"Rjyan Kidwell" <cex@tigerbeat6.com> wrote:
quoted 2 lines if drums and basslines are overrated, then accessibility is
>if drums and basslines are overrated, then accessibility is
>overhated.
This has to be my pick for quote of the day. Although, when at least half
this list pines for Artificial Intelligence and favors nursery rhyme tunes
over circa-1996 Autechresque beats (I plead guilty to the latter, without
shame), it's hard to sound the call to revolution anyway.
Speaking as someone who used to hate pop music as the gooey pablum of the
unwashed, I'm starting to tentatively agree with Simon Reynolds that a good
percentage of the most important innovations/evolutions in music happen at
the level of the dancefloor-- I'm not sure how the "training wheels"
metaphor really applies, unless Gonzi simply meant that it would be nice if
the chems had figured out how to do something *else* by now, which is likely
valid.
As a note, it's also the fan's inalienable right, asserted extremely often
by vast numbers, and usually with the fervor of a zealot, to bitch and moan
about an artist's new album because the artist is no longer delivering the
sort of goods that (to the fan) made the artist important. Diphthong /
Dipfthong(?) is pissed 'cause Phoenecia ain't funky no more (can't
corroborate-- haven't heard the new'n) and wanted to vent and maybe pick up
some like sentiments. Aside from the "enough with this trendy bullshit"
crack, that's really reasonable enough. Apparently he likes beats and funky
basslines, and maybe doesn't like the soothing classic-rock and big-beat of
fatboy or the chems, which probably aren't a very relevant gibe at someone
who was hoping for an elaboration on the goofball crunch of early phoenecia.
Making accessible tunes in a new way isn't in any way a step backward or a
sign that the training wheels need to get kicked off for experienced
riders-- by my vote, it's a helluva lot more difficult to produce truly
innovative pop than experimentalia, which often takes the "innovation" tag
for granted just by dint of genre or governing theory. Invading people's
intuitional sense of musical progression, or calling out latent pop
possibility, is a hell of a thing, and whoever manages to do so deserves all
the props they get. That's one of the reasons that artists like Slicker or
Mouse on Mars are so important to me--- if you look at the unlikely
concatenation of sounds and samples that JHIII slaps together, for instance,
there really doesn't seem to be any reason it should be as poppy as it so,
so blatantly is.
Cheers,
M.
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