Dinner Party Music
- Thread starter mixed_biscuits
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noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
I once DJd at SubCyberia, that being the 'smart bar' underneath the Cyberia Internet cafe, the first and at the time only one of it's kind in London. DJ Spooky was present and quite possibly receiving a shiatsu while I played ambient techno records. I think this is the most (appallingly) 90s moment I can remember.
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noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
I have also had a conversation with a member of Aufgehoben and he explained to me how, in a manner analogous to Burial's 'fishtails', his process involved getting the waveforms of their recordings to resemble solid blocks in CoolEdit.* That really is a most obstreperous choice of dinner party music.You should tell him to get their next album mastered a bit louder - it needs a little more 'oomph'.
* This was actually about 7 years ago so I think they have moved on considerably in terms of sonic sophistication.
UFO over easy
online mahjong
similar to the process in most recent drum and bass.
make tune
download Waves VST
apply L2 limiter till the gaps in the waveform disappear
Hah, very relevant subject. I usually go for some Reinhardt, a bit of Brel/Piaf/Trenet/De André, sometimes a bit of tango.
It's actually quite a challenge to find something that 1) you like, 2) appeals enough to your better half, 3) doesn't upset the guests and 4) avoids the usual safepath of going exotic/retro (jazz, chanson, french folk, world music, etc). First three are quite easy, but only if you ignore number four.
It's actually quite a challenge to find something that 1) you like, 2) appeals enough to your better half, 3) doesn't upset the guests and 4) avoids the usual safepath of going exotic/retro (jazz, chanson, french folk, world music, etc). First three are quite easy, but only if you ignore number four.
Transpontine
history is made at night
My heart generally sinks if I go round somebody's house to eat and they are playing jazz. To me it shouts of trying too hard to let everyone know it's a Dinner Party with capital D and P. I would be inclined to throw together an Ipod mix of everything that isn't too noisy and shouty - could even include one or two vocal jazz tracks (e.g. Nina Simone) but nothing too noodly.
god i love that album. stomach cramps and indigestion on the other hand, not so much.
why is number four even a concern to begin with? also you realize the breadth and variety you lump up in that section is several thousand times broader than all of your other sections added together.
Probably we just have too often people coming over for dinner.
Still, it's weird that when it comes to taste, specifically when in search for a supposedly shared taste, alot of people rely on said safepaths.
pardon me if it isn't, but it seems to be the case:
why would you consider, say, playing a recording of Andalusian Nubah music, any more "safe", than putting on Selected Ambient Works vol. 1, for instance?
from where i'm standing a selection outside of proscribed cultural norms is much more challenging
than staying within cliche western hipster or avant garde cannons.
i find it objectionable that someone would say something like it is "safe" to play "world music" on so many different levels -- but the main one being the mis and under informed smugness of european ethnocentric attitudes.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I think there is a degree of 'safeness' coming from the fact that not many people in the west know much about non-western music, and in particular they're far less likely to have a violent objection to something that they aren't already familiar with, provided it's not totally unpalatable. Plus there's the perception that 'world music' is automatically interesting and exotic and shows off the host's breadth of taste by dint of being nonwestern without anyone having to engage with it on a level of content.
IOW it's a shit feature of western music tastes that it's often 'safe' to play anything nonwestern but it is a feature.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
It''s pretty standard to describe 'world music' as safe because it just is in the sense that the very phrase 'world music' is usually used to mean those tastefully rendered, airbrushed, mellow, westernised versions of music from other parts of the world.
Only Michael Brook, Peter Gabriel and DJ Monkey Pilot need be offended.
Only Michael Brook, Peter Gabriel and DJ Monkey Pilot need be offended.
Exactly and something similar can be said for music that is considered as old. It gets an extra cachet of meaning through its age which almost automatically validates it for most participants at the dining table.
zhao said:
I agree that the mis/underinformed smugness of Europeans (don't you have that in the States as well?), myself often included, is objectionable. I don't think (self)observing taste patterns is, though.
nomos
Administrator
lately, mf doom's 'special herbs' discs are my having-people-over standby. they have that easy listening/leisure suit vibe that sits well in the background but with enough wtf? moments that you notice people doing double takes when they tune it in.
around 1999/2000 it was impossible to eat dinner socially without buena vista social club in the background.
around 1999/2000 it was impossible to eat dinner socially without buena vista social club in the background.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Re. 'world music' and its (purported) appeal to Westunaz - surely it's at least partly the case that we've all heard a bazillion rock, rap and dance tracks by the time we reach our mid-20s, and that therefore music from traditions we're not so familiar with will automatically sound more interesting (at least as 'background' music, when we're probably not paying too much attention to the details), whereas the bar is set much higher for music from familiar genres?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I bet her choice of dinner-party music is Killah Priest.
Not that that wouldn't be rockin' dinner-party.
