Lo fi gwan

What is the "stance" you refer to? I don't think a "stance" is necessary to listen to and enjoy lo-fi music. Unless that's all you listen to and you're the kind that complains often about stuff being "overproduced."

I can enjoy the lushest music around, but I also know that I enjoy the rawness I hear on lots of lo-fi recordings. Maybe for the same reason I like the sound of a distorted guitar, etc., which I guess makes the connection you draw to glitch an astute one.

I don't think that lo-fi music is more "honest" per se than any other kind, but I do think that there is a sense of freedom, of extended possibilities, that home recording and low production value allows, akin to what happened with punk c. '76.

You could say that it has something to do with a recording being less of a studio-produced entity, and more of a replication of actual sound. In some cases, stuff that's been processed to hell lose a certain energy and feel. and stuff.

The lo-fidelity of punk was more of an economic necessity, but it has created the dichotomy of prog vs punk (reason vs emotion) that still exists today and, by its very wording, suggests lo-fi music (cf: wl's "honesty") isn't progressive.

i suppose i'm less interested in the honesty that's expressed in lo-fi recordings, and more interested in what scope it has in creating something revolutionary sound-wise. Or will it always be retrograde?

lo-fi always seems to hark back rather than forward (therefore more punk than prog), with lone pigeon it's a kind of down-home traditionalism, with edan it's old-skool, with digital hardcore it's simplistic rave tactics.

the microphones may be getting there.

Progressive is "progress" toward what, though? I think that the Microphones and a handful of others have produced some new (or at least interesting) sounds via home recording. Pitting progressive vs. regressive is a value judgement, so you've gotta define your terms.

By the way, in mentioning "honesty" I was just reacting to the original question. Honesty, to the extent that I seek it in music, can be found in releases recorded under any number of circumstances.

And I referenced punk not in its snottiest connotations ("I Hate Pink Floyd"), but rather its "you-can-do-this-too" sensibility. Yeah, that can encourage a lot of crap, but there's also something wonderful about it.

Your perspective strikes me as more teleological than it needs to be. My own stance on fidelity -- and really, on any recording technique -- is that the right answer is whatever works best for the music being recorded. Sometimes that means just staying out of the way/being as transparent as possible; sometimes that means specifically complementing the material; sometimes that means outright transforming it. Daniel Johnston's Hi, How Are You wouldn't be the album it is had it been recorded in a modern studio with all its amenities; sure, part of that comes from knowing the story/background, but part of it is definitely the actual sound of the album: the way the motor on the boombox modulates his voice, the way the slow tape speed (which is thus too fast on playback) makes his voice sound even more uncannily childlike, and so on.

So if anything, it strikes me as being in some sense "progress" to acknowledge that objective standards of fidelity don't always equate linearly with the best sound-choice for a particular recording. It's understandable that the history of recording has been marked by a search for more and more accurate capturing of sound, but the closer we get to "perfect" fidelity, the more many of us realize that we don't always want the most accurate rendition possible -- not only because it conceals flaws, but also because supposedly inaccurate media and recording techniques can have a positive transfiguring effect on the "subject" (the music being recorded) itself. And that seems almost self-evident to me, given that we already use so many techniques to change the sound of recordings to make them more appealing (at least in theory), and yet so many of those treatments actually diminish the fidelity of the recorded material (brickwall limiting, to take a particularly annoying example): if those things are conceivably desirable, then certainly the transfiguring effects of lo-fi recording can be too, at least theoretically. It just depends on the material, and the objectives of the people making the recording.

(That being said, I'm not planning to queue up to buy, y'know, Mini-Cassette Mozart: Great Pieces of the 18th Century, As Recorded By Some Guy in the Balcony with a Dictaphone and a Nasty Cough.)

In terms of low fi I don't think anyone did it better then Eric's Trip, which was part economic nessicaty and also part cause they worked best in their basement. Alot of it has to do with the movements lack of the same cookie cutter mastering and production you get with your standard issue release that makes Our Lady peace sound/feel similar to I Mother Earth to Limp Bisquick and its a nice break for a change. Some people use the distortion to their advantage and learn how to make a brooding atmosphere from the sound like The Microphones or Mirah.

Then again their are moments with Beat Happening that I can't begin to understand myself let alone explain how they worm their way into my brain.