Monday, December 29, 2014
this track has such a remarkably forward thinking drum machine application - maybe not what you'd intuitively expect from a shankar/glass collaboration from a distance, but it makes a lot of sense upon a little reflection.
a lot has been stated about minimalism's influence on techno.
but this is techno...
a lot has been stated about minimalism's influence on techno.
but this is techno...
you know, i really liked this record, and it really hit me by surprise that i did. i'm not generally a spencer krug fan; the songwriting tends to overpower the musicianship, leaving these sonically limp narratives. it's music for english majors, basically. and who wants to hang out with english majors? fucking hippies, the lot of them...
by swinging a little more prog, it's like the opposites cancelled. he got some nice energy in crashing positive and negative.
and it might end up being his best record, if not his most popular or his most influential.
by swinging a little more prog, it's like the opposites cancelled. he got some nice energy in crashing positive and negative.
and it might end up being his best record, if not his most popular or his most influential.
this is a better example of the more character-based writing, but you can also hear how the music and themes are largely moving in opposite directions. see, they manage to converge, here, though - the delivery and musical development on the central question of the song is amongst the most powerful sections of music released so far this decade.
as it is with their contemporaries, the lyrical component of this band is something that is often interesting to approach from a distance, as though you're reading a novel with intersecting character arches. it's necessarily intellectual, which i think is a part of the problem the band ended up having.
this particular track, though, hit me on a more personal level...
this particular track, though, hit me on a more personal level...
MichiganMikeKid
Is it weird that I get into Bad Religion, and punk music now at 23, then I would at 13
deathtokoalas
you don't really get it at 13. you might think you do, but you don't. this was always the real "college rock". i'm still listening at 33...
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
no, i was about 13 or so when i started getting into punk. but, your comments indicate that you must have been an exceedingly smart kid to understand the topics being discussed - or that you still don't understand it.
it's not a question of "appreciating it" (like it's some kind of abstract art...) or being "narrow minded" (as though the topics on the record don't have a high school diploma as a pre-requisite to understand them).
i mean, if you think being open-minded means you don't have to learn the high school curriculum before you take on the university curriculum, that's fine. personally? i consider that stupid.
lots of good beats though, right, james? lots of fun to skate too, eh?
fwiw, i was a smart kid. i consistently tested at the 99th percentile on standardized iq testing until they stopped doing it near the end of high school. say what you will of these things regarding race and class and whatnot, but when you score in the highest 1% it indicates you're a smart kid. and, i came out of a low income neighbourhood, fwiw. i went through gifted/enriched programs. etc.
...and i can look back and realize i didn't fully get it. i could connect with broad themes. i had a sense of social justice. but, i didn't have the life experiences necessary to put the presentation together properly. which isn't a question of intelligence so much as it's one of maturity.
it's one thing to be able to read above your grade level. it's another to be able to place what you're reading into a valid context that is defined by the sum of your life experiences.
it's not just punk rock, either. i read the grapes of wrath for my tenth grade independent study. i got the themes and the plotline and everything. sure. but i reread it recently, after spending a few years homeless, and can state that i didn't fully get it in the tenth grade.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
and, now we have an entirely irrelevant response.
but, i'll give you some advice: it is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
if i were you, i'd tend to keep my mouth closed.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
typical corporate/jock response. yeesh.
you're in the wrong place, james. i believe you should be listening to slayer.
i repeat: what you ought to learn from this is to not randomly criticize people on youtube.
now, fuck off.
and go away.
Ivan Wind
I'm 13 listening to this pennywise misfits nofx rancid T.S.O.L. dead Kennedys and many more i cant name then occasionally listening to the offspring or green day
deathtokoalas
forget about misfits and rancid, though. green day is fun, and there's nothing wrong with having fun. but pay attention to jello - he's proven himself prophetic.
misfits were a very right-wing band with borderline fascist politics, while rancid were pretty much just cashing a pay check. whomever gave you those discs is doing this wrong. there's nothing worth remembering there.
it kind of demonstrates the point, though.
"i like dead kennedys, misfits and rancid" indicates that you don't really understand what they're talking about....
that's true of a lot of people older than 13, though, too.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
actually, i think i can make some reasonable deductions.
you probably pulled those discs out of one of your parents' libraries. maybe an aunt or uncle. if you're thirteen now, your parents are probably about the same age as i am.
i obviously don't know your parents. but i think i can state with a high level of certainty that they grew as people as they aged. whether that was the right way or not, i can't say - i don't know them. but their record collection is going to reflect that growth. i know my dad had a collection that ran through 60s rock like the who when he was a kid, into progressive rock in the 70s and a lot of blues in the 80s. i pulled a lot of stuff i liked out of it, and a lot of stuff i didn't. it's maybe a little unusual to see robert cray listed beside robert fripp. but, people grow as they age.
my progression through punk rock was something like rem (when i was a precocious child in the mid to late 80s) --> nirvana -> offspring/green day (always found rancid a little tepid...) --> dead kennedys/bad religion/black flag. well, i got into stuff like skinny puppy and ministry at the same time as the 80s socal stuff. it was a rejection of 90s culture, in favour of the underground music of the 80s. i didn't reconnect with the present tense until the very late 90s, when i started getting into post-rock bands like gybe!. but i wouldn't have known who the dead kennedys were without that spoken word introduction to the fourth offspring disc.
the point i'm getting to is that if your parents have a bunch of 90s "pop punk" alongside a slew of 80s hardcore, chances are they were listening to green day when they were your age and got into the older stuff as they aged and understood it. that might not be obvious to you as you're sorting through their library.
Ivan Wind
ok even if they don't have a good point in their music, they still sound awesome just like NOFX. No, my dad is thirty grew up as a drug addict and with no parents just 2 sisters and 3 brothers. I do get the music. But thats not always the only reason to listen to a band. You can listen to a music just for sound. Like, even SUBLIME. Sublime is awesome and they don't really have that kind of topic in their music. So no, I will not stick with those two or three, and I will spread through all punk rock ex: Black flag guttermouth descendents
deathtokoalas
nofx kind of sometimes have a point, though.
i smoked two joints with sublime a few times...they could have been a little less shameless in the hendrix rips, though.
there is of course a whole group of punk fans (and the descendants are an early example of it) that'll argue that punk shouldn't be political in the first place, it should just be fun. and again: there's nothing wrong with having fun.
it's still weird to me that you're listening to music that discusses topics that were current twenty years before you were born, though. the whole rock against reagan thing was a long time ago. i guess a lot of the same bands showed up for rock against bush, but even that was a long time ago, now. there's not a lot of newer punk bands that make music in the old socal vibe anymore. it's all gone through an emo filter. i can't help but think you should be listening to touche amore or something. but a current band you might want to check out is night birds. they tend to mix up the misanthropy of the misfits with an early kennedys sound.
anthony Hehl
Fat Mike has nothing worthy or Relative to say. He just spews shit. You want meaningful lyrics? Listen to PROPAGANDHI.
deathtokoalas
meh. they're kind of too doctrinal, not really very free thinking. it's more about brainwashing people into the collectivist hive than trying to instigate a process of individualist thought. not really the kind of thing you want to give a thirteen year-old kid, unless the aim is to have them grow up as a maoist...
it's the general problem with the second wave of hardcore.
i mean, you can't call yourself an anarchist and try and tell me what to eat at the same time. sorry.
anthony Hehl
i know wat u mean , for some bands the preaching can be too much but their not really anarchists. Freethinking is also about change and shedding light on the fact that most of what were taught in school, media, and mainstream culture is false. If you look at the overall message its very enlightening and darkly comedic.
deathtokoalas
oh, i wouldn't argue that propagandhi are anarchists. rather, i was suggesting that they're very explicitly not, that they're even directly opposed to the general crux of anarchist thinking and (for that reason) it's not the kind of thing you want to give to a kid.
propagandhi exist in the bluntly scary point where the authoritarian left meets the populist right. historically, this kind of "right wing collectivism" has been a necessary component in building fascism.
is the bulk of what they say worthwhile? i'd argue it isn't. their pop marxist analysis of systemic hierarchy mostly draws on the anti-science perspectives coming out of critical race theory, which makes it largely worthless coming from an anti-establishment rock band (and worthless all around, because it's total bullshit). that is, listening to propagandhi doesn't get you out of the government enforced scholastic narrative. propagandhi is the government enforced scholastic narrative.
now, i'm not arguing you should steal all your kids' propagandhi discs and burn them as fascist propaganda. the kid has to figure it out on their own. but, for fucks sake, don't give it to the kid from some place of authority and tell them it's good shit.....
it's really not.
they've addressed some of this in the past in their songs, but they've just demonstrated the validity of the accusations, in my view.
Is it weird that I get into Bad Religion, and punk music now at 23, then I would at 13
deathtokoalas
you don't really get it at 13. you might think you do, but you don't. this was always the real "college rock". i'm still listening at 33...
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
no, i was about 13 or so when i started getting into punk. but, your comments indicate that you must have been an exceedingly smart kid to understand the topics being discussed - or that you still don't understand it.
it's not a question of "appreciating it" (like it's some kind of abstract art...) or being "narrow minded" (as though the topics on the record don't have a high school diploma as a pre-requisite to understand them).
i mean, if you think being open-minded means you don't have to learn the high school curriculum before you take on the university curriculum, that's fine. personally? i consider that stupid.
lots of good beats though, right, james? lots of fun to skate too, eh?
fwiw, i was a smart kid. i consistently tested at the 99th percentile on standardized iq testing until they stopped doing it near the end of high school. say what you will of these things regarding race and class and whatnot, but when you score in the highest 1% it indicates you're a smart kid. and, i came out of a low income neighbourhood, fwiw. i went through gifted/enriched programs. etc.
...and i can look back and realize i didn't fully get it. i could connect with broad themes. i had a sense of social justice. but, i didn't have the life experiences necessary to put the presentation together properly. which isn't a question of intelligence so much as it's one of maturity.
it's one thing to be able to read above your grade level. it's another to be able to place what you're reading into a valid context that is defined by the sum of your life experiences.
it's not just punk rock, either. i read the grapes of wrath for my tenth grade independent study. i got the themes and the plotline and everything. sure. but i reread it recently, after spending a few years homeless, and can state that i didn't fully get it in the tenth grade.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
and, now we have an entirely irrelevant response.
but, i'll give you some advice: it is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
if i were you, i'd tend to keep my mouth closed.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
typical corporate/jock response. yeesh.
you're in the wrong place, james. i believe you should be listening to slayer.
i repeat: what you ought to learn from this is to not randomly criticize people on youtube.
now, fuck off.
and go away.
Ivan Wind
I'm 13 listening to this pennywise misfits nofx rancid T.S.O.L. dead Kennedys and many more i cant name then occasionally listening to the offspring or green day
deathtokoalas
forget about misfits and rancid, though. green day is fun, and there's nothing wrong with having fun. but pay attention to jello - he's proven himself prophetic.
misfits were a very right-wing band with borderline fascist politics, while rancid were pretty much just cashing a pay check. whomever gave you those discs is doing this wrong. there's nothing worth remembering there.
it kind of demonstrates the point, though.
"i like dead kennedys, misfits and rancid" indicates that you don't really understand what they're talking about....
that's true of a lot of people older than 13, though, too.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
actually, i think i can make some reasonable deductions.
you probably pulled those discs out of one of your parents' libraries. maybe an aunt or uncle. if you're thirteen now, your parents are probably about the same age as i am.
i obviously don't know your parents. but i think i can state with a high level of certainty that they grew as people as they aged. whether that was the right way or not, i can't say - i don't know them. but their record collection is going to reflect that growth. i know my dad had a collection that ran through 60s rock like the who when he was a kid, into progressive rock in the 70s and a lot of blues in the 80s. i pulled a lot of stuff i liked out of it, and a lot of stuff i didn't. it's maybe a little unusual to see robert cray listed beside robert fripp. but, people grow as they age.
my progression through punk rock was something like rem (when i was a precocious child in the mid to late 80s) --> nirvana -> offspring/green day (always found rancid a little tepid...) --> dead kennedys/bad religion/black flag. well, i got into stuff like skinny puppy and ministry at the same time as the 80s socal stuff. it was a rejection of 90s culture, in favour of the underground music of the 80s. i didn't reconnect with the present tense until the very late 90s, when i started getting into post-rock bands like gybe!. but i wouldn't have known who the dead kennedys were without that spoken word introduction to the fourth offspring disc.
the point i'm getting to is that if your parents have a bunch of 90s "pop punk" alongside a slew of 80s hardcore, chances are they were listening to green day when they were your age and got into the older stuff as they aged and understood it. that might not be obvious to you as you're sorting through their library.
Ivan Wind
ok even if they don't have a good point in their music, they still sound awesome just like NOFX. No, my dad is thirty grew up as a drug addict and with no parents just 2 sisters and 3 brothers. I do get the music. But thats not always the only reason to listen to a band. You can listen to a music just for sound. Like, even SUBLIME. Sublime is awesome and they don't really have that kind of topic in their music. So no, I will not stick with those two or three, and I will spread through all punk rock ex: Black flag guttermouth descendents
deathtokoalas
nofx kind of sometimes have a point, though.
i smoked two joints with sublime a few times...they could have been a little less shameless in the hendrix rips, though.
there is of course a whole group of punk fans (and the descendants are an early example of it) that'll argue that punk shouldn't be political in the first place, it should just be fun. and again: there's nothing wrong with having fun.
it's still weird to me that you're listening to music that discusses topics that were current twenty years before you were born, though. the whole rock against reagan thing was a long time ago. i guess a lot of the same bands showed up for rock against bush, but even that was a long time ago, now. there's not a lot of newer punk bands that make music in the old socal vibe anymore. it's all gone through an emo filter. i can't help but think you should be listening to touche amore or something. but a current band you might want to check out is night birds. they tend to mix up the misanthropy of the misfits with an early kennedys sound.
anthony Hehl
Fat Mike has nothing worthy or Relative to say. He just spews shit. You want meaningful lyrics? Listen to PROPAGANDHI.
deathtokoalas
meh. they're kind of too doctrinal, not really very free thinking. it's more about brainwashing people into the collectivist hive than trying to instigate a process of individualist thought. not really the kind of thing you want to give a thirteen year-old kid, unless the aim is to have them grow up as a maoist...
it's the general problem with the second wave of hardcore.
i mean, you can't call yourself an anarchist and try and tell me what to eat at the same time. sorry.
anthony Hehl
i know wat u mean , for some bands the preaching can be too much but their not really anarchists. Freethinking is also about change and shedding light on the fact that most of what were taught in school, media, and mainstream culture is false. If you look at the overall message its very enlightening and darkly comedic.
deathtokoalas
oh, i wouldn't argue that propagandhi are anarchists. rather, i was suggesting that they're very explicitly not, that they're even directly opposed to the general crux of anarchist thinking and (for that reason) it's not the kind of thing you want to give to a kid.
propagandhi exist in the bluntly scary point where the authoritarian left meets the populist right. historically, this kind of "right wing collectivism" has been a necessary component in building fascism.
is the bulk of what they say worthwhile? i'd argue it isn't. their pop marxist analysis of systemic hierarchy mostly draws on the anti-science perspectives coming out of critical race theory, which makes it largely worthless coming from an anti-establishment rock band (and worthless all around, because it's total bullshit). that is, listening to propagandhi doesn't get you out of the government enforced scholastic narrative. propagandhi is the government enforced scholastic narrative.
now, i'm not arguing you should steal all your kids' propagandhi discs and burn them as fascist propaganda. the kid has to figure it out on their own. but, for fucks sake, don't give it to the kid from some place of authority and tell them it's good shit.....
it's really not.
they've addressed some of this in the past in their songs, but they've just demonstrated the validity of the accusations, in my view.
deathtokoalas
obligatory influential on the track of week post.
i'm struggling to find my guitar influence in this track. the general construction is very edge, and the feel is largely corgan. i've kept track of this repeatedly on multiple videos though so i'm not going to post it again. there's also an extra sort of jazzy sophistication to this, though. keep in mind i'm still 17 on this track, and maybe a little shy about doing things with the instrument, so it's a little bit stifled.
i think there's some gilmour in there in the lyricism of the playing, but i hadn't hit that heavy animals period yet. i think that what i'm hearing is more the kind of thing that fripp did in something like starless, but interpreted through my suspicious-of-prog punk rock filters. so, it's a little grungier sounding.
(relevant tracks: idiotic, untitled, evil is a human construction, liquify, book it, all of the symphonies, most stuff after 1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHvD6h3-C0
i think the bassline in the blues guitar solo near the end of the track is a good way to explore how some people misunderstand a small handful of prog acts - king crimson and genesis in particular, to be very specific. ironically, i think missing the point comes in overanalysis.
if you sit down and try and figure out what the fuck it is that you're listening to on a mathematical level, you're going to hear a confusing time signature and an agile scale run and it will appear boring and academic. it's only when you step away from that that you can hear the bassline as controlled collapse framing the mayhem around it. these increases in the complexity of the music actually begin to affect the feel of the piece, which is what the tools of course have been developed for in the first place.
i've pointed out repeatedly that the critics of prog were often right. but these two acts in particular really legitimately went over people's heads, and that needs to be corrected and reevaluated. i think this is slowly happening, and i'm actually reinforcing something that's already happening. but i think it can't be said enough until the narrative really changes.
holiosys atRandom
drummer here and I totally agree, the mid song bassline is like 13/8 and as a drummer I'm quite amazed, but yeah, take a step back and let it all unfold and you shall see. tip, give reflection from tool a listen, beautiful.
deathtokoalas
i've been a tool fan for many years (although i found their last disc to be mediocre), but i consider them to be a grunge band with little influence from something like this. you could confuse a lot of people by telling them undertow is a soundgarden record.
tool's biggest influences were bands like melvins, black flag and swans.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
again: the only trace of crimson you're going to hear in tool is a bit of syncopation in the rhythm section. this is bruford/levin period crimson. but it's not dominant. tool is, first and foremost, a hardcore punk band...
fripp has stated he doesn't hear the similarity, either. and it's for good reason - there really isn't one.
i'll be a little more detailed.
the primary reason it's a bad comparison is that tool basically never plays in overlapping timings. they'll mix it up a little. but, again, i'm going to point to soundgarden or black flag (or led zeppelin) for that. the "crimson sound" is a sort of corollary to minimalist music theory - each instrument plays in a different time, in a way that unfolds metrically, but seems somewhat chaotic. fripp has claimed he developed this independently of steve reich, but i've always been skeptical of the claim.
the "tool sound", on the other hand, is very monolithic. when they play in off times, everybody is playing together. it's a full band attack. because it's punk rock...
now, yeah, you'll get this flashy bass part here and there, or this drum excursion jumping out from time to time. but they're fills.
so, when fripp claims he doesn't hear it, he's right. there's really no similarity on a compositional level. even if you can hear that touch of bruford & levin on the odd offbeat or in the odd figure...
obligatory influential on the track of week post.
i'm struggling to find my guitar influence in this track. the general construction is very edge, and the feel is largely corgan. i've kept track of this repeatedly on multiple videos though so i'm not going to post it again. there's also an extra sort of jazzy sophistication to this, though. keep in mind i'm still 17 on this track, and maybe a little shy about doing things with the instrument, so it's a little bit stifled.
i think there's some gilmour in there in the lyricism of the playing, but i hadn't hit that heavy animals period yet. i think that what i'm hearing is more the kind of thing that fripp did in something like starless, but interpreted through my suspicious-of-prog punk rock filters. so, it's a little grungier sounding.
(relevant tracks: idiotic, untitled, evil is a human construction, liquify, book it, all of the symphonies, most stuff after 1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHvD6h3-C0
i think the bassline in the blues guitar solo near the end of the track is a good way to explore how some people misunderstand a small handful of prog acts - king crimson and genesis in particular, to be very specific. ironically, i think missing the point comes in overanalysis.
if you sit down and try and figure out what the fuck it is that you're listening to on a mathematical level, you're going to hear a confusing time signature and an agile scale run and it will appear boring and academic. it's only when you step away from that that you can hear the bassline as controlled collapse framing the mayhem around it. these increases in the complexity of the music actually begin to affect the feel of the piece, which is what the tools of course have been developed for in the first place.
i've pointed out repeatedly that the critics of prog were often right. but these two acts in particular really legitimately went over people's heads, and that needs to be corrected and reevaluated. i think this is slowly happening, and i'm actually reinforcing something that's already happening. but i think it can't be said enough until the narrative really changes.
holiosys atRandom
drummer here and I totally agree, the mid song bassline is like 13/8 and as a drummer I'm quite amazed, but yeah, take a step back and let it all unfold and you shall see. tip, give reflection from tool a listen, beautiful.
deathtokoalas
i've been a tool fan for many years (although i found their last disc to be mediocre), but i consider them to be a grunge band with little influence from something like this. you could confuse a lot of people by telling them undertow is a soundgarden record.
tool's biggest influences were bands like melvins, black flag and swans.
(deleted post)
deathtokoalas
again: the only trace of crimson you're going to hear in tool is a bit of syncopation in the rhythm section. this is bruford/levin period crimson. but it's not dominant. tool is, first and foremost, a hardcore punk band...
fripp has stated he doesn't hear the similarity, either. and it's for good reason - there really isn't one.
i'll be a little more detailed.
the primary reason it's a bad comparison is that tool basically never plays in overlapping timings. they'll mix it up a little. but, again, i'm going to point to soundgarden or black flag (or led zeppelin) for that. the "crimson sound" is a sort of corollary to minimalist music theory - each instrument plays in a different time, in a way that unfolds metrically, but seems somewhat chaotic. fripp has claimed he developed this independently of steve reich, but i've always been skeptical of the claim.
the "tool sound", on the other hand, is very monolithic. when they play in off times, everybody is playing together. it's a full band attack. because it's punk rock...
now, yeah, you'll get this flashy bass part here and there, or this drum excursion jumping out from time to time. but they're fills.
so, when fripp claims he doesn't hear it, he's right. there's really no similarity on a compositional level. even if you can hear that touch of bruford & levin on the odd offbeat or in the odd figure...
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