it doesn't matter if i think it's good or bad, that's just what's happened

Chuck Klosterman (MN represent!) said some things about music criticism that I thought were kind of interesting in a recent interview: 

When I first got into criticism as a life in 1994 or 1995, one of the prerequisites of the job was, “Can you distance yourself from the life of the artist and just look at the art? Do you have the ability to do that?” Because at the time the thinking was: A lot of people can’t. A lot of people in the audience can’t do that. They can’t look at somebody like Marilyn Manson and not think of his character as a way that informs them about what the music means, but as a critic you’re supposed to be able to that. You’re supposed to be able to say, “I can just look at this art and examine its merits almost separate from the individual.”

And now that has completely reversed. Not only do people not expect you to do that—they don’t want you to. There is an expectation that, of course, you’re going to think about the individual’s real-life persona within even their fictitious work, so that has changed.

Isaac Chotiner: What’s your feeling about that?

My feeling doesn’t matter. [Laughs.] It doesn’t matter to me if I think it’s good or bad. That’s just what’s happened.

          ---

There’ve always been critics and writers who went outside of the text, where it would be like everybody’s writing about Hootie & the Blowfish, everyone’s writing about the Hootie & the Blowfish record, and they’re talking about whether the music is cool or lame or are they actually talented or are they not really talented or talking about who the audience for this music is.

And then there would be a few critics outside of that, who’d be like, “Let’s think about Hootie & the Blowfish as an idea. What does it mean for this to have happened that this band is so much bigger than all of these other artists who we perceive as being more talented or more important or more insightful. What does it mean, almost politically or socially, that for this brief period of time the biggest band in the world is Hootie & the Blowfish?”

There was always a sliver of people doing that. I suppose, when I first got into this, I sort of perceived myself as being in that sliver of people doing it. And now this has completely flopped. Now that is the overwhelming majority of criticism. That’s the only way to do criticism now. What used to be sort of the fringe is now the center of everything.

It seems like Klosterman is describing two distinct, but very entwined ideas that are foundational for a lot of music criticism today. The first is that we should reject the old(?) notion of separating the art from the artist. Amanda Petrusich explains this idea and its rationale here in somewhat more depth:

 

The second idea described by Klosterman is that we should analyze music in terms of its broader cultural meaning. Here's just one example of what this approach looks like in practice, but you can find it pretty much everywhere.

Anyways, the interesting thing about these ideas is that--despite being tenets of current (popular) music criticism among journalists--they are pretty controversial outside that inner sphere. The video above, as of my writing this, has 44 likes and 271 dislikes--which seems pretty rough for an unassuming "professional from x field opines on a topic in that field" type video. Even Klosterman, who I'd expect to be more aligned with music journalism, expresses some misgivings in the interview above about how prevalent these ideas have become. I generally don't like them much either.

That said, I also think that it would be crazy to evaluate such ideas from a majority rule angle. What would Petrusich think about the backlash against her opinion in the video? Probably not that her ideas were wrong, but that the people who hit 'dislike' weren't ready for, or felt challenged by them. That's probably sort of true. Comments on the video are disabled, but if they weren't, there would no doubt be a lot of whining about "ess jay double yoos", etc.

I'd like to think, though, that we can have better reasons for (at least some of the time) rejecting these ideas. I sort of already explained why I'm not a huge fan of Petrusich's approach in this post. As for the cultural meaning tenet, this ilm forum post from Οὖτις nails why it can be unappealing (it's "otm" as they always say there lol):

some work is less important for the experience of actually digesting the content it presents to you and more important for the discourse that it has created

and this is the point I *really* disagree with, because thinking like this is how music criticism (and to some extent the broader music industry - certainly the mainstream industry) arrived at the sorry state it's in today, where the "narrative" of an artist's career is more important/of more interest than the work itself. Celebrity becomes everything, telling (and discussing and responding to and judging) the larger meta-story about the celebrity's life transcends the work itself. Which, I have to say as both a musician and a fan, I very much resent and hate, because it devalues the work itself, the actual content/creation that is supposed to be performing that function of engaging and absorbing the listener. With great works, I forget p much everything about the creator and myself and get immersed in it, it's like a little world to walk into, a comprehensive experience. But artists will be less inclined to even shoot for that goal if their primary concern isn't creating something good, it's just *being* interesting themselves.

Anyways, to end on a more positive note, here's a excerpt from John Luther Adams that's (part of) maybe my favorite music-related quote period. I'm not gonna say it completely BTFO's the views expressed by Petrusich in the video (Adams himself probably wouldn't think so) but...

In fact, nothing makes me happier than when you think or hear or feel or experience something that I, the composer, didn't anticipate or didn't understand was present…was implicit in the music. That is very exciting to me. Look, the music always knows more than I do. And the reason I do this…the reason we dedicate ourselves to music and the reason music is so essential to our lives is that it’s bigger than we are. It’s deeper…. it’s like the ocean. There’s not just one current or one stream. There’s this ocean of possibility. I revel in that. I’m not trying to say anything. I’m just listening and trying to hear something I haven’t heard before, and then my job is to try and make that audible so you can hear it too. What it means is up to you.

...it sure seems liberating by comparison.

techno 1990

Bleep / Cold Futurism / Quaint Sci-fi

Veda

(People have already compiled tons of this stuff, I probably don't need to go on.)

Lush / Utopian / Dreamy

 Live the Dream

 

Only a Dream

 

The Attic

 Dreamworld

 Industrial / Mechanized Rock Riffs / Proto-Hardcore(???)

 

1200 AD

 Powerhouse

Bring That Beat Back

Revolution

In my ongoing attempt to get a better sense of electronic music history, I've moved on from Chicago / Detroit stuff from the late 80s to UK / European house and techno from the 90s--sort of following the trajectory of Energy Flash. So far I'm only at 1991, but I wanted to note a few of the aesthetic directions I heard in the tracks from 1990 (without writing another longwinded essay-type post). Obviously there's a lot of overlap between these; they're more like currents running through the music than discrete genres.

Edit: entry title reminded me of this video lol

no one creates music to make the world a worse place

This is an idea that's so foundational for my musical outlook that I'm not even sure how to clearly articulate it. But basically, it seems fair to me to say music (and maybe art in general) is created to be enjoyed / appreciated. As such, our goal in listening to it should be figure out how to do so. When we can't, we're missing out and should want to fix that rather than gloat about our superior taste. 

Maybe that assumption about why music is created isn't--or wasn't--always true. But even if you want to say that it can serve other functional roles (e.g. ringtones, tearing down bourgeois assumptions about what music is, keeping teens from loitering outside a 7-eleven), you can surely admit that "music is created to be enjoyed" holds true for most of what we consider "music" in our current society (maaan). If you are interested in music for those other roles it can have, you're certainly reading the wrong blog.

The boring Anthony Fantano-type response, though, is that Music Is Subjective™ and everyone has their own tastes, so you shouldn't force yourself to like things when in fact everyone is going to like some music and dislike some music. And that's obviously all true. But missing out is still missing out, regardless of how inevitable it is. So while you shouldn't worry too much about not "getting" a particular artist or whatever, I just don't see why you wouldn't want to be able to appreciate more things. Why take pride in not appreciating something when it exists solely to be appreciated? (Not that it can't be fun or even beneficial to try and articulate why you don't like certain music, but that's another post.)

Another truism-based response: Everything Is Political™ and so we shouldn't recklessly praise and support music without thinking about its impact in the external world. But I'd note that "enjoy / appreciate" doesn't necessarily mean "praise and support" (and I think it would need to for this objection to work). Also, granted, that is certainly a necessary consideration for everyone, but it's not the focus of this blog. (I mostly leave the more nuanced thinking on this dynamic to the geniuses over at Pitchfork.com.)

One more less fashionable objection might be that in order to determine what is aesthetically good / worthy of appreciation, one must also be able to determine what is bad--meaning some music must not be worthy of appreciation. And while I could just fall back on the old "nothing's objectively aesthetically good, it's just subjective opinion" line, a slightly more satisfying response might be say that there are practically an infinite number of reasons you might think a work of music is good--so even if that does suggest that other works are not as good in a particular respect--it doesn't mean you couldn't find other reasons to appreciate them. That said, I also don't see why my approach should prevent you from deciding that you like one work more than other (although it admittedly makes that harder).

I feel like I still haven't made it totally clear why I think this is so important, but oh well. This is a blog post, not a treatise. Just try to lighten up and enjoy things once in a while, I guess!


Edit: I guess one more important clarification is that I'm not saying you should actively seek to enjoy as wide a variety of music as possible if you aren't interested in doing so (my own listening habits are pretty narrow at the moment). I just find that this is a helpful way of looking at things when you do run into music that you don't immediately like. 

Listening 1

[This is the first of maybe a series of posts where I note what I've been listening to lately, and try to articulate what I liked (or at least what stood out to me) about it. Not sure if it'll be worthwhile but I'll give it a shot...]

vektroid - ocean color road

-extremely evocative, both on the level of sound design (lush magical water/wave sounds, aquatic tropical pads and leads) and the level of composition/pacing (some songs reminiscent of extended periods of oceanic travel, others of stopping at some mysterious island; each song is distinct and memorable in its own right)
-similar "segahaze" sound to Neo Cali and Starcalc but more fully realized: feels like a journey rather than a collection of songs that are just based on the same aesthetic template
-I know a sort of ironic detachment is often attributed to kindred spirits like Lopatin, Ferraro, Internet Club, etc. especially when they make music that seems to reference escapism--but damn if this doesn't sound like a pretty sincere attempt at making something that feels really escapist: a world you could (and would want to) stay in. not saying that's all there is to it--but that's probably why I like it so much more than anything I've heard by any of those artists

future - future

-I don't exactly know what drew me to this rather than any other mainstream trap albums, but I think it has to do with how it exemplifies the 2010s trap sound while offering some subtle freshness production-wise: it mostly eschews with the usual "epic" choir pads and spooky descending motifs in favor of brighter, more lush ambient and melodic sounds; at the same time, it exemplifies the interesting rhythmic feel of recent trap with its complex, contorting hi hat and kick patterns and use of interchanged kicks with varying degrees of loudness/punchiness. 
-future has a similar loose, singsong approach to a lot of other popular rappers--but he does it best imo. a lot of older rappers (even post-80s) sound stiff / lacking in groove sense by comparison

kanye - tlop

-turns out this actually his best album
-I'm assuming some of the critics who (comparatively speaking) panned it offered reasoning along the lines of platitudes like "it's sprawling and unfocused" and "it doesn't have distinct, unified aesthetic that could 'change the game' like his previous albums".
-personally I think such criticisms miss what makes this album so interesting: critics always love a neatly classifiable "new sound" album--but here he does something better: taking the most successful and distinctive elements of previous works to an extreme
-1. his earlier soul/gospel style and later more abrasive style are put in a blender: choir samples, rnb-style vocals, etc. are featured heavily but processed--clipped, distorted, delayed--in weird ways (almost reminding me of "gesange der junglinge" at times tbh)
-2. more generally though, it takes his approach of building songs around unusual sounds and unexpected changes to an extreme while still being basically a pop album. maybe my favorite example of how unorthodox his approach is right now is in "Wolves": right as the carthartic chorus/hook comes in (e.g. at 1:24), a bunch of other sounds also enter the mix, one of which doesn't even seem to be playing at the same speed as the rest of the song. very chaotic and 'wtf' in a fun way.
-also, I guess I've ignored the thing that always seems most important to critics when reviewing kanye west albums: psychoanalyzing the man himself. I don't have much to say there (c.f. megan garvey's review of ye), other than that lyrically there are, as usual, a lot of "groaners" and a few funny lines here and there. as for his broader public persona, it just amazes me that so many liberal music commentators / enthusiasts seemed to think for awhile that an impossibly rich, egotistical celebrity was genuinely "on their side" and would always be a responsible voice for the causes they (we) think are important.

a guy called gerald - "escape"

-basically exemplifies gerald's inimitable early approach: counterintuitive rhythms that are somehow angular yet smoothly flowing, and composition that holds interest by "drifting" in odd ways--favoring intuitive variation of initial elements over the introduction of completely new ideas. plus the "we've got so much power now" sample has a really cool industrial sound included, and i love how the delay used turns it and other samples into 'clouds' of sound rather than rigid grid patterns. overall very badass-sounding. fuck that guy who uploads old house tracks like this on youtube but always uses footage of a """sexy""" second life(?) avatar dancing it to accompany it though.

alright, its 4:00 AM, time to stop writing...

Reaching the Far Lands as an Aesthetic Goal

Lately some sort of analogy involving the far lands in minecraft and creativity (mainly in music) has been circling around in my head. This post is an attempt to lay it out, and hopefully articulate a potential goal / guiding idea for my own music-making attempts in the process =)


For any non-nerds who might (for some reason) read this, the far lands were an accidental feature of early versions of minecraft. The game generates terrain up to 8 times the equivalent size of earth, but if you somehow wandered even father than that, you would reach a point where the generation process no longer works normally. Characteristics of the normal game's biomes are still present, but twisted into visually striking, impossible new forms. Even basic game physics is warped: some objects can appear 2D, you need to travel by horse to avoid falling out of the world through the ground, etc. For me and probably many others, the far lands have a sort of romantic (in an almost Burkean sense) appeal.



The Basics
So how does the analogy work? Basically, I think that some music is to "normal" music what the far lands are to "normal" minecraft. Terrain in minecraft proper consists of various biomes, which can be seen as analogous to musical genres or idioms. The specifics may vary, but you know generally what to expect and look for in a jungle biome or a jungle track. That's not to imply that strictly idiomatic music can't be surprising or even mind-blowing--it's just that it's "mindblowingness" comes from expected elements being executed really well, e.g. a pop song with a really catchy vocal melody, or an ambient work with really lush sounds. It's the kind of shit you can achieve purely through a combination of youtube tutorial-level knowledge and practice-induced luck. (And I don't mean that dismissively.) Anyways, terrain / music governed by the expectations of biome / genre is the "normal" side of things; it's what the far lands are not.

Is far lands music, then, just any music that's innovative or experimental? Not exactly--it would be a pretty boring concept if it were that simple. When people use those terms, they're often referring to music that they think either a) combines elements from previously separate music idioms together or b) creates an entirely new music idiom. This would be equivalent to minecraft mods that a) create an additional biome that combines elements from various existing biomes or b) create an entirely new biome. Neither one quite captures the nature of the far lands, though.

Sandy on Earth (this is probably the most brow-furrowing-ly abstract part, pls don't stop here!)
Now I'm left with the difficult part: explaining what the hell is so special about the far lands themselves, and how it applies to music / art. First of all, I should clarify that this analogy isn't meant to be taken too literally. Really serious nerds may know that the far lands form according to some predictable patterns of behavior. But for the purposes of this post, they are simply, to quote my namesake, "a place where reality slips and slides, expands and contracts". Their defining characteristic is that they distort and push past the limits of existing categories / sets of expectations rather than form new ones. The cases described in the previous paragraph are different because they don't really break free of biome / genre expectations in the same way, but simply rearrange or replace those expectations. (Again, I'm not trying to be dismissive here; these approaches to innovation can of course be very exciting too.) But at the same time, the far lands aren't entirely disconnected from normality. After all, you can't bend reality if there's no "reality" established in the first place. Some sort of referentiality is needed. Without the context of the normal game, the minecraft far lands wouldn't carry the same resonance when you finally come across them. And without existing music idioms, the same would be true for far lands music. But I still haven't really explained what all this actually looks (sounds) like in music, which was, after all, supposed to be the point of writing this post. To do that, I'll need to introduce two further subconcepts in the analogy...

Sorcery
Again, far lands music doesn't readjust your expectations so much it just continually subverts them. When this is done really well, I think it can give the music a sort of "impossible" quality: you can't believe what you're hearing, or maybe listening to it feels akin to being in a dream. It's obviously difficult to point out specific musical characteristics that far lands music tends to have without reducing it to a formula (and therefore defeating the entire concept). But very broadly speaking, far lands music tends to subvert a particular idiom's standard composition structures by making them in some sense more complex or fragmentary (possibly both), by honing in on unique characteristics of a genre and pushing them farther than its constraints would allow, and sometimes throwing elements from other genres into the maelstrom as well. But music that simply combines disparate elements without much changing / distorting them doesn't have the same effect, because you can easily tell what's going on once you recognize the idioms its drawing on. So in a sense, such music still has limits--while far lands music, despite its referential nature, does not. It's more difficult to distinguish far lands music from music that creates its own idiom--but as we'll see below, doing so may be a matter of perspective.

Relative vs. Absolute Far Lands
All this talk of "expectations" leads pretty naturally to the conclusion that what is or isn't far lands music depends on the reference points of particular listeners. If you're familiar with one music idiom but not another, music from the latter might be far lands music to you. For example, a lot of academic electronic music seems this way to me because I'm more versed in / used to popular music. So a work like Jean-Claude Risset's Sud seems to take elements you'd hear in ambient / chillout music (flowing water sounds, birdsong, drones, etc.) and do amazing, mind bending things with them (transform one sound into another, merge ambient sounds with harmonic sounds, etc.) But if I were more familiar with that sort of computer music, I might be more able to classify and predict Risset's apparent sorcery. Usually, I think it's easiest to say that x music is far lands music in relation to x idiom (as in the example above).

But still, I can't shake the feeling that there is absolute far lands music out there, which would still strain credulity even if the listener was familiar with all music ever recorded, or even ever made. However, if it does exist, it's likely stuff that only people like this guy know about.

Examples
-Risset, Parmegiani, Stockhausen et al. (again, in relation to most ambient, psychedelic, "soundscape" type music)
-Autechre (in relation to hip hop / dance music--maybe even an example of absolute far lands music?)
-Vektroid (in relation to new-age, videogame soundtracks, etc.; this whole post was partly inspired by listening to Shader again recently, which is far lands music even in relation to vaporwave itself)
-Trout Mask Replica (in relation to blues / rock)
-Twin Infinitives (in relation to rock)
-surreal house (in relation to Chicago house; described in my first post)
-edit: Maryanne Amacher is probably an absolute example
-edit2: I also forgot that Autechre actually use a very similar analogy to describe their music in this interview, which I think kind of helps validate this concept:

Sean Booth: It's like gaming sometimes, trying to guide it. There's some very basic AI in there—I mean only using "if" statements, conditionals, if-the-situation-is-this-then-do-that type things. It's as basic as a game AI, if you look at the AI for the characters in a game, it's just a chain of "if" statements, basically. It's very much on a level to that, really. So playing music on it is about as fun as playing Grand Theft Auto, doing random shit with pedestrians, seeing if you can get someone to run up a wall or whatever. If I can get the musical equivalent of that, I'm generally quite happy.
Rob Brown: Make the cars float. Transparent cars that float. That's what we aim for. 

Misc Notes
It's probably obvious from reading this that I tend to really like music that I think fits with this analogy. It's not like I think it's automatically better than everything else--but I do suspend that it tends to stand the test of time better than most "normal" music. This is because, ideally, it should be capable of surprising you no matter how much normal music idioms are combined or multiply in number, since it exists outside them. Also, I've stressed the strangeness of far lands music, but I also think of it as the most intuitive (rather than consciously "logically" formulated) way of approaching music. In a sense, it's the most personal art around.

Surreal House Tracks

In trying to learn more about the history of electronic music, I've been doing something that, as a listener, I'm usually not comfortable doing--going through large quantities of music (relatively) quickly. I'm not a fan of this approach in general because it can seemingly lead to superficial engagement and understanding. But I've tried to avoid this problem by honing in on two (really one?) genres: Chicago house and Detroit techno from the mid-to-late 80s. Obviously, these scenes tend to get venerated a lot (mainly by European white guys) as being "where it all started"; the producers are "originators" and "pioneers", etc. And generally, it's true that some of the interest in listening to this music comes from identifying elements that would become important later on: "Acid Tracks" starting a never-ending stream of acid tracks, Derrick May's otherworldly string pads and contorting beats paving the way for ambient techno and IDM, etc.

But for the most part, when listening to old music, I think it makes more sense to focus on the musical elements and approaches that didn't start familiar trends or "make the jump" into the following eras, that still genuinely surprise you when you hear them. Otherwise, why would you actually listen to this stuff? (You might as well just read about Phuture in a Red Bull Music Academy article and listen to some more polished modern redux that got a 3.8 on Resident Advisor.) Anyways, one really compelling approach from this era that seems to have been lost to time is what in the title I call "surreal house"*. (Not the most creative name, I know...) The house tracks I have in mind can't be neatly summed up as either "warm/soulful" or "cold/futuristic" in their aesthetics, although they usually have elements of both. (I mention that distinction mainly because Reynolds uses it in the chapter of Energy Flash that inspired this post.) They tend to jutxapose off-putting / unsettling / "unmusical" sonic and compositional choices alongside brighter / more traditionally emotive / catchier / more pop-friendly choices. Usually these tracks don't feel overtly dystopian or "bad trip"-y, as might be said of many comparable 90s UK efforts. They just follow some internal logic, or lack thereof, that's suggestive of states of dreaming, sleep deprivation, etc. The point, though, is that these tracks evoke associated feelings (e.g. delirium, giddiness, acceptance of incongruity and oddness) when you listen to them. (Maybe I should call it "hypnagogic house", but I'm sure there are already some very talented musicians in Brooklyn or something using that as a descriptor for their work.)

*Not another reference to Derrick May though. His music tends to be too overtly sci-fi/futuristic to qualify. 

---

Here are a few examples:

Reese - You're Mine

 

Kreem - Triangle of Love

X-Ray - Let's Go (A Mix)

The above tracks represent the apex of this feel, but it's not like I have any strict standards in mind. A big part of why I find this concept interesting is that there's a lot of gradation. Below are a few more that are a bit lower on the "sliding scale" (with notes, since it might not be as obvious why I think they qualify).

Motor City Techno Mob - Ready to Roll It

- the motif that comes in at 0:18 is pretty weird, especially the eerie higher frequency resonance(?)
- the vocals are strange (sonically and content-wise) but especially the dissonance building up really briefly after 4:03, and then whatever the hell is happening even more briefly around 4:26 (reminds me of Oneohtrix Point Never's Replica)

Kaos - Definition of Love (Master Reese Mix)

- the sound first appearing at 1:35 is somewhere between metal scrapping and a dinosaur call. wtf?

Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes -  Time To Express

- this generally has a sort of deranged quality right? hard to single out a specific moment though. maybe the garbled vocals at 3:06 are a good example

Eddie "Flashin" Fowlkes - Goodbye Kiss

- the ridiculous manipulations of an emotive sample; the bass, flute, and stabs sound like they were recorded from an 80s sitcom. clearly the funniest track I've included

A few addenda:
- These are all really good

- Apparently all the examples I had in mind are from Detroit (and mostly from Kevin Saunderson, which is why he's the best). But I still feel like I've heard Chicago house tracks that would fit as well.

- My definition of this phenomenon is intentionally kind of vague, and could possibly seem more confusing after the examples (but hopefully not). If I had--at risk of being reductive--to pick out a defining formal quality of surreal house, I would probably say it's the use of weird samples in otherwise pop-influenced house / techno tracks. 

- That might raise the question of whether or not """"surreal house"""" is even a thing--or if I'm just noticing a byproduct of sampling / DJ culture in general. Obviously if you have tons of recorded sounds at your disposal it's going to lead to some whimsical choices. And to some extent, it probably is just that. But what I have in mind is definitely not, for example, some guy overdubbing his DJ name into 50s horror movie dialogue as a "hilarious" intro to his track, or sampling an anti-drug PSA in a rave track. It's very much an overarching compositional choice in that it affects how the whole track feels (for me at least), and is more enigmatic and artistic in nature that either of those examples--which are more goofy and superfluous add-ons to the actual music. Again, the important part is the feelings induced.

---

While my knowledge of modern house / techno is pretty limited, it does seem to me like most modern producers seldom, if ever, operate on this wavelength. I don't mean to suggest that they are entirely unadventurous--but when they do throw in unusual sounds or compositional choices, they tend to do so in a more tempered, almost apologetic way. For example, Terrance Dixon's "The Switch" (released on a 2017 Tresor compilation, and labeled "the record's strangest and best track" by Resident Advisor) is built around a sample that's weirder than anything in many of the tracks above. But rather than use it as one element in a more varied whole, Dixon just loops and filters it for eight minutes, almost as if to say "look, I know you probably think this sound is ugly and weird, but if you just listen to it for a while it's actually pretty interesting". And for the record, I don't think that's an invalid approach; obviously more minimal, meditative tracks also have a deep history in techno and house.

Still though, I wish I could find some kind of modern equivalent to "surreal house". Until then, I'll have to agree with Ishkur (circa 200[?] ) that these kinds of tracks could be considered "proto" versions of more modern styles "in much the same way that dinosaurs are proto-birds. In other words, extinct long ago, and still much more interesting that anything current."