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From:
Matthew Korfhage
To:
Date:
Mon, 02 Jul 2001 16:17:34 -0700
Subject:
Re: [idm] hip-hop stereotyping + reviews
Msg-Id:
<F110RhQdOgl4rhYQYx300009a49@hotmail.com>
Mbox:
idm.0107.gz
"Ron Jeremy" <galactic_funk@hotmail.com> wrote:
quoted 4 lines Equally, every genre produces its share of genius tracks.>>Equally, every genre produces its share of genius tracks. > >I'm not completely sold on that. I've never heard any genius bluegrass >tunes.
Then you probably haven't listened to much Bill Monroe, the Bad Livers, any of Danny Barnes' solo work, certain of Freakwater's tracks, or the nouveau takes on the genre by the newly soulful Bill Frisell or the goof-jazz Japonize Elephants (the latter admittedly not genius but very, very fun). It's not exactly verifiable, and definitely not objective, but you can pretty much take it on faith that there are gems to be found in almost any of the larger genres of music if you take the time to look. If you can't be bothered, well, that's fine too. That's fine too. On another note, I finally picked up the newest Microstoria after letting "glocky bit" take seed in my brain over the past few months courtesy of the Sonig comp. This has to be the lushest thing Microstoria has ever produced, and definitely the most rewarding. I'd thought that I'd had all I needed from them with snd and reprovisers, but this is turning out to be my favorite of the lot, with a much better realized synthesis of St. Werner's and Popp's more ambient aesthetics than in any of their other efforts. It's also much poppier, I suppose, which some may view as a drawback, but I find it flat lovely ear-candy. The new platter by Marumari, on the other hand, sounds almost too slick for my ears, especially when compared to the genius, piercingly sad pitch of Ballad of the Round Ball. Although evidencing more refined craft on Marumari's part, Supermogadon doesn't have the emotional import for me that the previous two full-lengths did, and seems much more able to be relegated to the background. That said, there are still some extremely rewarding tracks on the album, and I expect that it will grow on me much the same as Wolves' Hollow did. In that spirit, "holograft", "indigo florist", "a green morning", and "rocket summer" are overwhelmingly pleasant things, on a par with the best of anything Marumari has made, and the muffled and filtered vocal sampling is pretty deft and affecting most of the time. Also nice is the hazily varied digital processing in many of the track segments, which, for me, mixes up the immediacy of the recordings so that it almost feels like certain sounds or sections are being transmitted via distorted satellite transmissions or shortwave radio. The general melancholy that Lance mentioned in his review of this same album seems more poignant when it feels like it's been set adrift and only reached your ears by accident-- like that line in "Classic Water" by David Berman about the time he and a girlfriend were playing with a shortwave and picked up the sounds of an unknown man, far away or right next door, quietly sobbing into the ham radio static. Cheers, M. "It is the promises this place makes to me, promises that cannot be redeemed, that will confuse me later..." _________________________________________________________________ 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