The Music Thread (Page 3 of 22)

Hi matt, thanks for sharing those composer names. I've been listening to Monteverdi and Palestrina for a while and was on the lookout for similar material. 

I realized that just because something is classical, it is not always coming from a 'higher' place. After the age of baroque, the general trend of classical music seems to have taken a turn away from melodic currents that uplift the spirits. Thereafter, I think music generally appealed more to intellect, sentimental emotions, third density trivialities, first density whimsies, novelty at the expense of beauty, etc...

Music that comes from higher realms, the higher chakras, has that extra divine oomph that resonates the faint memory within of your divine origins. Maybe it approaches what was discussed in dreamosis's thread about objective music. Whatever it is, it transcends musical style, as I have heard "it" occasionally in non-classical music as well.

Here's a well-crafted song for lovers, written and sung by a guy who's playing the piano too... Coldplay - Trouble

Trouble is, we all feel that the music that we like is the best, and that everything else is really crap to our ears.
That's because it is all subjective (art). There isn't really a way to quantify various pieces of popular culture (or
high culture for that matter), it's a bit like trying to say that a particular Monet painting is better than a Van Gogh
or that Impressionist art is superior to Pre-Raphealite art.

I think each generation has it's fair share of artists that capture 'something' about the era/arena they operate in,
the zeitgeist of each generation is best understood by those closest to it, and in the case of popular (read youth)
culture this is the youth of the day. Hence the alienation that most (adults )will feel from what's 'fresh' and from the
streets as opposed to the playlist-driven commercial fm fare that is demographically tailored, and familiar/meaningful.

An interesting thing is that each generation has it's revolutionary/anti-matrix type anthems, but they all sound
stale and toothless (meaningless?) to successive generations. I agree that there is the sense that a lot of music
has that 'facsimile' feel. A lot seems to be very well produced retro-styles that are being re-hashed in a cyclic way
that says more about the formulaic-seeking industry that builds and perpetuates popular icons than the lack of
experimentation in bedrooms and garages around the globe.

The terms popular and successful seem to go hand in hand but another thing that I feel it's worth noting
is that this popularity is grown via shrewd and aggressive management and marketing, and historically this has
always been the case, there were literally hundreds of composers in post-renaissance europe who were not popular
because they did not have patronage from a royal court or some member of the nobility to further their cause.
So, the fact that we have all the great classical composers as the canon is due to the fact that they were the 'pop stars'
of their day.

Success is a term that we can only really equate with the number of singles/albums sold; of units shifted, in corporate
terminology. An interesting thing about the brou-ha-ha surrounding sampling and the appropriation of music is that the
corporates have no problem in appropriating a whole sub-culture or musical genre and grooming their chosen constructs
to be marketed to the masses to take advantage of an emerging movement or style of music. It was only a matter of
months between nirvana writing 'smells like teen spirit' and the teens being able to buy their 'grunge' outfits off the peg
in kmart, the same with punk and the diy culture that became designer bondage pants.

If I were to play the greatest selling or most popular or widely acknowledged artists' records to a tribal person from the
deep amazon, and they were to be unimpressed, would it mean the music was crap or that the person had no taste?
Both.. and neither. It's cultural, and subjective.

I don't mean to be churlish and this is in the humour and fun section after all, so sorry for such a long post, I felt
compelled to comment as this (music) is one of my essential passions, as a teenage aspiring rock-god turned mid-life
academic and media mercenary.

What seems to a be a common experience is that the music that accompanies any emotionally intense experience,
let's say puberty and adolescence for example, seem etched into our neural networks in such a way that when re-playing
that music, it can be evocative in a way that virtually re-creates that era/experience very easily, and associated imagery
seems easy to visualise. Mmm.. anyway I could go on and on about these related themes as they are intrinsic, but I will shut
up and share some more music.. the important thing here.

*choice uploads another track then dons his asbestos suit as he senses lyra reaching for her industrial-strength flame-thrower* ^__^

chill well and peace to all

king crimson - peace a theme - 1970
king crimson - peace an end - 1970
portishead - it could be so sweet - 1994
sounds from the ground - lean on me - 2003

I'm very much into music. When I was a kid, all I knew about was the shallow pop crap they played on the radio. This led me to assume that modern music was nothing more than vaguely catchy background noise. Then at around age 18 I heard Portishead - Sour Times, The Prodigy - Poison, The Chemical Brothers - Life Is Sweet, and Massive Attack - Protection, all within a very short timespan. This stuff blew my mind. I had no idea music could be so carefully and purposely made. In the case of Portishead, I had no idea music could so clearly transmit such feeling. For the first time I was hearing music created by human beings (even though they all used machines to do it). I bought the albums these songs came from and I was not disappointed. When I got onto the internet I became a downloading fiend, exploring every genre I could.

Here is a huge RAR archive of songs from some of my favorite artists. Except for the vintage psychedelic rock, the back catalogs of all of these artists are solid. If you like a particular song, chances are the artist has made at least an album's worth of other songs you'll like. (Be warned that the punk artists I selected evolved a different sound on later albums, though.)

czyx_music.rar (286MB)
(If that doesn't work, here's a self-extracting split archive: [1][2][3][4][5][6])

Here's what's in it:

Beautiful Girl Rock
    Cat Power - Wild Is the Wind.mp3
    Devics - I Broke Up.mp3
    Joanna Newsom - Erin.mp3
    Julee Cruise - Floating.mp3
    The Innocence Mission - Sweep Down Early.mp3
Electronic
    Breakcore
        Enduser - My AK.mp3
        Venetian Snares - Szam ¡r Mad ¡r.mp3
         µ-Ziq - Hasty Boom Alert.mp3
    IDM
        Aphex Twin - Alberto Balsalm.mp3
        Boards of Canada - In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country.mp3
        Jega - Geometry.mp3
    Psy-Trance
        Infected Mushroom - Deeply Disturbed.mp3
        Juno Reactor - God Is God.mp3
        Shpongle - Divine Moments of Truth.mp3
    Sample-Based Instrumentals
        Amon Tobin - Four Ton Mantis.mp3
        Bonobo - Kota.mp3
        EBN - Electronic Behavior Control System.mp3
        Fingathing - Big Monsters Crush Cities.mp3
        Four Tet - As Serious As Your Life.mp3
        Rjd2 - Exotic Talk.mp3
Gothic Rock
    16 Horsepower - South Pennsylvania Waltz.mp3
    Cranes - Beautiful Friend.mp3
    Diamanda Gal ¡s - Gloomy Sunday.mp3
    The Black Heart Procession - A Light So Dim.mp3
    This Mortal Coil - Song to the Siren.mp3
    Woven Hand - Blue Pail Fever.mp3
Hip-Hop
    AWOL One - Make.mp3
    Billy Woods - BBC (Backwoodz Broadcasting Corp.) (feat. Thrill Gates).mp3
    Binary Star - Honest Expression.mp3
    Deltron 3030 - 3030.mp3
    Jedi Mind Tricks - Saviorself (feat. Killah Priest).mp3
    Mr. Lif - New Man Theme.mp3
    Subtitle - Young Dangerous Heart.mp3
Vintage
    Alt-Country
        Lee Hazlewood - Come on Home to Me.mp3
        Lee Hazlewood - The Night Before.mp3
        Lee Hazlewood - Your Thunder and Your Lightning.mp3
    Psychedelic Rock
        Colonel Bagshot - Six Day War.mp3
        Dantalion's Chariot - This Island.mp3
        Saffron - Vision Is a Lonely Word.mp3
        Scott Walker - My Death.mp3
        The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - I Won't Hurt You.mp3
    Punk
        Siouxsie & The Banshees - Placebo Effect.mp3
        The Raincoats - Off Duty Trip.mp3
        Wire - Strange.mp3

I was going to include more genres but the collection was just getting too big.

Totally agree with you about the Portishead/Massive etc. (I posted a Portishead track yesterday curiously enough)

Amazing collection you've put together there! A few that are classics in my own personal mythology.

Great Post!

See, and I knew someone was going to say that too, and after I logged off yesterday I was thinking about this very thing.   What I came up with was this -  Sure, music, and art in general is all "subjective", but the fact is....the human mind is wired in such a way as to recognize beautiful things, and well composed music.   We are naturally drawn to beauty whether it's attractive people or beautiful surroundings,, and when it comes to the audible, most people can recognize when something is off key, or lacking in melody and non-harmonious in general.  It doesn't sound "good" to us.  We gravitate to that which is harmonious, melodious, and "symmetrical" you could say.

So sure, we one can say that all art is subjective - beauty is in the eye of the beholder - blah blah blah, and that's true...to a point.   That's the mentality though of people who generate modern shock art that involves tossing random nasty things onto a canvas, then claiming, "But I'm EXPRESSING MYSELF, see, this is ART, it's EXPRESSION..."   Where does one draw the line?  With music, I have heard some CRAZY stuff that can't even be classified as music....oh my god the other night in fact montalk was trying out new music, downloading different samples of this and that from online....and this one "song" was in the vain of techno, and was just ONE NOTE pulsing over and over and over.......!    I've never HEARD of such of thing.  I can't even describe it.    We were laughing about it....but then had to realize that, um, maybe whoever made this wasn't kidding....?  !!  Alarming!

Yes, Gorillaz are good, indeed!     That was probably the last modern CD I bought, actually, back in 2001. 

There's a lot to be said about commercial radio, so many things I could write about that it would actually make a great mini-article.   For starters, Clear Channel practically owns everything now here in the States, which means, homogenized control of the airwaves.  We're all getting the same flavor, whatever state we live in.   But Clear Channel aside, even if it's a non-Clear Channel radio station, the fact is, ALL mainstream radio relies on a Playlist.   That equates to the same 100 songs, TOPS, played in heavy rotation...over, and over and over and over and over.    And in the case of Classic Rock stations, you're just getting the same 100 classic rock standards, over and over and over and over and over with very little deviation.   "Deviation" comes in the form of "Specialized Shows", where some dude has his 2 hour show where maybe he gets to play something slightly different.   Ooh, it's 80's Retro hour!  Or it's the Garage Band hour, or it's Techno Party Time! or  whatever.  But the majority of any 24-hour day on any mainstream radio is devoted to the standard, programmed, homogenized playlist.

And what does this effectively do?  See, here's where it ALL comes together, where the Bigger Picture Conspiracy comes in.  Cause you know there has to be one, there always is! 

It locks people into repetitive habits, safety, security.   TPTB are all about programming humans with the notion of safety and security.   And what I've noticed is that SOOOO many people have their favorite radio stations that they listen to at work, for instance, where it's this familiar comforting thing playing in the background.   The same familiar DJs, during the same time, Monday - Friday, playing the same songs, from the same playlist, with the same lighthearted banter in between, and the same commercials interupting periodically for the same products.

Day in, and day out.

Comfort and security.   Stay in the pen.  Everything is going to be ooookaaaay.   It's cozy here. 

And it helps reinforce the idea of not thinking.   These people who play their radios on the same station every day at work, the thing that I saw that EVERY ONE OF THEM had in common was being on autopilot.  Not thinking.   Going through the motions every day, half asleep.   Talking about silly, trivial things, shying away from anything that was "outside the norm", just content with their repetitive routine.   Get up, go to work, eat, sleep, watch TV, repeat, die. 

Maybe I will do a write up on this.   This has spawned into a majorly interesting side topic! 

Mmm.. you probably knew that I would reply ^__^ but here you have it...
our opinions are just that.. whatever we think sounds good or bad is just our opinion..

there is no scientific method for deeming a piece of music to be good (or bad).
Academia is full of people generating volumes of opinions about why this art
is good, and why this art is not, this is what clearly separates the arts from the
sciences; no objective methodology to apply, to justify our opinions.

Thanks! and, no, that's what I meant, one archive.