That Other World

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I think quite a bit about how one thing that creative works seem to do is to project a world - maybe a version of the world, a particular vision or segment of the world that we just about agree exists. It's auteurism, if you like: there's a World of Damon Runyan, a World of Franz Kafka, a World of Samuel Beckett, a World of Norman Rockwell - etc etc. I'm not quite sure what the status of these 'worlds' are - but I suppose that 'fiction' is as good a word for them as any.

Unsurprisingly, my question is: to what extent does the same thing happen in pop? (My answer: a great deal.) And how does it happen? One answer would just invoke lyrical content, but I think that a lot of readers will share my suspicion about that view. Is there, then, a way in which 'sound' produces or projects a world? How does it all work?

― the pinefox, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

By the way, I thought that this question might also serve to link up some other concerns: eg: a) Tracer Hand's thoughts on the place of music in one's own (coherent?) 'world'; b) Stevie T's preoccupation with the relation between pop and other things like film and literature - the way that records and books can almost seem to conspire together to invent a milieu; c) what Tim H has said about whether or not you should 'sound like where you come from'. (Does a band always sound like where it comes from - do the Byrds sound like California - or is part of the point re. NOT sounding like where you come from - ie: Teenage Fanclub sounding like California?)

― the pinefox, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

odb's 'brooklyn zoo' always made me think of a late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century new york harbouring a cold grimy zoo full of weary vaguely-exotic animals. like a new yorker drawing by seth or something.

squarepusher's 'ufos over leytonstone' (shit song title, i know) evokes a sort of blurry memory of driving in a rainy english countryside and pulling over by the side of the road and seeing something in the leaves.

there's a bunch more, but those first two are perhaps the most vivid (and non- personal). plenty of early 90s east coast hiphop conjures an idealized view of the urban experience, but a lot of that is through lyrics (and videos).

being evocative is possibly the most important quality i look for in music. looking forward to reading other people's experiences.

― ethan, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Kraftwerk's "Neon Lights" brings to mind a sci-fi utopia and bursts of sunlight through Blade Runner cityscapes. Can are pretty evocative too. Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine create their own sonic language and even their own language.

― Michael Bourke, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

I think any type of "fictional" music has the ability to establish a distinct mood & setting. For instance, "Waiting for the Man", with the subway-like drumming & Lou Reed's apathetic drawl - that is SO boho late-60's New York. Or even (ish) the Eagles, with their ... thing. (The lazy confidence? That smug satisfaction? Name-checking their home state?)

I'm wondering how much of this, though, is influenced by the things surrounding the music - press, presentation, etc. For instance - the Smiths and Belle & Sebastian both strike me as resolutely (& perhaps stereotypically) "British" - scholarly, droll, whimsical, ironic, blah blah. (Doing a bad job of making my point, I know.) However, given the oodles of articles I've read about both bands, given their taste for simple & evocative record sleeves featuring tube signs & cobblestone streets, I'm not sure if I had a choice in the matter.

How the picture is framed ultimately determines your reaction. Or, put another way, maybe you CAN judge a book by its cover.

(Another thought - thinking about examples, and given Bob Dylan's recent birthday, I find it very hard to think of what Dylan's music invokes. Maybe I'm wrong, but it all seems rather blank, or universal - the listener provides the meat on the song's skeleton, and makes it their own. Just a thought.)

― David Raposa, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

but would 'waiting for my man' sound like new york if the velvet underground were not from new york? are you projecting that on the song because you are aware of their background, would it sound like new york if you had no idea of their origin? it is a tricky thing. what about bands who try to sound like someplace they are not from. like say the aislers set because they sound english to me or the previous example of teenage fanclub sounding californian. i suppose then it is the music of escapism which does create its own world. but i don't think the question was one of geography, it was a one concerning maybe different perceptions be it the seedy underworld of the velvet underground, the whimsical dahlesque world of of montreal or the cold landscape of someone like the aphex twin.

― keith, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Ah! Thank you, Keith. Now I see. (Not that your explanation was any different than Mr. Pinefox's. Guess it's just the matter of putting food in my belly before I start pontificating.)

In that regard, I can certainly add Low's glacial solemnity to the mix. They manage to project both heat and warmth simultaneously, especially on their newer releases - balancing the minimalist nature of their songs with trappings like string sections & glorious harmonies.

Another other-worldly group might be the Scissor Girls (a trio from Chicago, circa the mid-90s) - they manage to sound like THE epitome of some Blade Runner-like society; harsh, loud, angular, nonsensical sloganeering, simplistically brutal. (Check out the Atavistic label for more info on them.)

Tricky's 1st two albums presented a more considered version of this futuristic dystopia. Angels with Dirty Faces just sounds skanky, though.

To refer back to pinefox's questioning the role of lyrics in setting the mood - that's just the icing on the cake. Low, for instance, could be singing about speeding motorcycles in a song like "Don't Understand", and it would still reflect the same pensive feelings. Specific sounds / instruments can be linked to recalling various geographic locations (like a pedal steel guitar in a country song, or a Rickenbacker in 60's guitar pop), but I'd have to say that setting a specific mood (like a writer would) has a great deal to do with the artist themselves. Or the producer.

― David Raposa, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Phew! Good answers - ta. I nearly mentioned 'Waiting For The Man' myself - glad I didn't have to. But as has been said, it's very tricky and circular: do the Velvets say 60s NYC to us because they were from, um... 60s NYC? And again the point about 'presentation' is well-taken (but if presentation is consistent, as it was with the Smiths, then maybe we just have to add it to the musical mix, rtaher than trying to separate them? Not sure - this might be a way of dodging the analysis of The Music Itself, if that exists.) By the way, yes, I was thinking about 'geography' along with all the other stuff - the conjuring of particular places, or ideas of places, as much as anything. (I have a feeling that I have stumbled upon the meaning of Bakhtin's 'chronotopes' here, but could be wrong, again.)

― the pinefox, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Guided by Voices - psychedelic cartoon/children's storybook world happening in many of their records.

Pere Ubu - dripping, decaying industrial Cleveland.

― Oliver K., Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Ethan, you don't want to see the urban sprawl that is in fact Leytonstone. Really, you don't.

― Robin Carmody, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

i didn't even know it was a real place, it just sounds overwhelmingly quaint.

― ethan, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Isn't this definition almost the *purpose* of the entire genre that is goth? Ethereal, dark, vampires, blood, a land where sorrow and pain are not terrible things but are instead beautiful and fetishised - a world totally unto itself. Explains a lot about the ability to totally retreat into goth music as life style. Punk too I 'spose. A world where everyone is your enemy and being even slightly 'soft' is the worst thing you can do. Rebel rebel rebel!

― Kim, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

And hold up a second, isn't 'pop' music supposed to be the grand truth? The music that mirrors or exaggerates real trends?

I'm sorry. Probably I'm being deliberately obtuse about the question. I know you're asking about how particular sounds evoke places and images. It's just that the way the question is asked seems a bit contradictory.

The sounds in music can definitely call to mind particular images and feelings - but I think it all works through prior general associations with said sounds. For instance, Safety Dance but Men Without Hats has always intrigued me for it's uncanny ability to conjure up mediaeval scenes in my mind (it did this before I ever saw the video by the way) and I was puzzled as to why - it's DEFINITELY not the lyrical content. I concluded eventually that it must be the literal sound of the music alone doing it for me - but why? The best I can figure is that I do have some vague and totally non-specific idea of what mediaeval music is supposed to sound like from a life time of background music in themed TV shows, movies and the like. I know it's supposed to be all mandolins and flutes and stuff - which isn't exactly Safety Dance (which sounds like keyboards), but it must emulate the tone or pacing of all that somehow. Should look it up I suppose.

― Kim, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

This is an excellent opportunity to bring Neutral Milk Hotel back up! They recall a certain chapter in the history book for me, but the first time my brother heard them ("Ghost") he swore they were British.

New Order puts me a in a definite time and place, but I can't put my finger on it.

I'm also surprised country music hasn't come up yet. It's hard to be divorced from its context and it usual isn't made outside of where we consider it to 'belong,' which would make for interesting conversation given the topic.

― Keiko, Saturday, 26 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Pinefox -- actually yr a lot closer to the Greek concept of "topos" than the chronotope. There's a tendency, which I share, to simply replace "topos" with chronotope and thus sort of bring time into the picture by default, and tangentially. But this is not quite Bakhtin's point -- his essay on Chronotope in the Novel is not directly translatable to pop music because novels in fact describe places more clearly, and have sharper forms of movement between places. So he will speak of how certain novels move between certain places in a sequence and pace -- i.e. detailed action of battles outside, with few interior things. Or not just the drawing-room, but the speed at which the narrative progresses within the drawing room, and if the objects are described or just the people, and in what detail, and et cet. So this is a powerful, but open-ended concept. In pop, I tend to think that the question of "scenario" predominates as a specification of "topos" and that time enters largely in a musical sense -- relation between bridge and chorus, repetion of each, and suchforth. Bakhtin's point with "chronotope" is to link the two -- to argue that form and essence are inseperable in understanding genre, and that location is defined in part by how much attention is devoted to it, and that locations may be static scenery or dynamic enviornments. I think the problem is to imagine that the velvets, for example, evoke an "absolute" new york when in fact they invoke an image of new york which was in part created and defined by their work in the first place. Everybody knows a different New York, but the invarients are the cultural elements which pervade enough that the velvets can invoke them to a wide audience. To audience in NY at the time, they probably didn't invoke "New York" so much as "drugs" or "slum" or "decadent art". The Silver Apples, conversely, were declared by many to be the band which defined New York. Do the invoke New York? Not now. But they still sound like technified hippie machine lover poets. Which was what parts of New York wanted to be at the time. Hence they were embraced, as part of an act of definition rather than as an evaluation from afar.

― Sterling Clover, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

im interested in the view that the more hybrids there are - will there be more worlds to conjure or less distinct ones - goth and triphop i find one dimensional so those worlds get very boring for me very quickly - but most of the 4th world stuff sounds a bit samey to yr racer. all self-reflective musos i know AIM to convey a world if only to sell to a target group - the most boring ones get real reductive( we're industrial- we must sound hard) - whereas the better ones are unafraid to play with your perceptions, memories, frame of reference. the obvious way is either pastiche or using samples but with an acoustic guitar i could invoke an indian evening for you,take you down the bayou, or serenade you in 14th Century Italy - BUT unless they were within your frame of reference (FOR) you might think you were somewhere else. Where do Americans,Japanese,etc GO when they listen to max tundra, position normal, skitz, or half-man,half- biscuit. Do you find 'coach station reunion' conjours up ghosts as i do or is it twee english bollux to you ? i include emotional FOR as well as musical - i love the ambiguous stuff rather than the 'feel this now' music - why the new tindersticks album has no SOUL for me and is one - dimensional emotionally.

― geordie racer, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

to continue . . . maybe the 'stix emotinal/sound world is imploding. The ILM frame of reference grows an' incompasses many worlds - which is why i stay.

― , Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

sorry .. i digressed - went to the WOW festival last night - a few thousand geordies listening to 'world music' - the Rai was shithot an' i couldn't believe some peeple prefered to go hear tha clapton tribute band instead of dancin' - maybe it was was because yr border reaver,a brigand 4 beava - was getting down

― , Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

when i first read that Pere Ubu came from Cleveland i thought it was Cleveland as in Teesside - The Modern Dance made much more sense to me when they were 'Boro lads in my mind - FOR . Sterling - Bahktin ? - YOURE GIVING ME MORE TO READUP ON - i have information anxiety an' will sue y'all !!!!!!

― , Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Loved the assurance of the Geordie's claim that he could take us anywhere with the magic carpet that is an acoustic guitar.

I like the point re. the Velvets inventing a NYC that we then think is NYC, whereas they meant sth else at the time; funny to think that they actually refused to play there anyway.

Bakhtin specifications admirable.

The earlier point re Dylan was really good too - it's true, Dylan conjures less an imaginary world than... 'Dylan', and his history (?).

New Order are a good test case for this question, I think, because they are one of those cases where what the music conjures up is liable to be slightly *different* from where it comes from - the 'world-making' might not be as 'tautologous' with them as it now seems to us with the Velvets or many others.

― the pinefox, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Re "Waiting For The Man". Different NY's yes, subway-esque drum pattern and vocal inflections yes; but, far more obviously, the song has prominent lyrical references to specific places in New York, so isn't that the strongest hint?

― David, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

The Racer makes a very good point, which Ethan has partially answered. And, yes, Leytonstone exists, and there are few more *mundane* places in London (the antithesis of "quaint").

But I do always wonder to myself what this very specifically "English / evocative" music *means* to people from other countries; to what extent do they put their own mental pictures and impressions? Two of the people the Racer mentions - Max Tundra, Position Normal - are for me very much about "childhood", and I suppose they could be resonant for anyone of "their own childhood".

― Robin Carmody, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

earlier i was a bit down on 'reductive' soundworlds but thinking about it - now we can sound like anything/anywhere/anytime - the most coherent worlds will be the ones that focus more by omitting stuff. in these days of '200 free two-step drumloops' CDs it is easy to invoke the same soundworlds as many other people so you need to frame your work, make boundaries to personalize it.

BTW heard some amazing Zimbabwean music at the WOW festival today - which has been like the Great Exhibition in that Toop book to yr racer - sea of possibilities etc

― geordie racer, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Two songs from the Seventies -- "53rd and 3rd" by the Ramones and (bear with me, people, before you laugh) "Island Girl" by Elton John - - get me thinking about what certain parts of Midtown Manhattan must have been like back when those songs were recorded. Both of those songs have to do with prostitution -- Dee Dee Ramone peddling his ass for smack, Elton regarding a West Indian hooker at 47th St. & Lexington Ave. and imagining himself a fellow West Indian with thoughts of saving her from her situation -- in a Midtown Manhattan that is quite radically different than it is today. More specifically, both locations today are in the heart of the Midtown business district (53rd and 3rd is also a busy subway station) where that type of, um, "business" wouldn't be tolerated. Since I now work at 47th and 5th, and used to work at 42nd and 3rd, both those songs strike home somewhat since I know the areas they deal with pretty well and I can't help but imagining how very different they must have been some 20+ years ago for those songs to be at all credible.

On a lighter note -- Ween always makes me think of Philadelphia. Probably because they sing about South Street and Fairmount Park, but they definitely have a Philly-suburbs attitude about them. (Trust me on this, since I have lots of family in and around Philadelphia.)

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Not wanting to gush, but the Racer's stuff about "personalising soundworlds" are some of the most eloquent comments I think I've ever read on ILM.

― Robin Carmody, Sunday, 27 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

shucks..i thought i was jus ramblin' - foxy's question is a good one :)

― geordie racer, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

sabres of paradise's haunted dancehall always evoked *london* to me, but that was before i lived here, and only came down for weekends and stuff.

since i've been here the connection isn't quite so clear, and haunted dancehall doesn't sound like where i live, it seems more evocative of uncool outskirtsy places like south woodford, ilford and woolwich, or non-hipster places like deptford

someone said aphex had cold landscapes, this is only partially true for me. richard d james album conjures a nick drake-esque sun rising oxfordshire landscape to me (and i've only been to oxfordshire maybe twice...)

early fall puts me in burnley/todmorden/rochdale/huddersfield circa '81

with the fall and sabres examples though, as the velvets, that image is already prescribed so its difficult to know how much you would have that connection if you didn't know it was supposed to be there. cf hood

piano magic certainly conjure up all kinds of *other worlds*, but not so definable as the above, eg bratislava taxidermists 1927, maybe.

― gareth, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

I don't know, I often think that sound is even *more* emotionally evocative than lyrics. Sound, emotion, tambre of voice, all those things far predate logic and language in human beings. If this weren't true, why would instrumental music continue to be so powerful?

About evoking other worlds... I know from my own experience, what can make the difference between liking a band, and completely being *obsessed* with a band, is how successful they are in terms of creating and presenting their own little world, and inviting the listener/fan into it. This is certainly the whole reason behind distinct subcultures and genres (goth, mod and so on...).

It's not just done even with lyrics and sound- it's about having an entire identifiable culture to go with it. Clothes, slang, identification cross-over art forms, cinema, literature, that whole thing.

It's funny, all this "Waiting For The Man" talk- I just got this compilation CD at a show this weekend- "3D presents The New Rock'N'Roll" and the odd thing is, despite every single band being British, and the vast majority of them actually hailing from the Old Street area of Central London- it's been a long time since I actually heard something which *SO* screamed "New York City" at me.

I'm not sure if this is something which is an amusing affectation, or if there's something deeply flawed in the aesthetic. Either way, it amused me.

― masonic boom, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Good call on early Fall, Gareth. 'Twas neither there nor then, myself, but I can't listen to "Various Times", "Industrial Estate" and "Rebellious Jukebox" without imaging Maine Road, Manchester, January 1979; frosty pitch, rubbish and unburied bodies piled up around the city, the last Old Northern administration dying on its feet, and utter uncertainty about absolutely everything.

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Kraftwerk (There are far more knowledgeable fans, but here goes.)
Autobahn: replication of natural sounds (birds, gurgling brooks on 'Morgenspaziergang') and manmade sounds (horns; passing cars; that convex, turning-a-corner sound on 'Autobahn') in the same medium makes everything sound futuristic (even if it's retro futurism now) and somehow safe, not clinical though; it's interesting how the synths manage to sound warm; someone said that the way they sing "fahren, fahren, fahren" is an imitation of "surfing, surfing, surfing" from a Beach Boys song, so that might be an example of a band alluding to a world that isn't their own; however, I think both have in common what I think of as the spirit of the 50's (the dates aren't right so maybe it was retro futurism even for them), the postwar boom, everything clean and shiny and sturdy, exemplified in the cars from that period
Trans Europa Express: a very cosmopolitan, sophisticated, European old world feel punctuated by songs like 'Spiegalsaal' that sound brooding and introspective and pessimistic (impossible in the New World)

I give up. Someone else should be doing this. I know there is a world there. Somehow I think Die Mensch Machine should involve Berlin...

And someone should talk about Something Else and Village Green Preservation Society - the differences between them.

― youn, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

And from all my misspellings, it should be evident that I don't know German very well. I guess what one could think of negatively as ethnic stereotypes figures in my view of Kraftwerk's world. Part of the allure of other worlds must have to do with being an outsider.

― youn, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Yes. That's probably true.

Kate: who said it was about lyrics? I thought we were all saying it *wasn't* about lyrics. (But see Troussé ed, The Message, for counter- argument.)

― the pinefox, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

I'm suprised no one's brought up FSA on this thread. I've always thought that their first four albums are incredibly evocative of the harsher bits of the English countryside and its coastline in the autumn. The way they do this is a bit crude, what with the obvious folkiness == rural link and the heavy use of sea-like sounds, but it is very effective.

In a similar vein Hood have got that some of that same ruralness about them, but it's more specific, having a very West Yorkshire mixture of urban and rurual. A lot of their stuff seems to be lyrically very caught up with the experiences of living in a biggish city and feeling somehow lost and isolated within it because of having a stronger connection with countryside you were brought up in than with the city streets. I've never really though about the music supports this, but to my ears it does.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

fsa often use natural sound effects in their music though to make things all the more obvious and also the landscape cover art adds to their ruralness. the same goes for a band like salako who actually record on beaches and in greenhouses and thus sound like a bunch of tree-huggers. is it a deliberate effort by bands that succeeds in transferring the listener to their world or is it sometimes just the subconscious influence of their surroundings? that is a circular question, sheeh. i remember the first time i heard the chills 'pink frost' i imagined it to be what new zealand looked like or sounded like even though i had no idea, and then when i went to nz 8 years later the energy of that song was obvious in the country's personality.

― keith, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Geez, Pinefox, blinkin' 'eck, I can agree with you lot, and it still raises eyebrows by you?

Is it just the way I *smell* or something?

― masonic boom, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Flying Saucer Attack, yes, wonderful. How could I, etc., etc. ...

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Hm...Marc Almond actually does this for me, except it's not so much a world as worlds. He somehow creates a landscape that's part bar, part bedroom, part city street and part nostalgia, if you will, a locale defined by time and place. It's also endlessly shifting in style, hard to pin down.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

And to reply to Keith: I got the same impressions of The Beta Band when they recorded, IIRC, "Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos" outside in Cornwall and used the birdsong on the record. My feeling that way about them was actually one of the first things I ever wrote about for Elidor back in late '99 ...

― Robin Carmody, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

This is such a great question because this idea of creating worlds is about 80% of what I enjoy about music. For me, instrumental music (I'm thinking here of electronic music) does it more than most pop . Aphex twin. Oval. These are all about creating the sound of a certain fictional space from the inside out.

One major pop exception for me is that Suburban Light collection by the Clientele. Very evocative in a cinematic way, although I can't say it reminds me of any specific place. It just sounds like its wafting from some AM radio so long ago, in some rainy town.

Stuff like "X reminds me of Y city" is less interesting to me.

― Mark, Monday, 28 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

the sundays, just a general sense of bicycles, semis, local post offices and single decker buses on summer evenings. ordinaryness and niceness in a way that belle&sebastian don't really manage (too much specificity)

fieldmice have this effect too.

please don't let me have ruined this thread with dodgy formatting as well...

― gareth, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Following on from what Mark was saying about electronic music, "it's about creating the sound of a certain fictional space from the inside out", this music's always been about projecting a state of mind or a sensation rather than reflecting reality.
For example - Juan Atkins doesn't seem to evoke Detroit of the mid 80's so much as offer the only escape route from a dying city, the future. Producing sleek man-machine hybrids was Detroit's legacy, and Atkins' music, for me, is simply about driving. Although many Model 500 tracks are about cruising the wreckage of the city at night, the genre as a whole's been heading elsewhere. The motorway, a ubiquitous non-place, better defined as a state of transition than a specific location, is more accurate for Techno than the factory floor. My affinity with this music comes from being on the motorway at night; the sensation of being integrated into a machine, the widescreen perspective, and heading into the void, watching the lights unravel on the horizon has always seemed an accurate analogy for a perspective on our progress into the future, which we can see but can't define. These fictional spaces are abstract and individual, but are by no means uninhabitable or impersonal, they just don't rely on the studio production language we're accustomed to, it's matter of adapting, they relate to other 'dis-located' environments, such as the internet, or futures projected by sci-fi. eg - much as I loathe the digi-twee of Plone and Plaid it always reminds me of abandoned robots from Silent Running or Azimov's 'I, Robot'. RE: the question. Bands sound like where they think they're from, where they imagine themselves to be. But as far as the the 'fiction' of chart Pop's goes, it's always being undermined by the overlaps with other media, such as promos. If too much is infered, I'm not transported. It's like explaining why a joke works, er... it doesn't anymore.

― K-reg, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

What if you composed an LP of electronic music all based on past-life regression under hypnosis?

Rroland

― Rroland, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

The Rolling Stones have never been described as 'evocative' by even their staunchest defenders, but some of their stuff definitely takes me somewhere else - "Under My Thumb" and "Stupid Girl" immediately place me in a Soho club (London) passing around jazz cigarettes with straight-haired, mini-skirted posh crumpet while Ananda Shankar is on the jukebox, 'Let it Bleed' = 'Performance' (hated the film, but wouldn't you have loved to be in it?), 'Sticky' thru 'Exile' is pulling into a decrepit gas station somewhere in the South with a buck-toothed albino attendent talking on an old-fashioned telephone and a rusted-out body of a pickup truck out front, 'Black and Blue' thru 'Some Girls', Studio 54, cocaine, Warhol, Halston, chest- revealing suits, 'Last Night a DJ Saved My Life' booming out the speakers while members of the Carter administration chop out lines with Leon Spinks. I've never experienced any of these things in reality, except the southern gas-station bit, and that wasn't 1971. After 'Some Girls', Stones records lost any sense of atmosphere, and thus started sucking.

― tarden, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Yeah Gareth, the Sundays are *very* Home Counties. B&S will never feel like that for me; they're too *urban*-parochial in a similar way to the Smiths.

― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Built to Spill fans called out to defend themselves on another thread got me thinkin... BTS is one of the rock bands I know that can really do the conjuring act, create a specific place w/its own rules and texture - the guitars are detailed, specific, slightly loony, just like the lyrics. Much of why I "buy into" the fiction may have to do with the squirmingly confessional style - if you don't look away, then Doug Martsch really is going to show you every single last one of his primary-school photos. If you squint, they kind of look like you.

So that world is a nostalgic one, with all the egotism implied. Hmm. Was going to say that techno is like an anti-nostalgia but that's not really true is it? So many songs remind one of a particular night and a half-remembered feeling. I general I do tend to buy into worlds that offer some sort of challenge to the inherent decadence of listening to music in the first place.

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 29 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

Amidst the fascinating posts on this thread, I'm surprised that no- one's mentioned (unless I've missed or forgotten it) Sinatra or similar period stuff, or Bacharach / David for that matter. I mean: the sound of 'sophistication', and what's often rather crudely and misleadingly called Easy Listening, has a 'world' (or several) too, doesn't it?

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 30 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

What if you composed an LP of electronic music all based on past- life regression under hypnosis? Rroland

-- Rroland

Then you'd be the Aphex Twin.

― Mark Richardson, Wednesday, 30 May 2001 00:00 (twenty-five years ago)

two years pass...

I am reviving this so I can contribute later when I'm not sweating.

― Cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 13:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Whatever happened to Youn?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 2 July 2003 14:41 (twenty-two years ago)

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