steve wrote:I don't think a laundry list of qualities will ever convince me that something is or isn't crap, but like you said, it's your question, and if it's illuminating to others, good enough.
I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything.
I'm trying to get at the root of why most modern electronic music is meaningless to me, and this, when I hear, like, five minutes of it, at least does _something_.
Here's what I can come up with:
I can't relate to certain kinds of music because I am unfamiliar with them and have not learned how to listen to them. I can sense this disconnect most of the time.
Nerbly Bear wrote:Can't really judge, since I'm not sure what this music's aims are in the first place.
When I feel this way, I take it as a clue that I am missing something.
Example: I've spent a lot of time listening to classical music over the last year or so, and I can hear things that I couldn't hear before. Always thought Mendelssohn was a total nerd, but I can distinguish the pro-forma bits from the (pretty good) parts where he was writing for himself. Always 'hated' opera, but there's a reason Nessun Dorma is ubiquitous: it's awesome. A lot of it is awesome. If I don't take to it as a genre, I can see now that the failing is largely mine, not opera's.
However. All of that music is complex music. Technical requirements aside, it's rich--there's usually a lot going on. Not living with it for a while is an easy way to not get it.
Modern electronic music is not complex music, by and large. It is not generally musically complex, and it is not generally emotionally complex.
More important to me, however, than complexity is nuance. Most classical music is highly nuanced. It seems to me that most modern electronic music is not nuanced. It functions primarily as mood music, and narrowly focused mood music at that.
Mood music is distinct from more substantial music in that it
requires a contribution from the listener. More substantial music can win you over--it may even require you to succumb to it in a way. Mood music comes to you, and you either take to it (b/c you can relate to it in some way) or you do not.
Rick Reuben said that he considers modern electronic music to be second-tier music. What I am realizing is that whatever I take to be mood music, I consider that to be second-tier music. It's not nuanced, not complex. It may or may not be technically sophisticated, but its aims are readily apprehendable and easily realized.
The key is whether or not it strikes some chord with the listener. And that chord is going to be struck instantaneously, or not. It's not complex enough in any way to be missing something.
Dub--mood music. Not first-tier music (instrumental reggae is not necessarily dub--Augustus Pablo, for inst). Love Lee Perry, but he was at his best working on records of actual songs (Congos' _Heart of the Congos_). I could listen to dub all day and all night.
Martin Denny--mood music. Not first-tier music. Indifferent to it. Unfailingly easy on the ears, but it is not a soundtrack to any part of the life that I have lived or (crucially)
wish to have lived.
Most modern electronic music is mood music. Not first-tier music. I am as indifferent to it as I am to Martin Denny, except when I feel that it is trivial, overhyped, and/or an aural imposition, in which case I actively dislike it.
I am indifferent or disinclined to like it b/c I in no way relate to the environment from which it came, and w/o that relationship, it has no great meaning. I don't need to have an intimate relationsip with the environment from which more substantial music comes, b/c it creates some part of that environment w/in itself. Most of the modern electronic music I have heard doesn't even try to do that.
Burial, the instant I heard it, I was, like, "that's late-night, bleary, walking thru a semi-sketchy part of town after being out all night." Knew instantly what he was doing. Then I read the article, and he basically says that is what he is trying to do.
It's a narrow goal. Too narrow to add up to much in the end, perhaps. But he meets it, and my question to myself is, "Is that enough?"
It's enough for him to be critically accepted--critics loooooove it when they can get their minds completely around something the first time they hear it. It's much easier to get a handle on something when it is narrowly focused and not widely ambitious--when its ambitions are easily understood and met.
I think it's enough for a soundtrack, or a perfume commercial. I haven't heard nearly enough of it to know if there's something else going on.
Hence, this C/NC.
Thanks.
