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Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 25 November 2012 CE
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Nov 28, 2012, 18:01
Re: Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 25 November 2012 CE
Nov 26, 2012, 09:08
keith a wrote:
I've kinda given up on Bjork these days, not intentionally, I just haven't got round to buying anything by her in some time (I think Vespertine was the last I bought by her). But I wouldn't slag her off, because she's trying to do something new, something different which is rare in music these days. I think, therefore, she should be celebrated not dismissed.

As for another comment here re head not heart - well surely that could be said a large percentage of prog? That's what it sounds like to me anyway. I loved Bjork's first two albums though. Hyperballad moves me more than most music TBH.


She executes what she does really well I just don't feel it.

As Mooncat points out, more succinctly than I could, it is the "I AM ART" thing. It might not be spoken but it entirely implied. It is only a short step away from Jackson's "King of Pop" and Glen Hughes' "Voice of Rock". It's for other people to say and for history to decide.

I am with Bryan Ferry on that one - there is something wrong if people can stretch their sensibilites to embrace the Velvets but their self image wont let them do the same for Lesley Gore. Denying music that you might enjoy because it isn't deemed cool seems like an insane waste of life's limited listening time. No one should be pandering to fans with that little imagination.

What the music makes me feel aside, it's also the Scott Walker issue that bugs me. People like Bjork, Radiohead, Walker and Sylvian borrow an aesthetic from the largely impoverished (in terms of media access and funding) "Contemporary Music" world (which is invisible to most people) and to my mind give bugger all back other than a little reflected glory.

This is not new, artists from Bowie to Madonna have made careers of taking stuff wholesale without giving due credit. Some artists (Bowie/ Zeppelin) make the material into something that is at least as resonant as their sources and takes the music to a completely new place. Most don't.

Say what you like about the Stones but at least they were humble enough to enthuse about their influences and actually give them a leg-up when they could. And not just in the early days either - putting the likes of BB King, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Billy Preston and The Meters in front of 98% white audiences in the 69 to 76 era was no small thing. Who is doing that kind of thing today in terms of people paying homage to their influences? It's all take and no give. Which I suppose is really fucking Post Modern of them in one way at least!

Peter Gabriel would be one who has done the right thing at great personal expense. Blood and Fire was a nice thing while it lasted (and was an enthusiast's hobby rather than paying creative debt). Damon Albarn has done his bit at least on the world music end of things. But all those have a hint of that old school, first world - third world thing about them. I don't see anyone putting out a hand to Eliane Radigue or Pauline Oliveros or say Kevin Volans and making *their* music widely known. Whole labels that are promoiting nothern hemisphere music, with fantastic catalogues like say Atrium come and go with no one really giving a shit.

Anyway .... I really liked three or four Sugarcubes singles ("Birthday" and "Hit" in particular). I liked bits of the first solo album though I can't say there was much enjoyment to be had and her "jazz" album is to my ears a catastrophy. I guess she gets away with it because her fans don't know any other jazz albums. Either that or I am completely wrong and she is a genius and the entire school of 20th Century jazz vocalists were making a mistake concentrating on inconveniences like technique and having that thing of being embedded in the tradition. You need to know the rules in order to bust them open. Otherwise to my mind it is just pretension / affectation, playing musical dress-up.
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Re: Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 25 November 2012 CE (keith a)
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