quoted 3 lines I love it when intersections like this pop up on the list. In another> I love it when intersections like this pop up on the list. In another
> thread, people are discussing a tendency to focus on technique when
> critiquing music, and here we get a perfect example of that.
I love the intersections too, but please don't assume that by discussing
Luke Vibert's technique in constructing that song that we are discussing the
totality of Luke Vibert's oeuvre, or even the totality of that particular
song.
quoted 2 lines What we have here is a case of disillusionment and resentment> What we have here is a case of disillusionment and resentment
> toward an artist.
Not resentment at all, just disillusionment. I imagined X when listening to
a track and I found out the reality was Y.
quoted 5 lines The only difference is one piece of information that> The only difference is one piece of information that
> shattered an ideal. ... Let the "suffering
> artist" crap go, it never did anyone any good.
>
> The piece sounds the same as when you didn't know it was a sample.
Well, that's true, but my appreciation of the music involves more than the
sound - there is an intellectual component. To paraphrase Adam P, if I find
out my shoes were made by child labor, they certainly cannot be said to be
as comfortable. But I don't know what you're talking about with that
"suffering artist" crack, since that's not what I wrote about nor do I have
any opinion about suffering except that I think that it's always wrong.
When I experience art, however, I always imagine myself making the art. It's
part of how I think about all art, and I think a lot of other people do this
to one degree or another, by imagining the artmaking process. I put myself
in the artist's shoes and imagine why he or she made the decisions they did.
I don't overintellectualize, I just do it automatically.
My interpretation of that particular song was this: I thought it was a cool
self-referential song that willfully exposed the tools and means of building
electronic music. I turned out to be wrong in the sense that the artist
probably didn't intend that. More likely, he thought the sample sounded cool
and put it in for that reason alone. As an artist, I strive to not do
something simply because "it's cool". Rather, I try to build some kind of
intellectual reason behind it. I was disappointed to find out that Vibert
didn't create his art the way I thought he did. To be honest it doesn't even
lessen my high appreciation of that track on a visceral level, but on an
intellectual level I can't really get much out of it if I know that his
intellectual agenda was simply to make something that sounds cool.
It's like this: Imagine that you like the music of, say, Milli Vanilli.
Imagine that you think "Damn, these guys are great singers, they really know
their craft!". Then you find out that they were simply models lipsynching to
music made by anonymous session singers. You may be disappointed. Is it your
fault for having an unrealistic and naive expectation that modern pop stars
sing their own material? Maybe. By the same token it may be my fault for
assuming that an artist I admire might put some intellectual thought into
the words that I hear on his records. Big deal, so I'm disappointed. I get
disappointed in artists all the time, you know, including my own self and my
artist friends. They're not gods, they're just peers, including Luke Vibert.
By the way, I can't beleive that although I specifically said that I wasn't
saying anything bad about sampling, everyone invariably started arguing
about how beat jacking is postmodern and that I'm closed minded to sampling
as collage and all that crap. That whole debate is almost 15 years old now
and I'm not interested in it. Sampling is here, it's perfectly ethical and I
have no problem with it. To say that sampling is bad is like saying that red
is bad or that the piano is bad. Please give me the benefit of the doubt and
assume that my critiques are not the dogmatic proclamations of an ignorant
18 year old.
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