Are you cool with forks making Spotify playlists out of every rolling thread without permission?

I want to mention that the new Skunk Anansie album is really great.

https://open.spotify.com/track/6JphhA8BhS1H7U7T8Yqy0o

(Can we get a Spotify playlist for this thread, by the way?)

i dunno if i've shared this consideration on ilx because it makes for easy ridicule but hey, here we are: it seems like the goal of a truly discerning listener, counterintuitive though it might seem, is to learn to find things to enjoy in every sound. Is the purpose of the listener (or even a critic) to explain why a thing is not good? Why a person or many person's expression of self is not valid? Why a thing that has been manufactured to be enjoyable is not enjoyable? Is it preferable to live a life of cynicism and disappointment or to broaden your ability to seek out the best in the art that you engage with rather than the worst? Why not presume that a thing is good until it can be proved otherwise? And who else can prove that you don't like a sound but you? Which is why I've spent hours grappling with music that I don't care for, sometimes to the point of real frustration. Often it doesn't help and all I'm doing is torturing myself. But sometimes exposure provides context and sounds that baffled open up. Classical compositions, noise, 2 tone ska, free jazz... this stuff didn't engage me on first listen but over time, you can start to see where it fits and where it can make sense in your own pantheon.
I mean, there's regular exceptions of course. But even those provide the opportunity to hone your sense of what does not abide. And even the worst song is fascinating in its raw repugnance. It's why trainwreck songs fascinate us.
blah blah blah. i'm procrastinating here.

maybe. not really. sometimes. broaden, i think. seems presumptuous. nobody.

why? well we agree there. i get it if it's dangerous, but otherwise what's the harm? yeah absolutely. presumptuous, sure but worth aspiring to nonetheless imo. damn right.

i agree it is absolutely possible to stumble upon v pleasing & profitable monents through stirring a big pot

that's not really what the playlists are about though, they're modelled after the styles, scenes, sensibilities that are thrashed out on the threads. i just don't know when I'd ever benefit from hearing them abstracted out of the thread

who gets to say what is valid and meaningful. many revelations & approaches are contradictory. part of what makes for a strong aesthetic are its limits and the things it rejects. you can have your all-music buffet, but you won't be able to experience fine dining while yr there

in thread, you get informed recommendation and occasional context. on listening, you get your own experience. Both are important but I'm gonna selfishly pick the latter if i only get one.

we disagree about what constitutes "a strong aesthetic". I think your statement of "who gets to say what is valid and meaningful" (which i agree with obvs) runs counter to the suggestion that I don't get fine dining at the all-you-can-eat bar. as a matter of fact, i DO get fine dining there, almost every day! And it's not really all-music, what I'm counting on is that the much-maligned hivemind of ILX actually has its own strong aesthetic made up of many amateur and professional obsessives in any number of niches. And removed from context, those recommendations sometimes shine or fail on their own merits... even though i can sometimes absolutely tell who recommended something when it pops up in my listening.

i may not be being clear: i am NOT just willy nilly listening to anything. I'm listening to things that people who frequent ILX think are worth listening to. Having done it for over a year, I can tell you with some authority: as a site, we have pretty good taste! I've found hundreds of songs and artists I wouldn't otherwise have heard of solely through ILX recommendation. Some of them have become immensely important to me!

like alphabetically from the past year in the past two months alone:
Thank you ILX for The 1978ers (hip hop), 9 Muses (k-pop), 18 Carat Affair (vaporwave), 45 ACP. (IDM), 47 Soul (dancehall/MENA/hiphop/dabke fusion), A-Wax's new album (hip hop), Abra (electropop), adekunleGOLD (Nigerian singer/songwriter), Adrian Marcel (R&B), Agent Fresco (metal), Agent Sasco (dancehall), Ahleuchistas (jazz? kinda?), Alasdair Roberts (trad folk), Alaska Thunderfuck (WORK), Alessandro Cortini (thick fuzzy curtains of sound), Alexander Abreu and Havana D'Primera (salsa), Alexander Turnquist (shimmery guitar), Amadou Balake (West African folk), Amber (k-pop) etc etc etc

the things that come up in threads are not just recommendations, they're whatever comes up in discussion, things presented w varying degrees of distance or to help make a certain case

the availability of a huge variety of music does not enable different approaches to listening to music, in fact it encourages certain styles more. hence all the shit about kids growing up w the internet relating to music differently, blindness to genre/era or w/e. it doesn't mean they are able to relate to music in the same way as their parents or grandparents. the gulfs in how things are heard are most evident when people are listening to the same thing. i will never hear church music the way my grandma did and no playlist will change that

it IS scary that i'll never get to all of it. it IS frustrating when I hit music that just doesn't land even with my best intentions. it does feel like a waste of time when i get an hour in a row of sounds that go nowhere and leave me nonplussed. but man, the feeling of finding something new everyday never grows old. And today was Anthony Braxton (not my first rodeo there) and Anthony Child (who I've never heard before and this is great!)

i also think the find-good-in-everything ideal of listening is v much at odds with how most music is made, which is more a case of refinement, pefectionism etc.

xp i would say about 3 out of 4 songs that pop up in the genre threads (probably more) are either recommendations or mentioned because they're integral to the direction the field is headed.

i guess i don't disagree with anything in your second para there at all ogmor except that the maximalist approach is accessible to far more people with far less effort and i think that's okay and more often than not CAN lead to a certain genre blindness. not everybody does. but i do know a few parents whose kids are obsessive about yusef lateef or carl perkins or whatever mostly because they can deep dive on their own into the catalogue in a way that would've been impossible when we were growing up. but sure: we're all different monsters and we hear differently and we are doomed to live and die alone. in the meantime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-0sUuGufmw

that does not preclude attempt-to-find-good-in-everything xp

apols for violent language earlier, was a bit much and there's prob an interesting discussion to be had here

i also think the find-good-in-everything ideal of listening is v much at odds with how most music is made

there's prob an interesting discussion to be had here

You guys will argue about fucking anything huh

On a wider context ILM would be classified as "Open Collaboration"

Open Collaboration
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_collaboration
Open collaboration is a pattern of collaboration, innovation, and production.

In a 2009 paper, Riehle et al. define open collaboration as collaboration based on three principles of egalitarianism, meritocracy, and self-organization

open collaboration, anyone can contribute and anyone can freely partake in the fruits of sharing, which are produced by interacting participants who are loosely coordinated.

collaboration that is egalitarian (everyone can join, no principled or artificial barriers to participation exist), meritocratic (decisions and status are merit-based rather than imposed) and self-organizing (processes adapt to people rather than people adapt to pre-defined processes)

Definition of Open Collaboration

http://www.opensym.org/about-us/definition/
OpenSym is a shorthand for International Symposium on Open Collaboration,
OpenSym is the premier research and practitioner conference on open collaboration.

Open collaboration is collaboration that is

egalitarian (everyone can join, no principled or artificial barriers to participation exist),

meritocratic (decisions and status are merit-based rather than imposed) and

self-organizing (processes adapt to people rather than people adapt to pre-defined processes).

ogmor I feel like you're nitpicking just for the sake of the fact that this thread exists at all.

i do think the way you hear can/does change, even when you replay songs to yourself, and those big revelations when something clicks represent a broadening out and a respite from lonesome oblivion

i'm waiting for someone to pop in and point out that we're just rehashing poptimism vs rockism for the gazillionth time so why don't i just jump the gun and do that myself.

also, i <3 u djmartian, you have that unique style

those big revelations when something clicks represent a broadening out and a respite from lonesome oblivion

apols for violent language earlier, was a bit much

wait, you were serious? dag

those big revelations when something clicks represent a broadening out and a respite from lonesome oblivion

beautiful turn of phrase

this thread has expanded my (already ample) respect for forks, admirably rolling w the punches and positively engaging all over the place.

also forks i checked the post-fahey playlist in the name of science & you have a v inferior version of cripple creek on there. this https://open.spotify.com/track/28ybICjkSv7WJQoUMcRBmP is the right one even tho it is incorrectly tagged as being by john fahey

thanks art, that's nice to hear!

Ogmor, i switched them out. damn, that's fine geetar playing.

poptimism vs rockism for the gazillionth time

see also mahayana/therevada (great vehicle/little vehicle)

tale as old as time
song as old as rhyme
linda hamilton and ron perlman

I don't use spotify but I guess Royston Langdon from Spacehog works for them and I am a pretty big Spacehog fan, so.

Glenn, have you met Royston Langdon?

apols for violent language earlier, was a bit much
wait, you were serious? dag

― mookieproof, Friday, 5 February 2016 21:37 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Otm otm otm

Lj this is a low

Forks I have a question
Earlier today the #1 song on the top 77 tracks was there, for a minute
Now it isn't? Is this an IP thing? Why is Spotify being so ephemeral atm

:(

weak moment

pls forgive

plus, if nothing else, ogmor was starting the most interesting discussion in this benighted thread, even if his point was slightly haughty

cld never begrudge an imago

as always, dealing with the shadows in my own play pen, thinking through my own listening rather than being didactic per se

but haughty seems a step up from pretentious, I'll take it

Glenn when I saw Spacehog in the 90s Royston Langdon shook up a bottle of beer and then held it up like it was his dick and sprayed it all over. I hope he doesn't like those sorts of stunts in the office.

trying to find the good in all music seems like a very pointless and undiscerning goal to me. the logical end point is to enjoy everything, to flatten out your own tastes to encompass everyone else's? an aesthetic without hate is incomplete to me, you need to know what you stand against in art (and every other part of life) as well as what you'll go to bat for.

Now it isn't? Is this an IP thing? Why is Spotify being so ephemeral atm

― Worth Taking from Little Kid (Will M.), Saturday, February 6, 2016 8:51 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a prime reason i would never rely on spotify for my principal listening fyi. it's not just incomplete but licensing and roll-out fuckery means that you can never necessarily rely on something being there when you want it.

an aesthetic without hate is incomplete to me, you need to know what you stand against in art

Ok Rollins

Purest lex

I just looked and Realiti (Demo) is still there.

I still use MP3s for things I like and want to access at all times, but Spotify has definitely become my main discovery engine - well that and mixes/podcasts.

Implicit in this thread is a tension between posters who fancy themselves as bringing recommendations to the table and those who are perceived as just skimming off the top. Most posters do both obviously, but it explains why people get huffy about other people not "putting the effort in".

I just made a playlist of the Afropop/Lisbon tracks that made the EOY poll, purely to troll this thread.

As a total side comment/pro tip, the best approach to functionality in Youtube-heavy threads is to turn off "display images" in your preferences while you're browsing that particular thread

― Chikan wa akan de. Zettai akan de. (Noodle Vague), Thursday, February 4, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

#howIRoll - srsly tho', wonder if that could be a default option to then be switched on if the poster wants to.

I just listened to Anthony Braxton's 'Trio and Duet' and Anthony Child's 'Electronic Recordings from Maui Jungle v.1' back to back for no other reason than they fell alphabetically adjacent but they ended up informing each other in ways I couldn't have otherwise arranged or predicted. All revelations are valid. Any approach is meaningful. There is no spoon (feeding).

You are being spoon-fed by the alphabet.

maybe spotify should sort its streaming music autobiographically like john cusack in high fidelity

we can argue the correct ideology of aesthetic preference all we like, but my decisions are ultimately practical ones. i adopt pan-genre dilettantism because the musical aesthetic philosophy i was raised under, which is generally termed "rockism", is pretty untenable these days. i can't pretend that beck and jack white represent the apex of what music is capable of these days. maybe other people are still able to profess a coherent aesthetic philosophy, and if you can do it, well, go right ahead. but i can't.

trying to find the good in all music seems like a very pointless and undiscerning goal to me. the logical end point is to enjoy everything, to flatten out your own tastes to encompass everyone else's? an aesthetic without hate is incomplete to me, you need to know what you stand against in art (and every other part of life) as well as what you'll go to bat for.

finding the good is not the same as "flattening out your own tastes" &c, that's a false equivalency. an aesthetic without hate is a mature aesthetic that understands something about creativity; you probably won't ever arrive at such an aesthetic, but that's fine too - I still have an irrational hatred of mayonnaise, we've all got our crosses to bear

Lol you pompous, dishonest twat

I hate jazz, for what it's worth, but I don't think that makes me a better listener, nor that learning to appreciate it would render my aesthetic "incomplete". I'm not even sure I believe that's a thing, an incomplete aesthetic, but if it is a thing, I'm pretty sure learning to love things you currently hate is a movement towards more completeness, not less.

Everyone hates shit and articulating that is incredibly important to any sort of critical thought. Trying to enjoy everything is like rendering enjoyment meaningless

Trying to enjoy everything is like rendering enjoyment meaningless

I think there was a time in my life when I would have agreed with this in some visceral, defiant way, but at the moment it seems wildly and profoundly and patently wrong to me.

If I love X things and hate Y other things, you would grant that my love of the Xs is meaningful. And I can move some things from the Y group to the X group, and as long as there's still something left in the Y group, all my X loves are meaningful. But if I move the last thing from Y to X, it invalidates the meaning of all the meaningful loves in X that were meaningful one minute before? Do you really believe that the difference between my "really" enjoying "Delirious" and "not really" enjoying "Delirious" is whether I still hate jazz as I'm listening to it?

I don't believe that.

any schema of taste that requires "hate" to make sense or have some sort of validity is, i would've thought, pretty plainly juvenile