever evaporates.
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innit, shades of fukuyama to all this imo. the end of music and the last band?
 
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