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| Adam |
 Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 10:40 am |
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Joined: 07 Apr 2006
Posts: 37
Location: Nottinghamshire, England, UK
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| ...One thing I cannot obide, absolutely loathe is seeing laptop musicians performing whilst smoking...one hand placed on mouse or keyboard with the other holding a cigarette. I think it looks ridiculous. It doesn't make a performance very attractive to watch in my opinion. And there's always a bottle of beer beside their laptops...isn't it about time laptop performances became more fanciful and attractive? |
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| bliss |
| Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 11:18 am |
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Joined: 03 Aug 2006
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Adam wrote: ...One thing I cannot obide, absolutely loathe is seeing laptop musicians performing whilst smoking...one hand placed on mouse or keyboard with the other holding a cigarette. I think it looks ridiculous. It doesn't make a performance very attractive to watch in my opinion. And there's always a bottle of beer beside their laptops...isn't it about time laptop performances became more fanciful and attractive?
Someone once said the same thing about jazz musicians during their performances. You can read Chasin' the Trane to find out that John Coltrane actually had to dance on the top of the counters in bars to earn a buck -- and this was when he was already well known and established! Anyway -- the thing is that it's in a bar/nightclub scene and audience members are talking and smoking and in some cases eating -- very few are actually paying attention to the performance. Many just want to get laid. My point is that the performer is probably just working on stuff as if he or she were in his or her home studio. Might as well have a beer and a smoke while everybody else has theirs. You don't see cigarettes and beer at museum and gallery gigs but you do see wine! 
I know what you're saying about the laptop performers because jazz musicians still managed to look cool.  |
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| MetroSonus |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:35 am |
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Joined: 24 Jul 2006
Posts: 25
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Notice you said mouse there, and not controller decked out with knobs and sliders.
This is a toughie...
I read an artcile in wired magazine about the same thing, this was laptop gigs up in NYC. The author, while still rying to make it sound cool, was trying to say that it was pretty lame to build up a chic around not knowing if the guy with the laptop is playing the music, or playing solitare.
Obviously that is a little lacking... I mean, the guy with the laptop, between the two PA speakers, with the wires going to his laptop, is playing the music. If he doesn't look like it, through body language, I say hack..
I say hack about alot of things.. people that look like they dont try, people that only try hard enough to look like they tried and them use all sorts of fancy language to justify their "art".. "oh you see, but looking so ambigious, i'm transposing the sense of personal space to make the audience the performer, and therby create the stage within the audience, where who was once the performer is now the director"... puke, puke....
I think in general, the amount of effort someone puts into their music, is proportional to their attidue on stage or in general. Theres exceptions.. ususally the overdone public image backing up crappy rock.... but I digress.
Throw in the laptop, and I think it just gets more complicated, or worse I rather. Now everybody can steal software, sample CDs, download songs, mix those up whatever...
Its a toughie as I said.. the guys music might be good, but his attitude sucks, I usually wont like the music much longer..
Then you get some college kids, playing a CD of songs made out of acid loops, having what looks like the best time in the world on stage, and you think "hey they're just kids having fun".. and then theres a million things inbetween.
On a candid level, I wont play out anymore unless it's a "professional" type gig. Im a solo electronic act, and if I play out, its usually as an opener, or a "festival" night where a few guys have gotten together to fill a roster for the evening. Its usually people I know and feel comfortbale working with. That's when I do dance stuff.. and I usually have about three controllers with me too, running off of my laptop. On the other side, I may do ambient in the back of a book store cafe or something. Those are pretty low energy, but I do sit there triggering loops with a few controllers. But in either case, I try to be professional, I introduce myself over the PA, I have something up with my name on it.. ect. I never would come in with the attitude of "hey, you owe ME something....". Performers, Djs.. theyre all public servants, and we got to be a bit like politicians, shaking babies and kissing hands at time.. lol |
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| atomic_afro |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 1:41 pm |
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Joined: 25 Mar 2006
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Location: Bellingham, WA (Home of Edirol USA!)
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No doubt Metro. A year back when I was playing gigs with my band RnA, I did whatever I could to make the performance as "live" as possible, even though it was a computer-based electronic group. That meant throwing in live effects, mixing between tracks, and basically doing stuff on the fly similar to a turntablist, only with a PC instead of 2 turntables.
I firmly believe that you've got to give a little something for the people to viscerally feel, otherwise they're going to treat you as little more than live background muzak. Smoking, and looking like a hispster douche isn’t going to make the people like you any more. Ooooh, I’ve got a powerbook, I’m so cool sitting behind it looking like I’m doing something, all the while I’m just playing my tracks through iTunes.
ATA |
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| oscillateur |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 1:51 pm |
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Joined: 07 Apr 2006
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Location: Paris, France
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One of the most boring laptop concert I ever saw was Biosphere at Beaubourg in Paris a few years ago.
Booooo-riiiiing. He could have been playing with the equalisation of winamp for all I know... I saw Biosphere + Deathprod live a few months before and the concert was very good, but it was not only one guy and his laptop...
If I remember correctly, I think Vladislav Delay played the same evening. Also laptop-based, but he used an external mixer, perhaps some external effects too. And the concert was really better because of this : we could see that he was actually making music, not just pushing the "play" button.
One of the few people that I've seen several times live with just a laptop and that managed to make interesting music and interesting concerts each time is Christian Fennesz. As I knew the albums quite well, I could hear that he was re-arranging his tracks live, that everything was not entirely planned (at least it sounded like that). |
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| MetroSonus |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 2:06 pm |
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Joined: 24 Jul 2006
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you know, we can condense all that by saying.. "the computer / laptop replaces the hardware, but not the performer..." ! lol
I just find it hard to believe that someone who honestly treats their craft with effort and care, will turn around and shroud it in attidue and mystique. Good PR people will do that.. (if you can afford them) but I think were talking about the musicians that would play on the local pub circuit or such..
You know we really could extend this into other things if we tried.. Although im not blaming it, alot of this poseurism seems to have sprouted around the time of the internet... before then, there was such a local underground art music thing, at least here in tampa / orlando that lots of good things came from. And now with the internet, it seems everyone has taken a sort of "lets not and buy the tshirt and look like we did" sort of attitude.. with the photos on my space to enhance it.
I just dont know.. the kids in genertion x are approaching their 30s now. I think what happened is we have that, where most of us have partied and some of us have done the art thing.. now were all jaded because we dont have good credit, havent worked up the ladder to financial stability and were all jaded and angry with outrselves now. we seem to want everything without the effort..
not me though, i work my ass off...  lol |
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| bliss |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 4:26 pm |
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MetroSonus wrote: I just dont know.. the kids in genertion x are approaching their 30s now. I think what happened is we have that, where most of us have partied and some of us have done the art thing.. now were all jaded because we dont have good credit, havent worked up the ladder to financial stability and were all jaded and angry with outrselves now. we seem to want everything without the effort..
Kinda funny that you said this because it reminds me of a conversation that I had with a friend not even 24 hours ago. The thing about any movement in the past is that it was intimately tied to a specific geographic location where its adherents espoused a definite way to live one's life. Jazz was first in New Orleans, LA and then New York City, NY. Blues was down in the Mississippi delta and then Chicago, IL, HipHop and Rap was rooted to Brooklyn, NY. Boston, MA, Seattle, WA and Athens, GA all had their moment of introducing new and interesting rock and roll. Even surfing, as in surf boards, sand, and carnuba wax was mainly an "underground" phenomenon known to locals on the beaches of Hawaii and southern California before the sport exploded into popularity with the movie Gidget in 1965. What I am pointing to is the bohemian ingredient that was the lifeblood and soul of all those movements. People subscribed to a certain way of life and they networked and they depended on one another for survival so that they could continue to do what they loved long into the twilight of their lives. Searching for the perfect wave for many of them is still the primary focus of their day to day. And out of all their dedication commerce emerged (in various legit and not-so legit forms) and they learned how to make money in order to maintain their vision and philosophy of how to live. They were not into what they were into just because it was fun, just because it was art or just for the sport of it, they were into it because it was also an agreeable way to live one's life.
Today there is no such location. The globe is dotted many times over with electronic musicians and their laptops performing everywhere! There is no Mecca. There are lots of bedrooms, though. There are very few who are willing to share and support others like them. It does seem to be rife with snobbery rather than humility which was the hallmark of all the movements that came before them. There doesn't seem to be a true electronic music culture despite the fact that there are tons upon tons of electronic artists. And, yes, while many toil through many midnights a year splicing and dicing beats, bits, and loops, recording the footsteps of ants, pulling the finger of their Uncle Charlie to record his farts for later manipulations through a simple granular synth, there is almost no sign of true kinship.
Oval? Fine. Aphex Twin? Fine. Autechre? Fine. Squarepusher? Fine. Boxcutter? Fine. The only thing that really unites those guys is their laptops. That's it. This is not to say that they and others don't have a personal philosophy that they each live by but what it does suggest is that most are living in a box instead of outside it. No view of life and how it should be lived has ever jumped off of the page of any interview that I have ever read by any of them and that's not too surprising since many have professed a hatred of the media. Still if one were to contrast the "culture" of electronic music to the culture of jazz or surfing one would notice a big damn difference. That difference is what turns crowds off, in my opinion. I've seen live performances by Autechre, Plaid, Mira Calix and others and almost nobody in the audience dances or tries to meet one another. How can the audience even relate to a laptop musician when there is almost no human element in the life that such a person has chosen to lead? |
Last edited by bliss on Tue Aug 15, 2006 3:21 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| atomic_afro |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:19 pm |
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Dude, hold up bliss. There is a communal aspect to certain styles of electronic music, for better or for worse. What you were going off of was the rather limited perspective of IDM/experimental/"laptop" music, which many times is DESIGNED to be undanceable (and as a result quite individualistic). In effect, it's the antithesis of the other major branch of electronic music, dance music.
Of course, due to the commercial popularity of certain forms of electronic dance music (like Trance) in other countries, the respective music culture has been weakened over there. Just like hip-hop has been weakened here.
It's rather presumptuous to say that electronic music somehow lacks any philosophical backing, as ravers often cry out "PLUR!", along with preaching about half a dozen other leftwing/hippie/libertarian viewpoints if you care to listen. Likewise, the industrial electronic music scene in its various strains breeds a significantly different set of views to those seen at most raves.
The difference is there is true plurality in beliefs in modern electronic music. Whereas hip-hop, rock, blues, etc. all for most part have a rather homogenous background to start with, Electronic is truly a world wide music genre, and as a result has no central core aside from a technological background/outlook. Of course individual styles may have common belief trends (I somehow doubt that a right-wing conservative would be making Psy-Trance), but as a whole electronic music is just an idea onto which people place their own views and beliefs.
And that's fine for me. As a kid, I always preferred to play alone, and as a from of music, electronic taps into my very individualistic identity.
ATA |
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| MetroSonus |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 5:32 pm |
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Quote: I've seen live performances by Autechre, Plaid, Mira Calyx and others and almost nobody in the audience dances or tries to meet one another.
That, might be an almost American thing... Ive heard quite a few european musicians on tour here who are used to playing large festival type shows comment on how strange it is to play in a club here, to a crowd of 3-500 people, where everyone stands pretty much still and sort of looks like they dont want to be there anyway. |
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| bliss |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 7:26 pm |
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ATA, your points are well taken. You are right my perspective is limited but that is inherent to any individual. As MetroSonus points out, I am referring to my perspective of the American experience in electronic music. I should have been more clear about that.
Jazz and blues cultures are not homogenous they represent diversity to the very core of human experience. Just as Hip Hop does. Marketing however has obscured that by emphasizing the limited views of a few with such slogans as "Keep it real." I used to be a break dancer back in the early 80s and every kind of person in my locality was at the parties. Blacks, Latinos, Whites, Koreans and Jews. That was a very exciting time here in the US. It was, dare I say, beautiful. The philosophy was self-evident and nobody needed to preach it to others who were open-minded. Kinda like the culture of surfing. (As you can tell I'm a big fan of surfing.)
Being an electronic musician/musician/composer/whatever it doesn't appear to be that same kind of camaraderie as I experienced back in the early 80s. I mean, it is among a few here and a few there but it doesn't hardly feel like any sort of movement even though it obviously is when I get on the internet. Maybe I need to move to Europe to find in large measure what's missing here in the States.
Perhaps I've been duped by the marketing tactics of advertisers as well. Despite the fact that I do not watch TV.
However I am very well aware of the abstract nature of some types of electronic music. It's not unlike the approaches of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem De Kooning. This similarity is what drew me to electronic music in the first place. But in terms of relating to an audience it is clear that there has to be some sort of relavance for the audience to even care about listening and taking part in the experience (experiment?).
Europe certainly has it's share of existentialists with all those big names. Sartre, Camus Nietzsche, Kafka, etc. So maybe that's the cultural connection that its audiences have with many types of electronic music.
Hmmm... |
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| michaeluna |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:01 pm |
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[quote="MetroSonus"]
That, might be an almost American thing... Ive heard quite a few european musicians on tour here who are used to playing large festival type shows comment on how strange it is to play in a club here, to a crowd of 3-500 people, where everyone stands pretty much still and sort of looks like they dont want to be there anyway.[/quote]
I will admit, most of the time I am that American audience member. Although, I stand there unmoving not because I don't want to be there. No, it's because I just blazed a fat joint on my way in and I"M FEEELING THE MUSIC WITH MY MIND.
Actually, I do like to dance, but then I'll hear a particularly interesting sound and stop, transfixed. A good song will hold me completely still. |
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| Jaymis |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 9:51 pm |
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I don't know about the "not looking like you want to be there" thing, but at the Sigur Ros gig I went to here in Brisbane (at the incredible Tivoli Theatre) the entire crowd was reverently silent and still for the entire show. Not a word was yelled or spoken, hardly anyone dancing. That was an incredible gig and everyone wanted to be there.
On the flipside, and I'm sure people are finding this elsewhere, venues in Brisbane are getting filled with fuckwits who pay $40+ to go to a show and then TALK LOUDLY the entire time. I saw Emiliana Torrini last year, and she actually took the time between songs to say "I can't believe there are so many people who are coming to a gig and then talking through the music, what is with you people".
To me this is part of the whole "taking drugs and wearing ripped stencilled jeans and going to see live music is marketable now" culture. I'd say a huge chunk of these people don't know anything about or care for the music, they're just there because they've got disposable income and the girl whose panties they're trying to remove heard a track once on a Gap advert.
I personally don't care if musicians smoke while playing. It's illegal now here anyway , but I've played enough Jazz to dig the aesthetic. I personally don't smoke, have in the past when working hospitality, but the smoking ban in clubs is totally awesome! I can actually VJ a gig now, come home and not need to leave my controllers and cables outside because they're completely impregnated with smoke!
Never again will I turn my projector on to watch a movie and be blasted in the face with smoke from last week's gig. Hell yeah. |
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| MetroSonus |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 10:03 pm |
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Joined: 24 Jul 2006
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Well, maybe in america, and perhaps limited to florida, or at least tampa (i dont want to speak for places I havent been.. XD) Ive had to come to grips with with the relazation that things have changed. I think largely, people care more about being social than they do music. Aaron Copland said in his book "what to listen for in music", written in the 1930's, that most people dont like music, they like it as a distraction. Which, I think for most people, the culture surrounding it, becomes the vehicle for which they can play these social games... Speaking of these off the mainstream genres. Bands are like a dress code.. the longer the genre is around the more the bands start to sound like the genre rather than define it. It's just a glass to hold your drug for the evening, a tshirt with a band on it that claims to be different yet sounds the same as everyone else.. Look at people myspace profiles.. they don't say "im a nice outgoing person whose into boatbuilding, I love to laugh at a good joke" they're all define by the bands they listen to.. or at least pretend to..
I think if you step back and look at the content of music as a whole.. we have very little niche, cutting edge music anymore, thanks to the internet. What we do have, is a new idea that gets replicated like a virus as soon as it's put out, and run into the ground by people with a low immune system who have built up a tolerence to all the preexisitng crap. So we end up with a few good bands off to the sides, and a whole lotta crap in the middle. All thanks to the internet..
case in point.. look at the you tube videos, how everybody now has to jump out of a closet to scare someone, and then slow it down a million times. it was funny the first time... but now theres like a zillion copycats out there.
The internet has spun up the life cycle of every idea out there.. what may have taken a natural course of decades is now months and years.. I think music / media as a whole is sufering severly... its a drug now with all the instant access. after a while it's never enough.. you need more more to get the next high.
The next ten years or so are going to be interesting to see how this all pans out.. |
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| Jaymis |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 10:24 pm |
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Metro, lots of interesting ideas there. Especially Aaron Copland's "most people don't like music".. I've always believed this, and it's a quite interesting idea for someone like me who is a compulsive eclectic music listener.
The thing I don't understand is that these people actually pay lots of money to go to a venue, ignore the music and piss off the people around them. At DJ Shadow last week (which cost either AU$80 or $60 depending on when you bought your tickets), there was a whole group of people standing in a circle and talking loudly through a reasonable chunk of the show. I just can't understand this, and I don't think you can blame the internet for that kind of behaviour.
The net has definitely compressed the media cycle (well, for everyone but the music and record industries.. Going to wait 3 months for them to deign to release Clerks 2 here? I don't think so), but I don't think it's going to be as damaging as you're making out. There have always been copycats, I'm currently in several conversations about spam sites RSS scraping popular blogs. This dilutes the real work for people who aren't smart enough to realise what's going on. But the people who actually matter - those who create and influence what others listen to and view - aren't going to be fooled by the youtube copies.
Seriously good art will always shine out like a beacon. |
Last edited by Jaymis on Sun Aug 06, 2006 10:26 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| bliss |
| Posted: Sun Aug 06, 2006 10:25 pm |
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MetroSonus wrote: Well, maybe in america, and perhaps limited to florida, or at least tampa (i dont want to speak for places I havent been.. XD) Ive had to come to grips with with the relazation that things have changed. I think largely, people care more about being social than they do music. Aaron Copland said in his book "what to listen for in music", written in the 1930's, that most people dont like music, they like it as a distraction. Which, I think for most people, the culture surrounding it, becomes the vehicle for which they can play these social games... Speaking of these off the mainstream genres. Bands are like a dress code.. the longer the genre is around the more the bands start to sound like the genre rather than define it. It's just a glass to hold your drug for the evening, a tshirt with a band on it that claims to be different yet sounds the same as everyone else.. Look at people myspace profiles.. they don't say "im a nice outgoing person whose into boatbuilding, I love to laugh at a good joke" they're all define by the bands they listen to.. or at least pretend to..
I think if you step back and look at the content of music as a whole.. we have very little niche, cutting edge music anymore, thanks to the internet. What we do have, is a new idea that gets replicated like a virus as soon as it's put out, and run into the ground by people with a low immune system who have built up a tolerence to all the preexisitng crap. So we end up with a few good bands off to the sides, and a whole lotta crap in the middle. All thanks to the internet..
case in point.. look at the you tube videos, how everybody now has to jump out of a closet to scare someone, and then slow it down a million times. it was funny the first time... but now theres like a zillion copycats out there.
The internet has spun up the life cycle of every idea out there.. what may have taken a natural course of decades is now months and years.. I think music / media as a whole is sufering severly... its a drug now with all the instant access. after a while it's never enough.. you need more more to get the next high.
The next ten years or so are going to be interesting to see how this all pans out..
Good points from top to bottom. And a very good quote from Aaron Copeland. |
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