Listen to this part 3: Intensity

EmpressJess said:

To me it sounds just like everything else does these days. Before music used to be ammore diverse but recently it seems like everything’s either like this or it’s house.

Just my opinion, don’t all bite my head off!

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Well, as any other music, it commands a certain degree of surrendering. I think that this cognitive exercise that Barty has us all undertaking should channel the experience of seeing something for the first time ever and exploring the nature of it as an alien artifact.

Erase your notion of what is is or should be. Yield to its patterns, immerse yourself in its architecture.

"make the stone stony."

said Viktor Shklovsky

There's a meh effect here, the slow tempo, saturated 'epic' production, one note (almost) 808 synth bass. Every aspect - lyrics, production, theme - all hitting the same notes. Danchell was always great at immediacy and contrast.

This is a variation on a 25 year old riddim... its silly but it hits harder.

All of this stuff sounds to me like a variant of dancehall that takes the bug riddim as year zero.

And whilst I fully admit to not being hugely engaged or fond of current trends in dancehall, I still cant recall hearing anything better than this out of Jamaica in the last few years.

lol. What can I say? Ive seen empires rise and fall, each less impressive than the last.

sadmanbarty said:

droid, is the koffee album any good? if so we can do it for tomorrow's danny l listening thread.

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It's mixed. That tune really stands out.

me projecting my virtual friend barty onto the physical grid of my next lover

entertainment said:

Well, as any other music, it commands a certain degree of surrendering. I think that this cognitive exercise that Barty has us all undertaking should channel the experience of seeing something for the first time ever and exploring the nature of it as an alien artifact.

Erase your notion of what is is or should be. Yield to its patterns, immerse yourself in its architecture.

"make the stone stony."

said Viktor Shklovsky

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Not gonna lie, that did make me a bit moist.

OMG! I can’t believe I just wrote that!

This forum is filth!

careful, this is a safe space for us to flaunt around and puff out the intellectual chests, but once a girl comes around to actualize the stakes, we disappear like mice into the crevices

fuck off barty :crylarf:

droid said:

lol. What can I say? Ive seen empires rise and fall, each less impressive than the last.

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I saw them rise and fall before I was born even. Sadly we're going to have to rename sadam barty back to Sandy Batty-Galley to drag him back to his Englishness so that he can live in his garden of Eden.

droid said:

There's a meh effect here, the slow tempo, saturated 'epic' production, one note (almost) 808 synth bass. Every aspect - lyrics, production, theme - all hitting the same notes. Danchell was always great at immediacy and contrast.

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Finally someone articulated what I've been trying to say. it's ultimately the de-masculinisation (and even de-feminisation) of dancehall to conform to global Americanised diaspora demands. diaspora benzos. the UK doesn't really hold the same amount of sway of being one of the prime consumers of dancehall as it did in the 80s-early 00s.

And ultimately, I had a pretty interesting realisation the other day. I like dark intense dissonant music because one breaks through the abyss to reach gnostic joy and ascend to plateaus that are taken out of reach of most of society. Dionysus vs appollo etc. Speaking strictly personally for me, Barty's music just sounds depressing to me. not in the sense of carrying that mood - tho it can, but because it's not life affirming at all. it's life accepting, which is depressing cos to me that means I don't really need it.

If I may be so brash and use that dichotomy of the 90s, we can also plot a graph like this

appollo
intelligent vs untelligent
Dionysus

(yes i gagged writing that... but you get my drift, replace with conceptual vs immediatist if you must)

My approach is precisely slightly antithetical to that of bliss (and barty's) because I'm intelligent Dionysus. whereas they are intelligent appollo and immediatist Dionysus. For me it's mostly (tho not always) the other way around. I don't really seek contemplative intelligence in meditative or oceanic music etc etc.

For E:
dionysian intelligence:







appollachian immediatism




By far the best track on the album that, but most people seem to disagree. the closest he came to detroit.


immediatism verging into appollachian stupidity.

Barty's music just sounds depressing to me. not in the sense of carrying that mood - tho it can, but because it's not life affirming at all. it's life accepting

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This is interesting. And that is how Barty sometimes frames it but I don't know if we need to agree with him there necessarily. I also wonder how much of this is to do with context.

If I played the narcos riddim to most of my peers who like dancehall they would hate it and complain about slackness. In fact I did this, just to wind them up, and that's what happened.

But the slackness of the eighties and early nineties gets a free pass from them. Why? Partly nostalgia for youth but also because it's the past and music which might once have been understood as having a political and cultural dimension is finally allowed to be purely musical and understood and enjoyed as music.

Dancehall about guns and murder and sex are fine so long as it is 30 years old. It no longer exists as a symptom of moral decay.

Ok mate, as I suspected; slackness lyrics and auto tune. . Not for me I’m afraid