Philosophy Discussion Forums

Sy Borg wrote: ↑April 15th, 2021, 5:07 pm To me, [Bjork] is just another of those "new" artists

Me too! Anything after the 'punk revolution' of the mid-70s is 'new'.

Papus79 wrote: ↑April 14th, 2021, 9:55 am

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑April 14th, 2021, 9:38 am There is no "good" music and no "bad" music; there is only music.

The only guidance I'd add to that:

There's something that can be said for misapplied dissonance or too little of it. If an artist makes a track that's too dissonant for most people to listen to it there's a question as to what purpose they were getting at and whether it was organized or cohesive enough to at least say that it achieved its objective, ie. it's the difference between a John Cage vs. a three year old mashing keys. Something similar could be said of too little dissonance where the question is does it communicate anything, is the artist just practicing, or is it strictly a money-maker? Particularly with too little dissonance it can sound like someone just chained together a few loops they found in a library (one 2000's genre example - 'dubstep' vs. 'brostep').

And there is Public Image Limited, using dissonance like a rocket uses fuel. Check them out, at Glastonbury 2013:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0Rw4-gFtCQ

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑April 18th, 2021, 8:22 am

Sy Borg wrote: ↑April 15th, 2021, 5:07 pm To me, [Bjork] is just another of those "new" artists :)

Me too! Anything after the 'punk revolution' of the mid-70s is 'new'. 😁

Exactly :)

Something I might say to maybe help reify the conversation earlier - ie. how can producer-oriented electronic music (not 100% life, one guy jamming on 8 synths, doing backflips, and eating fire) can be rated on content.

IMHO this kind of music is more draftsmanship and story-telling oriented than musical athletic prowess. One thing I can say after spending something lik 12 or 13 years making electronic music - the mastering process is *evil*, and was made even worse by the loudness war. Darren D-Bridge said it well that maybe 5% of tunes he wrote actually made it to vinyl and a large part of that was the mastering process eating things. I was watching a tutorial by John '00' Fleming (one of the most respectable trance dj's/producers IMO) and he was saying a similar thing.

Not everything will be 100% novel, the mid to late 90's were a time of high novelty, similarly 'dark and mysterious' spaces were reexplored (at least in dnb and dubstep) in the late 00's but it was done in a softer register rather than clomping/rolling techstep (less 'making the 808s bleed').

This was the kind of novelty that really drew me in and IMHO it's dnb hitting at-weight:

Robert66 wrote: ↑April 18th, 2021, 3:06 pm And there is Public Image Limited, using dissonance like a rocket uses fuel. Check them out, at Glastonbury 2013:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0Rw4-gFtCQ

Interesting ty.

In a strange way it sounds like it's on a continuum between 80's King Crimson and Pop Will Eat Itself (though less of the later's electronics).

One of the first hard rock songs I heard on the radio and started my affair with it. Didn't even know what the band was until years later.

If you think we are interested in musical prowess for its own sake, Papus, you are missing the point. It's about musicians gaining the prowess to create magic:

A side note, in this sublime performance, it's heart-warming to see David Crosby's obvious affection for his son, who's playing piano.

Pattern-chaser wrote:Me too! Anything after the 'punk revolution' of the mid-70s is 'new'.

Generally speaking, when it comes to music, I think most people think of anything that happened after their teenage years as "new" and before as "old". In my case that means the 80s. My teenage step-daughter is currently discovering "ancient" bands from the 90's like Radiohead. My teenage son considers bands from the 90's more ancient than I would have considered the Beatles to be at his age, and spurns them.