Bollocks. The lot of you. I'm talking shit. For fuck's sake, pick me up on it. Cunts.

I hate it when people talk music theory. Fuck off.

But at least you're talking shit on the idea of 'ground-breaking' music, at least to the extent of rock music, so that's nice.

So, nothing's groundbreaking?

End of thread?

...I contend that, in all reality, with the amount of technology, instruments, infinite amount of combinations of notes/riffs/melodies/structure, etc. that it should technically be impossible for any two bands to sound that much alike unless they are purpoisely trying to sound like someone else, or they can't escape their influences. But eh.

When I listen to or produce my own music, the ever-unfolding struggle of qualitative progression (or whatever) is the last thing on my mind. And the token influences of film directors, visual artists, and authors fail to repair the collapsed bridge between that conception of music and the rest of life.

Ah fuck it.

*plays 3 power chords, goes OH WHOA WHOA, gets a 10.0 from pitchfork and a million dollars*

peace

I call it nahvant-garde.

I think music should just get more ridiculous.

Like a whole genre of amplified gardening ; contact mics on the leaves and tools and shit, call it avant gardening.

A whole genre of people washing dishes and making food, "experimental electro culinary art rock". Beating on plates and shit with forks.

The possibilities never end.

Yeah, I'm all for that, just as long as we not reduce whatever quality such musical freedom might have to a grand, impersonal narrative.

The thing is, though, just the idea of doing those things will get people "liking" it, regardless of the quality.

I watched Art School Confidential last night, and while it was sort of a mess (albeit a charming one) and this point is really obvious, it still is good to bring up... it doesn't matter if it's "good", it matters if it's "interesting", because anyone can convince anyone else that something is "good" if it has enough going for it.

For example, I may not like the sound of a band who makes music with nothing but bicycles but I'll certainly remember them because that's interesting. On the other hand, I may not remember a pop punk band who sounds like all the rest, even if they're serviceable, because there's already enough serviceable bands.

I think the best bands tote the line between tried and true music conventions, but still not being strictly musical at all times. There's no such thing as a "wrong" note.

Walked in a gypsy's tent with a food stamp,
And walked out with a magical lamp, yeah,
I met Milenko, he gave me three wishes,
That night, I fucked three fat bitches!

Can't get the fuck wit' it? Forget it,
I'll rip ya face off, and wipe my ass wit' it!
When the genie says "on with the show...",
It's hokus pokus, jokers, Great Milenko!

Even in terms of Rock, an album like Loveless is far less innovative than I think it's generally credited with. What that album marks is a sense of opening up parameters within an already myopic 'back to basics' Punk idea of what Rock is: (simple chord structures, standard drum patterns, etc) but certainly can't compare, in terms of innovation with the plethora of albums released in the late 60s-early 70s by bands such as Soft Machine or Yes (and obviously Beefheart) all of whom strike me as having a for more expansive attitude towards what Rock could be. I'd certainly say that, compared with those, Loveless closes Rock down far more than it opens it up. I'd even go so far as to say that, in terms of the Valentine's peers, an album like The Butthole Surfers Locust Abortion Technician was infinitely more innovative than Loveless - which I still can't see as anything more than a decent welding together of Dinosaur Jr riffs with Cocteau Twins textures and Beach Boys harmonies. Fortunately, innovation is one of the factors furthest from my mind when I listen to Rock.

Racist.

that too

With every year, Loveless seems more and more like such a boring record. I've never really liked it very much, but I listened to it last year and had to turn it off halfway through. The songs are uncompelling repetitions, the drum machine sounds like tinny shit, most of the songs are built around sometimes compelling distorted walls and simple repetetive melodies. It wouldn't be such a bad record if they hadn't already made Isn't Anything, which is such an energetic blast of awesome, creative rock, which has much better a) riffs b) melodies and even c) noises! I just can't stand to listen to Loveless, it goes on forever; some of the songs sound like straight-up boring grunge songs, albeit with a bit more distortion. How much did that record cost to make? 3 million? I think Lovelss is an important record, but it's one I'll never fully understand the appeal of, especially from a band who had already made so many good songs before that particular album.

I still wish I'd seen 'em live though, I bet they were great. Anyway...

I prefer ''Isn't Anything'' because they do more interesting things with drums. On a song like ''Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside), for instance, I like it how the syncopation of the drumming seems to dictate the unfolding of the melody more than the other way round. That is something that I don't hear much in many bands that work in a melodic rock format.

I've always thought Loveless would've made a great EP. There's maybe three or four truly outstanding tracks on it but the rest just sort of pass me by.

(Good point about Soft as Snow)

Exactly, the drumming on Isn't Anything rules. But again, Loveless is all drum machine except for like one song. And it's possibly the tinniest, worst programming drum machine ever. Really, in general, the album sounds like shit. $3,000,000?!

In what way are Drunkdriver pushing things forward?

Drunkdriver/Mattin type stuff

Yeah, Mattin's interesting but I've never really seen anything particularly forward looking when it came to Drunkdriver. If you're talking about some kind of collaboration between the two though, then fair enough. I've not heard it so I can't comment.

Eh, if that's the case, JLIAT has everyone beat!

They collaborated both on record and live.

OK, cool. I'll try and check it out.

Incidentally, have either of them got anything to do with the band Homostupids?

Soft Machine are a really good example - I think their intimacy with jazz and their sense of the preposterous makes for more 'progressive' music than much of prog music proper.

Interesting you mention the Cocteaus there - I was going to say before that where rock is capable of being interesting is on a lyrical level. I love the Fall, but they're hardly pushing music too far forward. Lyrically though (and this mightn't apply to their later stuff) there's some really fascinating ideas. With the Cocteaus I find it really fascinating how they created this language-myth around what sounds to me like prosody. That's clever, to my mind.

Also, while I'm not a fan myself, I know a lot of people who see the Cardiacs in the kind of terms we're talking of here.

And finally, I really can't hear it in Drunkdriver either. Mattin is sometimes interesting, but rarely for his music.

I think Autechre pushed things forward Con/Draft/Untitled era, they're kinda stuck in a rut though now (that doesn't mean their music is bad though; they're just not innovating like they used to, but how many times can they be expected to do that?). I think they're one of the few electronic artists who you can identify within like 2 seconds of hearing one of their songs. That in itself seems like a pretty big innovation; electronic music is usually kinda faceless, and their music definitely isn't friendly, comforting, and welcoming. I think Untilted is definitely such a breakthrough record, the way things repeat endlessly but if you pay close attention they're actually never repeating. There's always some little microsound changing. Brilliant.

Scoff if you want, but I think Shellac ... well, they're not young, but I think they definitely have tried to push things forward a bit. When I listen to them, I hear some grumpy talented middle aged men who are very bored with rock music. Minimal power trio. But I mean, no one sounds like them. They get lumped with "math rock" but actually their music is really simple, when focusing on just riffs or whatever. The structures though, are pretty odd. Like on that last album, on the song with the drum solo... no, not a drum SOLO, just the drums playing the main beat solo for a good minute. Everything drops out except this beat going on and on. I find their approach to songwriting satisfyingly lazy, tight, ridiculous, obvious, intelligent, bizarre, and right-on. Obviously, they've been doing this band for 20 years now so they've repeated themselves quite a bit, but I think there's lots of cool little ideas in there. I'm sure most bands would just hear them and go, "Oh, Steve sounds like he's playing a paper shredder! I wanna do thaT!" But there's really a lot of neat little things in most of their songs, if you pay attention.

I thought Phantom Limbs were pretty radical there for a while, I liked the idea of circus goth noise punk, they had a really cool sound. Lots of those bands. Don Salsa, Idiot Flesh, Sleepy Time Guerilla Museum, they all strived to do something different with music. I think all that music is a bit too demanding, with little rewards. Most of those bands only have a few albums, they toured relentlessly and died quietly.

I think Kayo Dot are genuinely striving to do something different, but I dunno if it works all the time. I like their idea of trying to create meaningful climaxes without crescendos, rhythm/time changes, or obvious chord changes and such. They're making this floaty drifty music that still gets lumped in with metal. It seems like they're definitely going for something. I dunno if they'll get there, but it's commendable.

I dunno.

It's interesting you say about Kayo Dot genuinely striving - I know very few musicians who wouldn't like ot think they're pushing things forward. I saw the world's most anodyne metal band a few weeks ago, and chatting to them afterwards you'd think they'd invented some space-ages ears for their radically new and exciting music. Rock musicians are inherently narcissists: discuss.

Toby from Kayo Dot seems pretty down to earth. I mean, he's actually made tons of albums, for 20 years now, alienated his bands who have all quit on him at various points, I think he's very driven by a very specific sound, and I think he's good to the people who recognize that.

http://www.sputnikmusic.com/feature.php?id=5615

This is a really good interview.

But, yeah, rock musicians as narcissists.. well, really, any musician who puts their music out there, wants it to be heard, and I don't believe that most people do things without wanting something in return. I mean, if I give someone money, I at least want a "thank you", even if I don't expect them to pay me back, right? If a musician is putting it out there, they want to be recognized for something, otherwise they'd just make the songs and keep them for themselves.. or, hell, just never take the time to record them. Artists seek ... something. Recognition, fame, money; I think it's more important for littler bands to at least be recognized for talent, or innovation. They want a review to read, "THEY MAY NOT BE WELL KNOWN, BUT THEY HAVE SOME DOWNRIGHT CLEVER STRUCTURES. THAT HAND CLAPPED PART LEADS WAY TO A GHOSTLY SYNTH AND DELICATE TRIPLE VOCAL HARMONIES." I mean, we've all those moments as musicians where we think of some "brilliant" little part, and we want people to pick up on that, I think. I dunno. It just goes to question.. why play music? Why record it? Why take the time to layer parts, to add keys or to overdub or to re-do takes or listen back to what we played? We're all craving.. something.

Thought I would get shit for my last few posts. Am I on ignore?

How many people here have heard a tune of mine? I know slavo was unable to do anything with one of my tracks.

Glice - You make some good points, as usual. What I don't get is why you seem to apply academic theory to what is really just popular music, with a frankly very different way of evolving than the classical music you love. Personally I think Beefheart is indeed an important musician, but hardly one that didn't come out from a narrative of sort that the numerous experiments between rock, blues and jazz pointed at since the mid to late sixties. Also, good mention of The Soft Machine demonrail. I didn't say Drunkdriver are, or might care to be, an innovative band. Their work with Mattin, though, fuses two worlds that haven't met before, so that at least makes them different from any other hardcore band making music today.

Another thing. Which rock bands, records, gigs are you referring to? Past and present. An extensive list would be helpful.

I perhaps didn't make this clear - the thing with academic theory isn't that it belongs strictly to Western art music (which is a more useful term than 'classical music', albeit more cumbersome) but that it purports to offer a vernacular and language to describe all music. This maybe wasn't the case prior to the 20th-century and it's not quite a one-size-fits-all, but the general principle is that the vernacular you're calling 'academic theory' isn't loaded to solely describe 'classical' music, but that it's a way of describing music. You get a frission, as our musical horizons expand in the 20th-century, against other formalised systems - the main two I know about are the Maqams of Arabic states and the Indian 'raga' systems - but I don't believe it's somehow a reduction of the merit of anything to point out that some music has certain abiding forms. This is as true of, say, fugal counterpoint as it is of 3-chord-country.

I suppose the big difference for me is that popular music isn't somehow absolved of its formal structure. I don't think it's stretching the point to say that pop music didn't evolve in a vacuum, 'outside' of 'academic' music - it's only really with punk music that you get this idea of the auto-didactic musician, which is a good 50 years into pop's development. There are exceptions prior to then, but if you think of the early jazz bands (and even your Davises or Coltranes), most of them have some relationship with formal tuition, although not necessarily with the conservatoire-style tuition of your Oistrakhs and so on.

Even within the idea of the auto-didactic musician, there are plenty of people in 'classical' music who are entirely self-taught yet well considered - Takimitsu for instance.

So yeah. With all due respect, I don't think pop and classical music do have a different way of evolving. They still use the same language, the same instruments. I'm not saying that classical music is somehow better, or anything like that. I'd definitely say that one of the most important things that pop music has done is to introduce ideas surrounding tone production that go far beyond the timbral ideas of even Musique Concrete. This in two senses - first, the affect that amplification has on a tone, and second in the way that studio production offers a new palette for recordings. Loathe though I am to admit it, something like Sgt Peppers is a massively important record, if only in terms of studio craft.

I mean, it's worth bearing in mind that I've had no formal training and am entirely self-taught when it comes to matters musical. I'm happy to accept that you may think I'm talking out of my arse. I do think that popular music is capable of doing things that few have done before. My first thought was of Xenomania when I opened this thread, but I can't really be arsed to argue the case for them on this forum because I know most people here just have no time for that sort of thing.

Was this to me? Referring to where?

*typical kayo dot fan comment*

Yes.
I will post a longer reply tomorrow. Why do you think classical musicians use the same instrumentation as pop musicians? That's not often the case.

It's the same family of instruments. It's hardly like pop music is using dulcimer, sarengi and didgeridoo. Same family, same language, same structures etc etc.

After hearing your tape, I think you pushed something forward, Glice!

Pssh. Very kind of you to say. But still. Pssh.

Wait until you hear his Happy Hardcore take on 'The Little Boy that Santa Claus Forgot".

I made an electronic mix CD the other day and kinda wanted to send it to Glice but I figured he'd go "some of it was a bit shit and some of it represented the end of electronic music as we know it, a bit too much moog for my tastes and the flow from massive epic well-worn classics to slightly odd primitive 303 worshippers was jarring, often abrasive. Not a bad mix but not one I'd want to listen to again." or something like that.

Oh, send it along. You shouldn't worry about that kind of thing, talking shite is mostly keeping myself entertained.