Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Obfuscating

Some musicians are just too Spartan in their practices to offer mere enjoyment to the people who buy their CDs. Some musicians have dedicated entire careers to producing overthought exercises in the unlistenable (Venetian Snares) while others think it makes them more serious in their art (Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, Miles Davis' Gemini/Double Image and everybody has their own personal pet peeve to add to the party). I think Matthew Herbert can sometimes be a bit like this, but never actually dedicates whole albums to ridiculous noise noodling, so I reckon that you can have about three Herbert CDs in your collection. Lou Reed would be any number of Velvet Underground studio releases because there aren't so many, but probably only a maximum of four solo LPs, not including Metal Machine Music. Miles Davis: remember the coefficient, and avoid the overdone crap.

Venetian Snares: no. Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV/Genesis P Orridge: Is there really a need?

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2 Comments:

Blogger Marc said...

And I forgot all about Squarepusher. Squarepusher is horrendously uneven. One album maximum. Absolute. No quarter given.

8:19 PM  
Blogger peter said...

I'm not sure how much Velvet Underground is acceptable. I feel that most people like them because they feel they should.

I'm with you on Squarepusher -- I'd prefer to see downloads or burnt CDs. 'Port Rhombus' is the best track.

9:17 PM  

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