I love Hassell too. I feel like the mixture of electronic music and jazz can sometimes go very very wrong, but his work is an example of just how incredible that mixture can be.
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He studied music with La Monte Young and worked for years with The Theatre of Eternal Music.
He developed with Brian Eno the idea of “Fourth World Music”.
ECM tries time and again to categorise him as a jazz musician which he’s not or at least not in the strict sense of the term.
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Mainly Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Lingua Ignota, Meshuggah, Gojira and Russian Circles.
Really been in the mood for Let Love In and The Boatman’s Call for some reason, and naturally had to have a listen of the new full Gojira record.
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A short list of contemporary classical music chosen from Bandcamp:
Currently finishing out the week listening to Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee. I’ve always loved the composition and instrumentation of country, but rarely the lyrics. This album is my kind of country and by that I mean the preference of an ignorant but interested intruder with very particular opinions of what they like.
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It’s funny, I love Radiohead, but there have been albums that took me a while to warm up to. For each of these albums after a initial tepid response, I ended up really loving them (with the exception of Hail to the Thief). The biggest example would be Kid A and Amnesiac. I wasn’t a big fan when they came out, but now Kid A might be my favorite album of theirs.
In Rainbows also fell into this category. I love this album now, as you said there’s a lot in there.
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I am opposite most Radiohead fans, as I acclimated with Creep. So, I like them up to Ok Computer, plus Hail to the Thief. Two completely different bands they were…
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It’s the same with me, and I think this has a lot to do with quite how radical a departure the two albums were for Radiohead. It took me several years to get into them.
Radiohead were getting to be big when I went to college in Britain in the mid-90s, not just with Creep but also with the early releases from The Bends, like the My Iron Lung EP. I was knee-deep in grunge at that time, and discovering American punk and hardcore bands, so I didn’t pay all that much attention to Radiohead–until, that is, I saw them supporting REM in '95.
They were a prime example of a band that’s far heavier live than you’d guess from their albums, and they put on an exhilarating show in what was an awful venue - a college campus with no mosh pit, seating areas only, and with no bloody booze or smoking (this was in the US, hence the lack of booze). While REM put on a lackluster show - understandably, this was that exhausting, long tour in support of Monster, the one in which the drummer suffered an aneurysm, I think - Radiohead put on one of the best performances I’d ever seen.
A couple of years later, John Peel or another one of the Radio 1 DJs in the UK played Paranoid Android. I still remember vividly hanging out at my best mate’s place and both of us being blown away by it, not knowing what to make of it. And then, a few years later they released Kid A…
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I knew Creep, you couldn’t avoid it, but was more into the Seattle sound, Tool, NiN, Helmet, Rage etc. Then the video for Paranoid Android came on MTV in my freshman dorm room and split my head open.
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I totally agree. I was 18 when Kid A came out and it was so different from The Bends and OK Computer. I wasn’t ready for it.
I think another major contributing factor was that I was listening on really shit earbuds for the most part. I think Kid A really needs non-shit gear to sound good, while I could listen to OK Computer out my IPhone speakers and enjoy it (kinda, you know what I mean).
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Yeah, the sound quality of Radiohead albums is varied and all-too-often disappointing. Some albums are compressed as hell, falling victim to the loudness wars, I suspect, and they sound awful. Drums are terrible on far too many albums. I’m not sure Nigel Godrich is the ideal producer for high fidelity music, even if he does play an instrumental role in shaping the band’s sound.
The Bends and OK Computer, though, are better, which probably explains why they’re acceptable with more headphones or IEMs.
But then, as you note, some releases sound great with the right headphones. I was auditioning the Empire Ears Odin a few weeks ago and Kid A sounded really excellent - I was surprised to hear how well the Odin’s resolution did a big favors to the album. We talk about transducers scaling with better gear. Kid A scales surprisingly well with the right transducers!
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Would you mind sending me a pair of Odins to independently confirm you findings?
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I’d love to - alas, I wasn’t allowed to keep the loaner tour ones. Can’t imagine why.
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A while back I went through my CD collection and realized that 1993 was a banner year for music releases. In 1991 Nirvana hit it big (following U2, REM, and Jane’s Addiction expanding acceptable mainstream music), so the record labels signed a whole bunch of underground, independent, and young bands. All these bands created music in 1992, and then released the albums starting in 1993.
Radiohead released Pablo Honey with Creep in 1993 – they were thereby lumped in with all the rest of the Seattle hangers-on. As with the 1980s and Hair Metal, the record companies forced bands into the Grunge genre whether they fit or not (e.g., Pearl Jam, as a plain old pop/rock band and never actually Grunge in any way). The same thing happened to plenty of artists before, such as John “Cougar” Mellencamp and Skid Row. Oddly, Skid Row was a serious metal band (e.g., Slave to the Grind album), and forced into the pretty-boy genre because of Sebastian Bach’s appearance.
If not for Grunge then Radiohead might have always been a different-sounding band. If not for Grunge they might not have had a contract in 1993.
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I was shocked when I saw this Waxahatchee record ranked so high on Pitchfork’s 2020 year end best list. I had listened to it superficially and thought it was just above-average singer songwriter stuff. But I’ve found since that every time I listen to it, I like it more. And I’ve listened to it a lot. It’s as if it masquerades as merely pleasant folky pop, but if you listen beneath the surface, the depth and richness are almost boundless. I recommend this episode of the podcast Song Exploder about the song “Fire,” which might be my favorite song from the past year:
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These years are like going home for me. This was the soundtrack of my transition from child to young adult. It was difficult to understand why anyone would want to listen to the absurd self parody that 80s rock had become by then. In retrospect it’s easy to see the hand of the labels in choosing bands that were “more”, and asking bands to amplify what had sold. Regardless it helped turn them into one dimensional jokes with nothing but a new power ballad. At the time it was clear that that was from a different world than the one I lived in. It was not honest music.
I’ve never thought “grunge” was a useful descriptor in anyway other than as shorthand for a thing that happened. Alternative seems like a more apt description. R.E.M. and all the college rock darlings, (Camper Van Beethoven being my personal favorite), The SubPop bands, and the last gasps of the punk DIY bands (Fugazi came through and played at least 8 times in Washington and Oregon between 91 and 93) just seemed so much more real than a sequined clown telling me to jump.
As for Radiohead, I’d argue they overcame the labels desire for them to sound like anyone else very quickly. This is probably why Pablo Honey is my least favorite album, as it is either them trying to be someone else, or them not knowing who they are yet. This is a bummer for people that liked Creep, as there is really only one album from that band. If you catch me in a mean mood, home with a sick kid and a little tired from staying up too late listening to music, I might say the people that liked Creep should check out Coldplay, since Coldplay really wishes they had written Pablo Honey.*
* Like Oasis wishes the had written Revolver
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[You likely know all this…but oh well…]
The commercial packaging of artists worked until the Internet and MP3s (circa 2000) because of the prior limited distribution options: a handful of major record companies, and every city had about half a dozen genre radio stations (i.e., Urban Contemporary, Mainstream Pop, Rock, Adult Contemporary, Country, and Easy Listening Elevator Music). Those stations could play about 10 songs per hour, and repeated every 3 hours or so. Maybe 30 artists on each playlist had any serious exposure or chance of success. Anyone on the list could be made to sell a million records.
Classical, Jazz, and College Rock were relegated to the no-ads, no-profit stations on the “Left of the Dial.” See The Replacement’s song of the same title. College rock was initially called “progressive rock” – but nothing at all like 1970s quasi-Classical progressive rock (e.g., Rush, Yes, King Crimson). Alternative became a catch-all name for everything from punk to Sonic Youth to Bjork to The Smiths to Primus. In the 1990s Alternative became Grunge and non-metal rock only, with females largely disappearing. Now, much later, many ascribe acoustic and art-oriented pop to the “Indie” genre. It’s not a great category either.
Radiohead and Creep: I see that song as following in the quiet-loud format after a ton of orchestral music, Broadway show tunes, and movie musicals. It was popularized in rock and roll by Led Zeppelin’s numerous quiet folky songs that went bonkers half way through. Much later, the Pixies (1987 to 1988) brought quiet-loud duets to the Alternative umbrella, got ripped off by Nirvana (1991), and then quickly turned into Creep. Rather than Coldplay, I see Linkin Park making big, big, big money by turning sharp contrast duets and the broad Creep formula into commercial mainstream pop.
Coldplay: I don’t hate their earlier work for what it is. It’s melody driven in the spirit of the Beatles, and roundly inoffensive. Oasis too. I sometimes had Coldplay on when working as non-distracting background music. Nothing more. Their later stuff…not so much…
To my ears Oasis and Blur are the pop offspring of the Stone Roses and Jesus and Mary Chain. They were all British bands, and Blur later became Gorillaz (as either a new thing, or return of the Vaudeville Variety Show). Creative pioneers routinely get ripped off by easily digested mainstream editions.
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Musical genres: either so broad they are useless, or so narrow they are useless.
It’s the circle of product. unknown → edge user → mainstream
There is a part of me waiting for the same cycle in film, as a response to the non stop superhero glam we’ve been consuming for the last ten years. We could use a revolution.
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This is precisely the humor that Frank Zappa loved to exploit! Beef Pies! Walking by the Pies! Walking by the Pies! Root oot DOO do doo!