tocharian wrote:

Nina wrote:Just out of curiosity, what the hell would inspire you to make such a comment?

Several reasons, one of which is how often people seem to aim their noses strait for Steve's asshole.

Here's the long answer:

Am I willing to concede that Steve does not in fact dwell exclusively in the catacombs of punk rock? Yeah. Do I nonetheless feel ok about having said such a silly and smartass thing? Yeah again. My flippant dismissal of his aesthetic is no less fair than his relentless, caustic dismissals of music he knows little about--music that is actually pretty good by others’ standards.

As for electronic music, I could give a flying fuck about the morality of how it’s made. I only know how I respond to it, and about the culture which surrounds it—which, since so many people making it nowadays are so damn serious, is actually quite cool. Saying that making popular music by “mouse-clicking” is less valid than making music with guitars makes about as much sense as saying visual art should only be made with tempera and plaster. The really good electronic musicians research music as tirelessly and expend as much effort on their product as good bands. The process is different, granted. Oh waaah.

Classical musicians could say plenty of dismissive things about the process of making rock music and rock musicians--their comparative ignorance of music theory, the relatively paltry amount of time they spend mastering their instruments, the relative simplicity of the music. In comparison, rock music is pretty trivial and maybe even immoral, yet we listen to it and like it and even get self-righteous about it. In terms of amount of effort and talent required, the distance between rock and electronic is negligible compared to that between rock and classical, so careful with those stones.

Finally, I say mean things about music and films and people on the board tell me I’m dead inside, they hate me, they want to shoot me, and they even want to eat me (and not as in “out”). Sometimes they even say wounding things about my aesthetic maturity. And you know what? It’s fine. I understanding that being misunderstood and ridiculed is part of what happens when people go head to head about art they care about on the internet. Why should anyone spared?

Antero wrote:

NerblyBear wrote:Takes no talent at all to come up with something like this.

I swear to god I've done this rant before, so I'll leave it here:

The quoted statement is one that can only be made by someone with total ignorance of the music in question, its aesthetic, and (most significantly) the process of its creation.

Another completely ignorant person here. It sounds to me like this guy could easily produce 12 albums a year and each one of them would be of equal quality. Bad Comrade mention computer background music - this is spot on. I think I actually heard something like it in Need for Speed game about 8 years ago. I can also imagine bunch of heavily stoned dudes listening to this and thinking it is awesome.
CRAP



edit: Also, this music has it's own genre? Dubstep? It's laughable. Well but sub genres are in general.

yeah, Math Rock is like, so smart.

steve wrote:Fuck this music. Fuck the culture that makes it, commodifies it, mythologizes the mouse-clickers that hack it together, and uses it to supplant tangible culture. Fuck everything about this.

I think that the arguments made by Antero, Tocharian, Houseboat and Ekkssvvppllott sum up much of this argument better than I can, but I want to address the issues of commodication and bad faith brought up by Steve.

Before going on, I should state that given my own limited immersion in electronic music, and given that this is shared by most of us here, I am lumping in many different genres for the sake of this broad argument.

I sense an implication in the statement that Burial and his ilk are guilty of bad faith: of trying to bullshit the listener into thinking what they are doing is art, when what they are really producing is some kind of fake music, aural decoration, or a pure entertainment commodity. I would guess the presumed motive to be financial enrichment, the esteem of media trendies, pothead urban hipsters and coffee table cokeheads (since we're dealing with stereotypes); and the sex, free drugs and magazine covers that go with this. In this conception, at best the artist can be said to be someone who has fooled himself into believing that he is an artist whilst being primarily motivated by the cocaine and lobster.

Having spent a little time around similar sorts of artists and their music, and having lived with a close friend who makes his own (resolutely uncommercial and personal) music, I know that this is wrong for a large number, if not most of them. I am equally sure that there are fakes and pretentious fops in these circles, but one could say the same for any popular music movement.

There are genuine aesthetics to creating sample and synthesizer based music; you might hate them and think that they are conducive to producing lightweight, unmemorable or dull music, but the seriousness, dedication, passion and craft that some put into this should not be doubted. I would go as far to say that to accuse such an individual of bad faith would be slanderous.

(Which is not to say that you cannot express sorrow that such effort has gone into music that you think is worthless; another matter.)

Whilst I am undecided over how much I like Burial's music, the impression I get from the interview posted by Tim is that he is genuine and has thought a great deal about his aesthetic. If it indeed proves to be worthy only of perfume commercials, then that is shame as it will be a failure rather than a lie.

The commodification of much of this music is undeniable; the inextricable links between clubs, drugs, T-shirts, media trendies and the like ensures this. However, much of the same could be said of rock music throughout its inception and peak. And, as with rock, there are some resolutely anti-commercial, anti-capitalist and experimental strands to electronic music that fight against this. I cannot compare these to the heyday of punk as I have never had the pleasure of being immersed in either meleé (through age in one case, through my own rock-preference in the other). However, as before, the intention - the good faith - that goes into these endeavours is truly admirable.

I have never been much of a clubber (the last couple of times that I went in London were overcrowded, unpleasant and eventually repellent), and I rarely listen to electronic music on my own. However, there are a few electronic records that I find incredibly beautiful, evocative and moving, including a couple that I mentioned earlier; in some ways, I think that it might even be harder to make genuinely touching music through these tools. I think other arguments (e.g. Steve's in the Pro-Tools one) on this forum might back this up.

emmanuelle cunt wrote:It sounds to me like this guy could easily produce 12 albums a year and each one of them would be of equal quality.

I'm sorry EC, but you are wrong. You can despise the music, but these blanket statements are pretty ignorant of the processes, thought, effort and experimentation involved in its production.

Benny's comment is probably the funniest and most spot on:

Benny wrote:EA: Premier Rock Forum
"forget talking about electronic music here"

tocharian wrote:In terms of amount of effort and talent required, the distance between rock and electronic is negligible compared to that between rock and classical, so careful with those stones.

I think the essential difference lies in being the event vs retrospective event-manipulation.

The point at which most would agree electronic music is 'created' is not at the point of sound naissance, but at final point of sound manipulation. I think it's probably valid to question/consider the validity/equality of retrospective manipulation relative to other, real-time musical forms.

Interpretation/compilation vs authorship if you like. Or documentary vs fantasy.

Not that I would waste much time assigning relative value, but surely it's worth admitting that these things are not 'the same'?

What is "dubstep?"

Does it have defining characteristics?

Genuinely interested.

I have no opinion of Burial.

I like his attitude as outlined in the link in the first post.

I don't know if it's any good or not. It has a sound, but it might be a common sound, for all I know.

Tim, I didn't know what it was either. So here:

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

I find this music interesting in a way--it doesn't engage me, so when I'm listening to it I'm trying to figure out why people seem to dig it--as far as I can tell, it amounts to the emphasis on the bass drum--and it's a decent dance bass drum sound. I like more complexity in my electronica, though.

edited: maurice already added the wikipedia link.

i think it's just a "dub" version of the "two step" drum n' bass genre. super sparse and ambient. i don't know the genre myself, but i liked this. i had a very hardcore electronica period when i was 15-19 years old. Dub-Techno is another great genre, mostly non-dancing music, very smart arrangements of beats, and brilliant textures.
suggest you to read some interviews from robert henke, aka monolake. the guy with his other mate from the band created ableton live, which is a brilliant piece of software. the guy has great ideas and interesting concepts. the music is pretty good too imho.

i still don't understand how in other threads people are celebrating drone music, ambient, krautrock, using only one chord and they thing that this kind of electronica it's just for perfume ads. but well...

probably my last post on this thread by the way. tim, i like your interest.
cheers,

Benny

sparky wrote:I'm sorry EC, but you are wrong. You can despise the music, but these blanket statements are pretty ignorant of the processes, thought, effort and experimentation involved in its production.

I think it's extremely significant that EC's statement is considered insulting.

If 'Burial' released 100 records of this stuff in a month, in what sense would this negate his artistic integrity?

If he released 100 records in a week, and they all sounded pretty much like his output thus far, would that diminish his artistic value relative to a rock band?

It seems to me that the implication is that if this stuff takes 6 months, it must have been created with integrity. Because, you know, integrity takes time...

Alberto the Frog wrote:The point at which most would agree electronic music is 'created' is not at the point of sound naissance, but at final point of sound manipulation.

I disagree with this statement. I'm not sure that there is or needs to be a point when electronic music is created/comes in to being/etc. It's a continual process, from initial experiments with sound sources to the finished article. The only coherent point at which one could say that the music has been created is when the creator is done with it - otherwise we can't talk about its having been created in the past tense. Although there are very obviously significant differences between the way in which some guy sits at home making music on his lap top and the way in which a band writes together in a practice space, the above aspect of the process seems fundamentally the same. You sit at home maybe, you find a nice chord and then another one, go through ideas for changes, accompaniments [sic, probably], scrap a bit here, change the structure there. The piece of music isn't finished until the band says it is. Both methods of creation seem to share the same property then - of being defined by a continual process or series of inter-related events, rather than an identifiable event or moment of naissance.