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a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Aug 29, 2008, 16:18
Re: Rock careers and the end of music!
Aug 29, 2008, 15:59
stray wrote:
Maybe. But if you were a musician, sound engineer or producer and you realised that for the majority of the time your music was going to be listened to in-ear what would you do ? Serious question, do you know how different music is, and a mix is when listened to like that ? Mixing/producing a track with headphones on is a serious no-no as everything is placed wrong, you'll end up with stupidly overblown bass for a start. I'm simplifying, but you get the idea. .


Well yes but this is not a new thing. People have mixed records in acoustically perfect environments for 40 years and have spent 1000s of Dollars mastering them only for listeners to hear their detailed work mangled on a car stereo or via the medium of cassette. The iPod isn't perfect but it isn't as bad as the old car radio / cassette combo. The gap between what the artist intends and how the audience chooses to consune their work is always going to be huge.
stray
stray
2057 posts

Re: Rock careers and the end of music!
Aug 29, 2008, 16:21
oh definitely, but even a car cassette system has speakers which is very, very different to headphones. Moot point though yeah, but the margin of difference is considerably larger.

I agree, partially, about the triumph of the bland. But, if you have labels, netlabels, blogs you can trust its still all okay. The print media has no way to keep pace, in fact no promotional platforms can keep pace, identify quality anymore. Thats becoming increasingly true for netradio and blogs too. I don't think its as bad as you make out to be, I'm still finding stuff thats good to me by narrowing my sources, but I can see it getting there eventually.
stray
stray
2057 posts

Re: a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
Aug 29, 2008, 16:23
Its the way its going I think. If you need any help sourcing the tools drop us an email with your postal again.
IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Aug 29, 2008, 18:53
Re: Rock careers and the end of music!
Aug 29, 2008, 17:00
stray wrote:
oh definitely, but even a car cassette system has speakers which is very, very different to headphones. Moot point though yeah, but the margin of difference is considerably larger.

I agree, partially, about the triumph of the bland. But, if you have labels, netlabels, blogs you can trust its still all okay. The print media has no way to keep pace, in fact no promotional platforms can keep pace, identify quality anymore. Thats becoming increasingly true for netradio and blogs too. I don't think its as bad as you make out to be, I'm still finding stuff thats good to me by narrowing my sources, but I can see it getting there eventually.



Oh yes that's true. I still find stuff that turns me on but none of it is finding its way through the cracks into a broader consciousness. There are lots of frontier's people making and listening to music but we are like a lost tribe of Israel or something. We have no voice. We have no influence on the mainstream music consumer. So the Vertigos, Harvests etc have no reason to exist.

I want the stuff that is great to sell as much as possible so they can keep on doing it and doing it with greater resources rather than be stuck unheard in commercial backwaters. Sadly there are dozens of really good artists selling micro quantities and hundreds and thousands of average and below average ones selling nothing. People like those of us who inhabit this board will always find a way to access the true poison but for most people whi like to think of themselves as music fans, in the absence of reliable filters (a&r, journalists, radio, promoters), it is the average artists who clog up the avenues at the expense of those with something interesting to communicate.

I was quite encouraged to see Burial and Unthank in the Mercury list for 08 but even if they win it's worth less than 20,000 sales (if that) because they wont be heading for any playlists or colour supp covers any time soon.
Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Re: It's all in the machines
Aug 29, 2008, 20:03
I certainly wasn't dissing "electronic music", but it does seem to me that a lot of what's being done today in that realm isn't really a radical break from things that were being done in the 70's if not the 50's (yer Tony Conrad, Stockhausen, Eno, Kraftwerk obviously . . . ) The "means of production" has changed due to the tech, but I don't really think the "palette of sounds" the computer opens up is necessarily broader. And samplers don't really expand the palette at all, since it's just recycling pre-existing sounds.

Computers main effect on music has been the way it has changed distribution (easily transmittable identical copies), and therefore the way audiences perceive music (see interesting rant below about people having downloaded "too much" music, that they will probably never listen to -- and basically this whole thread!)

In some ways the problem might be that the latest tech gives too much capability -- you can do literally ANYTHING, so where to start? It's too easy to do something that sounds like something you've heard before.

Whereas if all you've got is an acoustic guitar, the limitations of the instrument might give you more to "push against" as it were . . . . I often think the "anybody can do it" aspect of computers on music is detrimental. (Nothing to weed out the posers from the real talent! Elitist I know . . . )

I'm largely just rambling and brainstorming here. This is a very interesting thread, I think it hits a real nerve that a lot of people are feeling!
Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

new different original experimental . . .
Aug 29, 2008, 20:14
You are absolutely right, our discussion of "music" usually means "recorded music of the English-speaking world".

And the line between "pop" and "art" music is also very problematic. Probably has more to do with the audience than the sound itself . . .

But I guess one thing that has changed over time is that the two concepts are much more separated -- people used to talk about pop songs by the Beatles et al as "art" in a way that no one would when discussing Cheryl Crow (for example.)

I can even imagine a bunch of hipsters in 1969 sitting around talking about whether Stockhausen is a genius or a joke -- what would be the equivalent discussion today? Are there any "art music" people who are well known enough that regular folks could even have an opinion?

But then again, back in those days people didn't question the concept of "whether new music is even possible" . . .

I usually don't go for "end of history" arguments, but I can't help coming back to the idea that "the age of music" is ending and "the age of TV screens" is ascendent. (Just as "the age of novels" was ended by radio & film, etc.)

For that matter, "newspapers" are another media format that is dying quickly. It probably all flows from economics!
Popel Vooje
5373 posts

Edited Aug 31, 2008, 23:46
Re: Shock of the new . . .
Aug 29, 2008, 20:39
Dog 3000 wrote:
I still experience the "shock of the new" all the time . . . usually listening to old music that I haven't heard before.

"It's new to me."

I'm a fan of both of those new ones you mentioned -- lately I have just discovered the new MATMOS album "Supreme Balloon" which is the best analog electro avant pop record I've heard since the 70's heyday of Kraftwerk & Cluster! (Never heard anything else by Matmos before -- I probably need to.)

As for shock-of-the-new records from this decade (that really don't sound particularly like anything from the past) I would nominate LIARS ("Drowned" and "Drum" in particular) and SCOTT WALKER's "THE DRIFT" (which is very artsy and has very little to do with "rock" -- but it sure is "new and different.")



I like what I own by Matmos a lot - what I own being "The Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure" and "The Civil War", both of which do indeed recall German electronica from the early 70s, including the playfulness that a lot of other bands who hark back to that era seemed to lose in translation.

I agree about Liars - those LPs you mentioned are both extraordinary records which pushed the envelope a lot further than I would have expected from hearing their debut. I saw them play live just prior to the release of "They Were Wrong....", and audience reaction was really polarised between those who thought their new material was brilliant and those punk purists who were excecting more stuff in the vein of ther fist album and therefore thought the new songs were pretentious artwank. Even they have palpable influences, though - I can spot elements of the Pop Group, Silver Apples (now THERE was an original band!) and Lee Scratch Perry in there, but it's certainly offbeat enough not to sound like a knockoff.

I liked "The Drift", but after having heard "Climate of Hunter" and "Tilt" it didn't shock me as such, because I knew from listening to those that it wasn't going to be "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore"!
Excellent album, though - it sounds like the musical equivalent of a really bad dream, what with it's oppressive atmosphere and sinister but never quite intelligible lyrics. It may well be the most extrreme thing he's released, but in terms of hios output over the last 25 years it does make sense in a skewed way.

One album from the 90s that did strike me as being fresh and novel was the Flaming Lips' "Zaireeka" - actually hearing it played on four CD players routed through a PA system with the volume cranked up high was an experience that didn't trigger off any recognisable feeling of deja vu. "A Machine In India" felt like being trapped in a hive with a particularly vicious swarm of killer bees.
zphage
zphage
3378 posts

Re: a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
Aug 29, 2008, 21:48
Lester Bangs said the last thing we all agreed on was Elvis. After that everything fragmented.

I think any great innovation musically will be on the level of a composer, somebody with real compositional skills bringing many elements and genres together enjoyably.

The glorification of musical ineptness has led us to the same staleness that 70's overproficiency that spawned a punk backlash.
Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Re: Shock of the new . . .
Aug 29, 2008, 21:59
I need more Matmos then -- I totally agree about the "playful" element.

24 minute epic "Supreme Balloon" from his (? this is just one guy right?) latest can be heard here: http://www.kosmikradiation.com/archive.htm (3rd hour of Aug 27 show) It's "Autobahn" for airships!

I have never really heard Zaireeka in the 4 channels -- I bet I could find some people to put together a hearing somewhere, hmmmmm . . . .

(Though even here, the 4-speaker set up is very much like Stocki's "Gesang der Junglinge" from c. 1959 of course! Not a new idea, but pretty cool that someone's still going there.)

In fact, to get back to my "live music is the way out?" notion -- one thing you can do live that you can't do on a record is mess around with spacial effects by having lots of speakers in weird places. I can't think of anyone who really does this!
Dog 3000
Dog 3000
4611 posts

Edited Aug 29, 2008, 22:08
Re: a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.
Aug 29, 2008, 22:08
zphage wrote:
Lester Bangs said the last thing we all agreed on was Elvis. After that everything fragmented.


Nahh, lots of people hated Elvis at the time. Pretty much anyone born before about 1930 I would imagine. Typical baby boomer centric viewpoint!

A better case could probably be made for the Beatles (before they "went acid") in that capacity (moms & dads could like some of their songs, classical composers and critics paid their respects, etc.)

Not that it matters really, the point is the same -- the "mass audience" is no more. Every radio station targets a specific AGE of person more than anything else, and people tend to listen to what was popular for young people when they were teenagers (not necessarily the musomaniacs around here though!)

zphage wrote:
The glorification of musical ineptness has led us to the same staleness that 70's overproficiency that spawned a punk backlash.


!!!

In fact there's hardly anyone around anymore who's respected and popular for MUSICIANSHIP.

Carlos Santana had some big hit albums lately, and he's "just a guitar player." Otherwise you have to sing and be sexy, or else forget it.

BRING BACK THE MUSOS!!!

Once again, the topic has wandered back from "art music" to "pop"! But maybe that's the thing right there -- "punk" severed popular music from musicianship, and it became more of a "star system."

These "Pop Idol" TV shows are probably the wave of the future . . .
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