This is a great exploration of what makes music “work” for listeners - melody, “narrative,” familiarity with the kind of music you’re listening to - in the context of contemporary classical, which makes it applicable to “difficult” forms of music in general. (It’s also a Socratic dialogue, which is fun.)
A side note about the whole Angelina Jolie thing is that until a few years ago there was a really strong economic disincentive for women to get tested for the gene. If it was found, it would be part of their official medical history, and they could be charged much higher insurance rates. They had to hope that a male relative (ideally their father) would get the testing done, since it didn’t put men at risk and so wouldn’t affect their insurance rates. That’s no longer the case: Obamacare made the practice illegal.
ayeeeminniebit asked: Umm… how do you comment
Shout it into a bottle, screw on the lid real quick, and throw it into the ocean
you guys i am obsessed with this cover. to whom is this question directed? who is asking it? is this saying, “we think by wearing a bikini in greece, kim is saying to the world, ‘you call this fat?’” or is the magazine asking me, in kind of an aggressive way, whether i would call that fat? because this magazine has, literally, called her fat, like 1 week ago, and references that one black and white outfit that “made her look like Shamu” in every article about her since she wore it.
i’ve started carrying it around, approaching strangers, and saying i have a very important question for them that demands the highest consideration. then i show it to them and yell “YOU CALL THIS FAT???”
Here is what I think, maybe: when a lot of people are doing something new, they probably don’t need to be told that the new thing is good or new. They already know that, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. But they do need to be told that just because something is new doesn’t mean it’s good. It could be bad, and it could be done differently. Pointing to good things as an example of the righteous path is one great way to do this. But pointing to everything and saying that it’s good in general seems pointless. Accurately describing the changes that are occurring, while saying who they’ll benefit and who they’ll hurt, is service enough.
Boosting the new thing will be done perfectly well by people with an economic interest in the new thing, and either the new thing will be accepted by everyone else, in which case no one needs to be expending extra energy talking about why it’s good, or it won’t be accepted and it’ll fall into obscurity, in which case nothing needed to be said at all. The major productive stance in relation to new things is either an inquisitive or a critical one, at least in a context where novelty is valued for its own sake. Promoting a new thing as a miracle solution to longstanding problems is like shouting about the value of life vests when you’re throwing one to a drowning man. It’ll sink or swim on its own.
With new things, proof of concept will always be far more powerful than a manifesto. Manifestos are good for raising money and getting gigs, but they’re pointing fingers, not nudging ones. The people with the money can promote their products perfectly fine without our help. Let’s save our energy for making the case that they could be doing it better.
davebloom asked: Hope this doesn't come off as nitpicking, but it's Breakwater, not Shearwater. "Release the Beast" does sound like a Jonathan Meiberg song title, though, which had me checking Shearwater track lists for a few minutes and trying to remember exactly how "Robot Rock" sounded.
Agh, thank you.
A series of videos preceding the album’s release highlighted the musicians they worked with on the project, from contemporaries like Chilly Gonzales to electronic music elder statespeople like Giorgio Moroder. Most notably, they’re working with Paul Williams, a songwriter who composed, among other things, “The Rainbow Connection,” and their first single (and the only music we’ve heard so far) “Get Lucky” used not only new vocals from Pharrell Williams but newly-recorded rhythm guitar from Chic guitarist Nile Rogers. Producing stuff from scratch like this would seem to be a break from their previous way of putting together songs, which relied heavily on samples. (A fantastically annotated list can be found at Spin.) If so, a strange thing is happening: Daft Punk is reenacting in 2013 the move from samples to new studio creations that happened in hip-hop after the legal crackdown on sample use.
Wrote this pre-leak, thinking about the significance of Daft Punk’s use of collaborators given their previous focus on sampling.
In 1996 - before they got lucky with Pharrell, before they were in Kanye’s clique, before the robot helmets - Daft Punk were two Frenchmen playing in a wet Wisconsin field.
This is also fantastic.
Ever wonder why some artists get signed to labels, and then they never get to release any music, or their record gets delayed forever? Aylin Zafar explains why this happens in this excellent, very well reported feature story.
Yes, this is fantastic.
“You will be a disappointment to the entire Jewish community”
