Best Ever Albums

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Tue, 4 Nov 2014 13:25:49 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 11/04/2014 18:25

Silver wrote:

Are we talking about free jazz here or the chart?

Link

shots fired, and shots justifiably received 🤣

Anyway, the squealing and just wild all-over-the-place-ness of this particular brand of free jazz was honestly just perplexing at first (though not quite as perplexing as my notes which can be labeled with more or less the same descriptors). I think it's just a matter of an increase in familiarity with the style, but also a matter of contextualizing the style within the body of work of the musician in question (or perhaps just in the timeline of jazz development as a whole). Like before Meditations, Coltrane certainly leaned towards this kind of explosive honking of notes (just as I slowly leaned towards my own honking and overblown notes in an attempt to describe it) but this was generally just an accentuation placed over his more post-bob influenced compositions, which whilst being far from simplistic or compositionally pedestrian to even the slightest degree, are comparatively more accessible; I think following Coltrane's musical trajectory as his techniques evolved (often in conjunction with many of his contemporaries) the slow progression into this kind of crazed "wtf is going on" free jazz if far easier to digest when you've taken the slow (and totally beautiful/worthwhile journey) through the stylistic progressions leading up to this particularly wild style. Who knows, I imagine a bunch of people could just jump right into it and be enamored immediately, but, at least in my case, it was a matter of following jazz as a developing art form until it arrived at this point, and by the time I got there, as fucking insane as this method of composition/performance appeared at first glance (and really as fucking insane as it continues to appear, just received a little differently), at this point it seemed a surprisingly logical progression, and fell into place in my own personal contextualization of jazz (especially as it pertained to Coltrane's work) pretty perfectly.

tl;dr listen to Coltrane. Listen to lots and lots of Coltrane

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

The Olatunji Concert: The Last Live Recording by John Coltrane
^especially this

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:27:35 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 11/03/2014 22:27

Silver wrote:

Are we talking about free jazz here or the chart?

Link

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:17:47 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 11/03/2014 22:17

sp4cetiger wrote:

advice for people who struggle with all the squealing and overblown notes?

Are we talking about free jazz here or the chart?

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Mon, 3 Nov 2014 17:09:24 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 11/03/2014 22:09

I have another question, actually. Last night, I dove into some Coltrane:

Meditations by John Coltrane

This bit from your notes rung particularly true for me:

Quote:

It's like it took the language created in A Love Supreme, and twisted it, bent it out of shape, and made a spiritual successor to Coltrane's universally hailed masterpiece that feels off-kilter, unstable, and imperfect in all the right ways

Coltrane's free jazz explorations aren't for everyone, but do you have any advice for people who struggle with all the squealing and overblown notes? Did this brand of free jazz resonate with you immediately or was it a matter of adapting your ear?

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

pa — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 04:55:42 GMT

Author: pa

Posted: 10/28/2014 08:55

thank u dbz, it was really an awesome thread!

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 18:17:05 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/27/2014 22:17

D'aww thanks guys <3

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Mercury — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 15:52:09 GMT

Author: Mercury

Posted: 10/27/2014 19:52

sp4cetiger wrote:

Fabulous. Tough act to follow.

This. Honestly probably the toughest act to follow.

This has been an awesome read and an amazing thread.

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 14:03:38 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/27/2014 18:03

dividesbyzero wrote:

Was I a good guinea pig?

Fabulous. Tough act to follow.

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 13:08:35 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/27/2014 17:08

sp4cetiger wrote:

From what I've heard of your chart, that makes perfect sense. When I started the thread, I described exploring it like taking a hike in the mountains -- I still feel that way. Despite having a wide range of genres and themes, most of the albums on your chart have a very organic feel to them and it has kind of inspired me to listen more closely to the sounds of everyday life.

Anyway, I'm going to end the "official" questioning here, but I hope you don't mind if users (me included) still pop in from time to time to ask questions. I also don't have a problem with you using this thread to announce major updates to your chart in the future.

Thanks, dbz!

Thanks for taking the time to do this tiger. Was I a good guinea pig?

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

pa — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 10:29:42 GMT

Author: pa

Posted: 10/27/2014 14:29

dividesbyzero wrote:

...I suppose listen to Another Green World, and identify your favorite elements and I will happily direct you to aspects of his work that reflect those elements to a greater degree via a more specified approach..

thank u dbz, I really like this option 😁
and of course I will have a look on My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 09:44:53 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/27/2014 13:44

dividesbyzero wrote:

This is gonna sounds cheesy as all hell but I honestly treat the majority of sounds I hear on a daily basis as music to some extent.

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 03:26:19 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/27/2014 07:26

sp4cetiger wrote:

Both rely on the use of slowly changing, repeated patterns. It seems to me that this kind of music is close (at least in structure) to sounds we might hear in our everyday lives. Is there any kind of "natural" music that you like to listen to? I mean, for example, listening to the birds sing in the morning or listening to the sounds of a busy city from a roadside bench. Do you ever look for music to simulate this sort of real-life experience or is music mostly an escape from the real world for you?

This is gonna sounds cheesy as all hell but I honestly treat the majority of sounds I hear on a daily basis as music to some extent. I adore the sound of rain; why shouldn't rain storms be considered naturally formed aleotoric music? I mean John Cage started making compositional decisions literally by the will of a coin flip. If you were to remove the composer from the equation all together, if the coin were still flipped, the music would turn out the same. Nature flips John Cage composition coins all day, and sometimes it's just grating shit (or just "bad ambient music" perhaps?) but so often I can really enjoy hearing whatever little noises happen to be flying around my periphery, at least to some extent. Then you bring up the idea of music as a form of escapism vs "simulation of real life-experience... hm. Well, certain music can definitely evoke real-life experience, but I don't think I use traditionally arranged music to simulate real-life seeing as I view real life as already having music imbedded into its inherent structure. Einstein on the Beach, Disintegration Loops, etc., while clearly being influenced by the natural progressions of the "music of nature" or whatever, still have a composer sitting behind them. Behind the scenes it's all very precise, even if it comes across as a purely natural development. There is definitely music I use to remove myself from the "real world", however, ironically, some of that "music" is the aforementioned aleotoric natural formations. e.g. I can honestly just loose myself in a rainstorm... (can I put "Random Droplets" by Rain in my top 10?). Anyway, I'd say Einstein on the Beach (as well as most of Glass' work) does more or less remove me from reality. You ever been a passenger in a car while it's raining? Looking at the droplets as they roll down the window, some collect into a single larger droplet, keep rolling, patterns are formed, maybe start seeing which droplets can reach the bottom of the window first? It seems like such a ridiculous thing in which to immerse oneself, but there is just something truly fascinating about how the rain running down the window is always just that (rain running down a window), and it seems utterly monotonous when taken as a whole, but during that car ride, watching every tiny change in the patterns of the individual water droplets and seeing how they interact with each other can capture my attention for I don't even know how long, but it never seems that long at all, and before I know it the car ride is over (or the rain. Whichever ends first). That's more or less how I listen to Glass' music, just replace the droplets with notes and the movements and interaction with tempo and timbre. I certainly wouldn't say music is purely a means of escape or removal from reality, but I definitely spend a lot of my time using it as one. I like getting lost

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 21:18:21 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/27/2014 01:18

dividesbyzero wrote:

That sounds about right. I asked about Disintegration Loops in particular because one time I tried to use it as nighttime music and my wife complained, asking for something more "conventional." That response from her wouldn't surprise me for a lot of things, but I think of ambient music as something that can play in the background without bothering most folks. In fact, Eno's words on the matter:

Brian Eno wrote:

...[ambient music can be] actively listened to with attention or as easily ignored, depending on the choice of the listener

So I guess both my wife and Brian Eno would agree with you that it fails as ambient music.

However, it does bear a resemblance to the work of another artist on your chart:

Einstein On The Beach by Philip Glass

Both rely on the use of slowly changing, repeated patterns. It seems to me that this kind of music is close (at least in structure) to sounds we might hear in our everyday lives. Is there any kind of "natural" music that you like to listen to? I mean, for example, listening to the birds sing in the morning or listening to the sounds of a busy city from a roadside bench. Do you ever look for music to simulate this sort of real-life experience or is music mostly an escape from the real world for you?

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 01:53:05 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/26/2014 05:53

sp4cetiger wrote:

As someone with ADD tendencies, this level of attention to detail is difficult to fathom. Regardless, your note got me thinking about ambient music and the role it plays in the life of avid music lovers. In your mind, what is ambient music? Here I'm not talking about the ambient genre, but rather "ambient" as a descriptive term. Would you say The Disintegration Loops failed as ambient music?

Also, what fraction of your listening is done with music serving an "ambient" role?

Ha interesting question. I suppose if we define the adjective "ambient" (insofar as it applies to music) to mean solely music that fills the role of "background music" or ("study music" as I put it), then I suppose The Disintegration Loops fails in all the best ways. I still don't fully understand how Basinski's work can manage to get such a firm threshold on my attention when really the concept of his music is so simple. Maybe that's where the attention-grabbing factor lies; The Disintegration Loops is (are?) deceptively simple; there's really just a single strand of (disintegrating) music running through the whole thing... it's one thing to hold my attention with hooks and layered complexity, but there's something so just demandingly beautiful (and utterly transfixing) about watching this single strand music slowly and subtly fade into oblivion just as you start becoming so intimately familiar with every little melodic nuance...

for anyone that hasn't seen the 9/11 film associated with "dlp 1.1", here. I won't cloud it with words

Link

So as for the question you actually asked (which I just realized has almost nothing to do with the above), I suppose music that fills my role of "background music" firstly has to be music with which I am already familiar; (can never listen to new albums with too many distractions). Beyond that it varies immensely; e.g. as I am writing this I am listening to The Dead Texan, but I can count several times with this exact same album where it's "failed" as ambient music, where it's somehow pulled my attention entirely towards itself. I'm gonna stop myself now before I continue this circumlocutory declaration of "I honestly don't know". There is very little measurable rhyme or reason to the evidently arbitrary system by which my brain determines what music I can listen to as "ambient" at any given time. If the music becomes distracting, I throw on something else, (and generally repeat the process ad nauseam until whatever work I was trying to accomplish is already long overdue and I've ceased to give any quantifiable fuck). I realize this is a fairly disappointing answer. Oh well. Fuck yeah Basinski.

pa wrote:

even if I didn't write any post I've been following this thread since the beginning and I'm really enjoying it 😁
I really love the comment on Ys by Joanna Newsom:
"And essentially this is what Ys is all about, an implicit sense of beauty that slowly seeps into your consciousness without ever forcing itself. Very scarcely can an album be this intricately and meticulously arranged, and yet still so effortlessly beautiful"
was it love af first sight?

Yes and no (shut up Dave). I was immediately taken with Ys on my first listen, but it's one of those albums for which my affection has only increased the more time I've taken to get to know it. The intricacies of the chamber music arrangements, the way Newsom's beautifully untrained voice just bounces back and forth off of her harp, and especially the deep sublime texture of her lyrics, for which I cannot express my love enough. So love at first sight yes, but a love that's only deepened over time.

pa wrote:

ok I know who Eno is but I never listened to any of his records, which is the best one to start with?

Ok so this is a big(ish) question seeing as Eno has covered a fuckton of different styles throughout his career. I will second Mies in saying that AWG is probably a good starting place seeing as a great many of his myriad styles all come together in perfect synthesis on that album. I suppose listen to Another Green World, and identify your favorite elements and I will happily direct you to aspects of his work that reflect those elements to a greater degree via a more specified approach. Or if you just want recs then go and listen to Ambient 1: Music For Airports, Here Come the Warm Jets, Thursday Afternoon, and Before and After Science. Also I highly recommend most of his work with Roxy Music as well as his production work with Talking Heads and David Bowie (which you probably have already heard at some point), and I think more than anything (other than AGW), I'd recommend this

My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts by Brian Eno & David Byrne
(because it is lovely)

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

pa — Fri, 24 Oct 2014 13:36:32 GMT

Author: pa

Posted: 10/24/2014 17:36

Mies wrote:

What??!! 😲
Ahah
Ok start with Another Green World, it's really a classic, even people who don't like Eno (if they exist) prob like it.
Or maybe Taking Tiger Mountain, too.

ok I will start with Another Green. I have this feeling, unjustified feeling, that Eno is boring..don't ask me why!
but I know that you don't listen to boring things...so I'm gonna give it a spin soon 😁

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 21:24:30 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/24/2014 01:24

sp4cetiger wrote:

Would you say The Disintegration Loops failed as ambient music?

I (sorry, waiting for a better answer by dbz but in the meanwhile) think it depends on how a person like to listen to ambient music: some like to put it on background, some others like to listen to it with full attention. Though it depends on which album too.

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 19:46:53 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/23/2014 23:46

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski

dividesbyzero wrote:

...I hate this album, because I'll put on my ambient playlist, hoping to study without getting distracted by the music, and then The Disintegration Loops comes on and I know I am fucked. I want to put this on in the background, but I found myself unable, as I can't help but try to seek out every change in composition with each repeating loop...

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 18:24:02 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/23/2014 22:24

pa wrote:

ok I know who Eno is but I never listened to any of his records, which is the best one to start with?

What??!! 😲
Ahah
Ok start with Another Green World, it's really a classic, even people who don't like Eno (if they exist) prob like it.
Or maybe Taking Tiger Mountain, too.

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

pa — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 03:45:58 GMT

Author: pa

Posted: 10/23/2014 07:45

ok I know who Eno is but I never listened to any of his records, which is the best one to start with?

Re: Chart study #2: dividesbyzero

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 17:25:17 GMT

Author: Anonymous

Posted: 10/22/2014 21:25

Nah, that one is too long! 🤣

Anyway thanks for your answers.
I'm glad I feel exactly the same about importance and influence, and all those things.
About AGW, I imagined you would have answered like that, ahah. Though you satisfied my curiosity with the last period. Funny: I had that song in my head all the time today, and I haven't heard it for a while.
The answer to the last one would be hard for me, too, indeed. But maybe I would put more of my force in! ahah joking, it's just too hard: there are very long pieces, extreme differences between one and other, etc.. And yes as you said his pieces work better as parts of albums.

Ps: I remember I had discovered Eno through Wiki. 😨