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AfterHours
Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #11
- Posted: 01/20/2018 01:06
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Miscellaneous thoughts/updates...
Classical:
I am mainly revisiting works that walk a thin line between 7.8/10 and 7.5/7.6/7.7 in a nerdy attempt to ensure my ratings are "correct" and the cut-off point between the two sections is accurate for future comparisons. Some mild downgrades of rating in this regard seem imminent, though I haven't fully decided yet.
Rock:
I am revisiting more Rock albums now and also may see if, in a flurry, I can finally complete listening to all of Scaruffi's 8/10s. There's still a small group of his 8's that I've never heard. Maybe I'll get going again on his 7.5's after that... and finally update that section of my "Greatest Albums" list.
After revisiting it this week, I am considering upgrading the ranking of Down Colorful Hill by a few spots.
I finally listened to the stunning, atmospheric Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T. - Einstürzende Neubauten (1983). If you dig Faust, you'll probably cherish this more ascetic, ambient and haunting masterpiece. Also, the pioneering, ferocious and grotesque industrial-metal work, The Land of Rape and Honey - Ministry (1988)
Jazz:
I am mid re-evaluating Sarah Manning's Harmonious Creature, perhaps one of the best albums of the 2010s.
Paintings:
I am putting together an analysis of Dali's greatest work, Metamorphosis of Narcissus. In rough draft form at the moment, but I hope to complete it soon.
I just found a very large (decent quality) image of Bosch's Last Judgement and added it to my "Greatest Paintings" list.
Yesterday, I revisited some Goya paintings, including two that had been recommended to me by ricardo (listology.com user? I don't remember...): El aquelarre (1798 version), and Judith y Holofernes.
My Criteria / Recommendations Page:
I am updating some entries on my "Recommendations Page" to reflect recently "honored recommendations" and resulting ratings.
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AfterHours
Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #12
- Posted: 01/20/2018 20:47
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Interesting interview with Piero Scaruffi, from Tristan Jones of Sputnikmusic - August 25, 2016
Tristan: To what extent is musical history important in analyzing music? Can a reviewer cover a genre alien to him/her and deliver a worthwhile think piece? This is a relatively general question, but feel free to go on whatever tangent you’d like.
Piero: If you are “analyzing” music, then i think it’s important to have studied what came before. An analysis that doesn’t tell me how this piece of music relates to the rest of music is not an analysis. I don’t really care to be told how many times the song uses the “C” note, but i do care to hear how that sequence of chords has been used since the 1950s in so many songs. Then again some always argue “who cares about analyses”, which is perfectly fine. You don’t have to analyze if you don’t want to; but if you want to analyze, then ignorance of the past is not a good way to analyze the present (it is a good way to embarrass yourself writing something that you will regret the day you study the past). Incidentally, my personal experience (being someone whose opinions have almost always created controversy) is that opinions tend to converge rather than diverge when different people with different taste (and maybe different ideologies) study the past. The more we listen to, the more likely that we reach the same conclusion on a new piece of music. This is true in every discipline, and popular music is simply a more complicated affair because of the huge amount of money spent by the music industry to publicize their music. If they spent the same amount of money publicizing theories of Quantum Mechanics, the field of Quantum Mechanics would have the same problem telling genius from junk.
The second part of your question is actually more interesting: should i write about Hitler if i am not a practicing Nazist? should i write about the Holocaust if i have not gassed a few thousand Jews? The answer is obvious, right? But surprisingly so many people criticize the critic who a) does not play/read music (i can’t even tell a C note from an E) and b) does not like what s/he is reviewing (and, alas, i don’t like 95% of what i hear in popular music), as if only someone who can play that piece of music and actually likes it should be allowed to discuss it. That’s actually a fair objection: what does it mean that you “understand” a piece of music? If you cannot play it yourself, how can you claim that you understand it? If you don’t like it, and maybe you don’t like the entire
style/movement, isn’t that a definition of “not understanding it”?
Let’s take a different discipline so we don’t yell at each other. Let’s take the visual arts. An art critic who writes a history of art is most likely going to write the same history that previous art critics have written. He will simply add a few trivia that came out from scholarly research, but it will fundamentally be the same story. If a scientist writes a history of art, s/he will come up with a completely different story. The scientist didn’t spend 10-20-30 years studying and listening to other art critics. The scientist literally doesn’t know what s/he is supposed to write, hence most likely s/he will not write it. In particular, the scientist will NOT be influenced by the museums, the art galleries and the art magazines that pretty much define what has to be considered “art”. Art critics will deride the scientist as not “competent”, but “competent” often means “very influenced by the establishment”, “very brainwashed to repeat like a parrot what the establishment wants you to say”, etc.
I personally love to read what “incompetent” people have to say about art. In some cases it simply betrays real incompetence (e.g. the dude has no idea that there are lots of artists doing what he thinks artists are not doing) but in many cases the “incompetent” says something important that no professional critic was saying, simply because s/he doesn’t have to fear retribution from the establishment. His income comes from his scientific institution, not from the museums, art galleries and art magazines that decide what is art. In rock music this problem is even bigger. Exponentially bigger. So you do want “outsiders” to write about rock music. If you are professional rock critic, you will never dare write that most (all?) rock stars are pathetic garbage. If you are not a professional rock critic, that’s the first thing you notice about rock music.
You wrote an essay pertaining to “bridging the gap between art and science.” While this seems more geared towards visual arts (and, bearing in mind, you adopt a fairly liberal definition of art in this essay), are there any notable recent examples that might include music in the equation?
Since music depends so much on technology (no piano, no piano sonatas; no electronic keyboards, no cosmic music; no drum-machine, no disco; etc), music is one discipline that borders on technology. My friend Curt Frank at Stanford studies the materials used by visual artists over the centuries and hopefully someday will publish a history of the visual arts from the point of view of a chemical engineer. This is more so in the music of the 20th century, where electrical and electronic instruments have created entire genres of music. One could argue that rock music was invented by the electrical guitar, not by Chuck Berry, and so forth. There is hardly a style of music that we don’t identify with the specific sound generated by a specific instrument, even the humblest styles. If you want to play reggae, you don’t buy a violin, right? But you could, and it would be very interesting, except that reggae was born with that Fender jazz bass, so that’s probably the first thing you want to have in your reggae band. I’ve seen a history of jazz in which each chapter is titled with the name of an instrument: trumpet, saxophone, piano, guitar…
In general, music was the first art to be closely associated with mathematics (think Pythagoras) and in the 20th century there have been even too many attempts to “serialize” music. It is also the one discipline that has been studied extensively by neuroscientists (Stanford has a yearly conference on “Music and Brain”). Bartok was fascinated by the mathematical patterns generated by the “golden mean” (the same mathematical formula that generates the spirals of snail shells) and used it to compose “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta”. A list of recent music inspired by science would take several pages. Just some personal favorites:
Iannis Xenakis’ Metastasis (1955),
Philip Glass’ Einstein on the Beach (1975),
Steve Reich’ Three Tales (2002),
John Adams’ Doctor Atomic (2005).
The influence also goes the other way, from music to science. Einstein said if he wasn’t a scientist, he would be a musician (he was an excellent violinist). Galileo’s father (Vincenzo Galilei) was a Renaissance lutist and it makes you wonder if how Renaissance music influenced the future scientific genius. The 19th century astronomer William Herschel, who discovered several stars and moons, composed 24 symphonies. And so on. I co-organize the “Scientific Delirium Madness” program at the Djerassi Artist in Residence Program, a center incidentally founded by a scientist, Carl Djerassi, for artists, and every year we pick at least one composer who works with science. Every year it’s difficult to pick just one.
I get the impression that you’re particular about musicians you choose to review. Your choices don’t really seem to be based around album promotion. You’ve described yourself as being a historian above being a “fan”.
I get way too much music to listen to, and it’s mostly garbage, even when it’s recommended by trusted friends (and sometimes even when metacritic will show an average rating of 9/10). Hence i get very upset that those labels and musicians have wasted hours of my time, and i tend to be more critical than i should be. After all, most of these musicians are just kids, and some of them honestly spent months rehearsing and dreaming. Nonetheless, it is upsetting to read all these reviews that hail every kid as a new Mozart or Beethoven. It is also upsetting that so many people want a review “right now” of the new album. If it’s a good album, it will still be good ten years from now, right? Why do you need to listen to it “right now”? If you ask me for the review of a new album, you already told me that you are not interested in good music but in what gets promoted by the music industry. If you are interested in good music, check my lists of best albums of the 1960s, 70s, 80s,… of jazz… of classical music… There’s plenty to listen to.
The albums of the last few years are probably the ones you shouldn’t listen to. Let good music shape your brain, not promotional campaigns shape your brain. (Incidentally, the same is true of cinema: i find that Hollywood has declined so precipitously that virtually no Hollywood film of the last 5 years deserves to be watched…why in heaven would anyone waste 2 hours to watch “Spiderman Chapter 623” or “Star Wars Episode #welostcount – The Return of the Return of the Return” when there are so many good films made in the previous 100 years that people haven’t seen yet? The last sequel that was worth watching was Godfather 2, 42 years ago, or the Road Warrior, 35 years ago). If we thought more highly of ourselves, we would not watch bad films and listened to bad music just because they are publicized.
When we first spoke via email, you mentioned you were in China. What are your favourite musical experiences while travelling out of country? Any music scenes you’d endorse and recommend stumbling upon?
Honestly, these days everybody listens to Western music, no matter what they tell you. And it’s usually a bad imitation of Western pop. I get the feeling that the only national tradition that is surviving and still thriving is Indian classical music.
In your review for the most recent My Bloody Valentine album, you claimed it was “heralded as a masterpiece by pretty much all the publications that has ignored their real masterpieces.” Are there any recent artists you predict might get the same retrospective treatment in a couple decades from now?
In a couple of decades, “publications” will not exist anymore, so it’s hard to predict what “all the publications” will mean in 2036. And the format of music will be different. The music industry is keeping alive the obsolete concepts of “single” and “album” because that’s the way they structure their business plans, but sooner or later common sense will prevail. It’s ironic that the music industry still sells “albums” but in some places there are no record stores where to buy them. What they are really selling to us is digital files, that cost $0 to make.
Your site has been a bit quiet in terms of musical coverage this year. I assume you’re busy with travelling and getting involved with Silicon Valley technology, but are there any artists catching your interest this year?
Not yet. I have more than 1,000 albums sitting on my hard-disk. But when i find the time, i would like to go back and re-listen to albums of the 2000s and 1990s. So my priority is NOT to listen to the albums of the last few years. And i have lots of classical music to listen and re-listen to. And jazz. Life is too short.
You’ve allegedly changed your mind on certain albums you’ve reviewed. While I’ve seen your scores change slightly, have there been some albums you’ve done a complete 180 on?
I keep hearing this, but which albums are you talking about? Slight changes in the ratings happen all the time because i need to balance one band’s ratings with all the others, but i can’t remember a major recording where i changed my mind (“garbage” to “masterpiece” or viceversa). I certainly changed my mind on the degree of influence, e.g. i never imagined that Black Sabbath or Radiohead would become so influential (i still don’t particularly like either, btw). Unfortunately, it happens only for the very famous albums that people ask me to re-listen and re-listen (often with the result that i get more and more convinced of my initial opinion, eg Revolver, one of the worst albums i’ve ever heard no matter how many times i re-listen to it).
I wish that people prompted me to re-listen to obscure recordings by obscure musicians, and that’s probably where i would change my mind. It is unlikely that i have not listened carefully to a wildly popular piece of music: i heard it more than once even if i didn’t want to. Very likely that i only listened once to a piece of music that nobody talked about, and so the chances that i screwed up are much higher.
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Facetious
Gender: Male
Age: 24
Location: Somewhere you've never been
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- #13
- Posted: 01/21/2018 15:33
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| AfterHours wrote: | | Revolver, one of the worst albums i’ve ever heard no matter how many times i re-listen to it |
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AfterHours
Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #14
- Posted: 01/21/2018 18:29
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| Facetious wrote: | | |
Lol, I dont think its quite that bad. It's a solid album, but I can understand the "eye rolling/annoyance" in his reactions after listening to so much of the history of music (Rock, Jazz and Classical) and how ridiculous Revolver looks as the "greatest album of all time" (or one of them).
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AfterHours
Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #15
- Posted: 01/22/2018 07:58
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New week rolling out ...
Along with revisiting Rock and Classical, along with some Jazz, I've been immersed in various works by Dali, especially his astonishing Metamorphosis of Narcissus of which I am putting an analysis together (with what little time I've had, otherwise I'd have posted it by now). I've also been revisiting some paintings of Michelangelo and Da Vinci that I've never rated and ranked, so if I draw conclusions on those, I'll probably add them to my "Greatest Paintings - Extended List" as soon as I can.
Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.
Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.
Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.
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Facetious
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Age: 24
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- #16
- Posted: 01/23/2018 18:17
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| AfterHours wrote: | | Lol, I dont think its quite that bad. It's a solid album, but I can understand the "eye rolling/annoyance" in his reactions after listening to so much of the history of music (Rock, Jazz and Classical) and how ridiculous Revolver looks as the "greatest album of all time" (or one of them). |
It's an excellent album that's more essential to rock history, and more innovative, than at least 80% of the stuff he rates 7/10 or 7.5/10. Not even nearly the greatest album ever of course, but it's a perfectly acceptable entry for, say, a top 200 rock albums, or even 100 (although I'm not sure it'll make my own).
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AfterHours
Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #17
- Posted: 01/23/2018 23:21
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| Facetious wrote: | | It's an excellent album that's more essential to rock history, and more innovative, than at least 80% of the stuff he rates 7/10 or 7.5/10. Not even nearly the greatest album ever of course, but it's a perfectly acceptable entry for, say, a top 200 rock albums, or even 100 (although I'm not sure it'll make my own). |
My opinion...
I suppose it depends on what one considers important to rock history. In the end, I only consider about 2 min of Revolver particularly outstanding and innovative (TMK). Taxman, Eleanor Rigby and I'm Only Sleeping are good songs. For No One and And Your Bird Can Sing and She Said She Said are pretty good too. The rest are decent (Love You Too), mediocre (Got to Get You Into My Life) or basically a waste of time (Dr Robert, Here There Everywhere, Yellow Submarine, Good Day Sunshine, I Want to Tell You...)
The album is a solid contribution to Pop Art, but no match for their own Sgt Pepper (or Pet Sounds, and others of the period) in this regard, which takes the form more seriously and has a superior, more fleshed out and substantial, array of songs.
In comparing it to other 7's and 7.5's that are similar (or fairly similar in pop art/melodic intent), I feel Revolver is a far cry from the emotional/conceptual depth, consistency and overall quality of albums, such as the following list. When comparing it to these, its deficiencies are more evident:
Mr Tambourine Man/Younger Than Yesterday/Notorious Byrd Bros - The Byrds (each 7/10)
Stands for Decibels - DBs (7/10)
Dusk at Cubist Castle - Olivia Tremor Control (7/10)
Sgt. Pepper - The Beatles (7/10)
Pet Sounds - Beach Boys (7/10)
They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Giants (7.5/10)
Bellybutton - Jellyfish (7.5/10)
Forever Changes - Love (7.5/10) ... closer to The Doors than The Beatles, but see "Doolittle" comment
Doolittle - Pixies (7.5/10) ...perhaps a dubious comparison, but never loses a sense of Pop Art aesthetic throughout
Psychedelic Sounds of - 13th Floor Elevators (probably 7.5/10)
Murmur - REM (7.5/10)
Skylarking - XTC (7.5/10)
The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses (7.5/10) ... perhaps too Rock-oriented, but dressed up in what are largely melodic pop songs circa Beach Boys/Beatles
White Soul - Green (7.5 or 8/10)
All of the above demolish Revolver imo, in several cases, at its own game. Whether its instrumental acumen (conviction and skill in which they play), vocally (much more conviction/emotional investment, especially over McCartney and Harrison and Ringo), or (at least) equaling The Beatles genius in a melodic sense... And most of those are "only" top 400-1000.
Even a 6.5 like, say, Zombies' Odyssey and Oracle or Byrds Fifth Dimension, are clearly better imo (I'd probably give Revolver a 6/10).
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AfterHours
Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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- #18
- Posted: 01/25/2018 21:58
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Just listened to Richard Dawson's latest release. First impression upon finishing it...
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NEWLY ASSIMILATED ROCK/JAZZ ALBUMS - RATED:
Peasant - Richard Dawson (2017) 6/10 or 6.5/10 ...a strange, idiosynchratic album of awkward, seemingly incongruous (but usually interesting) elements that works just about as much as it doesn't. Dawson merges midieval themes, freak folk, yearning/angry choirs, inharmonious instrumentals and outbursts of strange sounds/cacophany, and in his own vocals, he sings in a pained, broken, stretched register somewhere between Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel) and Captain Beefheart. The weaknesses seem to lie mostly with his vocals when they are left alone, or mostly alone, without the other elements to cover them up. As in: when he sings solo (or mostly solo) his performance sounds overly self-conscious and contrived (trying more to imitate his idols/"sound different/off-balance" than actually thoroughly enveloped in the emotion(s) in real-time) so even though he is stylistically somewhere between Mangum and Beefheart (two extraordinary touchstones) he usually comes across as somewhat tedious, lacking Beefheart's startling range/force of nature and lacking Mangum's amazing compassion and moving dichotomy between overwhelmed ecstacy and deep sorrow/nostalgia. He fairs much better when there are chorals surrounding his voice, or when more instrumentals/cacophany enter the mix, or on some occasions when he applies his gravelly, throaty register (the peak of which can be found in his previous album with The Vile Stuff, one of the best songs of the decade). Still, an artist to look out for, and it's entirely possible this album is more a grower than I realize, as it is a respectably creative effort from all involved.
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If anyone has anything to say, various insights to share, that could veer me towards a higher rating, please let me know. The album has a strange, compelling, ragged spark to it, that may have more to offer than I've realized... but I don't know, maybe not?
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AfterHours
Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)
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Amirkhosro
Gender: Male
Age: 36
Location: Tehran
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- #20
- Posted: 01/27/2018 20:43
- Post subject: Sup
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What's up man!
Glad to see you spending time with Songs from the Hill/Tablet. It made wonder, what do you make of that album? And what's your favorite side, the short songs or Tablet?
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