The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

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Darkness_Fish
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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Darkness_Fish » 11 Dec 2017, 20:43

Bloody hell, I must've cocked that up about 15 times there. Never had to edit a simple couple of sentences so many bloody times.
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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby KeithPratt » 11 Dec 2017, 20:48

I've listened to enough experimental music over the last two decades to decide that most of it is of little merit. 2017 is no different.

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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Darkness_Fish » 11 Dec 2017, 21:06

I've listened to enough non-experimental music and come to the same conclusion about the mainstream. So I guess that's that issue sorted.
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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Penk! » 11 Dec 2017, 21:13

Well I have gone and listened to them all* and this is what I think as someone who straddles the "conservo-rock" and "arty-poking" camps on BCB.

*bits of them

1. Chino Amobi - Paradiso
This was shite. 6th form "art music" from the 1990s.

2. Richard Dawson - Peasant
Still struggling a bit with this one. I don't think it's as daft or instantly dismissable as some; it certainly has something about it. But it never really attracts me either. The melodies are all a bit too awkward (read: not really there), the singing a bit too blaring.

3. Klein - Tommy
Cut-up rubbish. Someone plays a piano and some other people talk. It stops a bit and starts a bit. Again and again. Next.

4. Jlin - Black Origami
I'd already heard this one. I like it (I've heard some of her earlier work and liked that too). It seems to me like an exploration of the way electronic dance music interlocks with other kinds of rhythm. Intricate and a bit impenetrable maybe (it never just settles on a rhythm) but I think it's a fascinating listen.

5. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - The Kid
A bit meh. Sounds a bit like The Knife meet Air but without any decent hooks.

6. Jana Rush - Pariah
Pretty boring. Like the Jlin album but without the exploratory, inventive edge.

7. Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society - Simultonality
Listenable but derivative modern-minimalist jazz-classical thing.

8. Pan Daijing - Lack
Oh another one of those things where they cut up found sounds with drones and abstract ambient rhythms. This one is trying to be dark and scary or something. It sounds like someone's burping on one track.

9. Jamie Branch - Fly or Die
Trumpetin' jazz with big drums. Quite liked this. Much more about the rhythm and percussion (those words again) than a lot of jazz, but it's got some good tunes and hooks too. I'd listen to more of this.

10. Circuit Des Yeux - Reaching for Indigo
This isn't on Spotify but one of their other albums is. It started quite intriguing - gothic chamber indie with vocals that sound a bit like Antony/Anohni - but then bizarrely went into a kind of cruise ship Led Zep bit. I turned off.

11. Actress - AZD
I like this guy but this one was just OK. Normally he does these kind of downbeat, greyscale techno albums, soundtracks for rainy days in the industrial world, with a lot of atmosphere and memorable bits. This one switched between more synthy moments and tracks that sounded like offcuts from his other work.

12. Nadah El Shazly - Ahwar
Oh look, it's not just the western world that can do dreadful "art" music that makes you want to call the person's mum and dad and ask them if they know what the student loan is getting wasted on!

13. Ryuchi Sakamoto - async
Pleasant. Reliable.

14. Felicia Atkinson - Hand in Hand
There might be something here. It's very minimal. Just bass pulses with some other sounds layered on top. But I found it quite appealing.

15. Bill Orcutt - Bill Orcutt
A man playing vaguely abstract versions of popular classics on an electric guitar with no backing. He gets a nice tone and there are some pretty bits, but too much aimless twanging too.
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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Goat Boy » 11 Dec 2017, 21:15

That's me sold!
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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Darkness_Fish » 11 Dec 2017, 21:32

I'm not bothered about people not liking this stuff. I wouldn't expect most to do so. I'm pretty disappointed with it, I've not made any effort to defend it. I just find the projection of qualities onto the listener, rather than talking about the music, baffling. And terms like self-indulgent don't interest me at all, without self-indulgence, there'd be no Coltrane or Ayler. You end up with Steps and Travis.

I wouldn't mind hearing the Felicia Atkinson, I've got an album of her with some Sylvain Chaveau that's quite nice. And Bill Orcutt is usually worth hearing, even if his groaning and heavy breathing is a little off-putting.
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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Ghost of Harry Smith » 11 Dec 2017, 23:12

Toby wrote:50% of that is landfill though.

I mean, there's a lot of dreck there - a lot of it self-indulgent nonsense that people want to inflict on us just because they have the ability to.


I get that you've listened to lots of that list, more than me Toby, but I'm genuinely confused as to why "self-indulgent" equals "landfill". I mean, how are they "inflicting" this on people when it's a real effort to track most of this marginal music down?

Landfill was the word I responded to because it suggest that not only are their creative endeavours pointless and terrible but also a waste of resources. I can't click with that line of thinking. To me, these weirdos with their strange, sometimes-unlistenable experiments are doing something of worth to them and others...not many others perhaps but that's not the point.

The next step in this rhetoric is passing judgement that art doesn't matter unless there's a large audience for it. That thinking, along with "art doesn't matter unless I personally give it the thumbs up", really gives me the shits.

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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Ghost of Harry Smith » 11 Dec 2017, 23:16

Rayge wrote:
Ghost of Harry Smith wrote:Yomp, with respect


Why, in Dog's name? It's the Bear. He invented punk, shits in the woods and rides a bike. What's to respect?


Ah, y'know I'm old fashioned, I want to acknowledge respect for the person even if I don't respect their opinion. But it probably reads wrong...

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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Goat Boy » 11 Dec 2017, 23:18

It's a dismissive, throwaway comment by Yomp. It's what he does, hell, it's what lots of us do sometimes.

I really don't think it's worth paying much attention to. Personally I took it to mean simply, "trash".
Griff wrote:The notion that Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong vocal proponent of antisemitism, would stand in front of an antisemitic mural and commend it is utterly preposterous.


Copehead wrote:a right wing cretin like Berger....bleating about racism

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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Ghost of Harry Smith » 11 Dec 2017, 23:32

Goat Boy wrote:It's a dismissive, throwaway comment by Yomp. It's what he does, hell, it's what lots of us do sometimes.

I really don't think it's worth paying much attention to. Personally I took it to mean simply, "trash".


Yeah, fair enough but I care enough about the subject to argue it. That's alright isn't it? No butts are hurt or anything.

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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby KeithPratt » 12 Dec 2017, 11:22

Ghost of Harry Smith wrote:n?

Landfill was the word I responded to because it suggest that not only are their creative endeavours pointless and terrible but also a waste of resources. I can't click with that line of thinking. To me, these weirdos with their strange, sometimes-unlistenable experiments are doing something of worth to them and others...not many others perhaps but that's not the point.



I get that. But I also think that the critical eye often gets lost in the experimental world - it's as if everything is possible and you can do anything you want because someone somewhere likes it. I used to think that was ok, but I don't now. Critical judgement is absolutely fundamental, especially when people are paying for performances and music. There's a lot of music in this area which gets a free pass because music media essentially allows it, especially when print subs are down and they need to get new customers and a new audience.

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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Darkness_Fish » 12 Dec 2017, 11:37

Toby wrote:There's a lot of music in this area which gets a free pass because music media essentially allows it, especially when print subs are down and they need to get new customers and a new audience.

Eh? When subscriptions are down, you think they have a cunning plan to praise fundamentally worthless obscure experimental music, to attract a healthy repeat audience?

Fuck me, Tesco's CD stocking strategy is all wrong.
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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby KeithPratt » 12 Dec 2017, 11:51

I articulated the last point not particularly well - I admit that.

There is a much healthier appetite for experimental music nowadays than there has ever been. You only have to look at the success of things like Unsound for example. I think it's actually quite "hip" nowadays - certainly it is now the preserve of venues such as the likes of the Barbican rather than some smelly old studio in South London. The Wire taps into that.

It's the only magazine that really touches upon experimental music in any profound way - but I think when it owns a corner of the market, then there is less room for critical judgement. That's not to denigrate the journalists, some of whom I know well.

My point is that the Wire's Top 15 albums will contain a composite of what they listen to in order to appeal to everyone who buys their magazine. There will be the hip hop record, the female grime artist, the synth guy who everyone knows who's still doing the left field thing, the experimental old guy with a guitar, the utterly absurd experimental record that no-one has heard of and will never play, the jazz thing that's not from Scandinavia, the black guy making techno etc. It's pretty much the same every year.

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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby driftin » 12 Dec 2017, 13:18

Toby wrote:
driftin wrote:One person's self-indulgent is another person's minimal and restrained.

The amount of tutting, outrage, scoffing, knee-jerking, and character judgment over some fucking music that simply isn't to your taste is terrible. Is this a forum or an echo chamber?



Oh boo hoo - can't take a bit of someone disagreeing with you?

I don't care about the disagreeing, I'm used to that. It's the spiteful and narcissistic tone that I hate as well as what Fish said about projecting qualities onto the listeners of music that strays from the norm.

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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby fange » 12 Dec 2017, 14:07

Ah, don't get het up about it, driftin'.

Saying you like experimental music on BCB is like saying you're a jazz fan 'round here - people automatically think you're just trying to be different, hip and trendy. And while they're spot on with me, such musical generalizations should just be taken with a grain of salt, water off a duck's back, etc.
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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Darkness_Fish » 12 Dec 2017, 14:28

Toby wrote:My point is that the Wire's Top 15 albums will contain a composite of what they listen to in order to appeal to everyone who buys their magazine. There will be the hip hop record, the female grime artist, the synth guy who everyone knows who's still doing the left field thing, the experimental old guy with a guitar, the utterly absurd experimental record that no-one has heard of and will never play, the jazz thing that's not from Scandinavia, the black guy making techno etc. It's pretty much the same every year.

You can say that up to a point, but The Wire claim their top 50 is compiled entirely from the votes of their staff, which I guess covers all those things. I'm suspicious that new and slightly hipper electronic stuff is normally close to the top, but that might be a case of the journo trying to appear more up to date and down with the scene. I believe them on the voting thing, because they had Far Side Virtual number one in the charts a few years ago, despite no-one liking it that much. It just had the most votes, but was nobody's favourite release.
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Re: The Wire's Top 15 of 2017

Postby Darkness_Fish » 12 Dec 2017, 14:32

fange wrote:a grain of salt, water off a duck's back

Numbers one and two in The Wire's charts of 2014. Field recording was all the rage back then.
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.


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