Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Papus79]

Also I've tried doing what Optical, the guys in Bad Company, and Hidden Agenda did - it's really hard. There was a metal drummer out on the west coast of the US who started making drum and bass (Hive) and he said making good dnb was way harder.

It's a genre that most people aren't into and I'd guess its mostly these factors:

1) Socially ambiguous - ie. it doesn't assign a social role, meaning, message, particularly if it's not a vocal piece of music. People tend to need to see group affiliation, something immediately prescriptive where it's more like an open world MMORPG.

2) It's niche to the UK. I've had talks with some friends about music and I'm coming to the conclusion that the 'normal' thing to do is to like 'local' top 40 - meaning like what's current and like what's from your country not from somewhere else on the planet because... music seems to be fungible for clothing, ie. it's just a status implement.

3) A lot of the really good stuff is super-liminal. We live in a very 'type A' culture (Darwinian victors - which is what it is) so with that mindset tunes like Matrix's Sedation wouldn't land for most people of that mindset, nor most of Photek's classics, because they're as cryptic as they are calm (Photek's Modus Operandi's very much that way) - almost more of a Buddhist or Hindu approach to emotion and spirituality than an Anglo-Saxon Protestant one.

[Papus79]

[baker]

There is something about understanding the physicality of a sound that makes it relatable to me.

For me it's the craftsmanship and the rare quality of the energy (it's part of why I don't really care for the pop side of dnb - it loses what I came for). /.../ I think that's where, for me, music's always been more of a magical incantation than a concern specifically about the physicality (or even lack of it).

By "physicality of a sound" I meant understanding how a sound is made by a physical, analog instrument. The way a sound is produced by plucking a string or hitting a membrane, etc.. As opposed to the sound made by a machine/computer.

When I hear a piece of electronic music, I automatically try to imagine what it would sound like if played with actual instruments. I think this partly comes simply from having listened to a lot of classical music. But also how in the early days of trip hop when it was not that uncommon for songs to be performed live with physical instruments.

DNB and several other eletronic genres are a bit of outliers here, in the uncanny valley when it isn't always clear right away whether the drum part is played by an actual drummer or whether it's made by a machine.

The above comes from a 1996 Metalheadz record label compilation called 'Platinum Breakz I'. The whole first side from Dillinja's 'The Angels Fell' onward is amazing. The second 'disc' has a lot of great tracks that get deeper and more abstract until the end. A lot of those tunes on the first side feel especially 'sentient', like the author is dropping you off inside their head and you're floating in that abstract space. That last part doesn't bother me at all because, for me that's always been the 'spiritual' aspect of music - like you can close your eyes, start with a flat gray Blendr X/Y/Z graph, and just let your mind fill that space with whatever the music brings in.

Lost in music ...

[Papus79]

There's a bit of 'live band' stuff out there, not a ton but some.

Roni Size and Reprazent at BBC 1997:

Goldie's band:

Macc Live:

[baker]

Can't get this out of my head:

[Papus79]

[baker]

And you can actually buy a music box that plays this.

[Consul]

I cover the waterfront
I'm watching the sea
Will the one I love be coming back to me?
I cover the waterfront
In search of my love
And I'm covered by a starlit sky above
…

A friend asked me to translate the first line into German, but I'm not sure what "to cover" means here. Does "I cover the waterfront" mean "I traverse (walk along) the waterfront"?

[baker]

Also I've tried doing what Optical, the guys in Bad Company, and Hidden Agenda did - it's really hard. There was a metal drummer out on the west coast of the US who started making drum and bass (Hive) and he said making good dnb was way harder.

It's a genre that most people aren't into and I'd guess its mostly these factors:

1) Socially ambiguous - ie. it doesn't assign a social role, meaning, message, particularly if it's not a vocal piece of music. People tend to need to see group affiliation, something immediately prescriptive where it's more like an open world MMORPG.

2) It's niche to the UK. I've had talks with some friends about music and I'm coming to the conclusion that the 'normal' thing to do is to like 'local' top 40 - meaning like what's current and like what's from your country not from somewhere else on the planet because... music seems to be fungible for clothing, ie. it's just a status implement.

3) A lot of the really good stuff is super-liminal. We live in a very 'type A' culture (Darwinian victors - which is what it is) so with that mindset tunes like Matrix's Sedation wouldn't land for most people of that mindset, nor most of Photek's classics, because they're as cryptic as they are calm (Photek's Modus Operandi's very much that way) - almost more of a Buddhist or Hindu approach to emotion and spirituality than an Anglo-Saxon Protestant one.

I would call it a medieval or baroque approach to emotion, rather than a Buddhist or Hindu one. Because it's not new or foreign here. Also, modern classical music is similar in this regard. There's a (perceived) type of detachment and aloofness that are unthinkable both for the classical and the romantic period (which are easy enough to relate to for many people).

The phenomenon of the uncanny valley is relative, though, depending on the particular person's recognition of it as such. As an example, it's ironic that there are many renditions of Avril 14th with classical instruments, while the more adequate one would be the one with the music box or one where a robot would play the instrument, given that the piece was originaly composed for and played on a disklavier.


- - -

I live in a part of the country where the reception of local radiostations was rather poor in the 1990's, but we had Austrian radio, specifically a station called FM4, which was an "alternative" radio station and as a matter of principle, they played only music that the mainstream stations did not. They had a weekly schedule with specialized shows dedicated to individual genres, with very knowledgeable DJs. They had DNB, heavy metal, indie, and several more that I can't remember anymore.
What an impact the accidence of geography/topography can have.

[Papus79]

I would call it a medieval or baroque approach to emotion

Could you elaborate on that a bit? I've heard medieval typically applied to scholasticism but not emotion.

Where I could see it rhyming - a lot of good proper dark dnb is exploratory. It feels like what they're going after is a mystical state or place and doing it with amen, apache, 'tighten up', etc. jazz breaks beneath it. I'll feel twinges of something like the old fashion 'Latin mass' type reverence, which - IMHO - the times I attended a church like that with the walls loaded with icons and a nice late 19th century wooden pulpit and altar that's a good 60 feet tall (wrapping the back of the room) - it's WAY different than going to a more modern Catholic church in the US where a small number of icons and a priest seems to be the only thing distinguishing it from a non-denominational protestant mass.

There's another set of terminology I somehow stumbled on while talking to Google Gemini, it's a term I've never heard used before but 'Hunter's focus'? I think it applies to stuff like what I'll post below (and in the second link with the title 'Hunter' - I think they were just going straight for Predator suiting up to go hunt xenomorphs):

The phenomenon of the uncanny valley is relative, though, depending on the particular person's recognition of it as such. As an example, it's ironic that there are many renditions of Avril 14th with classical instruments, while the more adequate one would be the one with the music box or one where a robot would play the instrument, given that the piece was originaly composed for and played on a disklavier.

I tend to leave concerns like that alone because my take on good dnb, especially the really rare moods, I consider myself lucky that it even exists (if I had to put extra preconditions on it to allow / disallow myself from listening to it I'd probably just be SOL). I get the sense that if I got hung up on specific details of how what was made or what went with what (outside of whether or not it's a breath-taking or inspirational production) - I'm not 100% sure what I'd have left. My general orientation is to find deep inspiration with whatever can move me regardless even of whether it was originally written on a kazoo.

I live in a part of the country where the reception of local radiostations was rather poor in the 1990's, but we had Austrian radio, specifically a station called FM4, which was an "alternative" radio station and as a matter of principle, they played only music that the mainstream stations did not. They had a weekly schedule with specialized shows dedicated to individual genres, with very knowledgeable DJs. They had DNB, heavy metal, indie, and several more that I can't remember anymore.
What an impact the accidence of geography/topography can have.

I don't want to dox my exact location but I can be broad enough to say US midwest and 'rust belt'. For some reason that's a bit hard to grock, and maybe completely unconscious and not obviously latent at the superficial layers of the culture, we had a really hard core and dedicated jungle / drum and bass following here and we'd regularly get top UK talent and the like. We also had regional dj's like Dj 3D, Phantom 45, AK1200, etc. who took it pretty seriously and liked / purveyed the UK sound a lot (the west coast / Los Angeles did it's own thing somewhat). I had friends as well who were dj's and we'd be down their basements playing really iconic dark dnb like Cells by Nico (Ghost in the Shell themed), John B's Sight Beyond, Dillinja's Unexplored Terrain - ie. really pensive and journeying stuff.

Heading across states to see my favorite dj's or seeing them at three day festivals (it sounds like Count Lucanor enjoyed his share of that as well), and good dark drum and bass washes over the crowd in a real similar way to how sludgy low-end-heavy metal does (just more hip-hop, jazz, and reggae in the drums).

[baker]

[Jinjer]

Can you talk a bit what you like about this music?


While I am somewhat impressed by the level of craftmanship required to perform this, I also find it alienating. The kind of psychological detachment (from the content of the song) that is required in order to adequately sing in that screaming/growl manner make this kind of music into purely music for music's sake. (If they would sing from the actual emotion, they'd cough blood, literally, and permanently damage their vocal folds within a couple of songs at most.)

I think these heavy metal etc. folks are emotionally very mature people and function on a very different level of emotionality than ordinary people.

[baker]

I tend to leave concerns like that alone because my take on good dnb, especially the really rare moods, I consider myself lucky that it even exists (if I had to put extra preconditions on it to allow / disallow myself from listening to it I'd probably just be SOL). I get the sense that if I got hung up on specific details of how what was made or what went with what (outside of whether or not it's a breath-taking or inspirational production) - I'm not 100% sure what I'd have left. My general orientation is to find deep inspiration with whatever can move me regardless even of whether it was originally written on a kazoo

I'll use this opportunity to talk a bit about irony and sarcasm/cynicism in music, and of music.

Here a few examples off the top of my head. Let's start with Elvis Presley laughing:

kd lang's Miss Chatelaine:

Something seems off right away, but we see a better picture soon:

Pretty much the entire opus of Roxy Music falls under musical irony/sarcasm.

Death is not the end, here in the version by Nick Cave and company:

(What is Kylie Minogue doing there?)


And the crown goes to Mark Knopfler for Ticket to heaven:

(couldn't find the original video)



I didn't know Avril14th before, but when I saw it's from Aphex Twin, I immediately thought there must be a catch to it. And there is. It's another example of Aphex Twin treading the line between human and machine, making it a thin line. (And that grin -- what's up with that?)


It's to a large extent because of irony in music, and the irony in how music is not rarely received by audiences in a way it wasn't originally intended, that I've become skeptical about finding inspiration in music. I always suspect there's irony or cynicism lurking somewhere there.

[Papus79]

(And that grin -- what's up with that?)

It's a troll. He pulls out all the stops on Windowlicker.

While I am somewhat impressed by the level of craftmanship required to perform this, I also find it alienating. The kind of psychological detachment (from the content of the song) that is required in order to adequately sing in that screaming/growl manner make this kind of music into purely music for music's sake. (If they would sing from the actual emotion, they'd cough blood, literally, and permanently damage their vocal folds within a couple of songs at most.)

I just read the lyrics and lol... not much to detach from in this case. In this case I just really liked how much the thrash metal structure reminds me of stuff I used to love as a kid. When I was in my early teens Headbanger's Ball was something I looked forward to and the pacing, chords, etc. have a very reminscent feel. I'd say I like it mostly for the same reasons I like this:

[Pattern-chaser]

Listen to the hummingbird
Whose wings you cannot see
Listen to the hummingbird
Don't listen to me

[Papus79]