FYI: Truth Attack - All Genres Of Music That Have Ever Existed Contain Awesome Music In Them, And If You Write Off A Whole Genre Of Music You Are Being Closeminded And Dumb

Geir, can you refer to people by name? Can you even tell people apart?

from what I understand, new age is a branch of ambient, and eno is responsible at least for the "ambient" term. eno may or may not be new age, but new age is a form of ambient and so is eno.

so I wrote a couple things upthread which I'd like to explore:

anything beyond the mechanical objective measurement of notes and rhythms is opinion; genre is not based in any objective measurement system, so the definition is up for grabs; every piece of music is an assertion; some pieces reassert what is already known, some (purposefully or not) redefine the parameters of what is known; this makes genre a measuring stick with unknown boundries - i.e. a contradiction in terms

so let's talk about whether eno is new age or not. there's this:

NEWS FLASH:
!!!!BRIAN ENO IS NOT A NEW AGE MUSICIAN!!!!

WHY?
Good question.
Well, because New Age music is political and spiritual. Eno is neither. Eno is neutral.

which reads as the desperate protest of an eno fan that his beloved shouldn't be associated with something as icky as new age. how does a form of instrumental music consisting largely of meditative soundscapes somehow contain political/spiritual elements? unless of course you are evaluating things outside the music - the musicians' spiritual beliefs, the company they keep, the record label they're on.

this is the problem with genre - it relies on signifiers that have nothing to do with the music and closes listeners' ears to actual content. "new age" becomes a dismissive pejorative, regardless of whether or not the music is of any real worth. does "new age" really contain any value as a descriptor? who is responsible for the management of who is and who isn't "new age" - the people who don't want that awful albatross hung around their favorite artist's neck?

also, there *is* a spiritual and political subtext to eno's ambient work. he meditates, and he thought that the public would benefit from more meditative surroundings. music for aiports was originally installed in an airport, it was a subtle & provocative criticism of modern ugliness, of the alienation built into the design of public places. eno's a real thinker, so the medium became the messsage in a more satisfying way than others who followed in his footsteps. but eno's aims and that of a thousand hippy-dippy "new age" purveyors were not all that different.

philip glass - new age or no? how about his soundtrack to koyaanisqatsi? it's ambient, spiritual, and political.

Hmm, equally, I'd have thought it was a "New Age" fan who finds Eno shallow and lacking in political undercurrent.

Who knows, eh?

good point - I guess a new age "true believer" could see eno as a decadent dabbler but that's the trouble with fundamentalists isn't it

Is there such a thing as a New Age true believer? Was any music called "New Age" before Eno went ambient?

Defending the Indefensible: Windham Hill

"New Age Music", search and destroy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age_music

New Age music has its basis in the work of 1960s European and American electronic and acoustic musicians exploring music for creating expanded consciousness. In the late 1970s, music began to be recorded specifically for the purposes of meditation and relaxation. During the early 1980s, the term "New Age music" was introduced more widely to the public by radio stations and then by music retailers and some record companies, as a marketing tag applied to a variety of non-mainstream instrumental music styles. Radio stations in major markets (such as "the Wave" in Los Angeles) defined themselves as "New Age", while playing some New Age music and using nature sounds in their station-id's, yet those stations also heavily featured styles musically and philosophically unrelated to New Age music, for example, Smooth Jazz. The first true New Age radio station is the U.S. was KLRS (Colours) in Santa Cruz, CA with a non-stop playlist of New Age music and is considered the first New Age station in the world. Most major cable television networks have channels that play music without visuals, including channels for New Age music, such as for example, the "Soundscapes" channel on Music Choice.

Yes, I thought Windham Hill kind of invented the term

New Age music is defined more by the feeling it produces rather than the devices used in its creation; it may be electronic or acoustic, or a mixture of both. New Age artists range from solo or ensemble performances using Western instruments such as piano, acoustic guitar, flutes, harps and many others, to electronic musical instruments, and Eastern instruments such as sitar, tamboura, tabla; and instruments from all other parts of the world, the human voice singing in languages from all around the world.

Some New Age music artists openly embrace New Age beliefs, while other artists and bands have specifically stated that they do not consider their own music to be New Age, even when their work has been labeled as such by record labels, music retailers, or radio broadcasters.

There is a significant overlap of sectors of New Age music, Ambient music, electronica, World music, Chillout, spacemusic and others. The two definitions typically used for New Age are:

* New age music with an ambient sound that has the explicit purpose of aiding meditation and relaxation, or aiding and enabling various alternative spiritual practices, such as meditative healing, chakra auditing, and so on. The proponents of this definition are almost always musicians who create their music expressly for these purposes.[2] Prominent artists who create New Age music expressly for healing or meditation include Aeoliah, Deuter, Deepak Chopra, and Steven Halpern.

* Music which is found in the New Age section of the record store.[2] This is largely a definition of practicality, given the breadth of music that is classified as "new age" by retailers who are often less interested in finely-grained distinctions between musical styles than are fans of those styles. Music which falls into this definition is usually music which cannot be easily classified into other, more common definitions, but often includes well-defined music such as Worldbeat and Flamenco guitar. Musicians as varied as George Winston, Dean Evenson, Will Ackerman, Ray Lynch, Suzanne Ciani, Jim Brickman, Enya, B-Tribe, GregZ, Deep Forest, Jean Michel Jarre, Enigma, Kitaro, Yanni, Oscar Lopez, Mike Oldfield and Steve Roach are typically classified as New Age despite their wildly divergent musical styles. It also includes expressly spiritual New Age music as a subset.

Liked it from day 1. Love it still today:

Enya - Orinoco Flow (Sail Away)

New Age music is defined more by the feeling it produces rather than the devices used in its creation;

this is an excellent way to classify something!

don't they know new age music makes some people want to kill things?

Disney World's Tomorrowland used a New Age and Contemporary Jazz sdtk for years, which has made me a fan of:

Andreas Vollenweider - Night Fire Dance
David Lanz - Behind The Waterfall
Suzanne Ciani - Summer's Day
Vangelis - Elsewhere
Larry Carlton - Bubble Shuffle

I get nostalgic every time.

I was looking at wikipedia's acid jazz entry and the only one I could thumbs up was kruder & dorfmeister. but I also haven't heard 90% of the bands on that list.

90's Acid Jazz: Classic or Deathly Dud!

David Hykes (b. 2 March 1953) is a composer, singer, musician, author, and meditation teacher. He was one of the earliest modern western pioneers of so-called overtone singing, and has developed since 1975 a comprehensive approach to contemplative music which he calls Harmonic Chant (harmonic singing). After early research and trips studying Mongolian, Tibetan, and Middle Eastern singing forms, Hykes began a long series of collaborations with traditions and teachers of wisdom and sacred art, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the Gyuto and Gyume monks.

that sounds like new age, and david hykes' the harmonic choir is awesome

so I am mostly a lurker here, but really, I gotta pipe up and say that nothing said to the contrary on this thread has successfully refuted the original premise. You can stick with whatcha know, or you can listen to a wide variety, whatever; that's your business. But to preemptively decide that if/when that one (and there may only be one, and it may be hard to find, but it's there) piece of great 12-tone or new age or CCM or black metal or rap or polka or opera or anything that doesn't fit my idea of the perfect melody or whatever sneaks up and bites you on the ass, you're not going let yourself say "holy crap!" or "wow!" or at least "huh. I'd never've guessed that" or "not my bag, but I see what the big deal is", then that's your loss.

What you have to remember is that Geir isn't actually a person.

he's a genre

and they love him

breaks a new heart

every day....

What you have to remember is that Geir isn't actually a person.

Yeah, I realize that. I have this image of him hearing music that doesn't fit his parameters, and saying "does not compute! does not compute!" while smoke trails out his ears.

Still, ya can't blame a gal for trying.

The new age artist Brian Eno drinks his urine on a regular basis. It is healthiest if you do not do drugs and do not eat meat. If you do drugs, especially prescription drugs, it is best to not drink your urine until you are sure there are no drugs in your system. I have been on so many prescriptions for such a long time it has been years since I drank my pee.

Contrary to your imagined ideas, if you are on a vegetarian diet and you do not do legal or illegal drugs (this means pharmaceutical products of any kind for my friends down under) you will likely discover your pee is quite tasty, You may even like it on the rocks. But for health reasons only drink your own and if friends come over and want some persuade them their own will be better for them than yours or anyone elses.

[1 point] 210 days ago by United States Chipmonk Reply Edited 210 days ago by Chipmonk

^^^thread finally delivers

hahhahahaa

it was all worth it

if friends come over and want some persuade them their own will be better for them than yours or anyone elses.

It's easy to say this but those guys just will not take no for an answer

I have been on so many prescriptions for such a long time it has been years since I drank my pee.

And I can imagine just what those prescriptions might be

miss manners of the golden showers set

I'm still not hearing much compelling evidence for new age (and none for acid jazz). My library has some CDs from this David Hykes fella. Which should I go for: Harmonic Meetings (hmmm), Hearing Solar Winds (um...), (shuffles feet) Earth to the Unknown Power, or (voice lowers, face reddens, should be written in 8 point font but don't know how) Windhorse Riders?

And more for the fwiw category:

Results 1 - 10 of about 885,000 English pages for disco "neil diamond"

Popol Vuh dude.

hearing solar winds

blast this into yr front yard on halloween and fire up a strobe light in your living room, I guarantee you get 0 trick or treaters

i was gonna read this thread but then

lol @ at this being a 2008 (not 2001) thread <3 <3 <3

― Jordan, Monday, October 20, 2008 12:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

and i was like oh yeah

o_O at ethan being so patient w/Geir, tho. dude, you guys have hashed this shit out for fucking years at this point

lol, what a worthless thread.

yeah, give us hell!

"Hearing Solar Winds"

such an amazing album. the harmonic choir are no joke. the stuff is powerful. especially the earlier records.

listen to "rainbow voice" on his myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/65805799

this is a good new age thread, but it needs more stuff on it:

"New Age Music", search and destroy.

Vollenweider is awesome!

at my college radio station somebody had taken one of those old PSA tape cartridges and made an endless loop of 60 seconds from hearing solar winds. whenever a dj didn't show up for their next shift the departing dj would throw that on and blanket south jersey in hours of the harmonic choir...

I think John Fahey was considered a New Age pioneer at one point. Don't know how much he's considered to be part of the current canon. (oh, I see that being mentioned in the other thread.)

Dunno how many threads of "everybody talks at Geir" I'll have to read through before I know that it's going to be an enormous waste of time from the first post. But I think there's something about apparently very complete and coherent worldviews that are nevertheless completely baffling that appeals to me.

http://www.september11news.com/LeadersBinLaden1998.jpg

Wait, Jonathan Ross?! And you think Geir is insane?

Really, Gordon Burn or David Peace ought to write a book about Geir.

I love how ILX is full of people stating opinion as fact, hundreds of times a day, thousands of times every year, and as soon as Geir does it everyone gets all 'THIS IS JUST YOUR OPINION!' level of tossy.

Geir is an incredibly irritating person to argue with but to intimate that he's a potential mass murderer, racist or Austrian cellar dude because he says the same thing about Paul McCartney again and again is kind of off. Especially coming from people who are all 'when I listen to Fleet Foxes on Radio Two I know how Michael Ryan felt'.

Seriously, is there any evidence anywhere on ILM of Geir making a useful or valid point about anything? He constantly disrupts and ruins potentially interesting threads on ILM and not even from a declared anti-commonsensical point of view.

I would suggest dealing with Geir is a far better use of moderators' time than pointlessly changing thread titles or yellow carding LJ because of "daddy daddy thith man inthulted me" whingers.

people, geir is so easy to ignore, precisely cuz he never actually interacts with anyone specifically. i never understand why people get so het up by him.

Why not have an ILM killfile? Mods, can this be done?

Lex OTM, Geir is only a problem because people can't help themselves.