live digital music dissapointing shocker

[zhao]

name of thread would make a good Onion caption no?

god i used to get so excited about this sort of thing... still enjoy the recordings but last night's show marked a turning point inside... kind of like when i realized that boot-cut jeans are no longer for me.

talk about cliche to the fucking max: there was a projection on repeat for 30 minutes of big bold helvetica which read alternately "MINIMALISM" and "FUNCTION"

and the after "party" -- imagine a room full of people, all completely disconnected from eachother, staring at a couple of geeks standing behind Apple logos on stage, everyone looking uncomfortable, nervous, and scared (of what? of looking bored? of admitting to themselves that they are bored shitless?); about 0.1% of them trying pathetically to sway with the clicks and cuts...

good morning boys and girls, can you say "neutered"? how about "soul-less"? repeat after me: "white people who make laptop music should be heard but not seen".

maybe i was too tired to be all "glass half full" but just about the only thing i got out of paying 18 euros to see Raster Noton 11th anniversary at Volksbuhne was a good T-shirt idea:
big bold helvetica which reads: THE FUTURE IS BORING.

maybe THE FUTURE in the front and IS BORING on the back? hmmm... :slanted:

(don't bite my idea all you little graphic design shits out there)

 

[hint]

maybe i was too tired to be all "glass half full" but just about the only thing i got out of paying 18 euros to see Raster Noton 11th anniversary at Volksbuhne was a good T-shirt idea:
big bold helvetica which reads: THE FUTURE IS BORING.

maybe THE FUTURE in the front and IS BORING on the back? hmmm... :slanted:

(don't bite my idea all you little graphic design shits out there)

http://www.wasted-german-youth.com

 

[zhao]

oh yeah ha my flat-mate has one of those stickers on his desk

 

[zhao]

and just like the vapid self-absorption of the deluded Italian Futurists, who endlessly railed against the bourgeois notions of "Art" and "Good Taste" in favor of pure Machine and Function --- their works were nothing BUT "Good Taste".

function??? what function?!?! it's just style isn't it?!?!?!?! in fact, there is nothing else, no content, no nothing, it's all just pure aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics!!!!

pretentious fucking bollocks...

 

[Dusty]

function??? what function?!?! it's just style isn't it?!?!?!?! in fact, there is nothing else, no content, no nothing, it's all just pure aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics!!!!

Good point. I like Raster Noton, but I can't see it as music for a live clubbing event. I use it as music for working to. Maybe you should have taken a laptop and sat facing the people up on stage, writing this thread?

Hell, thats probably what they were doing, all that frantic motion behind the mac, thats not them mixing the next track in, thats facebook activity.

 

[borderpolice]

Raster Noton

I though RN was always boring. All they were doing was doing something that others had done before (e.g. Oval), and it was a thing that was most interesting when it was new because it was radically different from other things.

 

[gek-opel]

I loves me some Raster Noton. They are distinct from previous click/cut fetishists in that they strip away even the glitch itself as signifier and are left with the smallest pieces of data possible (ie ultra-minimal datamatics). I'm still undecided however how much of this stuff I really need to hear tho as it is all very much of a muchness (ie- Ryoji Ikeda's "Dataplex" pretty flawlessly summarises most of the aesthetic in a genius symphonic longform construct, so much of the rest of the output of the label seems a touch superfluous). Although the recent COH album "Strings" is pretty decent I must admit.

Its not really live music (Ikeda and Cartsen Nicolai aside given their ace audio-visual work... more like a trip to the cinema than a live gig tho). To be honest its absurd to present laptop music in either a club or rock venue format- where the anticipation is movement of some ilk. Far better to present it like electro-acoustic music at a nice sit-down stroke-chin establishment. Indeed if someone is playing a laptop my instinct now is to immediately sit down, there are never really any performative gestures to appreciate, and bugger all chance for audience motion, so why present it in such venues?

 

[zhao]

more like a trip to the cinema than a live gig tho). To be honest its absurd to present laptop music in either a club or rock venue format- where the anticipation is movement of some ilk. Far better to present it like electro-acoustic music at a nice sit-down stroke-chin establishment. Indeed if someone is playing a laptop my instinct now is to immediately sit down, there are never really any performative gestures to appreciate, and bugger all chance for audience motion, so why present it in such venues?

during intermission i tested out this one-liner on a few germans: "the story is good but the acting... i don't know" and the response was hillarious: first one -- with straight face and slight grimace -- "what do you mean? there is no story. it's abstract" HAHAHAHAHAHA

to be fair Kanding Ray (nice fellow) was trying very hard to be performative at the after non-party. impressions of an autistic and awkward jim morrison? but sadly it just didn't hold up. at all.

yes Ikeda is the shit. i drop everything to go see him anytime anywhere.

i like almost all the outputs of the label. even the more "superfluous" stuff such as Modul or Kanding Ray, which may not be crucial but is so pretty and accessible. and yes, as someone mentioned, great for working.

 

[gek-opel]

A key thing is not to put a square digital music performative peg in a round rock music shaped venue hole. Its this which creates the majority of the problems. Its music-for chinstroking and as such ought not to be presented in a way which emphasises its shortcomings. Its unlikely to be exciting to watch until better more gesturally demonstrative interfaces become both more sophisticated and cheaper. Better to not even have the performer on stage but have them at the back behind a mixing desk (which is precisely the set up at the few gigs of this kind I've been to which actually worked).

 

[Jonesy]

I went to see Tim Hecker in a theatre last Saturday and, while his music has more depth on a decent soundsystem, it was kind of lacking. I saw Pole in the same venue previously and he had a guy doing visuals (essentially a retro screensaver of shapes), but even that didn't fill the visual gap.

I guess I've been conditioned by TV since birth to need sensory input for the eyes too.

Maybe I expect too much but I'll give laptop shows a miss from now on.

 

[borderpolice]

I loves me some Raster Noton. They are distinct from previous click/cut fetishists in that they strip away even the glitch itself as signifier and are left with the smallest pieces of data possible (ie ultra-minimal datamatics).

Not sure I agree with this. This minimalism was done before, but there's nothing wrong with doing a good thing again. RN has been more visible in the mainstream though.

 

[Dusty]

I also think they simply do it well. Alva Noto's Xerrox release was brilliant, regardless of how original it was or wasnt. I'm happy to relax to that sort of noise ad infinitum (am I boring? probably). I can say the same about chain reaction-style dub techno, its all been done before but I still enjoy hearing a mild permutation.

Not wanting to seem like a digital music debate-addicted mentalist or anything, but relating this back to the whole arguement about artists making money from performances rather than unit sales - here is a genre that would clearly die a death should that logic ever become reality.

 

[Jonesy]

relating this back to the whole arguement about artists making money from performances rather than unit sales - here is a genre that would clearly die a death should that logic ever become reality.

True. There were less than 20 people (in a theatre) at the Tim Hecker show I went to and it was 8 euros a ticket.

 

[gek-opel]

HOWEVER: A lot of these guys can obtain arts-council funding and the like or pursue alternative/parallel careers in sound art/installation art. I'm sure they will be fine.

 

[Dunninger]

Far better to present it like electro-acoustic music at a nice sit-down stroke-chin establishment. Indeed if someone is playing a laptop my instinct now is to immediately sit down, there are never really any performative gestures to appreciate, and bugger all chance for audience motion, so why present it in such venues?

Absolute agreement here. If the artist has some interesting technique like manipulating a prepared turntable or something like that it's nice to look, but that only works in close range environments, otherwise sitting down and closing the eyes is the best thing you can do.

There's an interesting article about the subject written by Francisco López, who only plays in absolute darkness.
http://www.earlabs.org/text/text.asp?textID=10

 

[Gavin]

I saw Autechre in almost total dark and it was GREAT

 

[Jonesy]

...sitting down and closing the eyes is the best thing you can do.

Next time I'll take an eye mask. I've tried closing my eyes but can't seem to do it. I must be wired not to close my eyes for long periods in case of predators. Damn you evolution!

 

[zhao]

I saw Autechre in almost total dark and it was GREAT

i did too. about 2003 or 4. really enjoyed it at the time. or thought so at least. but i think i had a pretty fucked up definition of "enjoy" back then... has something to do with anger and masochism. now i wouldn't go see that if you paid me.

it's this fragmentation and shock thing. sure it can be nice to have your senses assaulted and obliterated and cut up into little pieces, but ultimately, for me at least, the real reward in art and music is not that. a classical Persian music concert leaves me inspired, balanced, enriched and feeling great. whereas an autechre concert like this one leaves me alienated and feeling terrible afterwards.

 

[gek-opel]

Hmm but this is a matter of the content of the music surely Zhao rather than the method of delivery? Autechre are (or were at their peak) to a certain extent all about the alienation, but a curious kind of alien emotionalism, that when engaged with correctly left me feeling extremely elevated in a curious kind of way, as if I had spent an hour exploring a nameless crevice of an indescribable emotional state. Mind you, I've never heard them in concert where they are noted to be more technical and percussive.

 

[zhao]

this particular autechre show (pretty sure same tour Gavin mentioned) was just gnarly relentless a-rhythmic pounding and sheer hellish miasma.

i guess at a certain time in my life i got over the whole fetishization-of-industrial-pollution thing. which was a big part of my musical life for a long time.

the film director Abbas Kurostami once casually said something along the lines of:

there are 2 kinds of movies today. one kind takes you hostage in your seat, you are tense, nervous, but cannot take your eyes off the screen, and it proceeds to poke, prod, and torture you. you walk out of the theater exhausted and disturbed, and you go home to sleep it off.

another kind of movie is slow and boring, seemingly not much happens. you maybe drift in and out of consciousness in the theater. afterwards you stretch out, yawn, and walk out feeling refreshed. but you wake up in the middle of the night thinking about scenes from the movie. and 2 months later you realize that you are still thinking about it.

it is the second kind of movie i am interested in making.