Wednesday, May 19, 2004
I feel I should excuse myself for the ridiculous manner in which I have approached this weblog project… I don’t mean to create any ridiculous scenario here. I have just gotten a little carried away and obsessive with this medium and I’m using it to explore and develop free thinking concept. It was interesting the other week when I decided to change to a white text on back background look… I didn’t think about it at first but realised maybe the reason was to emulate a “chalk & blackboard” concept and thus signify an almost ephemeral nature to the project. The way information can sit in this virtual capacity and possibly be there one day and not the next… but also the free thought approach of just writing stuff because I think about it and can work it out in this space. Not sure… but I have felt some sense of pleasure from this and play with, and expand the various thought-loops that flip around in the virtual space that is my mind… which in an odd way is replicated by the virtual space of the Internet… except in this case you have this weird entry point whereby other people can access portals in the electronic mind. Maybe this is what schizophrenics go through in a reality sense… their actual minds develop portals to act like transmitters receiving information (albeit in an inverse fashion I suppose).
The other reason why I do this is because I seem to prefer typing to handwriting these days and tend to type a lot. It seems like a more fluid way to jot down ideas… and thus what I translate to this weblog thing.
The tutorial the other week developed a discussion around what if the music industry ended tomorrow and if it could be considered that there is enough music available already in one’s possession not to be concerned about this. An interesting premise and could possibly be linked to the idea that everything that can be done with music has already been done and is just being repeated and recycled. Yes it is true styles and ideas get regurgitated… just look at Jet… a text book exercise in the replication of past styles, sounds and even songs. But the past also gets re-contextualised and developed into new forms as well. Of course it is valid to question the point of satisfaction…(“am I satisfied?… clearly not…”). I must be unsatisfied as I constantly crave the new. Have I fallen foul of the manipulations of our commodity culture… the need for the latest in the insatiable quest for everything new? I love the shock of the new… and thus really look for anything new (new to me that is - from the past or now)… but the choice to pursue such an interest requires commitment to finding what this is. It depends on how much time you have… and what position music has in your lifestyle choice… what type of music you identify with… for some people music is just there, on the radio or TV and part of the environment of sound where its meaning is not so specific (although still filled with meaning no doubt, but maybe more in parallel to other aspects of their life). One thing is that music production is exponentially growing and the choices are excessive. In this sense it can get draining pursuing the new and easier to listen to what the gatekeepers choose to playlist on radio and TV. But the development of genre hybrid is continual and evolving and when the connectedness of global influence and the Internet are taken into account it becomes even more exciting.
I find one of the most exciting aspects of music production for me is stylistic hybridity. I enjoy the attempts (and sometimes they just don’t work) to mesh and combine different styles and genres - accidental or conscious - I find them fascinating (even the more faile attempts). There is a sense of resistance to conformity by breaking the rules of the genre (although this also appears as a natural consequence of genre development). BILL LASWELL is been a highly prolific and influential stalwart in genre exploration, experimentation and dissection. Working as a musician (bass player) as well production he has left some significant marks on music. Aside from his production on groundbreaking releases like Herbie Hancock’s “Rock It” he as been involved in incredibly innovative (and some would say self-indulgent) musical artists such as MATERIAL, LAST EXIT, PAINKILLER and PRAXIS, as well his work with BUCKETHEAD. Plus established labels that filter in out like shadows and place music in evolving levels like no other… collaborations and fusions of styles that have encountered much criticism for his fluid like merging of classical and popular music… at times at a break neck pace. Labels such as AXIOM, ENEMY, CELLULOID, SUBHARMONIC, STRATA, BLACK ARC and the lastest project INNERRHYTHMIC.… if you have the urge (and budget or download ability) there is a substantial catalogue of material worth investigating.
What’s new from Bill Laswell?
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The other reason why I do this is because I seem to prefer typing to handwriting these days and tend to type a lot. It seems like a more fluid way to jot down ideas… and thus what I translate to this weblog thing.
The tutorial the other week developed a discussion around what if the music industry ended tomorrow and if it could be considered that there is enough music available already in one’s possession not to be concerned about this. An interesting premise and could possibly be linked to the idea that everything that can be done with music has already been done and is just being repeated and recycled. Yes it is true styles and ideas get regurgitated… just look at Jet… a text book exercise in the replication of past styles, sounds and even songs. But the past also gets re-contextualised and developed into new forms as well. Of course it is valid to question the point of satisfaction…(“am I satisfied?… clearly not…”). I must be unsatisfied as I constantly crave the new. Have I fallen foul of the manipulations of our commodity culture… the need for the latest in the insatiable quest for everything new? I love the shock of the new… and thus really look for anything new (new to me that is - from the past or now)… but the choice to pursue such an interest requires commitment to finding what this is. It depends on how much time you have… and what position music has in your lifestyle choice… what type of music you identify with… for some people music is just there, on the radio or TV and part of the environment of sound where its meaning is not so specific (although still filled with meaning no doubt, but maybe more in parallel to other aspects of their life). One thing is that music production is exponentially growing and the choices are excessive. In this sense it can get draining pursuing the new and easier to listen to what the gatekeepers choose to playlist on radio and TV. But the development of genre hybrid is continual and evolving and when the connectedness of global influence and the Internet are taken into account it becomes even more exciting.
I find one of the most exciting aspects of music production for me is stylistic hybridity. I enjoy the attempts (and sometimes they just don’t work) to mesh and combine different styles and genres - accidental or conscious - I find them fascinating (even the more faile attempts). There is a sense of resistance to conformity by breaking the rules of the genre (although this also appears as a natural consequence of genre development). BILL LASWELL is been a highly prolific and influential stalwart in genre exploration, experimentation and dissection. Working as a musician (bass player) as well production he has left some significant marks on music. Aside from his production on groundbreaking releases like Herbie Hancock’s “Rock It” he as been involved in incredibly innovative (and some would say self-indulgent) musical artists such as MATERIAL, LAST EXIT, PAINKILLER and PRAXIS, as well his work with BUCKETHEAD. Plus established labels that filter in out like shadows and place music in evolving levels like no other… collaborations and fusions of styles that have encountered much criticism for his fluid like merging of classical and popular music… at times at a break neck pace. Labels such as AXIOM, ENEMY, CELLULOID, SUBHARMONIC, STRATA, BLACK ARC and the lastest project INNERRHYTHMIC.… if you have the urge (and budget or download ability) there is a substantial catalogue of material worth investigating.
What’s new from Bill Laswell?
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Monday, May 17, 2004
Phew… stepped out the door for a while… needed to compose myself so I could lose the plot a bit more. So much to read to gain perspective… and just not enough time to achieve this to the degree of consumption that I would like. Move on… and the glaring holes in these simplifications only lead to more questions. Looks like I’m generating confusion and interest from these free rambles. Writing like this is a great way to construct thoughts.
Consumption is an active practice… an everyday practice. It is suggested by Bourdieu that we distinguish ourselves through our taste; that our agency in consumption is linked to significations of social standing. On the other hand, Baudrillard posits consumption as a process of becoming; that our agency in consumption is what develops and defines our identity. Ultimately to some extent we consume and display this consumption according to how we wish to project our identity. Of course there is the question of whom has access to the means of consumption and the manner in which class affects the choices available to people. Then there is the argument that consumption is about passive responses to manipulations of producers and their advertisers – derivative of Marxist ideologies, and expanded by the Frankfurt school as part of a mass culture manifesto whereby people where victims of falsely generated needs. Consumption affords a combination of needs and wants, subjective in the sense of how the objects of consumption are used and appropriated, relative to an individuals approach to their identified meanings. It meanders between the productive manipulation of tastes we can remain passive to, and the active resistance inherent in the choices made available. In the fragmented postmodern world lifestyle is becoming the defining factor. Music has a great deal to do with lifestyle choices… as well as taste and identity construction. Music is ubiquitous in that our experience is very much everyday
The relationship to music is obviously a subjective one although linked to objective availability… what is provided for our engagement versus how and to what degree a person chooses to access. The consumption of music is directly related to pleasure… and yet music consumption is entwined in and problematised by the profit motives of production. This tension between commerce and art is only one aspect though in this pursuit of pleasure… it could be expanded in another direction in that of ART and ENTERTAINMENT. Entertainment suggests a concern with mass culture; an engagement with the mass audience to incite pleasure. Entertainment incites a direct relationship with commercial interest yet also manages to engage the idea of being foremost for the pleasure of the people on a highly accessible level. Art on the other hand seems to suggest an almost self-indulgence, a dedication to the act of creativity irrelevant of audience response. Art also encapsulates a high-brow notion and elicits a sense of elitism. Art insinuates a confrontation to the dominant frame, a challenge to convention. Art conveys a sense of meaning, a message… as abstract and self-indulgent it may be… but all the same a feeling of engagement other than basic pleasure. That is not to say pleasure should not come from depth and complexity, and in some sense it is disappointing that there is a rejection of this as entertainment. (I prefer experimentation and depth in the music I find pleasure in, and find myself in interesting, conflicting states of mind when I’m faced with music that excites me and yet contains lyrical content I can’t relate to such as sexist or racist crap)
Creativity should not be for industry… industry should be for creativity.
There is the cheesy and surreal pop world of the Eurovision Song Contest…
…and then there is GONZALES, a Canadian artist who relocated to Berlin, now based in Paris, is a unique and profound artist who plays with the concept of entertainment. His first album under the moniker of Gonzales, “Gonzales Uber Alles” was released by Kitty Yo early 2000. A Jewish prankster playing with the elitist notions of the underground (he challenged Alec Empire from Atari Teenage Riot to a public debate about the avant-garde organising a press conference at which Empire failed to show), he produced an album that ranged across cheap beats, triphop and beautiful harmonies. Late 2000 he released “The Entertainist”, a hilarious cheap beat hiphop parody. In 2002 the third album “Presidential Suite” fused the styles of the previous two. In 2003 he re-recorded a bunch of previously released tracks under the name “Z” with a bunch of guests and seemingly with the guise of Danny Elfin and Lionel Ritchie in mind (interestingly his brother Christopher Beck composed the music for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series). Hilarious and genius all in one breath. Soaked in his unique and postmodern mixture of social critique, self-deprecation and a poke in the ribs of entertainment, art and commerce. “What is the hidden message encoded into the performer-audience relationship? New CD out now!”
He followed this with a series of pre-tirement shows through Europe in 2003 and since this time has been working in production. Go to the Kitty-Yo website and check his listing under artists.
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Consumption is an active practice… an everyday practice. It is suggested by Bourdieu that we distinguish ourselves through our taste; that our agency in consumption is linked to significations of social standing. On the other hand, Baudrillard posits consumption as a process of becoming; that our agency in consumption is what develops and defines our identity. Ultimately to some extent we consume and display this consumption according to how we wish to project our identity. Of course there is the question of whom has access to the means of consumption and the manner in which class affects the choices available to people. Then there is the argument that consumption is about passive responses to manipulations of producers and their advertisers – derivative of Marxist ideologies, and expanded by the Frankfurt school as part of a mass culture manifesto whereby people where victims of falsely generated needs. Consumption affords a combination of needs and wants, subjective in the sense of how the objects of consumption are used and appropriated, relative to an individuals approach to their identified meanings. It meanders between the productive manipulation of tastes we can remain passive to, and the active resistance inherent in the choices made available. In the fragmented postmodern world lifestyle is becoming the defining factor. Music has a great deal to do with lifestyle choices… as well as taste and identity construction. Music is ubiquitous in that our experience is very much everyday
The relationship to music is obviously a subjective one although linked to objective availability… what is provided for our engagement versus how and to what degree a person chooses to access. The consumption of music is directly related to pleasure… and yet music consumption is entwined in and problematised by the profit motives of production. This tension between commerce and art is only one aspect though in this pursuit of pleasure… it could be expanded in another direction in that of ART and ENTERTAINMENT. Entertainment suggests a concern with mass culture; an engagement with the mass audience to incite pleasure. Entertainment incites a direct relationship with commercial interest yet also manages to engage the idea of being foremost for the pleasure of the people on a highly accessible level. Art on the other hand seems to suggest an almost self-indulgence, a dedication to the act of creativity irrelevant of audience response. Art also encapsulates a high-brow notion and elicits a sense of elitism. Art insinuates a confrontation to the dominant frame, a challenge to convention. Art conveys a sense of meaning, a message… as abstract and self-indulgent it may be… but all the same a feeling of engagement other than basic pleasure. That is not to say pleasure should not come from depth and complexity, and in some sense it is disappointing that there is a rejection of this as entertainment. (I prefer experimentation and depth in the music I find pleasure in, and find myself in interesting, conflicting states of mind when I’m faced with music that excites me and yet contains lyrical content I can’t relate to such as sexist or racist crap)
Creativity should not be for industry… industry should be for creativity.
There is the cheesy and surreal pop world of the Eurovision Song Contest…
…and then there is GONZALES, a Canadian artist who relocated to Berlin, now based in Paris, is a unique and profound artist who plays with the concept of entertainment. His first album under the moniker of Gonzales, “Gonzales Uber Alles” was released by Kitty Yo early 2000. A Jewish prankster playing with the elitist notions of the underground (he challenged Alec Empire from Atari Teenage Riot to a public debate about the avant-garde organising a press conference at which Empire failed to show), he produced an album that ranged across cheap beats, triphop and beautiful harmonies. Late 2000 he released “The Entertainist”, a hilarious cheap beat hiphop parody. In 2002 the third album “Presidential Suite” fused the styles of the previous two. In 2003 he re-recorded a bunch of previously released tracks under the name “Z” with a bunch of guests and seemingly with the guise of Danny Elfin and Lionel Ritchie in mind (interestingly his brother Christopher Beck composed the music for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series). Hilarious and genius all in one breath. Soaked in his unique and postmodern mixture of social critique, self-deprecation and a poke in the ribs of entertainment, art and commerce. “What is the hidden message encoded into the performer-audience relationship? New CD out now!”
He followed this with a series of pre-tirement shows through Europe in 2003 and since this time has been working in production. Go to the Kitty-Yo website and check his listing under artists.
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