poptimists | Mercury Shortlist

freakytigger.livejournal.com posting in

Arctic Monkeys' Favourite Worst Nightmare
Basquiat Strings featuring Seb Rochford's Basquiat Strings
Bat for Lashes' Fur & Gold
Dizzee Rascal's Maths & English
Jamie T's Panic Prevention
Klaxons' Myths of the Near Future
Maps' We Can Create
New Young Pony Club's Fantastic Playroom
Fionn Regan's The End of History
The View's Hats Off to the Buskers
Amy Winehouse's Back to Black
The Young Knives' Voices of Animals and Men

go on then.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dubdobdee.livejournal.com

jazz? world? electronica? classical? hem hem "experimental"?
(are basquiat strings a kind of "portsmouth sinfonia w/o the politics"?)

From:

piratemoggy.livejournal.com

They appear to mostly just be really rubbish, playing boring classical music of the unlistenable sort that makes everyone think they hate classical music.

From their myspace: "Basquiat Strings are a five piece string group with their own repertoire of originals (composed by cellist Ben Davis) and arrangements. Ben finds inspiration from the raucous, driving Hungarian string groups of Transylvania, the luxuriously rich Brahms sextets and the unruly compositions and workshop arrangements of Charles Mingus. Well, all that and people asking him to fix strings for their sessions... The players have all trained classically yet are "naturally bilingual....wholly imbued with jazz's improvisational facility." (Chris Parker) The group has been involved with various other live projects including that of Juliet Roberts and Andrew McCormack; and has recorded for Ty, Darren Emerson, Monica Vasconcelos (Nois 4) Border Crossing and the Ed Moto produced Jazzinho record. Basquiat Strings are touring in March to promote and launch their own record "Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford" ..............PRESS:.............................................................................................. "Forceful Beast introduces Polar Bear drummer Seb Rochford's collaboration with Basquiat Strings, Faintly reminiscent of the Kronos Quartet but more beat driven and further off-planet." Chris May... All About Jazz 2005 F-ire : Works: Volume 2............................"Basquiat Strings shunt the mood again, as Ben Davis heads a classically trained quintet who are still profoundly influenced by the jazz experience" Martin Lonely... BBC Jazz Reviews 2004 F-ire: Works......................"Basquiat Strings track Double-Dares is a moody highlight " John Walters... The Guardian 2004 F-ire: Works......................"...Given extra emotional power by Ben Davis' Basquiat Strings" John Walters... The Guardian 2004 Nois 4: Gente......................."...A splendid string quintet" Robert Wyatt... The Times 2004 Nois 4: Gente............................."Basquiat Strings are that rare thing: a string group specialising in a unique combination with kit drums." Cheltenham Music Society... 2006"

I particularly like the last bit "that rare thing?!?!?!" I realise the classical world is a bit closed but ffs that is hardly new is it. Mentioning Yellowcard'd give them a heart attack, presumably.

Naturally bilingual, eh? What a load of arse. Given the number of strings musicians demonstrating you can make perfectly accessible AND technically brilliant music at the moment, there's really no need for that sort of pretentious arsefest which, bluntly, doesn't even demonstrate decent musicianship to me- it seems to be all over the place in a totally uncontrolled fashion (as opposed to for effect) and whether that's deliberate or not it sounds fucking rubbish. All their songs sound exactly the same to me, except that the first three on the myspace are slightly less listenable than the last, which almost achieves a degree of non-crapness for the first thirty seconds, at least.

It's so annoying when there are so many GOOD things to do with classical instruments but people like that are all "oh gosh look at those prostitutes writing brilliant pop songs with their classical training; we prefer to write utterly unlistenable tosh so that we and our friends can discuss how it pushes the boundaries of ~~boredom~~ the aesthetics in a way utter arseholes like us have been doing for centuries whilst sellouts like Tchaikovsky wrote slutty little concertos." DAMN THEM ALL, this is precisely why no one likes a violinist.

/hate

Bat For Lashes are supposed to be experimental I think. She is "alright," I would say, from the myspace. If she added me I would probably accept the add but I definitely wouldn't get excited about the whole thing.

From:

ms-bracken.livejournal.com

"That rare thing" is horrible. The one article I have ever saved from a newspaper is about recurring yet meaningless phrases in book reviews, which include things like "rare felicity", "wickedly funny" and "the name of that young German corporal was Adolf Hitler". In the same list for music reviews, "that rare thing" is surely up there. EVERYTHING IS THAT RARE THING, A THING THAT IS SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT FROM ANOTHER THING.

From:

giddyoldgoat.livejournal.com

'Rare Felicity' = good name for indie grp

Based on their myspace samples, Basquiat Strings sound pretty lightweight, mild-mannered even - i mean, it's not exactly george crumb, is it? i think they must have listened to a lot of John Zorn's string quartet/masada stuff.

no music is 'inaccessible'

based on a quick glimpse on C4, Bat for Lashes is aiming for a Teenage Jesus and the Bjorks kind of vibe

From:

skyecaptain.livejournal.com

My reentry into classical music after years of denying my realauthenticlegitimatesfistcated roots with this POP PABULUM (as Skye would say):

CROSSOVER APPEAL!!!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRIUYgozCGo)

From:

dubdobdee.livejournal.com

i'm not sure how well it works -- instead of "bilingual" i wd have said "neither fish nor fowl", viz neither bartok nor grappelli, and def not making a very coherent musical argument for why something merely between those two is a useful thing to try ("transylvanian" and jazz string styles are different languages, and i think i'd prefer an argument BETWEEN them, a heightening and framing of difference, not a polyglot fusion that blurs the distinctions) (i LOVE bartok and i like the really tweaky avant-jazz violinists too, like leroy jenkins or billy bang; but i'm not getting double the fun here)

moggy, i can't work out if yr against it bcz you think it's a bad weak try at non-tonal music, or bcz ALL non-tonal music is a bad thing -- yr rant comes across as the latter mostly, which is a pity, cz i think the prob in this case really is the former; a project that isn't quite working and seems a bit pleased with itself (i don't think the problem is that it isn't accessible, it's that it's eager-to-please while believing itself pleasantly out there, so it comes across weirdly glib)

obviously someone liking it just because it "makes you better than ppl who like pop" would be totally crappy, but that doesn't apply to robert wyatt or john walters (who've both appeared on top of the pops) (i am being marcello in this post)... and some people really do like non-tonal music for its own sake -- ie sukrat-poptimists like me and

xyzzz___ and

giddyoldgoat for example, tho actually all of us prefer it a fair bit more hardcore than this (cf xyzzz's "screech" series that he posted on

sukrat: this is very mellow by comparison with any of that!)

From:

dubdobdee.livejournal.com

further notes on accessibility: julio's LJ name is IMPOSSIBLE to get right!

From:

piratemoggy.livejournal.com

I am against it because of the attitude and the badness, really. I actually like quite a lot of music that sounds not dissimilar to the Basquiet case (har har har I am so drunk I am making with teh puns good god deliver me from the internets) but I dislike that they clearly consider themselves superior to other people because they are crap. Essentially, I could throw the same criticisms I have thrown at them at Rasputina, for instance, who I adore and own about 7000 albums by but the difference is that Rasputina, despite having a clear 'we are bringing cellos into the fore of rock/pop' agenda, don't go 'o yeah and this means you're all ignorant peasants for not being us.'

Err, this is probably not making sense. Anyway, the point I wanted to make was that I don't mind the idea of people making music like the Basquiet people it's just I really think they have got it all wrong and as a violinist it makes me weep to realise this is the sort of thing people envisage when contemporary violin is brought to mind. I'd really rather people thought we were all mad Final Fantasy-esque types. :/

From:

piratemoggy.livejournal.com

nb: (OH DEAR MOGGY SHUT DOWN THE COMPUTER NOW PLZ) I am actually v. big fan of non-tonal, messy music when is done right but feel you shouldn't be able to pass bad musicianship off as it because it is an interesting and v. difficult to pull off sort of thing and I have immense respect for people that do. As was demonstrated by LoP ~~and my affection for Katharine McPhee~~.

From:

dubdobdee.livejournal.com

haha ok fair enough, i think i was misreading yr rant a bit -- actually i largely agree with it in regard to smugness (but this is based only on those mp3s), and am just somewhat feeling, well ok if robert wyatt sed he enjoyed it, then (on a good night?) maybe they are a lot better than they manage on record? (i interviewed him once, he is a very nice and quite sensible man)

everyone shd post more when drunk