This shit is almost worse than Polly Bradfield.
ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!!!
How much of it did you listen to? Did you hear Crazy Nigger? It's quite good, but it took me a few listens to really get into, especially because it's so long.
>>63182547
its hard not to enjoy and quite complex philosophicly. the fact that so many newfags first art music album is a same though.
>>63182727
I've listened to all of it. Very bland minimalism.
>>63182997
Your mom's very bland minimalism
>>63182547
You just aren't meant to be on the other side
>>63182547
>polly bradfield is bad
Hello plebeian
>>63183039
Explain how it's good.
Its not even hard to get
>>63183211
Yeah but it's still shit.
Great insight, great discussion. Thanks for this thread
>>63183178
the most innovative string instrument improvisation recording ever. the violin equivalent of derek bailey and more.
>>63183681
>innovative
How is it innovative?
>>63183805
her way of playing the violin by plucking it, sawing, etc. resembles american primitivism in a way.
>>63183681
>>63183861
>how to pretend like you know what you're talking about
you still haven't explained how it's good, innovative or experimental or influential do not mean good
>>63182997
>>63183178
>>63183805
>>63183910
FUCK YOU FUCKER
WHAT SHIT DO YOU EVEN LISTEN TO, HUH????? BACH?? MOZART??? FUCKING PATHETIC!!!!!!!!! TELL US WE'RE ALL FUCKING WAITING!!! I WANT TO SEE WANT GOOD TASTE LOOKS LIKE YOU FUCKING LOSER FUCK!! FUCK YOU!!!
>>63183910
>you still haven't explained how it's good, innovative or experimental
yeah i did
and i didn't call it influential. i dont know where you got that from.
>>63183861
How does it do so? Doesn't at all sound like Fahey.
>>63183979
you just namedropped things. here's how one might attempt to explain it a bit more clearly:
Bradfield's Solo Violin Improvisations are definitely harsh and disorienting and difficult to approach at first. Perhaps the first thing to note is Bradfield's dynamic use of silences, using them to separate out her small vignettes of violin techniques in a way comparable to other composers' and improvisers' uses of silence in the American avant-garde around the mid century and continuing to the present day in some circles. The silences don't act like typical tension builders as they do in most pieces in which silences are used but instead are periods that help to draw together and centralize the listener's attention before a new passage is played.
The passages themselves are highly dexterous and have a variety of really incredible timbres. Again, these aren't things that everyone is going to enjoy, and that's fine, but for fans of post-war western classical music, Bradfield's runs along the violin strings, plucking and scraping as she goes, summon a lot of interesting pitch-bending and percussive effects. The agility on display is a technical tour de force in its own right, but as anon mentioned, there's a quality similar to Derek Bailey's guitar improvisations that allows for immersion and propulsion of the listener in conjunction with "mere" technical display. Perhaps the main reason why these passages are just as effective as they are is the aforementioned centering of the listener's attention that can then get coaxed out, shattered, abused, rewarded, etc. in equal turn depending on the passage Bradfield carries out.
the unfortunate thing is that this effort post is probably going to result in the opposite reaction - now that i've actually explained why it's good, i'm sure we'll get people saying that i'm a meming tryhard for typing this out. i can go on but i'm at char limit and anticipate trolling.
>>63184134
>"...pitch-bending and percussive effects 'that will remind them of a somehow even more confrontational version of the ensemble pieces for strings of modern composers who like to summon hordes of locusts to play their instruments like many of the Spectralists, even if Bradfield isn't really working within that idiom directly.'"
Totally lost my train of thought on that sentence and wanted to add that part in.
>>63184134
>>63184169
and to finish up, sorry for triple posting -
The real heart of the matter is that it just sounds really, really good. I think people get this impression that people who like Bradfield are sitting back drinking a breakfast blend scratching their chin and being "contemplative." This is just a bad stereotype based on how many kids do meme this album. There are a lot of us who just really enjoy the free-form journey it takes us on. I think appreciating Bradfield is a lot more like appreciating jazz than it is appreciating classical music on a conceptual level or something.
>>63184102
closer to the bill orcutt end of primitivism, in terms of just a barrage of abstracted atonal plucking that sometimes subsides into actual notes.
>>63184134
>>63184204
>>63184250
It's just not creative. There are ways of making timbral music without it just being wankery a la what Bradfield did. Listen to Penderecki, listen to Ligeti, listen to - yes - Cage. The issue isn't "This is 2deep4me," it's 2shallow4me.
>>63184276
>It's just not creative.
who treads the same ground then?
>>63184276
i like those individuals' work, too, but they're going for something completely different. where you hear wankery, i hear spontaneity and freshness. it's like comparing classical marches to jazz music (okay, not a perfect comparison, but i hope you can understand where i'm going with this) - they're completely different uses of some of the same core ideas, instruments, and feelings.
i understand if you have a strong preference for composed music, though. i know lots of classical listeners who have a hard time with improvised music in general, and i can imagine that if you come to this kind of music with expectations of more density and/or structure that this could be off-putting. i think it's just different strokes, and i think painting it as "shallow" is a bit unfair. i would never call it "deep," just like i wouldn't call any other kind of music "deep." i was just trying to explain why i and others enjoy it.
>>63184338
I listed three, please read.
>>63184345
I mean, improvised music can be good. Anthony Braxton can be just as jarring as some of Bradfield. But he also displays a technical competency. I can't be sure what Bradfield is doing isn't just scraping, pausing to think what to scrape next, scraping again, etc. There's no real skill in it.
Basically Bradfield's music just doesn't bring much of anything to the table. It's not particularly new, it's not at all skillful, it's not at all worth sitting through an entire album's worth. It's not like Threnody where there's a constant sort of development occuring.
>>63184375
>I listed three, please read.
you made those comparisons based off a single aspect of her music. when i feel like listening to bradfield i don't also feel like listening to the composers you mentioned.
Mozart is better than all the artists ITT anyway
You have shit taste all of you.
>>63184430
No one contested that, idiot.
>>63184375
like i said, different strokes. my preference for music is how it immerses me and how it sounds, and i can take or leave more formal development or my own notion of what skill is or isn't involved. if you can't, that's your prerogative. it doesn't make one or the other of us wrong or worse off. i'm gonna get back to work now, but it was nice talking to you. it's interesting to hear people's perspectives who aren't just hating on this album for meme reasons.
>>63184437
Oh I know
I just wanted you to know you have bad, not good, mediocre taste
>>63184468
Have a good day man, feelings mutual. Good to talk about music with someone who's not a mindless memer ya know? But yeah enjoy work lol
>>63182547
Near the pinnacle of modern music, Eastman's repertoire is so unfairly glazed over in the overly white sophisticate as to make me sick, but to make such beautiful, inspiring works into mere political statements (though that they are, in part) would be to reduce one of the most amazing careers in music ever to nothing more than that of a typical Marxist activist, and that treatment may be a fate even worse than public ignorance.
The works on display here are titanic. "Stay on It" opens the set, and immediately, it is revealed that there is such a thing as a populist minimalist. But that is the name of the game for Eastman - a shatterer of preconceived notions, and one of the very few in the avant-garde to make John fucking Cage seem conservative by comparison (see: his outburst at Eastman's choice of material while performing one of his open-ended pieces that instructed the vocalist to "Give a lecture"). I could go on for days about how "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?," though the worst of the set, far outstrips the careers of most modern composers entirely; how "The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc" is a more "classical" approach for Eastman, and it succeeds endlessly; how his highly political "Nigger Trilogy" could easily be called the greatest triptych ever conceived in music; and how the "1, 2, 3, 4!" of "Evil Nigger" separates the most impactful bars of music I've yet heard.
But I won't.
