tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590276773297960446.post812815608039795007..comments2024-01-27T06:40:07.056+00:00Comments on Zone Styx Travelcard: Chthonic UseUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590276773297960446.post-33115406053530766652010-08-07T01:04:30.630+01:002010-08-07T01:04:30.630+01:00Sorry, first line should have you're, not your...Sorry, first line should have you're, not your!!Robots Dancing Alonehttp://robotsdancingalone.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590276773297960446.post-16930724207238889462010-08-07T01:03:15.295+01:002010-08-07T01:03:15.295+01:00Hi again Zone, thanks for the response. I take wha...Hi again Zone, thanks for the response. I take what your saying about SY's audience and the reception of those types of discords; you're right, different context, different reactions. I like your characterisation of arguing with k-punk!!! I must check Youth out, I've loved the other Coetzees I've read.<br /><br />Grisey was a truly wonderful composer. Most famous amongst his pieces, justly, are <i>Vortex Temporum</i> and the monumental, world-inventing, <i>Les Espaces Acoustiques</i>. Here's a link to my friend Liam's review of the first performance of the latter work, in case you're <a href="http://www.musicalcriticism.com/concerts/qeh-grisey-espaces-1008.shtml" rel="nofollow">interested</a>. <br /><br />Tristan Murail is another great spectral composer, often in fact seen as being at the practice's head along with Grisey...Robots Dancing Alonehttp://robotsdancingalone.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590276773297960446.post-84257452289082248212010-08-05T17:54:33.682+01:002010-08-05T17:54:33.682+01:00Robots! what an amazing response - I've only j...Robots! what an amazing response - I've only just spotted it... My short answer would be that I agree with you. <br /><br />I generally (try to) avoid crude opposed binaries like mind-body... it's very easy to collapse the two into each other, and usually when the distinction is applied there's a not-so-subtle agenda attached... <br /><br />Nonetheless I think conceits like that can serve a purpose, just as throwaway lenses through which to make a particular point, and I would stand by the notion that SY took a spectrum of dissonance unfamiliar to rock and applied it to (or to it) the kind of taschiste violence of riff-rhythm you get from The Stooges. And I think that was new.<br /><br />The RoS/Webern/Schoenberg comparison is clearly overblown - arguing with Kpunk I find you tend to reach for the exorbitant, and as a historical arc, sure, it's not really one begun by RoS and closed by SY, there was a lot happening in between. I guess to put it more cautiously, you can imagine people slamdancing to SY but not Branca's Symphonies. And equally, it makes sense that RoS was a ballet, while later Wbern (though I know there have been plenty of avant dance interpetations) it is less intuitively danceable. But I find Webern highly sensuous nonetheless - the term braindance comes to mind, pinching from Rephlex. There's a great para in Youth by Coetzee where he describes the pleasure in Webern, albeit resorting a little readily to the 'coldness' characterization.<br /><br />Not clear what you're saying abt my view of RoS - I totally agree that its the rhythms that give the harmonic aspects its force... that should have been made clearer in the post.<br /><br />Finally - Grisey, Coates, Dufourt - I don't even know these names, so am looking forward to checking them all out.Sam Davieshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03256521398930476465noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590276773297960446.post-16646340719750127542010-08-02T02:30:36.009+01:002010-08-02T02:30:36.009+01:00Hi Zone, great post, sorry to come in on this (ext...Hi Zone, great post, sorry to come in on this (extremely) late. <br /><br />I have no problems with your analysis, and contra to Jase think it very original! I just had one quibble on the Stravinsky point though, which, since Alex Ross doesn't seem to be around, the taking of issue with will have to be mine. <br /><br />Briefly, to say that Sonic Youth, in 1985, 'reconnect discord with the body, restoring to it a libidinal force', is to ignore decades of the same in other music. Composers and artists like La Monte Young (and his many disciples) pioneered such an approach, whilst other drone musicians who, like SY (in this respect), use psychoacoustics as prime affectual resource - such as Niblock, Palestine, Radigue, Branca(!) - are plentiful. The spectralists (explicit intent: to mobilise the perceptual apparatus through the inseperate articulation of harmony/timbre), such as Radulescu, Grisey, Coates, Dufourt, even Sciarrino and Lachenmann (timbre-as-discord), come readily to mind too, though they don't predate the given marker by much, admittedly. <br /><br />I would also take issue with your characterisation of both the Rite, and Webern and Schoenberg; it is rather, to me, its rhythm and dynamisms which gives the ninths and seconds in the former piece their force. And those harmonies came from early Schoenberg anyway! Later Schoenberg can get a little clinical, but <i>Moses</i> has at least as much libidinal impact as Stravinsky's ROS. <br /><br />Webern I think almost transcends the body/mind dialectic, being too busy making an art of unprececedented subtraction, as ontologically revolutionary as White on White, but his tone-colours, closely related to the harmonies but not identical to them, have a sort of spectral libidinal force, making penumbral Stravinsky's pile drive, but maintaining, all the same, the latter's initial bodily intensity (though that body is disintegrating as it listens in Webern).<br /><br />Sorry to go on a bit, and sorry if I seem overly negative - I really liked the post, and always enjoy your blog (and other writing) very much.robotsdancingalonehttp://robotsdancingalone.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590276773297960446.post-56145026063352695442009-06-05T13:01:19.068+01:002009-06-05T13:01:19.068+01:00Sorry Jason, I'll try harder in future.
Could...Sorry Jason, I'll try harder in future.<br /><br />Could you direct me to where SY have been conceived of as an LA/Cali band as opposed to the archetypal NY band of myth? And the stuff about their West Coast obsessions being a psychopathology of place-type exercise, along the lines of David Peace? These may be old-hat notions to you, but they occurred to me only recently... I'd be interested to see earlier articulations of these ideas. (Actually, I recently remembered an article that ingeniously makes a parallel point to one of mine, about a different group, but I won't give away the references just yet... would be fascinating if you had read the same thing.)<br /><br />The quote you take exception to... can you explain exactly what you object to about it? I just have a feeling there's a misunderstanding to clear up... could be wrong. I hope it's clear that I'm *defending* SY from being characterized in that way...?Sam Davieshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03256521398930476465noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1590276773297960446.post-37514290791312736542009-06-05T12:20:27.863+01:002009-06-05T12:20:27.863+01:00Fact-heavy fluent writing undermined by a lack of ...Fact-heavy fluent writing undermined by a lack of any original ideas.<br /><br />"believing that the glib smirking mask of nihilist irony can be passed off as the silver laugh of wisdom."<br /><br />You will burn in hell if you write any more like that. Oh, wait...<br /><br />Hmm. You will burn in hell.Jasonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06368580633580971373noreply@blogger.com