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Unsung Forum » Music of the mad. |
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Aug 21, 2011, 12:28
Aug 21, 2011, 07:25
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handofdave wrote: IanB wrote: think I read somewhere that there will be something like 100,000 new album releaes this year. Compared with 12,000 in the mid 80s. Who can hope to keep up? No reliable filters. That's the problem I think. And that's why I'm hiring myself out as a hit man for the music industry. Soon as we can start thinning the herd a bit all will be back to normal. ;-D I would start with the journalists myself! Or rather the endless sea of people purporting to be music journalists who are mouthpieces for the PR industry. I've stopped reading all music media apart from Any Decent Music and Gramophone. ADM is a review of reviews which helps get an overview. I still end up buying some total shit though. Sweet Billy Pilgrim being the last major purchasing mistep. The ratio of good to dull records among HH's brigade of creative voices is much higher than that within the reviewers' flavours of the moment. Which says it all really. This is a place of honest opinions. I think the honesty of the music press has been in doubt for at least good twenty years now.
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Popel Vooje 5373 posts |
Aug 21, 2011, 15:53
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Rave certainly was a creative explosion, regardless of whether you got it or not. As with hip-hop it took a few years to reach its' creative apex, but the vast majority of ground-breaking music released in the early-mid 90s had either had direct roots in rave culture or used it as a springboard for inventing new genres like hardstep jungle. I don't even think that the question of whether or not you appreciated rave directly correlates with which drugs you were on - it was a generational thing which people over 25 largely didn't relate to (as with punk ten years earlier, psychedelia ten years before that, and rock'n'roll tewn years before that). Being in my layte teens - early 20s at the tiome, I found it exciting and refreshing even though my tastes had already been shaped by the traditional founding fathers of alternativ e rock (Velvets, Stooges, Beefheart, T Rex etc.) Personally, I have no problem with Pro Tools, quantising or home recording in general. To my ears it's much more valid than the annoying dead-end Ludditism peddled by industry-groomed fakes like the Jack White. Sure, the likes of the Mekons and the Fall would have sounded shit if they'd had an unlimited amount of time to record, but that's not the point - we'll never hear their like again, precisely because the music they made was the product of a specific time period and a specific set of circumstances. That's why I said I wasn't holding my breath in anticipation of a new explosion of cutting edge music - trhe musical landscape has become so diffuse that whilst there will always be disparate delights aplenty, I doubt there will ever be a specific genre which we'll be able to point to and define as cutting edge ever again. I do agree that the sheer volume of music being released at the moment is only likely to increase throughout the next decade, making it harder to filter out the chaff, but I doubt that the ratio of good to bad music being produced will change that much, regardless of technological innovations - in a similar way that the ratio of good to bad TV never seems to change no matter how many digital channels you can afford/be arsed to install. No matter what recording methodoligies are available to them, there will always be inspired / unhinged mavericks out there who will use whatever's at their disposal to produce works of genius.
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Popel Vooje 5373 posts |
Edited Aug 21, 2011, 16:08
Aug 21, 2011, 16:04
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Hunter T Wolfe wrote: IanB wrote: Robot Emperor wrote: Popel Vooje wrote: Daminxa wrote: That's true! I wonder if we'll witness a mass outburst of eccentric creativity as a result of the recent cuts? I was talking about this with a couple of friends in the pub last night - we were cautiously hoping that increasing levels of unemployment coupled with affordability of CDrs and home recording set-ups would lead to another creative explosion like the advent of post-punk in the late 70s and rave in the late 80s. As much as I'd like to believe that'll happen though, I'm not holding my breath. Personally I'm willing to put up with shit music if we can get rid of the increasing levels of unemployment. How different would say "Where Were You?" or "Damaged Goods" have been if the artsts had made them in Pro Tools and endlessly worked them over. Who wants to hear a quantised Mekons? I love the idea of records made under challenging circumstances. The world of Leisure Recording isn't especially good for the art I don't think. Absolutely. The last thing we need is more people making records just because they've got nothing better to do. The truly driven will always find a way. I disagree. The advent of "leisure recording" has facilitated a lot of astounding records by sollipsitic genii like Ariel Pink and Gonjasufi who would never have stood a snowball's chance in hell of getting signed if the record industry still operated the way it did 30 years ago. Artistically speaking, it would be a far more damaging prospect would be if the economy stabilised to the point where forming a band simply became viewed as an alternative career like advertising or software development. It was the latter mindset that produced most of the pedestrian pseudo-indie crap like Travis, Embrace, Razorlight, Snow Patrol etc. that made me stop reading the weekly music press altogether around 1997 or so, and ensured that I never stared reading it again throught the noughties.
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zphage 3378 posts |
Aug 21, 2011, 17:10
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the abundance of music, maybe similar to the abundance of cameras taking a picture doesn't mean one is a photographer
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Moon Cat 9577 posts |
Edited Aug 21, 2011, 17:56
Aug 21, 2011, 17:55
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Great thread and I've really enjoyed reading the responses thus far - wel done Unsung Heroes! I think people have nominated many of the 'candidates' I might have put forward for consideration. Maybe Jeffrey Lee Pierce? Troubled Soul perhaps? It did get me thinking back to fairly recent times though, and the seeming plethora of artists that were thrown our way with a vast percentage of their 'appeal' being that they were a bit 'bonkers'. I'm talking of the post Florence & the Machine glut of 'kooky' popstars that followed in her zany wake. La Roux, Paloma Faith (who's music seems utterly at odds with her "I'm mad me look!" presentation), Marina & The Diamonds, Emmy The Great et al. For awhile there it looked like being a bit of a 'fruitcake' was the gateway to the mainstream although it didn't seem to translate into commercial success for all. It was like someone had the idea of taken the percieved eccentricities you might find in genuine (IMO) artists like Kate Bush and Bjork (to name the obvious pair), and compress it into a marketable brand of "crazy", with a nod to ickle girl kookiness as the sexy-mad selling factor. Whereas I wouldn't think Kate Bush and Bjork would come into the artist as lunatic catergory, I think there is genuine eccentricity in the control and presentation - it's a complete package but where the quest for creativity fuels everything rather than some psychosis. It was quite weird to see such a spirit comodified into a potential selling point in such a rapid-fire, scattershot way.
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Aug 21, 2011, 19:42
Aug 21, 2011, 19:09
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Good points there. I wasn't as clear in what I was saying as you were and you are right I was in my mid 20s and a father when the rave thing emerged. It wasn't meant for me. I have no problem with home recording not least because I have indirectly been a beneficiary of the technology when it has come to mixing our records. That said I worry about a technology that leads to the over-working and over-thnikng of rock music because I don't think it helps that particular art form. To me rock n roll is something that happens in a room. There are lots of genres of which that is not true but I think that in rock (by which I mean the broadest church of electric guitar music) it can take away a lot the energy that used to find its way on to tape because of (and in spite of) the economics of old school recording. That's what I meant by the Mekons thing. I don't want to turn the clock back so that records today sound just like they did in 1979. God forbid! But I think rock music benefits when there is a pressure to deliver a performance in the moment. The main reason we have a bland rock mainstream is because the filters that exist are not looking for the edge they are looking for a safe wide margin just off the middle. That's the problem for me. Back in the day Time Out's music reviews were prefaced by the words along the lines of "What we like and what they want you to like". These days they are one and the same.
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