Re: [microsound] glut of new cds -- & writing about them

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@xxxxxxxxx>]

ola,

This discussion has been interesting for me. It offers points of correlation
to other registers such as writing ..

As someone who occasionally writes about sound, and thus receives promos,
I've been overwhelmed by the flood of releases for about two years now. I
still have CDs from 2002 I am catching up on.

I've tried different tactics to handle it -- ie discussing releases in
batches, as an essay, attempting to articulate links and discontinuities,
new approaches and general ones, but most publications carry the
narrow-minded perspective that the only way to write about music is in a
review. They generally shun essays and columns, ie what they tend to call
"thinkpieces."

There is a tendency among reviews to end up either as banal as the most
banal release or they take so much energy to write (in terms of saying
something as evocative _as_ a good release) that it drains the most
vitriolic writer's patience and energy. (I'm guilty of both).

I'd like to see a remix of the oldskool style aesthetic essays floating
around at the turn of the 20th century. The Wire does a bit of this (as well
as e/I a bit), but most magazines (Grooves, etc) do not. The reason is that
the writers are generally incapable of writing in such a style and the
editors generally incapable of recognising it.

It's rare because it requires the writer to have a kind of encyclopaedic yet
intuitive feel for directions in sound as well as the ability to cite and
reference quickly and with effect. In other words, it requires that the
writer navigate knowledge and talent as well as the tools to draw
comparisons if not forge frameworks for analysis, critique and praise that
are foreign (np. the recent discussion here on 'beauty').

What has frustrated me to no end is the denigration of such approaches in
favour of quotidian soundbyte "reviews" and ceaseless, rewritten press
release "face-interviews" that mean little and do nothing to explore the
aesthetic, historical as well as ethico-politico dimensions of all forms of
sound. 

Writing, in this sense, has flattened itself to the medium of television.
Those who struggle against it -- I'm thinking of Phillip Sherburne, Kodwo
Eshun, for example--are to be praised. However I have the impression that
the '90s era of fascinating electronic music writing--and thus perhaps of
innovative releases as well--is over: now we find ourselves surrounded by an
increasingly conservative atmosphere sinking both the publication and
presentation of discourse and sound.

This isn't surprising: a cursory historical evaluation of any
sound-discourse nexus reveals that after the freaks come the bureaucrats,
with their little paper castles filled with rules and procedure, telling us
what the audience can and cannot understand.

Hail! .. whatever ruptures from this mediocrity ..

cheers,

    tobias




tobias c. van Veen -----------++++
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org --
http://www.thisistheonlyart.com --
McGill Communication + Philosophy
ICQ: 18766209 | AIM: thesaibot +++ 


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