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Unsung Forum » New Scott Walker album out December 3rd |
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Popel Vooje 5373 posts |
Edited Sep 26, 2012, 14:01
Sep 26, 2012, 13:58
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IanB wrote: Hunter T Wolfe wrote: I'm excited. I thought The Drift and Tilt were both excellent, original, challenging pieces of work in their own right. And while I broadly get what you're saying, Ian, I don't particularly see the point in randomly singling Scott Walker out in order to compare him unfavourably to a randomly chosen important avant garde composer from a previous generation. He may not measure up, but so what? Completely different circumstances and all that. No worries. See my reply above. I picked Berg very particularly because of his choice of subject matter and the time in which he was composing. I think rock music gets in a mess when it tries to invade territory that belongs to a different kind of discipline. I think "classical music" has the same problem when stretching in the other direction. Taking influence from other kinds of music is one thing but staking your ground out in someone else's territory is tricky as it means you are going to get held to an altogther different standard. It's like when sprinters try and become rugby league players or whatever. It just doesn't quite work out because whatever unique skills you have to offer the other people doing it have made it their life's work. It's in their DNA almost. Jason Pierce's improv and guitar loops records / performances have a similar effect on me. I just don't believe it. This is where Macca, Roger Waters and others have come a cropper. Interestingly Jon Lord's passing and the legacy of his Concerto for Group and Orchestra seemed to get much more sympathetic coverage from the classical media than from their rock peers. Maybe because he worked over time to intergrate rather than impose. With anything like this it either hits your visceral hot spots or it doesn't. You've certainly proven your final argument there by implying that "Concerto for Group and Orchestra" as a possible exception! To my ears it's THE most glaring example of a failed attempt on the part of a rock group to incorporate the structural complexities of classical music coiming the exact same cropper you attribute to Waters and Macca (on which I agree). The two parties involved seem to mesh about as well as salmon and ice cream. With the exception of the classically trained Lord himself, Purple sound like out-of-their-depth Vanilla Fudge knockoffs awkwardly reading off lead sheets for the first time, and when the orchetra do come in, they sound like they're providing the incidental music for a Looney Tunes cartoon. There are parts where it sounds like two completely seperate albums being played at the same time (much like that bonkers Spooky tooth / Pierre Henry collaboration, which I do actually quite like, but more for comedy reasons than musical ones if I'm honest). Give me recent Scott - or perhaps some of Zappa's early symphonic works like "Lumpy Gravy" - over that plodding brontosaurus anyday. Still ... it'd be a boring old world if we all felt the same about everything, wouldnt it?
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Sep 26, 2012, 15:56
Sep 26, 2012, 14:32
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Hunter T Wolfe wrote: Also, can Scott be said to be making 'rock' music anymore? Do the territorial boundaries between rock, jazz, avant-garde, classical even mean anything these days, when talking about the kind of challenging, often dissonant music that many come to this site to discuss? I think the likes of Robert Fripp or Peter Hammill get an easier ride because they've always made "difficult" music. I think that's a really interesting point. I come back to the Jason Pierce thing. When he makes hazy, pseudo psych gospel records I think it is genuine. In essence I believe him even if I don't like some of the records very much. When he strays into improv territory (and I have seen him do it live and heard it on record) I cease to believe. It feels like he is trying too hard to be something else from a world that he has not fully inhabited. So when he plays in that style I have two things to think about 1) Do I think the music is any good in the context of the genre that he is dabbling in? 2) Does it get me out of my seat me on any level? That's what I ended up having to ask myself with Scott Walker. By the time he got to "Drift" I felt that the music he is making owes too much to too many other artists (of whom most rock listeners would be unaware) and is relying on the fact that the listener isn't going to be switched-on to those sources by critics. That's all really. The classical and avant garde folks are, as ever, for the most part pathetically grateful when a Damon Albarn or Scott Walker or Tori Amos sprinkles some rock star magic on their commercially arid soil so no one on that side goes "actually that's all a bit mediocre, listen to this instead" and hardly anyone on the rock side knows both sides of the fence in the first place so a critical conspiracy of silence ensues. And what you say about Prog Symphonies or whatever is equally true. When the likes of say ELP started using ever larger classical musical structures as a vehicle for bombast then it became an exercise in hubristic oneupmanship not music making. It is strange that people like that never wrote bare simple stuff in a classical style - piano or guitar sonatas say. They always went for size and volume. Funnily enough there are few things as moving as hearing a massive orchestra in the flesh play really quietly. I think Hammill is a pretty clear writer. VdGG got complex musically at times but it was more a viseral than an intellectual exercise. I don't know his 80s stuff as well as the 70s and 90s / 00s but Hammill's post 80s solo albums are challenging but also clear without being facile. Songs like say "Curtains", "His Best Girl" or "Like Veronica" are 5/6 minute novellas that deal with brutality of various kinds and have genuine weight. It is not easy listening but it is not deliberately inaccessible either. As for Fripp I think there is a lot wrong with Fripp's shtick as the-great-man-who-was-wronged-by-capitalism but the the instrumental guitar records are built out of sound palette that, if he didn't invent single handedly, is a sound of which he was one of the foremost originators. He belongs there and so it always rings true to me. Coming back to Scott Walker - I really like dissonant music. I also think that it is important that there is some songwriting in the world that tries to deal with the experience of being alive in this century and in this culture without being all ironic, arch and callous about it. So bravo for the major effort in going a bit further than anyone else though what it comes down to is that I just don't think he is as good with the avant garde material (sonic and lyrical). When it comes to expressing alienation, "Farmer in the City" aside (which could be on "Nite Flights" or even "Climate"), I think Scott Walker is a better artist when he sings "I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore" than when making "Drift". He certainly has a wonderful way with a lyric that the likes of Richard Hawley could only dream about but when he is singing words that make "The Wasteland" sound like "Beat On The Brat" while all kinds of oddness is going on in the music I think we lose more than he gains and vice versa. I really don't see how "Drift" or "Tilt" are any more important or well realised or profound than say "1.Outside" but an army of crtics will tell you otherwise. That's all really.
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Bov 181 posts |
Sep 26, 2012, 21:06
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Well I'm excited by the thought of new Scott. Weirdly, I've recently been getting back into The Drift a bit after I finally got round to seeing 30 Century Man which made me appreciate what he's getting at a bit better. I've always loved Tilt, but felt when it came out that The Drift was just too much dissonance without any of the moments of real beauty that Tilt has. However, I kind of filed it away as an album that I knew I'd come back one day and plumb its greater depths, and I do feel like I've finally started to do that. For the new one, I draw a slight sliver of hope from this sentence on the website: "If The Drift was a dark place, full of scorching orchestral textures and ominous rumblings, Bish Bosch is a tauter but more colourful experience". I'm not expecting it to be Take That And Party, but the title certainly sounds a little more playful. It'll probably take me another six years to get into it though.
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espsummer 340 posts |
Sep 27, 2012, 08:03
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Ian have you ever tried listening to Perry Blake? That kind of sounds like what you are looking for if it suits you. I like Perry Blake as well as Louis Philippe for the perspective of turning todays feelings into a finely crafted pop song.
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Lawrence 9547 posts |
Oct 13, 2012, 15:09
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Well here's a preview: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2012/10/scott-walker-album-preview.html
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Sin Agog 2253 posts |
Oct 13, 2012, 18:16
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The good thing about using machetes as a musical instrument is the producer will never ask for too many takes without putting their life at risk.
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Lawrence 9547 posts |
Oct 13, 2012, 20:57
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LOL!
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Daniel 277 posts |
Edited Oct 13, 2012, 21:27
Oct 13, 2012, 21:26
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Sin Agog wrote: The good thing about using machetes as a musical instrument is the producer will never ask for too many takes without putting their life at risk. Except that the producer is be the one who handles the rams horns, which could be reciprocal threats.
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Deepinder Cheema 1972 posts |
Oct 14, 2012, 17:51
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http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SCOTT-WALKER-SCOTT-2-PHILIPS-UK-68-MONO-/251164076404?pt=UK_Records&hash=item3a7a8ba974&_uhb=1
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anthonyqkiernan 7087 posts |
Edited Nov 13, 2012, 20:32
Nov 13, 2012, 20:31
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'Epizootics!' is the first track to be aired in full from Scott Walker's new album. (SLYT) Makes me hope for live shows (yes, I know...)
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