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New Scott Walker album out December 3rd
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Popel Vooje
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Edited Sep 26, 2012, 14:01
Re: New Scott Walker album out December 3rd
Sep 26, 2012, 13:58
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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Re: New Scott Walker album out December 3rd (IanB)
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