A Thousand Plateaus

[Olivianna]

(Not the book.)

The sound of screaming cats, women gasping, out-of-tune pianos, arhythmic tunes, off-key chords, high pitches...

Experimental Music

I just don't get it. Why does anyone listen to this stuff? Is it purely for an intellectual mind-fuck? I realize there is much variation in this genre, but in general I fear that it sucks the life-force out of me. I think it's that bad.

Can anyone, however, explain to me the artistic and aesthetic merits of it?

 

[Lancecastor]

Yoko Ono has a new album out?

 

[Olivianna]

To be fair -
If an afficionado can pass along a recommended tune, I will go download it and give it a whirl.

I want to be enlightened.

 

[WaxNWane]

Probably a combination of people who are genuinely trying to break from the standard 1-4-5 and people who genuinely have no business making music. Weirdos and rejects, I suppose. While there's something to be said for breaking molds, it doesn't usually make for accessible music.

Outside of the genre you're talking about, the label gets thrown around a little freely. Bands like The Sugarcubes, Radiohead and Godspeed You Black Emperor get called experimental when they're really just a bit off norm and probably not as original as they sound.

 

[Olivianna]

Ok, I'll tell you a story:

I'm listening to the 'Annoying Out-of-Tune Music Show' on the radio right now. I should change the station and instead start a thread on the Alias episode which is airing in 45 minutes.

But I can't do it.

 

[Olivianna]

Outside of the genre you're talking about, the label gets thrown around a little freely. Bands like The Sugarcubes, Radiohead and Godspeed You Black Emperor get called experimental when they're really just a bit off norm and probably not as original as they sound.

No, no, no. Those bands are NOT what I am referring to. I am talking about screaming cats and falling spoons.

 

[WaxNWane]

I gotcha...that's why I said "outside of the genre you're talking about."

And Bjork can do a good screaming cat, I'd bet.

 

[sexy-girl]

i know this isn't what you're talking about exactly

but radiohead - climbling up the walls

creates white noise by having 100 violins played at once ... i guess it just shows weird types of stuff can be used in creative ways


but i agree from the sounds of what you're talking about its just weird for the sake of weird

 

[Olivianna]

You're absolutely right about Bjork. The boundaries of categories and genres are porous, barely distinguishable at best.

Miles Standish? I recently read Longfellow in search of spinning references.

 

[ksmybuttons]

I confess. I am a melody junkie. If I can't whistle it, I can't listen to it. Esoteric jazz does the same thing for me. Might as well put the fingernails to the chalkboard and be done with it all.

 

[phrodeau]

Compelling, isn't it?

If music instills that kind of reaction in you, it must have some power.

Some avant-garde masters:

Edgard Varese (musique concrete)

Harry Partch (just intonation)

Karlheinz Stockhausen (rhythmic variations)

Conlon Nancarrow (tone clusters)

 

[WaxNWane]

The Miles Standish line jumped in my head from an old REM song. Always takes me back to English classes.

 

[Lancecastor]

"Art is whatever you can get away with." ~ M.McLuhan

 

[Olivianna]

Thanks, Phrodeau. I will check them out.

 

[Guest]

"Art is whatever you can get away with." ~ M.McLuhan

That's a definition of con-art.

There are arts, but they are relative to their audiences.

Subjectivity/objectivity. You can write a whole philosophical book about it.

Urika!

 

[Hamletmaschine]

Anything that offends bourgeois sensibilities is A-OK with me.

But I agree with phrodeau: if it gets on your nerves, it must be doing something right.

The question is: what is it about you that makes this music "bad"?

 

[under where]

Aw- I love Bjork. Besides she doesn't count because she's not from this planet, nor does she make any attempt to be human.
Anyhow, have you ever heard of Pink & Brown, Melt Banana, or The Moldy Peaches. All low-fi noise, but it has this strange appeal.

 

[Olivianna]

Anything that offends bourgeois sensibilities is A-OK with me.

But I agree with phrodeau: if it gets on your nerves, it must be doing something right.

The question is: what is it about you that makes this music "bad"?

The 'something right,' I suppose, is that it is being affective?

I need to think further about your first statement and your question. Thanks for provoking thought.

 

[celiaKitten]

Anything that offends bourgeois sensibilities is A-OK with me.

No wonder I adore you.

 

[modest mouse]

Stockhausen was a master.

Olivianna, if you want to bridge a gap between experimental and music of the Euro tradition(harmony/melody) check out Sonic Youth's Goodbye Twentieth century.

Their SYR releases are vital music to me but this one realease provieds an overview (in their eyes) of experimental music of this past century. About 12 bucks for the double CD.

 

[Olivianna]

Hamlet,
It is interesting that something so insular and exclusive as much so-called experimental music is should be considered anti-bourgeois. I mean, how many people could "get it" anyway? And, why is melody and formula bourgeois?

Further, the thing about me that makes much of this music "bad" is taste. I believe that there is good art and bad art out there. There is a chance that I could appreciate screaming cats more, on an intellectual level, if I learned more about the artist - but my taste (which, I will admit, is informed by what I have learned) judges this art to be unappealing. Is it because I cannot appreciate cacophony? No, it's that I would prefer not to subject myself to it.

Do you think it is an artist's intent to annoy the fuck out of his/her audience? To get on its nerves? Then becauseit succeeds in doing so, then it is doing something right? What if Greek wedding music gets on my nerves...is it doing something right too? Or no, because its intention is not consistent with my reaction?

MM, Thanks for the SY tip. I'll check it out.

 

[Olivianna]

bump for ham

 

[Hamletmaschine]

Sorry I missed this earlier, Olivianna.

The old epater les bourgeois rallying cry of the avant-garde has always appealed to me, even though it's rather cliched nowadays and somewhat juvenile in its impulse. Hatred of the bourgeoisie, Flaubert wrote, "is the beginning of all virtue." And so anything that confronts or confounds middle-class tastes is interesting to me from the standpoint of sociology of art.

I may not like the music you were referring to any more than you do--but I try not to project my own response onto the work itself. There is a lot of experimental or vanguard music (or other kinds of art)--as well as more conventional stuff--that just gets on my nerves. I don't find it beautiful, edifying, or entertaining in the least. But I think that says more about me than it does the work itself.

In other words, I don't believe that value resides in the work itself. There is nothing inherent to a work of art that makes it good/bad, interesting/dull, beautiful/ugly, etc. Value is rather a function of the operations that are performed on the work and the uses to which it is put.

 

[Olivianna]

This is a really lame response: I don't have time to respond to this post as I would like to.

I will say though that I do agree with you to a degree - that value is variable and is not contained by the work itself. Yet, I am torn because I do not wish to think of art as inherently neutral, and its value determined relatively. Does this not leave us within a vacuum?

What I'm getting it (I think) is what is art if not value-laden extensions of human selves? In what realm does valueless art reside? Where do you locate it? You see, you can't. I have a feeling you'd agree with me here.

I can appreciate a work of art because of the ideologies and sociology it reflects/produces/partakes in - but if I do not respond to it on some level (and acknowledge my inability to refrain from responding) then do I fully understand the intellectual and psychological (rational/irrational) negotiations which drive art and ultimately academic scholarship?

Finally, if everything is about me/us (and in fact I agree with you here), then where is there room for political action?

 

[LukkyKnight]

Anything that offends bourgeois sensibilities is A-OK with me.

But I agree with phrodeau: if it gets on your nerves, it must be doing something right.

The question is: what is it about you that makes this music "bad"?

What is it about nails being drawn across a chalkboard that's bad? The sound of a jackhammer can get on my nerves, and that pales compared too being to close to the singing of a modern jet engine...

MANY noises have power, but not all noise is music.