Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU.UUCP (12/28/86)
Really-From: hsu@uicsrd.CSRD.UIUC.EDU (William Tsun-Yuk Hsu) Just finished wading thru the past week's lovehounds mail... some comments: Hofboyy asks: >1) Who are the English bands that don't suck? Bands that are (probably) still around: Crystallized Movements, Bourbonese Qualk (not sure if they're British), most of the Recommended Records stable. For some strange reason they don't get much attention from the trendy music press... :-) >(Greg: Actually I don't think Big Black would really mind too much > being compared to early Cab Voltaire.) The thing that surprised me most when I first heard Atomizer was how danceable some of the cuts are. Love those catchy syncopated mutant funk grooves... dance music for the apocalypse, if nothing else. I wanted to play Bazooka Joe at a wedding dance (first choice was Fists of Love, but I thought something less, um, extreme might be appropriate :-)) but never got the chance... Hof also asked for a review of Savage Republic's Ceremonials. Well, I liked some of the cuts but can't get too excited about most of it. Very '70s artrock-influenced stuff, with several long instrumentals. The thundering tribal drums and distorted guitars that made the first album so special have been toned down in favor of acoustic guitars and keyboards. A must if you loved middle Pink Floyd, early King Crimson, Genesis, Renaissance etc. and must have more music in a similar vein. I was a big '70s fan but right now am in the mood for less sentimental and more abrasive stuff. (Let's see how long John Hogge can resist the temptation to post an opposing opinion. :-) He loves this album.) A token review of something I just got in the mail: Hartman/Bourbonese Qualk Music to Work By ...or some similar title. A split tape (advertised as 80 minutes but shorter because the Hartman side is short) from two industrial/electronic groups. I don't know if this is good music to work by since when I listened to it I was not working but tossing out moldy bread from my refrigerator which I accidentally turned off before I went out of town. It certainly is decent music to clean out refrigerators by, tho. The Hartman side is fairly minimal, with tape loops of complaints about how tedious everthing is and occasional instrumental passages. The BQ side is much more interesting, with their usual blend of acoustic instruments and electronic noise. Some of the BQ tracks were done live. You also get a sticker (design from the cover of BQ's Preparing for Power) with the tape. Get it used for the BQ side, I guess. Bill
Love-Hounds-request@EDDIE.MIT.EDU (03/23/87)
Really-From: hsu%uicsrd.CSRD.UIUC.EDU@a.cs.uiuc.edu (William Tsun-Yuk Hsu) < Grady Toss drops Alan Moore line in signature > (be thankful I resisted the temptation to pun there; "tossing off a line" etc) :-) Another Alan Moore fan! How many of them are their on this list anyway? Is there a correlation between liking great comics and good music? >Really-From: IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu >Just as you feel competent to generalize unfavourably about >American mainstream music based only on those musicians >With whose work you are familiar, IED felt that he had investigated >enough of America's current underground music to have an opinion about >it. Thanks to Hof for the rebuttal there. Quick anecdote: a group of musicially aware people had a birthday party at a bar two weeks ago. The range of musical tastes was wide, noise, reggae, country, you name it. We could only find about 2 songs to play on the whole jukebox, and had to put up with the mersh the other customers put on. Sheeeesh. >In fact, he wonders whether you would be willing >to fill a cassette with representative tracks for him, providing >he sent you a blank and an SASE. Seriously. IED, although skeptical, >still retains an open mind and a healthy curiosity. I'm in the middle of making a stack of different samplers (not to mention weekly sets for the radio) and right now it's driving me bananas trying to keep everything straight. Any volunteers to help IED out? >You've loaded your description of Galas's music so that anyone who might >happen to reject your praise of her talents is branded as one of the >benighted, insensitive few. (Sort of an old IED tactic, wouldn't >you say?) Huh? I'd be one of the first to say that Diamanda Galas is not for everyone. It's very easy to find her music and lyrics rather objectionable. But we're discussing technical proficiency (I think) here. >Without disagreeing that >her vocal control and "range of color" are impressive, it's not >clear to this listener that her vocal expressiveness is a result >of any exceptional degree of "attention to detail". Such a term >(in IED's view, of course) implies care, thought, reflection, >intense planning, and above all a restriction of improvision and >spur-of-the-moment creativity, or at least a constant reign on such >improvisation. Although there is some planning of certain basic >parts of Galas's music, it is by no means all the product of >the kind of careful preparation which IED, at least, has in mind. >In fact, a great deal of Galas's work strikes him as only very >slightly prepared, even to the extent that much of her vocal >touches seem to have occurred as much by chance as by real intention. Several points: 1) it's often difficult to tell how much is improvised and how much is composed beforehand. From interviews, I would suspect that much more of Galas' stuff is prepared than is apparent. Also, she does most of her background vocals/noise; the background loops seem pretty tightly controlled to me. 2) Improvisation does not imply lack of planning, or lesser attention to detail. It's just that you're handling the details while the music chugs along. But if you like pre-planned, relatively deterministic music, there's plenty in non-mainstream music too. < Somebody complains that John Zorn is not underground because his stuff is on CD > Weeeell, Sonic Youth and Foetus have CD releases too. I don't know if you'd consider them underground (non-mainstream tho). Let's not get into definitions here, this is not rec.music.misc :-). Most of the artists Zorn plays with on the Big Gundown are pretty obscure tho. There's Fred Frith, Diamanda Galas, etc. Actually Diamanda Galas may be on her way to trendy-land, with recent interviews in Rockpool and some slick Chicago yuppie arts magazine. Can trendies love somebody who claims to be the Anti-Christ and the "shit of God" (not in English tho)? Bill