Subject: RE: Techno/Electronica worth a listen?
From: +[doh \)+ (thrash@btclick.com)
Date: Fri Dec 06 2002 - 17:40:30 EST
" My reaction to Tangerine Dream was
>"this is trivial and boring."
Haha good reaction
-------------------------------------------------------
kdx: blackbanana.dyndns.org ( www.haxial.com )
mail: thrash@btclick.com
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-cecdiscuss@concordia.ca
[mailto:owner-cecdiscuss@concordia.ca] On Behalf Of Richard Wentk
Sent: 06 December 2002 22:39
To: cecdiscuss@concordia.ca
Subject: Re: Techno/Electronica worth a listen?
At 09:41 06/12/2002 -0800, Richard Zvonar wrote:
>I was using only two very broad categories: electronic music I found
>worthwhile listening to and that which I did not. My reaction to
"Switched
>on Bach" was "this is technically facile, but it is musically
irrelevant
>to what I think is important in EM." My reaction to Tangerine Dream was
>"this is trivial and boring." In both cases part of my concern was that
>such "accessible" examples of what one could do with synthesizers would
>become accepted models for electronic music and that a large number of
>inferior imitators would proliferate. This certainly did happen.
That's interesting, because my experience was the exact opposite. I
found
Carlos, Tomita, and TD (up until around '75) far more interesting to
listen
to because they were the first people who were making synthesized music
that used the synthesizer idiomatically. I went through a phase of
borrowing recordings of more classically minded composers in my teens
from
the library (not that there was much on offer) and I thought their work
sounded far more strained, self-conscious and contrived in comparison.
E.g. Silver Apples still sounds like a guy mucking around with a Buchla
to
no great effect. It's quite clever, but I don't get anything other than
'It's quite clever' while listening to it. I heard some of the Columbia
Princeton pieces that were doing the rounds (not enough - this wasn't
*at
all* easy to get hold of where I was) and again they made no great
impact.
Mostly because too much of it seemed intellectually contrived and
lacking
in poetry.
One piece that did make an impact was Michael McNabb's Dreamsong -
partly
because it's a good piece, partly because it was all done on a
mainframe,
and for 1975 that was pretty damn impressive. I don't think it sounds
dated
today.
Early TD covers quite a range, so I'd be interested in which
pieces/period
you're talking about. There are some very abstract albums, and then
things
settled down into a familiar 8-note sequenced groove around '75, which
is
when they stopped being interesting.
>BTW - I'm not knocking Wendy as a composer. She's done some excellent
work
>(and I don't exclude "SOB" from that "very good" category) and has a
>wonderful and generous spirit. My complaint, as stated above, was that
>electronically reorchestrating old music was an aesthetically (and
>sociologically) bad idea, though it certainly helped spawn and industry
>that has provided tools for us all.
I don't see why this should be. The 'classical' field had plenty of
inferior imitators of its own - not quite the same degree of cheese
perhaps, but still inferior. To me SOB was Gould-on-a-Moog. Tomita was
Debussy-on-a-Moog. Aesthetically both made as much sense as any other
form
of performance or reorchestration.
Plus I thought some of the sounds were really cool. :)
Actually thinking about it that's very much the difference for me. The
more
academically oriented music doesn't work for me because I don't find the
sounds sensually satisfying or interesting enough. Ironically perhaps,
they
don't surprise me, and I don't find them involving. Why others do and I
don't (and vice versa) is interesting.
Richard
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