Daft Punk - the future of music?

[ahinton]

Always good to argue with your Richard as I sense you are a contrarian.

He has already answered that. He thinks and, to the extent that you or anyone might perceive a "contrarian" stance theein or thereby, it is almost certainly only because he has argued with himself before presenting thoughts and ideas here or elsewhere. There are things with which I disagree with him, without doubt - and sometimes fundamentally - but, as a rule, he presents things that he's thought out before spouting forth about them and with the kind of clarity tht makes it easy to know whether or to what extent one might agree or disagree while at the same time applauding the very fact and content of his expressions.

If I may say so, you would do well to bear this in mind.

[doversoul1]

He has already answered that. He thinks and, to the extent that you or anyone might perceive a "contrarian" stance theein or thereby, it is almost certainly only because he has argued with himself before presenting thoughts and ideas here or elsewhere. There are things with which I disagree with him, without doubt - and sometimes fundamentally - but, as a rule, he presents things that he's thought out before spouting forth about them and with the kind of clarity tht makes it easy to know whether or to what extent one might agree or disagree while at the same time applauding the very fact and content of his expressions.

If I may say so, you would do well to bear this in mind.

Does calling someone a contrarian automatically mean disapproval of the quality of his/her argument?

[ahinton]

Does calling someone a contrarian automatically mean disapproval of the quality of his/her argument?

Not necessarily, by any means; it should literally indicate someone who is prepared to argue with good reason, but not necessarily always in a combative and aggressive way and who is also at least as prepared to conduct such arguments with him/herself as with anyone else.

[Ian Thumwood]

Hinton

Shame you didn't bother to read my comments because, so far, no one else has really come to the table to make a musical argument either for or against this music. I said in my initial post that I was endeavouring to be controversial but I have also argued why I am not too impressed with this kind of music which, as a rule, I find lifeless. You appear to shoot from the hip in your own post but your accuracy is akin to the a team being blindfolded and asked to hit the target after being on the lash.

Why don't you try to advance a musical argument instead of posting something in a antiquated and aloof manner ?

[MrGongGong]

I still think there are some major "problems" with this approach to music making.

"Problem" ??? No sign of that

The point with Daft Punk is that it is part of a broadening democracy within music whereby the doors have been opened up to non musicians.

"non- musicians" hummm interesting , I thought you were into Jazz rather than institutions?

. A lot of the music "produced" is sampled (i.e. stolen)

Like wot Mozart did you mean? (or any number of others NOT to mention the whole "Jazz Standards" malarkey)

from other artists such as the famous example of The Orb's "Little fluffy clouds" which ripped off Steve Reich.

It didn't "rip it off' It used it, in conjunction with Ricky Lee Jones talking about clouds, and was an affectionate and respectful use IMV
("Reich Remixed" which came after is a bit lame IMV)

Oddly, I think that this kind of stuff does owe a whole lot to Minimalism but perhaps lacks the sophistication of a Reich, Adams, etc.

Oddly ?????
Nothing odd about musicians listening to all sorts of stuff, it's only the trainspotters who think that one should stick to the parallel lines

Rhythmically, there is little variation

THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S DANCE MUSIC , you know MUSIC TO DANCE TO

To my ears, this is a massive problem

How massive though?
Diplodocus size or something bigger?
Why not change the ears?

I find the likes of other Techno / Daft Punk to be almost anti-music in this respect.

You are basing your ridiculous statements on a superficial listening (out of context, unless YOU are dancing to it?) to a handful of things
I listened to Chet Baker Sings and now can say with utter certainty that ALL Jazz is utter shite ...

I didn't watch the documentary, it might have been pants or good but to base your entire dismissal of things on that is bonkers

[Serial_Apologist]

Staggering that there aren't more out there who are able to advance my argument more eloquently.

I would be with you as I share a prejudice about what constitutes progress in musical idiom(s) that music evolves from within until it reaches a cul de sac, and someone like Ornette Coleman comes in and shows there are ways of doing the same thing (more-or-less) outside what had been perceived as natural limits. Debussy comes to mind, though in his case he quite quickly began to find routes out of his own impasses. Sometimes an artist can find the means to his own stylistic or rather idiomatic limitations by attending to his or her successors - Messiaen comes to my mind once more in the classical field immediately after composing Turangalila. Then it becomes apparent that older approaches might be capable of further expansion without aesthetic contradiction. Berg is another example; even the more conservative Zemlinsky; and Miles Davis in jazz. La Monte Young, early Terry Riley and Steve Reich seemed to come up with an entirely new aesthetic in the mid-60s by ditching the atonal modernist inheritance in favour of disciplines influenced by African, Balinese and various trance-based non-western traditions, and the idea appeared to relate to potential models of mass music-making under a post-consumerist society (and thus relating to the home-made approaches mentioned earlier in the thread) except that the post-consumerist society never came about. (Or only in the physically isolated surrounds of so-called "social media"). Thus the slenderness of the aesthetic base of Minimalism fell exposed to the simplisms of postmodern commercialism, and meanwhile a lot of erstwhile modernists lost nerve.

The problem twixt thee and me is that we often disagree on what we think of as 'progressive', especially in the jazz field, which in turn probably reflects our respectively different political angles on culture.

Edit: Mr GG would approach this question from the perspective that there are different places for different musics, all of them explicable in terms of the sourrounding cultures or subcultures (I wouild add with their economic substrates) and that it is possible to enter any realm and perceive the creativity therein on its own terms. (And in any case I can now see he's approached the matter from a slightly different angle).

I did that for a long time with having a dual appreciation of jazz and the classical forms contemporaneous with it, seeing jazz as catching up on its own terms, but I'm probably not sufficiently free inside myself to be able to appreciate any area without reference to the particular areas I've been brought up or grown to identify most with. Each area seems rich enough to spend a lifetime of indulgence, even if you "only" go from say late Beethoven to late Schoenberg; and I can always self-justify by pointing moralistically at the youngsters into Grime and say to them, but you're all missing out on the inner richness and complexity of "Moses und Aron" or Barry Guy's London Jazz Composers Orchestra, doncha know? - convincing myself that I and my likeminded contemporaries had the chance granted by what was available when capitalism still offered variety in broadcasting, and hey weren't we lucky?? But try telling some people on this forum that the dumbing down they're complaining about has anything to do with politics, and you'll get... told off!

[ahinton]

Hinton

Shame you didn't bother to read my comments because, so far, no one else has really come to the table to make a musical argument either for or against this music. I said in my initial post that I was endeavouring to be controversial but I have also argued why I am not too impressed with this kind of music which, as a rule, I find lifeless. You appear to shoot from the hip in your own post but your accuracy is akin to the a team being blindfolded and asked to hit the target after being on the lash.

Why don't you try to advance a musical argument instead of posting something in a antiquated and aloof manner ?

Thumwood

Since you mercifully do not sit opposite me in my office, you would have no means of knowing whether or not I had read your comments; as it happens, I have.

I do not know to which specific post of mine you refer; since all that I have written above in #31 (if I can assume it to be that) relates to your assessment of Richard Barrett as an alleged "contrarian" and accordingly does not even aim to set out to advance any musical argument for or against what you wrote in the OP, there is no shooting of anyone from either the hip or any other part of the anatomy involved therein, nor indeed any possibility of accuracy or otherwise; moreover, there's nothing either "antiquated" (I only wrote it today) or "aloof" (from what?) in what I wrote.

Must try harder...

[ahinton]

Nothing odd about musicians listening to all sorts of stuff, it's only the trainspotters who think that one should stick to the parallel lines

Carter called them caténaires, though some seem not to get the points...

The stuff concerned happens not to do it for me either, not least because I have less than no sense of any kind of dance other than the sort that music itself does (as a fellow called J S Bach seemed to understand as well as anyone), but that's hardly the issue here and it's not intended to sound like an attempt at a value judgement...

[Serial_Apologist]

Carter called them caténaires, though some seem not to get the points...

The stuff concerned happens not to do it for me either, not least because I have less than no sense of any kind of dance other than the sort that music itself does (as a fellow called J S Bach seemed to understand as well as anyone), but that's hardly the issue here and it's not intended to sound like an attempt at a value judgement...

I'm the same when it comes to dancing - but I would extend that non-appreciation on my part from ballroom or line dancing to the dance music that came with raves in the aftermath of Techno, and have to disagree with what I understand MrGG to be saying about that because I don't see it as qualitatively any different from the US helicopters blasting Wagner at the Viet Cong or the guy in Panama whose name I forget whose house they fired loud rock music at. Latin or certain kinds of African drum-based musics I could dance to all night, but that probably has something to do with the fact that, like jazz of certain kinds, but UNlike Techno of the four-bar loop repeats kind it is comprised of rhythmic complexity and gives you many to "dance off", not just one militaristic beat.

I have problems with the Mozart/standards used in jazz analogy too

[cloughie]

Ian, thanks for flagging this up, I'm quite keen on Daft Punk.

Perhaps it's just not your thing, no need to be amazed or surprised about Donny McClaskin and Nile Rogers. They certainly haven't been "taken in" by anything - maybe t's just that you just don't like this stuff.

It might help if you avoided thinking about value judgements as if they were facts "...music which is devoid of soul, sophistication and real interest.... even though aural results are more pollution than music..." you might understand it better.

You might like this Daft Punk number, a little more.........

Only just caught up with this thread.

Not a million miles from Chic.

[MrGongGong]

I'm the same when it comes to dancing - but I would extend that non-appreciation on my part from ballroom or line dancing to the dance music that came with raves in the aftermath of Techno, and have to disagree with what I understand MrGG to be saying about that because I don't see it as qualitatively any different from the US helicopters blasting Wagner at the Viet Cong or the guy in Panama whose name I forget whose house they fired loud rock music at. Latin or certain kinds of African drum-based musics I could dance to all night, but that probably has something to do with the fact that, like jazz of certain kinds, but UNlike Techno of the four-bar loop repeats kind it is comprised of rhythmic complexity and gives you many to "dance off", not just one militaristic beat.

There's a whole load of stuff about what "dancing" is as much as there is with "music".

[Serial_Apologist]

There's a whole load of stuff about what "dancing" is as much as there is with "music".

Sensuous vs. militaristic.

[MrGongGong]

Sensuous vs. militaristic.

and all the other possibilities

[P. G. Tipps]

Dancing is for the ladies and savages.

It was never, ever meant for we gentlemen.

[Beef Oven!]

Not a million miles from Chic.

But a million times better