Serving Notice

[douglas martini]

a) who came up with the term "freak-folk," and where is his office so i can send him a letter-bomb? "freak folk" is undoubtedly the dumbest genre name in the history of music journalism.

b) john, are you talking about field recordings that are integrated into the tracks, or are these field recordings their own tracks, serving as "interludes" or what have you? the use of field recording can be very interesting if it's worked into the actual song, a la the toothbrush sounds in cocorosie's "good friday." in my own music, i try to work the noise into the sounds, and got some pretty interesting drones from washing machines, microwaves, etc.

[alistarr*]

a) who came up with the term "freak-folk," and where is his office so i can send him a letter-bomb? "freak folk" is undoubtedly the dumbest genre name in the history of music journalism.

not undoubtedly, by any stretch.

personally i think i'm quite prepared to listen to a recording of someone mixing gravel in their driveway, though i can understand it annoying some listeners in the context of an otherwise song-based album.

[martin_van_buren]

a) who came up with the term "freak-folk," and where is his office so i can send him a letter-bomb? "freak folk" is undoubtedly the dumbest genre name in the history of music journalism.

not undoubtedly, by any stretch.

I mean, even for much the same music we have "New Weird America" to contend with.

[jebreject]

i mean, at least "freak folk" does something to describe what's actually going on

not that i don't think it's stupid.

ANYWAY, this entry contained a whole lotta bile for LPTJ. wtf, dood?

[nhennies]

Not sure why this is something to get all worked up over.  In the grand scheme of things there aren't really that many people adding bad 'field recordings' to their music when you compare it to the number of people writing bad folk or rock songs.  Also, I don't know why it's important that the person is wearing a vest or not...

[John]

not real sure that 200 tossed-off words on a blog counts as "getting all worked up"

[jebreject]

JOHN YOU ARE SO AGGRO LATELY JESUS CHRIST MAN

[jebreject]

Not sure why this is something to get all worked up over.  In the grand scheme of things there aren't really that many people adding bad 'field recordings' to their music when you compare it to the number of people writing bad folk or rock songs.  Also, I don't know why it's important that the person is wearing a vest or not...

What is important, to me, is the fact that Animal Collective (who this entry may or may not be about, I don't know, and I'm sure JD doesn't want to go on record naming names) is a terrible, uninteresting band.

[jebreject]

Well, mostly just uninteresting I guess.

[John]

JOHN YOU ARE SO AGGRO LATELY JESUS CHRIST MAN

I know! what can I say, I think indie is just sucking ass lately and since that's my neighborhood I get pretty aggro about it

I'm not talking about A.C. btw, I don't love them but I do think they do interesting enough work sometimes although my feelings about people who worship at the altar of vocal layering are well-known

[Ah_Pook]

i didnt know anal cunt were classified as freak folk these days. they must have taken a different direction on their new stuff...

[jebreject]

I know! what can I say, I think indie is just sucking ass lately

Yeah, there's pretty much no denying this statement IMO

My feelings on Animal Collective, however, are a matter of public record by now and need be discussed no further

[jebreject]

Also I think Anal Cunt is pretty lame

As long as we're talkin' shit.

Or I am, anyway.

[elpollodiablo]

You know what sucks


Stuff jeb likes

[elpollodiablo]

I know! what can I say, I think indie is just sucking ass lately

Yeah, there's pretty much no denying this statement IMO

If by lately you mean the past three or four years, I am in agreement

[Salkin Red]

I know! what can I say, I think indie is just sucking ass lately

Yeah, there's pretty much no denying this statement IMO

If by lately you mean the past three or four years, I am in agreement

While I think this may be true, it still feels strange for me to read this. For the last couple of years I was pretty poor (or spent all available money on guitars) and I stopped writing about music as a job and thus refused to accept any more promo copies and only recently I've been getting back into buying records and since a lot of the records I buy fall into the "Indie" category I feel strangely excited about that kind of music again. The Future Of The Left record had me jumping about the room like a 16 year old, the Evangeliste record blew my mind, the last Electrelane record made me fall in love with them all over again, I am religiously listening to the new Why? record in a way I, for a time,  thought I had too many records to feel like that again, - so while I'm sure most of you are way more aware of what is happening, I now eel sorta bad about the timing of me being excited about this music again at a time where it's not in the best of shapes...

[elpollodiablo]

Naw man it's not like that. I'd wager no one knows less about what's going on these days than I do. I just began to get utterly bored with indie music around 2005, and I'm not really qualified to say it's due to anything beyond my tastes changing. There came a point when quirky vocals, shifting time signatures and non-metal bands whose aesthetic get described as "epic" failed to interest me any longer. I'm still pretty much partial to the singer-songwriter model and people who take that to new and interesting places (JV, Will Oldham, this one dude who shall remain nameless).
So really it ain't you, it's me.

That all being said, I loved the new Electrelane record, as well.

[ellaguru]

Ain't nothing wrong with fading in and out of following the new. I basically took the nineties off from new music. This was probably mostly because I had a crazy job during my undergrad, and then grad school took my time and interest and zip goes ten years, but my official reason was always that there was nothing good to listen to. But then I got slowly reinvigorated, and the past five years or so have been pretty awesome for me as far as music goes. From the time off, partly, but also because every "new" band I'd hear already had a bunch of previous albums I hadn't heard, so I've been getting fifteen years for the price of five (although I've probably mostly caught up by now).

That being said, I listened to 60 albums this week, of which only 6 came out in the last 4 or 5 years, so there may be some truth to what you say.

[citrus]

quirky vocals, shifting time signatures and non-metal bands whose aesthetic get described as "epic"

This pretty much describes everything I look for in music, unintentionally or not. Kind of humbling to have all my taste distilled down like that. Just add literate lyrics to that list and you got me.

I will defend epic to the end, though.

[elpollodiablo]

I used to be pretty partial to literate lyrics as well though recently they've struck me as more precious and obnoxious than anything

I would rather listen to a tramp straight from the Georgia woods anymore

[citrus]

I also enjoy phat beats.

[douglas martini]

i didnt know anal cunt were classified as freak folk these days. they must have taken a different direction on their new stuff...

i'm vividly remember animal collective being classified as "freak-folk" more than once while "freak-folk" as a genre was enjoying its fifteen minutes of fame. and yeah, i'm still pressed for a genre name as abysmal as "freak-folk," as it seems like such a dismissive, high-horse term.

i don't know if i'd consider animal collective "uninteresting;" in fact, i think most of the time, they work considerably hard to avoid being uninteresting by being terrible. i don't love them, but i like them just fine. i dunno; i've always been the type of person who would rather be terrible than terribly boring.

and i think if you're going to do weird shit like stir gravel in your driveway or record running microwaves and turn it into some crazy drone [points at self], it should at the very least be somewhat melodic [or as melodic as you can make that sorta thing, i guess] within the context of the song, and not just doing weird shit for the sake of it. but i guess something like that will always be tossed off as "art for art's sake."

[hannah]

If we're not allowed to do weird shit for the sake of it, I cease to exist.

[Andrew_TSKS]

and i think if you're going to do weird shit like stir gravel in your driveway or record running microwaves and turn it into some crazy drone [points at self], it should at the very least be somewhat melodic [or as melodic as you can make that sorta thing, i guess] within the context of the song, and not just doing weird shit for the sake of it. but i guess something like that will always be tossed off as "art for art's sake."

or what about as UNmelodic as you can make that sort of thing? when i saw creation is crucifixion and they had a member who was just generating noise throughout their set, it added greatly to the chaos/distortion factor, which was pretty much the perfect thing for it to do.

[jebreject]

Yeah, man, I like a decent enough amount of harsh noise and shit like that, so I def can't agree with that last paragraph. My take on AC is basically just that they try to hard and what they do fails to move me. I guess that's really about it.