I'm pretty sensitive to when something is in-tune or not (thirty
years of listening to classical music will do that to you), and
for all I know Amon Tobin's stuff is woefully out-of-tune in a
manner that suggests sloppiness, not inventiveness. But I've heard
plenty of music from other places that springs from the latter,
whether from microtones, alternative tunings, or just playful or
coloristic out-of-tuneness. We all hear differently, so I can
easily imagine that what's "color" for one person might be "sour"
to another and inaudible to a third.
It's the same with rhythm. Playing slightly off-the-beat can have
the same sort of effect, perhaps by playing with our expectations
or by leading or pulling us into a particular body rhythm. Or it
can just be sloppy. But the fact remains that "perfect" tune or
"perfect" rhythm is one of the reasons people call electronic music
"souless," an appellation I don't entirely disagree with despite
my love of electronic music and its many genres. So it pays (for
me at least) to question whether a given off-tune or off-beat
passage bothers me because of my own prejudices or because the
artist Just Didn't Care Enough.
-Ed
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