Scott-O -- as in Scott Walker and SunnO)))

tarr isn't making films anymore no?

Amateurist: I didn't know about that. We've got an interview with him coming up on the site this month so I presumed he was 'back in the game'. Not read it yet though.

LBI: Cheers!

It could be some wild card thing like bankable actor x is a SW fan, uses his her leverage to get SW brought in as composer.

it's possible tarr is back in the game, but he made a lot of pronouncements around the time of turin horse that he wouldn't be making another film, and would instead devote himself to running his film school

oh, this leaked.

When's the official release? I preordered so long ago.

When people read that we were going to do this record I think what they expected was a lot of drones and some incoherent shit… you know what I mean… some screaming buried in the background.

lol

not so much this one but with other late period scott walker, how much must they cost to make relative to the amount they sell

oh this is just a straight-up late-period scott walker album with xtra guitar. nice.

"just"

"straight up"

also, doran, that was a great interview and write-up (though i have to say i think your interpretation of that benjamin essay is way off). so odd to see scott so talkative and open these days. i discovered him in the 1990s when he wasn't giving interviews and seemed to be cultivating a very strong mystique. which, oddly enough, isn't dispelled in any serious way by his new accessibility.

this album is a real kick. i had no idea it would be this, uh, tuneful (by their standards). also, it's really funny, something that's always been part of scott's work though not acknowledged enough. but this one is funnier than usual.

for someone who, only eight years ago, was the subject of a documentary about what a massive hermit he is, he sure comes across as a warm and balanced character. fab interview, goes without saying

Been a while since I saw the doc but can't recall it saying too much about him being a hermit. As so often in these cases (cf. Jandek) "hermit" is taken to mean "doesn't play live or give interviews". Scott travels on the tube, goes to the cinema &c.

Scott is like Kubrick - only gives interviews etc when he's got new product to promote. When you have a looong gap between albs, that means you vanish from the public eye and get accused of being a hermit.

Not sure that's the only reason we haven't heard from Kubrick of late

30th Century Man definitely painted him out as a recluse and a 'difficult' character - shutting himself away in a marshland hut, cap pulled firmly down over his eyes, rarely talking to people during studio sessions, deliberately removing himself from the public eye on more than one occasion etc... Obviously there's some truth to it, but 30CM had me believing for a long time that he was this utter enigma and highly unapproachable. Since Bish Bosch that's been completely disproven it seems.

That film is directed a certain way but Scott himself comes across as entirely affable and open, as he has in pretty much every interview since tilt?

This still rules. It's funny that he brings up the rhyming, I've often thought that a big unmentioned factor in why tilt comes over as more conventional than the two that followed is that most of the lyrics rhyme. I don't know that this is more "accessible" than climate of hunter as that quietus piece contends, but I have a hard time thinking of things in those terms, like who cares it's all accessible really

Another funny thing is that in all the interviews from the last one he talks about using less bass (and singing in a higher register) because bass tones & baritone voices act as a soporific, so it was amusing when he was all "hey guys I'm in sunn o now", maybe that's why everyone's saying this is more poppy

would be fun to spy scott in a tube

amateurist: Thanks. I guess any attempt to sum up Frankfurt School theory in a snappy single clause sentence is a fool's errand.

Is the hat because he's a paid-up member of the Steve Reich League of Bald-Headed Men?

He took his hat off when I first met him and he has some hair left up top. Not a thick mane like in his youth but then he is in his 70s.

Didn't Scott appear in a mid-80s UK tv ad for orange juice or something?

(I tried looking it up on youtube, but "Scott Walker commercial" just brings up campaign ads for that shitbag governor)

Yeah, Britvic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2EoduCLKYY

listening "party" in London next Tuesday

i was trying to find details of that but coudln't find them in the 0.7 seconds i spent looking between phonecalls at work.

Cool, that's the ad, thanks!

xp

bit of publicity for climate of hunter, why not.

i got in pretty quickly with my listening party rsvp, so here's hoping.

Ben Ratliff has a piece in the NY Times today. Not as good as Doran's but some valuable bits. Ratliff, in my view, seriously underestimates the animal pleasurability of Tilt and its successors in his desire to highlight the friendly mien of the new one.

I'm sayin

i got Tilt when it came out as soon as I could import it and yeah I was not expecting its sound but i was also not like "whoa how difficult" -- structurally yes, but the sound of it was pretty luxurious to me right away. just a new, surprising and stunning kind of luxury.

yeah finding it hard to believe that ppl who've been listening to scott's late stuff for a couple of decades by now really find this stuff so ~forbidding~

not trying to downplay anything, the songs are amazing and unusual, I've come to expect that along with cool earwormy sounds and phrases and jokes and awesome singing and a degree of lyrical opacity that is not at all a barrier to entry

I haven't listened to the leak, hung up about it for some reason. But the printed lyrics in the Quietus piece from "Herod" hark back to late 60s Scott for me, almost. Until it gets to that fucking breech birth verse and then we're back in the loving care of The Electrician and his ilk.

the drone in "brando" reminds me a bit of the bass note in "the electrician" actually

I don't really have any clue what happens at "listening parties" but I like the idea of a bunch of people who've been listening to a leak for weeks attending a preview & pretending not to have heard it before. I'd be tempted to start singing along

Tbf it looks like they play it on a really nice big rig that you or I would never own

no I can see why people go, I just can't really picture what they do when they get there.

download the 320 onto their iphones and play it on speaker just out of sync with the playback

tbh the flac of this has not leaked yet which might be one reason people will go

Viscerally Piercing the Semantic Mist (for completion of this thread, and bonus points for the quite frankly exquisite headline)

I only ever went to one listening party and it was a small room horribly crammed with people.

Oddly I found Drift to be his most accessible album, because at first listen I thought it might be a lot more difficult.

I've gone through find great the Drift terrifying to being just fine with it and more recently back to finding it terrifying. Cue has kind of overtaken the Escape for frighteningness

Doran, excellent interview. I really enjoyed it.

What are the writing credits on this? Is it all SW?

yes a good interview, scott walker never less than engaging and dignified as hell

On first listen this sounds very much like a new Scott Walker album, with Sunn O))) as a backing band, delivering their heavy feedback sound. The slashing whips, the broody atmosphere, the shrieking guitar sounds, and Herod 2014 to boot, tying it all together: that's all Walker, it sounds like a logical progression from Bisch Bosch.

I think it is magnificent, but one would think that rather easily being so in love with Walker's sound. I'd love to read similarly devised interviews as Doran's about the record with O'Malley and consorts now, to hear more about their input and ideas about what they brought to the table.

i remember that stephen thomas erlewine or somebody wrote a review of "tilt" on AMG that called it "the most difficult album ever made" or something which is the kind of thing you would write about "tilt" if you were sixteen years old.

the music is very non-generic (i mean it's hard to affix to a particular genre) and in that sense can present some initial difficulties but i dunno. i think folks have overemphasized the challenges of scott's later music. "the drift" is probably the most user unfriendly one IMO.

I think it's just the contrast in styles from his early work, and this intimidates some listeners who aren't that into anything avant garde. I really don't think the later era is much less accessible than the early albums. I think I got Tilt when I was 18 or 19 and I was fascinated by its reputation and I became a huge fan on the basis of that.
I think I was also surprised that Swans were way more accessible than I imagined from first listen.

I guess it probably made a difference that I was attracted to dark and extreme music and a lot of music fans won't have that enthusiasm to be so receptive.

woooo no you better than them big man

Yeah was gonna say there's some good hardmanning going on itt.

I was trying not to sound like my preferences made me a better listener, just talking about what we're predisposed to welcome. Because there is just loads of stuff I really don't get and I'm totally lost when it comes to a lot of noise music, so it taken me by surprise when I found something easy that had a reputation for difficulty.
Back then extremity for its own sake had more appeal and I wonder if that would make some stuff easier or more difficult now.