Head To Head
Log In
Register
Unsung Forum »
Regular Non obscure music
Log In to post a reply

Pages: 11 – [ Previous | 13 4 5 6 7 8 | Next ]
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
stray
stray
2057 posts

Edited Oct 03, 2013, 21:12
Re: Regular Non obscure music
Oct 03, 2013, 21:09
handofdave wrote:
It happens from time to time, but as someone (Stray, maybe) almost a decade ago, do we really have to prop up the stuff that's sold eight billion copies, or worse, stuff that made its splash forty years ago?


Oh god did I ? ;) Yeah, I'll stand by that, probably. Definitely when it comes to propping up things that sold countless millions, its done what it needs to have done, it's influence is unavoidable even if you don't hear it. It doesn't need hyping directly. Idon't even think it needs referencing either, but I'm odd. Cos thats how culture works in a wider sense I think, that stuff is the compost everything else can't avoid dragging its roots through. I listen to a lot of Blues that goes back 90 years or so at least. Classical too, but I don't go back further than the 20th century on that score.. well.. early music too but that's a wholly different thing.

But the splash that music made, back then, is a wholly different splash to the music made 40 years ago. It's about the quality of the splash. ;) Kind of, for me anyroad. Searching/Praying for the next big thing, or awaiting a new Bowie or whatever is to me a completely fucking ridiculous stance to take. I mean, Christ, have we not progressed at all ? What is music for, break it down, it sure as fuck should no longer be about the individuals who make it. The work itself is far more important than those who produce it. Moreso, it is more important to produce the work than it is to produce a 'system' (genre etc). This mindset was kind of glimpsed in the early days of the 90s dance culture. We all knew the tunes, the artists names, and hadn't got a clue wtf any of them looked like. (of course the media soon fixed that for us) The work itself was the thing, and how we connected to it, together.

Awaiting a new musical genius ? um.. fuck no ;) Seeking out genius music, yep. It occurs in every genre, it can occur to anyone, it can be distributed to anyone. (now playing on the radio Sex Pistols - 'Problems', now thats genius).

The splash is now personal, the pool fills more and more each day. Music that opens up new territories and hits you cold with a sentiment that absolutely connects and ensnares you. Thats the personal splash. It can come from any era but it has to be -you- and -now-. We're all becoming, constantly changing second by second, and we're becoming-aware of this. The new media is functioning (shit as it may be in many cases) to reinforce this epiphany. So we all end up being seekers by default. What is obscure ceases to be obscure if you hear it and you get it, and it gets you. Our musical territories are all different, and sometimes we hit a landscape that completely posesses us for a while, and sometimes we hear things that we like but aren't 'it'. They're like signposts, connected to the roots of other things that bring us into the landscapes that will posess us for a while, and enrich us. Music that changes the way you think about things completely outside of music, about yourself and others. Music that opens.

Think like an individual and stop looking for new messiahs. We will all be better for acting, enjoying and performing music with individual mindsets. The work is the whole of the agenda, the affects and sensations it resounds upon us. Not image, not some logos, stance, not even ideas tbh. Drop the semiotic trash talk and the signifying chains that do fuck all but impose limits. This place works best when one of us individuals finds a signpost (which is likely to be obscure music) that hits the rest of us cold and then opens something up. The recent Nisennenmondai splash is a good example. (edit : Straight up fucking correct Charlie2300, far, far better than Neu)
Sin Agog
Sin Agog
2253 posts

Edited Oct 03, 2013, 21:29
Re: Regular Non obscure music
Oct 03, 2013, 21:23
Yeah, I really don't buy this empirical view of the music world. If you think music is dead (or in stasis), you've got dodgy sources and should change them. The best album you've never heard has been made by someone somewhere this very day. The chances that you'll make a connection with it are slim- there's just too dense a sea of other media and flotsam in the way- but you'll usually find something almost as nice if you search for it, rather than sit back and wait for it to come to you.

Music's not so incredibly complicated and exclusive that the whole planet just suddenly forgets how to make it good for entire decades.

I can understand wanting to give up the fight for good new music. It's an increasingly time-consuming and arduous procedure, especially as you get older and the sources you relied on fall by the wayside. But it's too easy to comfort yourself with the idea that you happened to be there for its high-water mark which can never again be reached. That line of thinking is the proverbial wisp of straw that old, drowning men cling to.
Charlie2300
Charlie2300
412 posts

Re: Regular Non obscure music
Oct 03, 2013, 21:29
Sin Agog wrote:
Yeah, I really don't buy this empirical view of the music world. If you think music is dead (or in stasis), you've got dodgy sources and should change them. The best album you've never heard has been made by someone somewhere this very day. The chances that you'll make a connection with it are slim- there's just too dense a sea of other media and flotsam in the way- but you'll usually find something almost as nice if you search for it, rather than sit back and wait for it to come to you.

Music's not so incredibly complicated and exclusive that the whole planet just suddenly forgets how to make it good for entire decades.

I can understand wanting to give up the fight for good new music. It's an increasingly time-consuming and arduous procedure, especially as you get older and the sources you relied on fall by the wayside. But it's too easy to comfort yourself with the idea that you happened to be there for its high-water mark which can never again be reached. That line of thinking is the proverbial wisp of draw that old, drowning men cling to.


...and I must say that the discovery of the next music revelation is greatly facilitated by HH Unsung. Something will turn up here sooner or later, generally sooner if recent months are anything to go by. I'd have disposable income if I didn't check out the weekly soundtracks thread.
handofdave
handofdave
3515 posts

Re: Regular Non obscure music
Oct 03, 2013, 21:35
Sin Agog wrote:
Yeah, I really don't buy this empirical view of the music world. If you think music is dead (or in stasis), you've got dodgy sources and should change them. The best album you've never heard has been made by someone somewhere this very day. The chances that you'll make a connection with it are slim- there's just too dense a sea of other media and flotsam in the way- but you'll usually find something almost as nice if you search for it, rather than sit back and wait for it to come to you.

Music's not so incredibly complicated and exclusive that the whole planet just suddenly forgets how to make it good for entire decades.

I can understand wanting to give up the fight for good new music. It's an increasingly time-consuming and arduous procedure, especially as you get older and the sources you relied on fall by the wayside. But it's too easy to comfort yourself with the idea that you happened to be there for its high-water mark which can never again be reached. That line of thinking is the proverbial wisp of straw that old, drowning men cling to.


Good analysis.

And then there's the mistaken idea that the only worthwhile music is that which meets a preexisting criteria.
handofdave
handofdave
3515 posts

Edited Oct 03, 2013, 21:42
Re: Regular Non obscure music
Oct 03, 2013, 21:40
Another thing that many of us here share is the actionable impulse to create our own music, which to my mind is one increasingly lacking in the 'regular' culture, being that the regular culture is the same thing as consumer culture. They take what is handed down without considering their own potential for expression.

In creating my own body of work (if you want to call it 'work') it's changed my relationship to the music that others make.
keith a
9565 posts

Re: Regular Non obscure music
Oct 03, 2013, 21:53
thesweetcheat wrote:
keith a wrote:
To go back to the original post in this thread, I've been playing the Pet Shop Boys new album quite a bit. Dunno how it did in the charts cos I haven't seen them lately but I'm guessing it must have made an appearance?


Apparently it got to Number 3, amazingly.


Impressive!
IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Oct 04, 2013, 14:02
Re: Regular Non obscure music
Oct 04, 2013, 08:56
handofdave wrote:
Another thing that many of us here share is the actionable impulse to create our own music, which to my mind is one increasingly lacking in the 'regular' culture, being that the regular culture is the same thing as consumer culture. They take what is handed down without considering their own potential for expression.

In creating my own body of work (if you want to call it 'work') it's changed my relationship to the music that others make.


Well yes that's very true. Making music and the self criticism that goes with it has made me less tolerant of other music that seems glib or phoned in or merely cleverly conceived.

What I would argue with is that "regular" these days is the same as "consumer". If we are talking about rock music in all its guises then my sense is that it simply isn't important enough to be part of the mainstream. Music-based celebrity is mainstream. Music itself is marginalised from the mainstream. Right now it is so off the general public's radar people should feel free to innovate but they do the opposite and are risk-adverse instead. Interesting how this recession has produced so little ground breaking popular music when the 80s recession produced so much. I guess all that creativity is being applied elsewhere or maybe half an hour of Max Keiser on RT is more enlivening and more Rock than anyone with an album to sell.
IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Oct 04, 2013, 09:51
Re: Regular Non obscure music
Oct 04, 2013, 09:02
Sin Agog wrote:
I can understand wanting to give up the fight for good new music. It's an increasingly time-consuming and arduous procedure, especially as you get older and the sources you relied on fall by the wayside. But it's too easy to comfort yourself with the idea that you happened to be there for its high-water mark which can never again be reached. That line of thinking is the proverbial wisp of straw that old, drowning men cling to.


And regurgitating the past is the wisp of straw that the terminally untalented and unartistic cling to when making pop and rock records.

Things will improve when people detach themselves from the consumerist impulse to hear more of the nearly the same and that will free up artists to break new ground and be more unreasonable and less nostalgic.

Similarly the culture of championing the obscure for the reflected glory and status of being a cultural prospector of outsider art is nonsensical as it rates music, at least initially, on the basis of its inability to reach the market.

I am not advocating a Classic FM approach to rock music but if the only thrill left is to find the least mediated art and use that as a critical yardstick then that is about the listener defining themselves by their cultural otherness. It has little or nothing to do with the music itself. Its more akin to the teenager in a My Chemical Romance shirt in a school full of R&B fans.

Let me tell you it's not about having been there at the peak (I really wasn't) but there aren't enough hours in the day to be ticking off items on the endless list of the new and mediocre rock. That's more train spotting than close listening and if you are not listening closely you are just playing measure-my-cultural-virility-by-the-girth-of-my-gigantic-collection.
stray
stray
2057 posts

Edited Oct 04, 2013, 10:00
Re: Regular Non obscure music
Oct 04, 2013, 09:56
You should end your posts with 'Now, get off my lawn". ;) Sorry to pull you up but what effort do you actually make to hunt out the huge amount of new and genuinely innovative music there is out there? I have never seen you post here once championing a release on a netlabel, or any netlabels. You whine in one direction yet at the same time seem to look to the traditional (physical) channels to find this innovative music that you seek, channels where there is an understandable risk aversion. It's not going to appear there. Moreover, artists who take risk know this and don't waste their time on the whole trying to get accepted there. Or they pull back their art in order to fit in, which isn't helping anyone. The environment that could allow someone to have the impact (and earnings, remember earnings were the artists real power then, thats what was required to give you creative freedom) Bowie and Iggy and.. (insert who you like who was innovative and crashed into the widely visible culture) is long gone and will never return, and that is a good thing.

Solus 3 is good stuff, but I don't hear in it at all what you seem to be striving to find. The first risk that must be taken is in the work after all. I worry that you're just jaded, stuck in a negative mindset, and refuse to acknowledge that the creative reality may actually be different somewhere. Seriously, are you saying you've stopped looking because the channels you expect to find the 'good music' have dried up ?
stray
stray
2057 posts

Here...
Oct 04, 2013, 10:07
http://www.clinicalarchives.spyw.com/ Go play the last 25 releases on this label and then come back :)
Pages: 11 – [ Previous | 13 4 5 6 7 8 | Next ] Add a reply to this topic

Unsung Forum Index