Conceptronica

[padraig (u.s.)]

I guess whenever hear about things like this, Gabber Eleganza or something

I'm like wow that sounds really fucking cool

and then I hear it and I'm like, what is the point of this

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

like wasn't Bjork doing everything these people were doing decades ago except like way better and more interesting

partially through having respect for the source material

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

there's also a weird thing where everything initially scorned as in poor taste has to have a critical reappraisal and be championed by intellectuals with conceptual projects

I say this as someone who is 100% in that wheelhouse

why do gabber or trance or jungle or anything need a critical reappraisal? if they're good records people will listen to them

I'm not pointing fingers at anyone I don't it's malicious or anything in fact I'm sure people mostly have really good intentions

and if it makes some $ or garners attention to original people who deserve and didn't get it back then, that's great

but the product itself is always completely gratuitous, and makes no case for itself on its own terms without the looming shadow of the original

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

it's ersatz

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

the identities and intentions of the creators aside

the music is pretty much always terrible - or worse, boring - and it's hard to look past that fact

I can't think of a single counterexample, for me at least

like what is the point of Gabber Eleganza when Marc Acardipane already exists

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I do admit I'd likely be up for exactly this kind of thing in visual art

but I can enjoy that on a purely, or at least more intellectual level

whereas music has to connect viscerally for me in some way

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

you know I can think of a positive example

the more avant side of disco not disco, there are definitely some records that are both conceptual in this sense and also bang

Kid Creole's best work, for sure

but those were all first and foremost club records. they had to be killer dancefloor records or they wouldn't get played.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Arthur Russell's disco records

 

[thirdform]

this scene wouldn't even exist if fact mag didn't spend reams and reams of time bigging up their mates half formed projects tbh.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

 

[thirdform]

you know I can think of a positive example

the more avant side of disco not disco, there are definitely some records that are both conceptual in this sense and also bang

Kid Creole's best work, for sure

but those were all first and foremost club records. they had to be killer dancefloor records or they wouldn't get played.

mouse and no-name. crazy french amiga gabba records that are like musique concrete with a beat. incidentally conceptual though, like the best conceptual electronic music.

 

[thirdform]

 

[version]

woah thanks, had never heard that + had no idea

surprisingly not bad, too

Apparently blissblog wrote about it at the time and only found out it was him years later.

My first encounter with Mark was actually unawares – in 1994 I wrote a piece for Melody Maker about a group he was in called D-Generation, in which many of the ideas and themes that would obsess him in his later writing were rehearsed. But the phone interview was with another member of the group, Simon Biddell. Years later Mark shyly revealed that I had actually written about him, in effect, and I went back and checked the piece and there he was, in the photo. With long hair! But then we all had long hair in the early Nineties.

 

[thirdform]

honestly classical curves just reminds me of smoking as much of the shittest soapbar as possible with soggy walkers cheese and onion packets in the park and someone going whizz bang whizz bang, this is so trippy isn't it. and you're like yeah mate fucking hilarious let's run around like kids and make ourselves look dumb and then get reported to the authorities for breaching the piece.

this is better.

 

[version]

Limescale. Rust. Ground in dirt. They're a challenge. They're a challenge. They're a they're a they're they're a challenge.

 

[muser]

Problem I see with the naming of 'conceptronica' and maybe why some fans of the artists umbrella'd wthin have got their backs up ( I havent read through twitter s I dont know) is its putting the concept at the forefront as if that's the key unifying thing. This stuff doesn't bare much similarity to conceptual art, you can't really make any music without a significant amount of labor and time put in. Regardless of whether you like it or not putting together these projects with live performance, interfacing with audio-visual tech putting together large scale recording projects AKA Holly Herndon and learning to work with complicated tech to put something together, its obviously huge amount of work. Being dismissive purely because its made by art students some of whom are blurbing pretentious shit with their releases seems woefully ignorant. Not saying this is the vibe I got in the article but definitely in some peoples response. I like some of the artists mentioned dislike others, i haven't read any of the stuff written by the artists about their releases and I rarely do generally.. I think allot of the time it's irrelevant and an adjunct, if philosophy or whatever was their main focus and passion they'd be doing that not making music. I suspect as mentioned in the article the need to present some conceptualized complete package is part of the audio-visual arms race and far from the driving force behind the actual creative output.

 

[luka]

We should like it because they've worked terribly hard at it? They've made a real effort with their homework? Holly learned to work with complicated tech she was up all night revising.

 

[luka]

It's time to put a stop to music. We've all had enough of it.

"To the extent that art corresponds to manifest social need it is primarily a profit-driven industry that carries on for as long as it pays, and by its smooth functioning obscures the fact that it is already dead"

The taliban were right. Cancel music. It's necrotic.

 

[luka]

We are now officially in a post-music condition.

 

[pattycakes_]

utter joy in those opening key lines. One of the few times I ever shed a tear on the dance floor was when Joe Claussel started letting them ring out over the backside of Timewarp in my early days of getting into all this stuff. It was the aha moment where it all made sense. A moment of transportation. How fucking artful to combine that sense of childish wonder with super savvy/slick NYC disco and those naughty lyrics. Painfully on point. Russell and Levan like a pair of funky wizards all hopped up on god knows what, sliding you around in their big pot of vibe soup. Some sort of human apex here. Culminated, cultivated and daft as a bag of bats.