Kelley Polar - Love Songs of The Hanging Gardens (Environ CD05)

the fuck? no place for hermeneutics in thinking about music?

i guess i am looking for answers about broken beat? in that kelley polar reminds me of broken beat? ie, as jerry the nipper (sort of) puts it, "with the addition of bongos, rhodes keyboards and afro-positive divas, this drum + bass track is now a JAZZ FUSION MASTERPIECE"

No Vahid I wasn't saying that you can't make these sorts of comments, i was just honestly curious about whether you thought anything flowed from whether we think of Kelley Polar as IDM or pop or dance or [x] - it's precisely because I think there is a place for hermeneutics in thinking about music that I ask these questions, because I think these sorts of decisions can have effects on what we think of a piece of music, whether it is "good" or "bad" etc.

I don't have an opinion yet because I haven't heard the album.

the genre confusion is one of the things that makes it interesting to me. (just like our mammoth "what is deep house" thread)

actually that's not entirely true. when i listen to this, i do not think of genre for a second (well now i probably will). it is in the context of this thread and our discourse here that i find the genre confusion interesting.

speaking of splitting hairs, morgan geist is from new jersey not detroit, but point taken.

xpost, completely agree dan - "idm" is now largely shit and a completely moronic genre name.

no dummy, because my mom knows what disco is and if i played her kelley polar she'd just say "oh, more electronic noise?" she can tell the difference between disco and other music but to the 99% of the populace that don't listen to minimal electronica this simply isn't disco, or nu romantic or pop or whatever.

that nagging vocal bit in "my beauty in the moon" . . . andrew suggested "wood beez" or limahl's neverending story theme, ha.

I love how it's neuromantic but w/out the emotronica quality that the junior boys/superpitcher/&c have - it's so urbane! both baroque/choral AND on a great gatsby jazz age tip! i'd argue that there's no indie in this record's DNA.

wait, I see the point, we've all been hoodwinked! we love broken beat!!!!!

every song I dance to is magic,
every room I'm in keeps on moving,
when I sleep my dreams are filled with motion
it never gets, never gets, never gets...
oooo, oooo, oooo . . ."

= some of my favourite lyrics of the past few years - the implication & deferment of "you" in the first verse is up there w/phil oakey also avoiding "you" in "love action".

hmmn, possible convergent evolution w/indie - magnetic fields' "all the umbrellas in london"/"rats in the garbage of the western world", if they'd actually sounded like the NY discos stephin merritt has undoubtedly hung out at.

it's nice to see you have such a nuanced defn of IDM!

Not a trick question! If I ask the same question while listening to Luciano, the answer is "Yes!"

re: the comments on the review about the "laziness" of the artwork. They found a cool picture they liked and used it. They didn't know it had been used by the Shalabi Effect, and shockingly didn't know it was used on the insert to a Pearl Jam CD. I don't see why the hard time.

mike powell, 2005

Aphex Twin has continually re-imagined and reinvigorated the minor genre known as intelligent dance music, or I.D.M.—essentially a type of electronica fit for bedroom listening

random slate writer, 2003

The legend was this: Aphex Twin was a mad inventor from Cornwall who built his own synthesisers. Surfing on sine waves, he would lead a pack of young boffins out of the computer screen glow of their bedrooms, into the public domain of clubs, shops, and charts, then back in and out of more bedrooms in a feedback loop of infinite dimensions

david toop, 1994