words and music

[bluedevi]

So, dear readers, here are the ideas behind that genres poll I did last week.

It starts with something I thought would be a confession, a dangerous one of the sort liable to get me lynched or get objects lobbed at my head. Now the results are in, I feel a bit safer saying it. I like dance musicThing is, I also love indie music and (a lot of) goth

Comments

[barrysarll]

I'm glad I'm on the side of the angels I worried that ticking everything for 'like' (and OK, it varies how much music within each genre I like, but some of each) but nothing for 'elements you absolutely must have' (because I could think of a few tracks I love which lacked each one) might look like I was taking the p1ss.

[bluedevi]

No, I think it makes perfect sense to have everything in one and nothing in the other, if you're a true eclectic. For example, the purely indie people might tick 'must have good lyrics', because for them lyrics mean more than any other part of the music. Or purely dance fans might tick one of the musical-correctness-related ones, ruling out all those sweet indie bands who have genius lyrics but can't play their instruments.

The only must for me was the originality one.

[barrysarll]

I was tempted by 'good lyrics' because an awful lot of my very favourite music is covered by that, but then I remembered that even aside from the instrumental stuff there are the people whose lyrics you can barely hear (eg Tindersticks), the ones I don't understand much of (Rammstein) and the tracks which are ace but don't say much ("Giving them drugs, taking their lives away" x 100).

[verlaine]

I'm a diehard lyrics man and I would count all of those as "good lyrics" - evocative is just as good as comprehensible. For instance I think Kurt Cobain is a great lyricist, but if I see one of his songs written down on paper I can't make head nor tail of it; it's all in the delivery.

[ultraruby]

Hello! Your swimming between the genres sounds very familiar. I have no dancing friends at all anymore, and even when I did have a little band of trance friends, a LONG time ago, they were shunned by most of the other people I knew for having baggy trousers and the like. 'Belfast' by Orbital makes my spine tingle in the same way as the flower duet does. It's simplistic, maybe, but also so complicated. And the fact that there's no words just leaves more room for the imagination - like the difference between books and films; both good, just different.

Oh, and by the way, if ever you fancy a big hand-in-the-air-like-a-scene-in-a-film night out, I'd definitely be interested in coming along. Seriously!

[bluedevi]

Hurrah! Hands in the air!

This is another reason I did the poll :) And I love 'Belfast' to tiny pieces too. It's interesting you picked that one to go alongside a classical piece, because what makes 'Belfast' for me is the little samples of Hildegarde von Bingen in it.

[ultraruby]

I was just about to mention Hildegarde! Total classical crossover thing there - much like The Farm and Pachabel.

[atommickbrane]

I thought goths these days only liked bad trance music anyway. Give me THE DAMMED any day! Or at least Eloise which is BRILLIANT.

(BTW I missed your poll due to busy/office absence else I'm sure I'd rattle on more here!)

[bluedevi]

Yeah... the dance that cybergoths dance to is often lamentably cheesy. At least with The Damned you know you're going to get cheese, but rock-type cheese may well be more tolerable than the brand of cheese a lot of goth-dance bands deal in (usually very earnestly sung lyrics in atrociously bad German-English over twee synths).

I do like a few goth-dancey bands, but most of them are a bit cringe-inducing.

[boyofbadgers]

It's not so much the cheesiness that gets me about goth trance (though that is a factor)(and why is it all so teutonic anyway?) it's more that it's really lame beatwise. There's no snap or funk or groove to the drums *or* the bass. And it's not just the sequencing, the bass and drum sounds used are weak too. It's like 1997 trance with the bottom end diminished to near non-existence.

[bluedevi]

I know exactly what you mean. Part of why I'm not bothered with EBM ('electronic body music'!) any more is that it's ALL got the very same beat, the same regular four-by-four thud-thud-thud in every single song. I started listening to it in 1999 and it seemed interesting then, but when I realised that they were still using the very same structures and that same bloody dull beat three years later I got annoyed.

[miss_newham]

I liked what you once told me about liking dance music because you first liked classical music (except you put it much better than that). It made me reassess it somewhat and want to start listening to electronic stuff more (where should I start?). Go you and your theories!

[ultraruby]

I used to go out with a classical musician who explained fugues to me, and to me good dance music is kind of like fugues - interweaving themes and stuff. I'd like to know more about how it works; there was a programme on radio one years ago about a certain chord structure (I think it was called desh? Or maybe I'm stupidly wrong there) that somehow creates a euphoric type feeling in most people, and it exists in a lot of classical music, and has been traslated into pop and dance records too.

[bluedevi]

Very interesting. I wouldn't be at all surprised if such a structure exists, but I haven't a clue what it's called.

[ultraruby]

aha! http://www.washedashore.com/music/desh.html

(should have thought to google this a long time ago, really. Duh)

[mooism]

Me not liking classical music is currently because I’ve not really been exposed to it. I decided once I was going to try some opera, but never really got round to it (something by Puccini).

Oh yes, and does “opera” count as part of “classical”, or is it a genre in its own right?

[bluedevi]

I'd lump it in with classical, personally, though that doubtless betrays my vast lack of understanding of opera. I don't like opera at all. There are a few arias that I love, the bits that actually have tunes, but sitting through a whole opera drives me crazy. It's the way they sing at each other between the big arias, words sung but with no particular melody... what's the point?

I'd rather have them speak those little bits, or sing them to one of the big themes of the opera like they do in Les Miserables.

[mooism]

Ah well, you have more knowledge of opera than I!