First of all, I haven't read The Wire review, but the one at the bbc link
posted here is certainly glowing. Having said that, I wouldn't read it as
implying that Boxcutter's doing anything 'groundbreaking'. I think it
relates rather to someone taking a (sub-)genre template and
cross-breeding/hybridising it to make it sound somehow fresh. Hence the
ref. to that ubiquitous 'cutting edge'. Basically, I think you can be
'cutting edge' without being especially *innovative*. The former has more
to do with being on the cusp of the evolutionary moment (blah blah), but I
guess we're into semantics here, and not music. Turning to which...
'Oneiric' is certainly energetic and vibrant music, premised on dubstep
kinetics, but sneaking out magpie tentacles (ok, so magpies don't have
tentacles... go with it... 'cutting edge' prose, innit) to pilfer shiny
objects from elsewhere to festoon around its sound field. That said, it's
not essentially 'radical' or a 'bold departure' or whatever other
signifiers review discourse might allude to. It's just good sh1t, innit.
The Burial album is another one that's had the scribes straining similarly
to elevate, but, again, it's something that someone's seen as being somehow
on the crest of the 'Zeitgeist' (scuse me), and if you hold it up to the
light there's no massive paradigm-shifting going on. Good sh1t, again.
But you don't get critical kudos from writing that. Most critics are most
certainly not 'retards', as a previous correspondent uncharitably
suggested, but they do sometimes tend to reach for something greater or
'beyond' in their appraisals, and in so doing, may overreach themselves.
alan
--On 05 June 2006 16:29 -0700 wownflutter <wownflutter@yahoo.com> wrote:
quoted 33 lines Hi folks
> Hi folks
>
> I first read a glowing review of Boxcutter in Wire
> Magazine.
>
> Then:
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A11263376
>
> Checked it out and they say he is doing very
> innovative stuff.... elaborating on two-step dub...
>
> Im not a dj, I do like Oneiric, but am trying to
> figure out what these reviewers are hearing as being
> so differentiated than other artists.
>
> Can someone explain why Boxcutter's "onereic" is
> considered ground-breaking?
>
> Thx in advance :-)
>
> wnf
>
>
>
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----------------------
Alan Lockett (Senior Language Co-ordinator - EFL)
Language Centre, University of Bristol,
30-32 Tyndall's Park Road, Bristol, BS8 1PY, UK
tel: +44 (0)117 3310914 e-mail: Alan.R.Lockett@bristol.ac.uk
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