I can support this beautiful written piece totally. So, if anyone has
something more to say about this topic... Read this and shut up.
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: ajwells@ix.netcom.com <ajwells@ix.netcom.com>
Aan: idm@hyperreal.org <idm@hyperreal.org>
Datum: donderdag 11 november 1999 7:10
Onderwerp: (idm) Re: MBV
quoted 85 lines Well the obvious link between The Valentines later work and much of what>Well the obvious link between The Valentines later work and much of what
>goes on in electronic music is in the divorcing of sound from the
>physical act that originally produced it (or the elimination of the
>physical act altogether)... the Valentines were all about taking the
>physical rush of the guitar torrent and removing its' insides, leaving a
>ghost in its place... this almost exactly parallels the way that
>sampling has worked in recent years, allowing sound to be manipulated
>and used in ways not imagined by the creators of the sound... and
>sampling has changed how people hear things... pitch shifting in
>sampling has made the audience much more tolerant and accepting of audio
>which is "out of tune" in the conventional definition... Kevin himself
>remarked on this phenom one time, and said how thankful he was to house
>and hip hop because they softened up the audience for the sort of tonal
>scale bending which he accomplished with his whammy bar and his Emax...
>
>Of course now we have music which has never entered the physical realm
>at all... wholly fabricated inside silicon environments... and that
>music is just as oppressive as the hoary guitar rock that it is a
>reaction to... you need to feel the movement of human muscles inside a
>piece of work, which is why computer music is often insubstantial and
>unsatisfying in the long term...
>
>Of course the problem with anyone who innovates sonically is that you
>get these legions of people who come along and appropriate their
>approach to sound without realizing that you cant have form without
>content or vice versa... so you got all this crap a la SeeFeel, who
>basically took a fraction of one of Kevins ideas (of which any given MBV
>track would have at least five) and made a career out of it...
>essentially turning a radical approach to sound into wallpaper...
>SeeFeel in my opinion is a one line joke and I cant understand how they
>have gotten any respect at all (in contrast the offshoot Scala is lovely
>because they have sound AND songs)... none of the legions of Valentines
>followers, from the shoegazers to the ambient crowd, understood how the
>expression of the sound has to evolve from inside the music rather than
>being imposed on it by a flanger or chorus pedal... and now we have a
>whole new wave of Ripsters in the form of Bows and that ilk... ah
>well... Kevin brought it all on himself by not releasing any records...
>
>Ultimately, the problem with genres, lists and any sort of
>categorization is that anyone with any sort of inquisitive sensibility
>will by their very nature always be looking for something that FEELS
>new... anyone who listens to one only sort of music (or who focuses on
>only one type of art) is a moron... the fun is in the contrast that
>change brings... hearing something and getting that feeling that you did
>the first time you heard it... electronic music has felt new for some
>time now, but that is fading a bit at the moment with the assimilation
>of electronic music in the mainstream media and the predominance of
>stupid people who are presently working in the medium... that
>accompanying deadening that is going on... transcendence in any art form
>relies in part on the unexpected, and I dont know about you, but
>sometimes a Broadway show tune can sound like the most incredible thing
>in the world after a steady diet of Warp shit... I love sonic
>experimentation as much as anyone, but it sounds so much more incredible
>right in between a Cole Porter song and a studio one track...
>
>check out this pile next to the keyboard;
>
>Oval Szenariodisk
>Trashmonk Mona Lisa Overdrive
>Tarwater Silur
>Andy Pratt Resolution
>Throbbing Gristle 20 Jazz Funk Greats
>Miles Davis Sketches Of Spain
>Primal Scream Swastika Eyes
>Wire Chairs Missing
>Frank Sinatra Come Fly With Me
>Magazine The Correct Use Of Soap
>Stock, Hausen and Walkman Stop
>The Carpenters Now And Then
>Sly And The Family Stone Fresh
>Scientist Heavyweight Dub Champion
>Merzbow Tauromachine
>Broadcast Echos Answer
>Scala To You In Alpha
>Sneaker Pimps Splinter
>Meredith Monk Our Lady Of Late
>Plone For Beginner Piano
>Supercollider Head On
>Gang Of Four 100 Flowers Bloom
>
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