I don't hear what other people (e.g.) seem to hear with these guys. I keep thinking that a bit of me is turned off or inside out or something. It's passing me by. The fug is not my fug (doesn't even sound like a fug).
The knockers suggest it's drug-addled but I can't think what drugs they mean; none of the fun ones anyway. Maybe Music for Salvia Divinorum, a drug which doesn't like music much, a drug that requires stillness and silence and secrecy.
I'm thinking to myself not addled enough, too literal by half. Pleasant, a little dreamy, but not in the least psychedelic (cf lots of psychedelic music that meanders, that doesn't propulse, cf the 50 Years Of Sunshine CD that I only just listened to and found a definite deficit of understanding about the kind of music that might be psychedelic - it's not the same thing as dreamy, not the same thing as being in a dream at all)
There's mp3s here and here, if you want to test things out for yourself; for me, it's too watery; reminds me of course of that terrible John C Lilly 'ambient' disc released years ago.
I haven't heard much, admittedly, so maybe there's much better stuff out there and all I've heard is their sell-out, wasteful, spring at the mainstream hypnogogia that they did despite their better instincts.
But does anyone else feel like this?
I'm sort of feeling a bit the same with stuff like Black To Comm as well. I'm getting old, I guess, but hasn't this kind of thing already had it's day with the likes of PGR or Empirical Sleeping Consort or any of that stuff? In the early, dark (and mostly crap) days of dark ambient, Music From The Empty Quarter had a stew of these kinds of things every issue...
You read the reviews and it's like there's a weird kind of auto-suggestion going on here...
There's no new new age, is there?
11 comments:
*Ahem* Excuse me...
http://kidshirt.blogspot.com/2008/08/talking-books-3-hell-raiders.html
As usual Reynolds and Ingram got there 3 years too late lol, but hey! Lieven sent me a track well over a year ago for my (still) forthcoming compilation Cd (nearly there!)...it's ace.
I love Lieven's stuff. Have done for ages - he's a one-off - and it's wrong to tag him purely as (just) New Age - he has lots of other things on the go. I was very keen to meet him in person in Brussels last year, but I missed chatting to him by 5 minutes.
I hate the use of the word-term hypnogogia, etc to retro-tag what The Skaters, etc do/did...oh, and let's bundle in Animal Collective (let's NOT!!!), etc, etc: tho I know Dave Keenan did it for all the right reasons; shame it's stuck as some sort of general editorial catch-all...
i feel suitably chastened... still don't get them though...
Nah, that wasn't a chastening or nuffink , SAx...more a pre-tea splurge, a vent-dump, before my wife called me in ("Tea's getting cold!!"). So I didn't answer/address any of the questions you asked.
I'm surprised you don't *get* Leiven's stuff. I thought that you of all people might. It's not about 'New Age' at all.
Simon and Matt think they get it - and they're the least 'Hippy' people i can ever imagine lol; their point of intersection, I think, is because this reminds them of some of the Naff New-Age / Ambient music they heard in the Chill-Out Rooms of their early-90s Peak Yoof-Excitement Era. To them, this is a faux 'new Age' flashback to Rave - I can see why that appeals to them. Unfortunately, a handful of undergraound acts who - let's be brutal here - Reynolds and other critics have studiously ignored because it didn't fit a certain theoretical agenda, have now been lumped together in some vague musical porridge - a flag of convenience that suits writers, editors, readership - oh, look: instant 'scene' - just add water. You and I both know better than that.
I think this is the basis of my grumps. I'm glad Leib=ven, etc are getting the attention they deserve, but I don't think the way it's being addressed (surprisingly non-critical for Mr. R) does the music or the acts any favours. They'll be uncermoniously dumped once certain theoretical points have been made - tho having said that, I sincerely hope Simon's enthsiasm is as genuine as it seems to be.
There is no New New Age, as such. It's just a handful of people - of a certain age - semi-simultaneously - applying some voltage to an apparently creatively-dead / terminally unfashionable music-form (or elements thereof) and giving it some new twists...
There's no 'scene', just guys pulling up some shit from their childhood in the 80s, etc and throwing it into the pot - this as been going on for 3, 4 years - one of many things that have been re-explored.
This is part of the Discontinuum, of musical / cultural threads being picked up from 70s/80s and being (hopefully in a new way) rebuilt into (again, hopefully) new forms....that's why it interests me, because it's one of a number of interrupted conversations. I'm hoping it'll turn into weird French whispers.
I'm interested in the 'potentiality' locked w/in this stuff, not the rehashing of old tropes. It's also a lot of fun...
I've been interviewing Leiven recent, so I'm hoping to get his own angle on this. You should hear the Panda Tapers stuff.
Apologies for typos - cold hands and tea's ready!
yup. what he said.
think it'd be foolish to take the new age talk entirely serious. certainly plays (and is playful) with it.
i like this bit from ya though: "their sell-out, wasteful, spring at the mainstream hypnogogia"
mainstream hypnogogia... made me laugh.
plus i'm not convinced the whole hypnagogic schtick wasn't keenan's (succesful) attempt at cultural meme-ing. spread like digital syphilis it did.
"spread like digital syphilis it did." - LOL! Yeah, spot on: Simon R started throwing it around v. quickly - I think because it reminded him (the term) of one of his 80's comfort zones: "Dream Pop" "Shoegaze", etc...so another reason why he kinda jumped on this, I suspect (whatever 'this' is)...tho the hypnagogic schtick and Faux-New Age tropes/elements are completely different things. Warren Elis has picked up on the term recently cos Simon's chucking it around, so it's already in common parliance.
The last time I saw The Skaters I thought they had a hypnotik / trance inducing thing going on - more so than when I'd seen them before, but 'hypnagogic'? Hmmm...
A zillion outfits have played around with that kinda thing going back to Maclise, Young, etc and beyond...it's just an ongoing conversation that each generation has with its forefathers, The East and certain drug types.
It's just a laugh tho, innit.
By the summer, everyone'll be doing something completely different yet again, which'll then be completely ignored by the criterati for a coupla years. I noticed that when deep-fried southern boogie temporarily came back into, er, 'fashion' amongst a few brave sub-underground souls it didn't exactly get jumped on by The Wire lol.
Here's to the next ridiculous few months.
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...excellent; love the revolutions in all senses that strums up from these comments; totally agree in general Kek but I'm especially liking the fact that we're not hearing the same thing here since normally I'm a little disconcerted by all the parallel interests and findings that we've shared (and which set off whole avenues for me - "if kek likes it, it's got to be worth a few quid etc" -) and also set off this whole blogging thing - odd that I always wanted more people on here partly because i liked the odd flavour it gave - me and you'd put up similar genred things and then Gutter would add in a hardware knob gag and some mental minimalism and psychbloke (remember him?) would just draw od-shaped cyberman or post pics of girls aloud - i think that period of this blog was the most truly psychedelic...
and as for keenan; i'm still not sure.. the hypnagogic thing doesn't sound like it should; i'd be inclined to say Burial sounds more hypnagogic; the sound of being half asleep on the late bus...
and, yeah, the reconstituted, mistaken, bastardised, half-remembered version of Wyndham Hill does sound like a good idea...
word verification = Suble. Now THAT sounds like a new genre I could work with... part La Monte Young part Das Boot...
Just for the record what I've heard so far by DIF did nothing for me either. Quite dull, def not psychedelic, bit lame really...
Jake.
I kind of like music in which you can be engaged emotionally involved for a extraordinary array of melodic sounds, for instance the sound of dolphins and whales.
actually I enjoy this release so much, I wonder if you have the entire discography of this guy.
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