Trout Mask Replica vs. White Light/White Heat - Music

PurpleHazel

boyd94 wrote:

Tbh I thought VU's debut was more avant-garde.

You could even argue it's more experimental simply because it came first.

Trout Mask coming out ahead in this poll was always a uphill battle because some people here find it unlistenable.

boyd94

Tap wrote:

it's totally scrutable tho https://youtu.be/-FhhB9teHqU

I have seen that and it's a brilliant analysis which, to me anyway, highlights how TMR is not the chaotic morass its critics claim, nor is there some grand unifying theory or narrative that can neatly tie the whole thing together. The distinction between polyrhythmic/polytonal and arrhythmic/atonal is key. The album unfolds in distinct multiplicities; it contains discernible patterns but always in variation.

Like I said, if anything it rallies against singular interpretation. On first iisten it's dismissed as nonsense, on second listen it dares you to try and lock into a beat or hook - it gives you one for a bar or two and then changes up on you, goes back to an old one only slightly different, and returns again. The moment when it 'clicks' is generally the moment when you just relax and stop tying your brain in knots in an attempt to account for all these patterns and variations. You can do it with careful, lengthy study as Andreyev does here, but its just not feasible in real-time.

Fischman
RockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMaster

Gender: Male
Location: Land of Enchantment

Well, the Fischman's gotta' go with the Trout!
(name coincidence aside, it's not even close)

Come to think of of it, if Beefhart's doing Trout, is that a musical "Surf n' Turf?"

Amirkhosro

Gender: Male
Age: 36
Location: Tehran

boyd94 wrote:

Trout Mask Replica is an incredible album but people talk about it like it's some inscrutable cipher materialised out of the ether. It was made by Beefheart doodling on a piano he had no idea how to play, and John French transcribing those doodles and turning it into actual music. It's an incredible achievement, and it's a difficult album on first listen for sure, but once you stop trying to wrestle the individual tracks into uniform and familiar structures and let the whole thing wash over you, a veil falls and it goes from frustrating to bracing.

He wasn't just doodling on a piano though. The individual guitar and bass lines are beautiful and creative with well-defined structures.

He's definitely just doodling on the sax though =)))

There's a persistent myth going around that Beefheart composed the entire thing during 8 and a half hours on a piano. The myth was created by himself in a Rolling Stone interview. According to John French, each song's first piano sketches took a few hours to make, and then months to develop as the band practiced the music non-stop. Kinda sucks that he didn't tell this instead of "I made this all by myself in 8 and half hours" as a marketing strategy. Maybe he would've been much more popular if he wasn't so extremely egotistical. Still, the music's dope and fun to play despite whatever some hipster douchebags claim about how the secret to the meaning of life is hidden deep under its non-existent "indecipherable structure" which only unlocks itself to those with the best of ears. For fuck's sake, the guy's singing about going up to the mountain with his wife (which rhymes with life!) on a bunch of dirty-ass delta blues riffs. They should just straight up dickride Stockhausen or something for this kind of horseshit posturing.

badseed wrote:

I was gonna answer this poll, but I haven't got the time time. Too busy sucking on a ding dong.

Oh she does just like Sister Ray said.

PurpleHazel

Amirkhosro wrote:

Maybe he would've been much more popular if he wasn't so extremely egotistical.

Yeah, he would've ruled the album charts if he'd been more modest in his one Rolling Stone interview plus the others the average record buyer never saw. If sounding egotistical suppressed record sales, Kanye West would be less popular than Beefheart.

mickilennial
The Most Trusted Name in News

Gender: Female
Age: 35
Location: Detroit

lol

PaperVinnie

Gender: Male
Age: 23
Location: Pennsylvania

badseed wrote:

I was gonna answer this poll, but I haven't got the time time. Too busy sucking on a ding dong.

Simply one of the greatest songs of all time.

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

Amirkhosro wrote:

He wasn't just doodling on a piano though. The individual guitar and bass lines are beautiful and creative with well-defined structures.

He's definitely just doodling on the sax though =)))

There's a persistent myth going around that Beefheart composed the entire thing during 8 and a half hours on a piano. The myth was created by himself in a Rolling Stone interview. According to John French, each song's first piano sketches took a few hours to make, and then months to develop as the band practiced the music non-stop. Kinda sucks that he didn't tell this instead of "I made this all by myself in 8 and half hours" as a marketing strategy. Maybe he would've been much more popular if he wasn't so extremely egotistical. Still, the music's dope and fun to play despite whatever some hipster douchebags claim about how the secret to the meaning of life is hidden deep under its non-existent "indecipherable structure" which only unlocks itself to those with the best of ears. For fuck's sake, the guy's singing about going up to the mountain with his wife (which rhymes with life!) on a bunch of dirty-ass delta blues riffs. They should just straight up dickride Stockhausen or something for this kind of horseshit posturing.

Oh she does just like Sister Ray said.

But... But... and I mean this in the least pretentious/douchebaggery way possible: the album does become an extremely profound, even metaphysical, experience, the more one puts it together and becomes acclimated to its parts, and as a whole. This is primarily due to the following:

(1) Beefheart's vocals expand the temporal space of human psychology in relation to its environment -- never before expressed as such in Rock (and not approached to this degree in Jazz or Classical either) -- both by thoroughly dilating its sound with cries for help, animalistic screams/howls, and through a wild, endlessly varied and nuanced expressiveness that unlocks seemingly long-dormant, repressed psychology/forces of nature.

(2) The shape-shifting, extremely physical, tactile and surreal instrumentals/compositions are constantly expressing, both in unison and counter to his vocal expressions, the concept(s) of violent facial/body contortions and of influx/warping of spatial dimensions, his past enacting terrible delusions and scars upon him (farcical and serious) as he is acting them out/acting against this affliction, and these often become akin to "out-of-body" experiences, like he is exploding out of the confines of his skin to express something not possible otherwise.

(3) The endless variation of the music, and its constant flux of vocal and instrumental creativity, while also echoing, reminiscing on previous variations, seems to present an ever-expanding scope of all which came before, turning the whole album into like that of a massive stream-of-conscious.

(4) 1, 2, and 3 combined with the very deep conviction, blues and soul, fundamental to the work.

All of these factors combine to turn the work into an extraordinarily offbeat, insane, metaphysical experience, which expounds relentlessly and endlessly on the thoughts and expressions of a crazed, madman into a whole that is impossibly profound and powerful, of endless detours, an endless domino effect of its own insanity trying to break free from its own skin.
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Facetious

Gender: Male
Age: 24
Location: Somewhere you've never been

Both are in my top 10 rock albums, but I'll give the edge to Trout Mask Replica. Has all the grotesqueness and playfulness of WL/WH, but also feels more human, with a broader canvas of emotion.

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

AfterHours wrote:

Amirkhosro wrote:

He wasn't just doodling on a piano though. The individual guitar and bass lines are beautiful and creative with well-defined structures.

He's definitely just doodling on the sax though =)))

There's a persistent myth going around that Beefheart composed the entire thing during 8 and a half hours on a piano. The myth was created by himself in a Rolling Stone interview. According to John French, each song's first piano sketches took a few hours to make, and then months to develop as the band practiced the music non-stop. Kinda sucks that he didn't tell this instead of "I made this all by myself in 8 and half hours" as a marketing strategy. Maybe he would've been much more popular if he wasn't so extremely egotistical. Still, the music's dope and fun to play despite whatever some hipster douchebags claim about how the secret to the meaning of life is hidden deep under its non-existent "indecipherable structure" which only unlocks itself to those with the best of ears. For fuck's sake, the guy's singing about going up to the mountain with his wife (which rhymes with life!) on a bunch of dirty-ass delta blues riffs. They should just straight up dickride Stockhausen or something for this kind of horseshit posturing.

Oh she does just like Sister Ray said.

But... But... and I mean this in the least pretentious/douchebaggery way possible: the album does become an extremely profound, even metaphysical, experience, the more one puts it together and becomes acclimated to its parts, and as a whole. This is primarily due to the following:

(1) Beefheart's vocals expand the temporal space of human psychology in relation to its environment -- never before expressed as such in Rock (and not approached to this degree in Jazz or Classical either) -- both by thoroughly dilating its sound with cries for help, animalistic screams/howls, and through a wild, endlessly varied and nuanced expressiveness that unlocks seemingly long-dormant, repressed psychology/forces of nature.

(2) The shape-shifting, extremely physical, tactile and surreal instrumentals/compositions are constantly expressing, both in unison and counter to his vocal expressions, the concept(s) of violent facial/body contortions and of influx/warping of spatial dimensions, his past enacting terrible delusions and scars upon him (farcical and serious) as he is acting them out/acting against this affliction, and these often become akin to "out-of-body" experiences, like he is exploding out of the confines of his skin to express something not possible otherwise.

(3) The endless variation of the music, and its constant flux of vocal and instrumental creativity, while also echoing, reminiscing on previous variations, seems to present an ever-expanding scope of all which came before, turning the whole album into like that of a massive stream-of-conscious.

(4) 1, 2, and 3 combined with the very deep conviction, blues and soul, fundamental to the work.

All of these factors combine to turn the work into an extraordinarily offbeat, insane, metaphysical experience, which expounds relentlessly and endlessly on the thoughts and expressions of a crazed, madman into a whole that is impossibly profound and powerful, of endless detours, an endless domino effect of its own insanity trying to break free from its own skin.

To what end?