I failed rather extravagantly to enjoy Weirdo Rippers. Parts of it reminded me of Animal Collective trying to be punk-via-no-wave (vomit!). Some tracks seemed to contain decent song fragments, however cataracted with dissonance and noise. If there was any meaningful lyricism or songcraft,(turns out there intermittently was) why did they so willfully obfuscate it? I didn't understand. I mostly want nothing to do with modernist notions about music, all these bands that seem to want to create anything but a listenable song. And I have extremely limited patience for bands who test your patience at length before giving up the sugar (a bit more when it's because a record is melodically/structurally subtle). I've naturally learned to extend that patience to the breaking point, because outside the mainstream it's often worth it. But Weirdo Rippers wasn't yielding enough for me

Nouns is different! What am I hearing? Hooks! Songs! What happened to songs anyway? Why has slopping every track up with the sound of abraded metal, electric shavers and drooling computers become a badge of coolness? The only times it's warranted are when it serves to magnify the goodness of the songs underneath. Alien Lanes, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, The Glow pt. 2 etc. And it seems like this new No Age record might have just that in mind! Good news.

Yeah, I don't know. I gave it a couple listens and I found it to be completely mediocre. Nothing great, nothing horrible. And I'm a big fan of noise rock in general, but this just did nothing for me.

yeah black gravel, i'll just have to disagree. not about no age (as i haven't heard the album yet), but about your statement on the direction of some bands. i think it's about time that more noisy music has become popular now. frankly, i'm sick of hearing the same retired hooks, and i like the energy and more experimental approach that bands like animal collective and many others have brought to rock music.

My point was that alienating noise/the sound of Megatron tearing up sheetmetal doesn't belong in music UNLESS it serves a song. You disagree with that?

You think noise should be on a record just as noise? You think that noise should be added to music even if it doesn't improve that music? Because frankly, to quote the old people, that isn't music. If it's noise and it's not serving a song, it's not music. It's just uh. Noise.

You got the completely wrong idea if you understood me to be saying that I oppose noisy music. There's a difference between needlessly noisy music and music that artfully employs noise. I was pretty much using Weirdo Rippers vs. Nouns to illustrate the difference I was talking about.

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You're still not doing yourself a favor with your illustration. Now you just come off as someone who doesn't like having their pretty pop music tarnished with some rough edges.

The place I find beauty in my music is the ability for so many varying sounds to affect me in so many different ways. Homotopy to Marie will always be one of my favorite albums; if you were to tell me that the only function those songs serve is to just be noise, I would call you insane. Noise music requires an imagination and an open-mind; it requires intelligence. It is some of the music I struggle most with, but I manage to find an occasional album that blows my mind and sticks with me for a long time.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't legit. Anyways, No Age aren't anywhere near noise or noise rock. No Age are pretty damn tame.

From a less-then-rigorous pass of Nouns it sounds like they're sublimating and burying their poppier elements into a bed of warmish noise, as opposed to haphazardly throwing noise shrapnel around.

EDIT: Which is, loosely and perhaps to even greater effect, what I believe Animal Collective do as well. Can't speak for the first No Age album.

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Just wanted to say that this "pretty pop music tarnished with some rough edges", as JGlass put it so nicely, is great. Just after one listen i was ready to put it in my top ten of the year. Great stuff

quote:

You're still not doing yourself a favor with your illustration. Now you just come off as someone who doesn't like having their pretty pop music tarnished with some rough edges.

Are some people really this incapable of understanding or responding properly? If you actually read what I said, then your response makes so little sense it might make my brain melt. Noise is GOOD if it SERVES the music.

Now, I know I already said as much a few times, so let me repeat it a few more times for the benefit of some of you who don't seem to get it just yet.

NOISE IS GOOD IF IT SERVES MUSIC.

I LIKE MUSIC WITH NOISE.

NOISE. IS GOOD. IF IT SERVES THE MUSIC.

ALSO

NOISE CAN ALSO BE "GOOD" IN ITS OWN RIGHT AND FOR ITS OWN SAKE. IT CAN BE CHALLENGING AND INTERESTING AND ENGAGING.

HOWEVER

THAT IS NOT MUSIC.


But what Glass went on to say does indeed touch upon a kind of "music" that I'm speaking to.

Most of Nurse with Wound is not, quite objectively is not music. That doesn't mean it's without value, but it irked me to see that record on the Pitchfork albums list for that reason. I guess it didn't specify "musical" albums, but still

If you think I Cannot Feel You as the Dogs Are Laughing etc. is harrowing, and horrible, and unforgettable, then you're right. If you think it's music, well. If someone thought that was music, we'd be discovering a rather virulent new alien strain of "wrong."

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Fine, but you're definition of arbitrary noise, or albums that are worthless because of too much arbitrary noise, is--for lack of a better term--arbitrary. Objectively, qualitatively, undisputably arbitrary. And I flat disagree with you, as is my wont, about Animal Collective. I think their use of "noise" is sophisticated and very much to the point... and musical.

Animal Collective do make music. Obviously. I just find it intermittently precious, affected, irritating, and derivative. I don't mean by that to say that it's all bad.

Nurse With Wound don't make music. The members of Nurse With Wound probably wouldn't claim to have set OUT to make music (on the records and songs I'm referring to, anyway)

Throbbing Gristle didn't often make music either. These are avant-garde outfits, who put out field recordings and confrontational sonic experiments. Whether or not they might also be musicians, they put out a whole lot of stuff that was. Not. Music.

And let me say, since people still don't seem to get it, for the eightieth time, that in discussing noise IN MUSIC I'm not objecting to the use of noise, I'm objecting to the gratuitous use of noise, the use of noise simply to use noise.

Not only does the clumsy and excessive application of noise have the potential to ruin good music, but it's also often a cheap and transparent way to seem "edgy" or "challenging."

I find people who call Animal Collective innovative hilarious. They are:

The Beach Boys with less talent having drank too much coffee and with access to modern technology. That's what they are. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, but calling them "innovative" is ridiculous.

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That's a massive over-simplification.

I edited my post to soften my description because I don't really hate Animal Collective. I even like some of their music.

If you ask me, as long as the creator IDs it as an album, or as a musical endeavor, then it's music. An hour of monotone, squealing reverb with nary a blip to distinguish any one single part of it, is still music. If it's sound it has to have a pitch right? Pitch is intrinsically music. No one would reduce it that far, except to make a statement, and they probably wouldn't sell many records, or maybe they would, but regardless, it's still music.

Right, an electric shaver has a pitch. If I set my electric shaver on the desk and let it rattle around for an hour, am I listening to music? No, obviously I'm not.

The approach you're suggesting represents so much about what I hate about modern musical (or artistic, literary etc.) discourse. What's music then? It's nothing! It's anything that can be heard! Suddenly "sound" and "music" are synonymous, as long as some simpleton insists that music is what he's put to wax. (again, try actually reading what I post - as I said, many pure noise artists like NWW probably wouldn't claim to be making music in the first place)

So everyone's opinion is so sacred, they all have such equal value, that music comes to mean absolutely fucking nothing at all. Dear God how I hate that shit.


So I can put on a Spiderman costume, clip a microphone to my balls, curl over and roll down a hill in a ball sucking my own dick, then publish whatever results as "music."

NO.

I jumped into this conversation late, so balls-out spiderman is now going to be forever etched in my mind.

Anyhow, No Age is one of my favorite bands at the moment. I really liked Weirdo Rippers, but with Nouns they've reached a new plateau. Really great stuff.

You can go back to arbitration on noise vs. music if you want.

Look, it all comes down to what people are willing to swallow. You may call a large enough chunk of the population to warrant the release of a sponsored album to be a bunch of nitwits, so long as the album doesn't adhere to your standard of what "music" is. Whatever. It more annoying to me when someone goes out of their way to say their noise is NOT MUSIC. Blah, blah, blah. People know what they're getting when you release an album of rattling electric razor sounds and it shows up in the "music" section at Best Buy. It's a fucking album. Get over it.

Mediocre, nothing special really but it can be fun at times.

This isn't an argument at all, JGlass hasn't responded and goathouse doesn't seem to understand what I'm saying in the slightest.

What I'm saying is that noise and music are two different things. Noise can complement or be a component of music. I am not equating noise with "bad" and music with "good." I'm not equating noisy music with "bad" and clean music as "good." The fact that you people are reading these conclusions into what I'm saying is confounding. There is no spectrum with music and noise at opposite ends, on which I would place a given recording.

Something can be totally unnerving and arresting and not music in the least. First track from Homotopy

Something can be totally unnerving and arresting and qualify as very, very, very, very slightly musical noise. Hamburger Lady.

I have no problem with either of these being sold as albums.

Something can be completely musical and also totally meaningless, disposable, craven, disgusting, pathetic, deplorable, miserable, poisonous and inane. Secondhand Serenade.

I have a BIG problem with that fuck's being allowed to make records. But there's nothing I can do.

Do you understand now? Please say you do.

Christ, you don't have to be so sanctimonious about it. You're expecting me to be careful with my responses, but you're the one disregarding gists if you're going to claim that I'm not interpreting you're posts within reason. I'm taking the liberty of reading a bias into your posts against much of the more experimental noise going on in "modern" music right now, and I'm correct to do so. Get over yourself. My last post was just to illustrate that I and others have a higher tolerance for it than you, which would also be correct. Are you reading my posts?

Sure am, and if you are in fact saying that "you and others" probably have a higher tolerance for noise or dissonance than I do, or even prefer it to a greater degree than I do, then you still don't get it.

I might be more geared toward songwriting than texture and sound than some "indie" fans", but again, one does not preclude the other - this indicates no distaste for "noise" whatsoever. I often have quite an appetite for it. But for some people, a great sound is all they need to send them straight to cloud 9. Me, I usually prefer a solid song and even some top-notch lyricism AS WELL.

Don't you remember me hollering about Meadowlands? Many of those songs employ noise and dissonance and experimental sound. And that record isn't just my favorite, it's about ninety miles ahead of my second favorite. Noise is good. Noise that is contrived or clumsy or counter-productive or just handled wrong is NOT good. One way to fumble the noise aspect is to use too much of it. I went on to add that Nurse With Wound can't be guilty of that sin of excess, because they aren't making music.

And stop with that "get over yourself" nonsense. If I had to guess, I'd say that I got over me sometime during the summer between fifth and sixth grade. There is a big difference between narcissism and my mix of combativeness and conviction.

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