IDM Mailing Archive

On Sat, 27 Jan 2001, Charles R. Terhune wrote:

quoted 5 lines Yeah. There does not seem to be to much innovation in the world of

> Yeah. There does not seem to be to much innovation in the world of > rock. Is it me, or was the music I listened to back when i was a teen in > the 80's infinitely better than most of the shit out there now? An dI was > digging Big Black, The Fall, The Cure, The Smiths, Bowhows, and alla that > stuff.

You can find very worthwhile music of any stripe in any era if you look hard enough (although the 80s were a particularly low point for jazz, for instance). The stuff you mention above were pretty big bands and their recent analogues would probably be CMJ chart-toppers like Tortoise, Stereolab, Belle and Sebastian, Mogwai, Pavement, etc, etc. I could totally understand not being able to get too excited about that particular grouping of bands, but I'm sure some teenager is getting high off their sounds and will remember this time as fondly as you do yours. I also think there's a lot of cross-over potential between the post postrock landscape and IDM (c.f. Fridge, the Hausmusik label and the Morr comp). If you want to be more adventurous, I'd say that the Dead C and Fushitsusha are both as fine a rock band as have ever existed. While we're all sitting around, pontificating "what's wrong with IDM", I will proffer the observation that too much of it sounds like it's made by people who never listen to anything else. Not that IDM has to necessarily be influenced by other things to be good, but I think it lends a certain sense of perspective and hey, cross-pollination works in nature. Anybody who remembers the nth-generation Pavement rip-offs that swarmed the record bins in the early to mid 90s can surely attest to the horror of inbreeding. -rob --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org

quoted 3 lines Yeah. There does not seem to be to much innovation in the world of

>> Yeah. There does not seem to be to much innovation in the world of >> rock. Is it me, or was the music I listened to back when i was a teen in >> the 80's infinitely better than most of the shit out there now? An dI

was

quoted 11 lines digging Big Black, The Fall, The Cure, The Smiths, Bowhows, and alla that

>> digging Big Black, The Fall, The Cure, The Smiths, Bowhows, and alla that >> stuff. > >You can find very worthwhile music of any stripe in any era if you look >hard enough (although the 80s were a particularly low point for jazz, for >instance). The stuff you mention above were pretty big bands and their >recent analogues would probably be CMJ chart-toppers like Tortoise, >Stereolab, Belle and Sebastian, Mogwai, Pavement, etc, etc. I could >totally understand not being able to get too excited about that particular >grouping of bands, but I'm sure some teenager is getting high off their >sounds and will remember this time as fondly as you do yours. I also

Yeah, or some 23 year old... I personally name half those bands as my favorites. Tortoise and Stereolab are ok... --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org

Re: [idm] cake or death? Message-ID: <016a01c08f20$ffb8cb00$a4622104@muziq.vz.dsl.genuity.net>

quoted 5 lines Yeah. There does not seem to be to much innovation in the world of

>>Yeah. There does not seem to be to much innovation in the world of >>rock. Is it me, or was the music I listened to back when i was a >>teen >>in the 80's infinitely better than most of the shit out there >>now? And I >>was digging Big Black, The Fall, The Cure, The Smiths, >>Bowhows, and >>alla that stuff.

Yeah, but like my parents have always said, you just can't top the Beatles and the Stones, when rock really MATTERED. Ahem... Yeah. As long as your ideal of rock and roll music is based on those bands, those bands will always be far better than anything coming out now. It's not a terrible thing to have that be your aesthetic, but it's just not incredibly relevant to the larger strains of more prog-oriented independent rock being created right now (although definitely check out Mocket's Pro Forma album or anything by Satisfact). I'll always have a special place in my heart for the sounds of my own late teens/ early college years--which were PJ Harvey, Railroad Jerk, Thinking Fellers Union, Tricky, Unwound, Doo Rag, Slint, K records, and yes, Jon Spencer, along with a cross-section of 80's music that somehow entirely avoids all of the bands that you mentioned (except Big Black, come to think of it)--but in about 5 years I expect I'll find that the world doesn't like that kind of music anymore. So goes it.

quoted 3 lines You can find very worthwhile music of any stripe in any era if you >look

>You can find very worthwhile music of any stripe in any era if you >look >hard enough (although the 80s were a particularly low point for >jazz, for >instance).

I don't have the original post to repsond to here, but that last parenthetical is as inaccurate a statement as I've heard in a while (although i agree wholeheartedly with the sentence preceding it). I can't say that I'm the _best_ informed when it comes to this genre/period, but I think of the mid and late 80's, especially, carrying over into the early 90's, as being a time of incredible creativity in jazz, what with the Lounge Lizards, the Jazz Passengers, John Zorn's creative apex, the birth of Bill Frisell as a non-ECM jazzman, Marc Ribot, Wayne Horvitz, the meat of William Parker's career (although you might as well think of him as a 70's musician, even now, along with Ware and the young Mr. Shipp).... this is some damn important music, and not entirely obscure, really. If anything, that period pulled jazz out of the hole it'd gotten itself dug into in the late 70's, when it seemed like it was crawling up deep inside itself to die. Much like the worries some people have about current IDM.... But there you go. Cheers, M. ----- Made with affection by distrustful lovers. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org

On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, Matthew Korfhage wrote:

quoted 6 lines sounds of my own late teens/ early college years--which were PJ Harvey,

> sounds of my own late teens/ early college years--which were PJ Harvey, > Railroad Jerk, Thinking Fellers Union, Tricky, Unwound, Doo Rag, Slint, K > records, and yes, Jon Spencer, along with a cross-section of 80's music that > somehow entirely avoids all of the bands that you mentioned (except Big > Black, come to think of it)--but in about 5 years I expect I'll find that > the world doesn't like that kind of music anymore. So goes it.

Yeah, but in another ten/twenty years, stuff like that'll be the nostalgic soundtrack du jour.

quoted 7 lines think of the mid and late 80's, especially, carrying over into the early

> think of the mid and late 80's, especially, carrying over into the early > 90's, as being a time of incredible creativity in jazz, what with the Lounge > Lizards, the Jazz Passengers, John Zorn's creative apex, the birth of Bill > Frisell as a non-ECM jazzman, Marc Ribot, Wayne Horvitz, the meat of William > Parker's career (although you might as well think of him as a 70's musician, > even now, along with Ware and the young Mr. Shipp).... this is some damn > important music, and not entirely obscure, really. If anything, that period

I guess it depends on your viewpoint (I was the one who made the original point). IMO, most of the above had exhausted their valid contributions in the late 70s and mucked up the 80s with unlistenable garbage. And hey, I've got a pile of small-press jazz vinyl from the 80s that all exhibit a sense of directionlessness and lack of conviction, even from more established figures. If ever there was a time in which jazz was unsure about its future, this was it. I mean, the one nice thing about the 90s is that everybody sorta realized that there was no need to be embarrassed about the stuff that was going on in the 60s (though this current mode of ESP/skronk worshipping thing has gone on far enough). I will admit, however, that Anthony Braxton (the guy who Zorn got all of his ideas from) finally hit his creative stride during the 80s. And downtown still sucks, for the most part (Susie Ibarra, Rob Brown and Marc Edwards excepted). -rob --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org

On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, Andrei wrote:

quoted 7 lines On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, R. Lim wrote:

> On Mon, 5 Feb 2001, R. Lim wrote: > > > I will admit, however, that Anthony Braxton (the guy who Zorn got all of > > his ideas from) > > Come on Rob, you know Zorn stole all his ideas from Kagel and Ornette ! ;) > And Braxton got a lot of his ideas from Cage and Stockhausen, so...

OK, OK (though Zorn openly acknowledges his worship of big T). Braxton has some obvious influences which he wears on his sleeves (like the Tristanoites and Sun Ra) and others which he doesn't (Giuffre, for some reason). On the whole, however, I think he does a pretty good job of integrating everything into a system which steps further forward than it does back. I don't think I'd say the same about Zorn or any of his contemporary analogues in other fields (if I said their names, I'd be afraid to sleep at nights). And for what it's worth, the 20th c composer influences happened earlier in his career and their influence has been more and more integrated into his music, rather than become more and more obvious. In other words, he matured out of it.

quoted 4 lines The 80's quartet with Crispell, Dresser and Hemingway did make some great

> The 80's quartet with Crispell, Dresser and Hemingway did make some great > records, but I think Braxton also did a lot of great work in the 70's. I > find that his work form the 70's has more of a visceral punch than what > he's done since. And his recent work is godawful imo.

I thought the same thing about Ghost Trance until I saw it live. It's basically like an open-ended version of his 80s quartet stuff, another step "meta" if you will. Tremendously exhilirating and it kicks ass all over Cobra, at least. He did some amazing stuff in the 70s, but they were mostly shorter pieces. There's an awful lot of conservatory-oriented stuff that was pretty dull (I'm talking about the stuff that HatArt licensed- I can't imagine that this is the stuff you're referring to). Certainly the Arista series stands as a remarkable and diverse body of work that, if not as important as the Ornette quartet's early work on Atlantic, ought to be held in a similar sort of regard (esp given that that was sort of it for corporate sponsorship of a genuinely forward-thinking jazz musician). -rob --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org