there was a cancelled bing & ruth show this week, as well.

i guess there's three ways to approach ambient music. the first is as purely background sound, in which case any sort of cerebral analysis misses the point. the second is as film music, which explicitly evaluates the sound in terms of how well it can be paired to a set of visuals. this second approach is of essentially no interest to me, as i have no interest whatsoever in the medium of film. the third is via active listening, which is the one i tend to default to, even when i know i should be interpreting the music as background. the ambience that i'm most likely to connect positively with is the type that maintains the aesthetic of the style, while still allowing for active listening; i don't want to eject the cerebral component entirely, i still want to actually listen to something. so, this is the kind of struggle i get in interpreting music in the genre - should i be listening carefully or not? am i listening too carefully and missing the point? i'm not interested in the visuals...

there was a time when i was more actively interested in this genre, but i had not heard of bing & ruth previously. when i went to check them out, i learned that they initially started with a large ensemble before slowly dismantling it over time. so, i thought it would be best to start at the beginning.

unfortunately, this ensemble seems to mostly be focused on the second approach, which is sort of out of my sphere of interest. as the music seems to mostly be intended to integrate with visuals, it is often actually too abrasive to function as background - it's too loud for that. but, after sorting through each of the three records, i've found nothing at all that is interesting enough for active listening.

he could use some counterpoint or something here and there....there's just none of it....it's just tonally absolutely bland, all the way through.

i will consequently have to excuse myself from this, and leave it to the film majors to enjoy, instead.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_x_YzBWlL_q_nFJ9rNW0Hg/playlists?view=50&sort=dd&shelf_id=17666223384013636041