Mercury Shortlist

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

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.

Comments

Re: lord sukrat sez: MORE TOKENS PLZ

[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!)

Re: lord sukrat sez: MORE TOKENS PLZ

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

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

hi i am drunk sense probably not happening

[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. :/

Re: hi i am drunk sense probably not happening

[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.

Re: hi i am drunk sense probably not happening

[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