I think that all the retro rockers and electroclash folx are part of the same dissatisfaction, regressing because the outer limits have been reached, or so we're given to suspect. I myself as I stated upthread have been really disappointed with new music for about two years now, at least in the arena under discussion.
I wonder whether it will all dissolve in favor of some better, purer pop sounds anytime soon. Maybe the long-imagined mishmash of everything from the last century will finally appear and no man will ever go hungry again, who knows. Can't get here soon enough for me, though, I can tell you that.
― Millar (Millar), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 01:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
and I think that Reynolds may have already provided the answer to this problem didnt he? his biggest frustration it seems (when he was more of an evangelist, iguess), was that people were unwilling to accept dance on its own terms... the music itself doesnt really matter as much as whether it is received as "proper music, not dance shite for the proles", ya know? I mean, really, the key to Reynolds and maybe even to all of dance is the quote he put in the intro from Hoskyns (sp?) about losing "knowingness". wasnt the problem with indie always less the music itself, but more how it became so unimportant in the face of snobbery, tribalism, and the search for obscure knowledge for the sake of the egos of the searchers? I mean, superchunk is just a pop-rock band until the rhetoric is added...
my stake in all of this is really similar to what has been mentioned upthread by others... what Ronan said about "an electronic style which runs contrary to almost all the things I enjoy about the electronic music I like, while at the same time enjoys more critical acclaim and becomes the default option, an easier option for people"...Ronan what do you think of the tapes? ;-)
― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 01:59 (twenty-one years ago) link
Aaron I will mail you this afternoon about the tapes.
― Ronan (Ronan), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 09:27 (twenty-one years ago) link
i dunno,i think that,whatever you think of it,and i love some of it and some of it just wrecks my head,but surely electroclash was dance music dissolving in favour of pure pop?
― robin (robin), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 13:55 (twenty-one years ago) link
Can I add that maybe what worries me is that, well, the thing that always got be about rock was, at its worst, bad rock criticism seems to think that any schmuck playing a guitar is automatically more real, intelligent, authentic, etc., than anybody playing anything else (ie worst folk artist better than best rapper), and I worry that IDM/indieelectronic could repeat that scenario, simply replacing the guitar for laptop... and I think a lot of this has to do with being in America, where the scene is small and vulnerable and could easily fall prey... of course, maybe I am just feeling paranoid this morning ;-)
― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
But even Chuck Berry, or the Blackhearts, had a rhetoric, even though maybe it's faded and hard to remember now. Folk singers in the 50s and 60s had one too, among other things in their implicit rejection of the things Chuck Berry could use to make you move. But rhetoric isn't added, like you'd add milk to coffee, it might have been what made them form the band in the first place. I don't see anything wrong with having a rhetoric.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:30 (twenty-one years ago) link
― robin (robin), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:38 (twenty-one years ago) link
― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:39 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:50 (twenty-one years ago) link
I mean, is art creation or filtration? Does it gain its power from what is made, or from what is left out?
― Aaron Grossman (aajjgg), Tuesday, 6 May 2003 14:52 (twenty-one years ago) link