IDM Mailing Archive

bjerk, criticism can only be metered on one thing and one thing alone, the music, that's why it's presumptuous for gonzi to attack bjork's album without hearing it first, gonz cites cylob as an counter-example of an artist producing music in the way he thinks it ‘should be done’, but he is subscribing to the hackneyed romantic notion of the "struggling artist", as joe carducci pointed out in his *excellent* book ‘rock and the pop narcotic’, if you feed any audience a mystique, that very soon becomes more important that the actual art being produced and allows a convenient escape route from criticism [hello mr. james], bad music is bad music not matter what circumstances it is produced under, same goes for good music the problem most people like gonzi have with bjork's music is that it [can not] be romantizied about, financed by a major label & worked on by a host of hired hands, bjork toys with the latest 'in" producers, as ken said in a search for credibility, what she is doing could be seen as a shrewd move, she is no dummy where electronic music is concerned, she was checking mixmaster morris out back in the days when most idm’ers were still listening to kiss and no matter what her motives, it could only be a good thing that the music of ‘underground’ producers is reaching the ‘overground’ market. as someone correctly pointed out if she was looking for a quick buck van helden & oakenfold would have been safer bets than plaid & mark bell, how would every one feel if what she started working with afx then? [she’s already laid down tracks with tom jenkinson] in the first place i think franz might have been playing devils advocate with his suggestion that bjork was more innovative than freeform, but it depends on how you define innovative, to me innovation is all about pushing forward the barriers, in whatever way possible, gonzi has to face up to the fact that [now] the music of rephlex is [no more innovative] or [challenging] than bjorks, to pretend otherwise is self delusion rephlex retains the same subtle approach to cultural appropriation within an admittedly more micro-cosmic specialist market, at the end of the day it’s still an attempt to seem to get 'with it', [but in no less a cynical way than bjork] re: the recent dip into sub genres like japanese noise, rephlex don’t go out on a limb and release material by true sonic innovators like but violent onsen geisha, aube, masonnatoy or otomo yoshidie, but instead play it safe with the media friendly ‘wackyness’ of sam & valley . bjorks work stands tall or falls down on the music alone, not the peripherals my 2p stuart @ mfr -- http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/mfr/ cutting edge mail order..elecktronic label [esoteric, non-generic material wanted]