philip sherburne declares music officially dead

[content]

from his blog at www.philipsherburne.com

But one thing must be said. We have never been of a particularly teleological mindset, but today we must indulge in a Fukuyama and report The End of Music. After Jamie Lidell, all other musicians may quietly lay down their tools and slink off to collect an artist's pension in some quaintly socialized Scandinavian country. Lidell is all there is, all that's left, all that need be.

[Sheridan]

now I am as big a fan as the next person here, or elsewhere for that matter. but lidell is not the all to end all in music.
this guy speaks like lidell is the alpha and omega.

[bitch one]

who is this guy philip sherburne btw? i keep hearing his name recently. does he write for a rag?

that paragraph can be condensed to 'i think jamie lidell is really good.'

takes a lot less time to read.

[decadnids]

Originally posted by bitch one
who is this guy philip sherburne btw?


thats what I thought, never heard of him.

[Hagbard]

well after I last saw Jamie live I did have ideas of the same thing.. but my rational light of day conclusion is that he is the start of something incredible, not the end...

Sherburne writes for The Wire, XLR8R and various San Francisco publications. He seems to write one of the most popular electronic music blogs.

[decadnids]

Originally posted by Steev

Sherburne writes for The Wire, XLR8R and various San Francisco publications. He seems to write one of the most popular electronic music blogs.

right, shows you how much i know about anything ;)

i dont often read stuff about music. prefer to listen to it.

[namshub]

i'm seein jamie this fri night!!! finally!!

hope to see any melb no-futurists there!!

[Hagbard]

It's all new to me really, I hadn't bought a music magazine in about seven years until recently.

[christtjj]

yeah fuck music magezines. i haven't seen one yet that doesn't pandor their reviews to the labels/musicians that are most hip. lol

[pongoid]

It's funny this gets mentioned as I was just wondering where I might be able to find some of Jamie Lidell's stuff, pre-SC. Anybody got any ideas?

Ape

[emef]

early subheads, sativae 13 safety in numbers ep, mosquito 8 freekin the frame for great JL action
try ebay... most pop up quite often
muddlin gear on warp... easily available i imagine

[pongoid]

Cheers, muchly.

Ape

[Mui]

Originally posted by namshub
i'm seein jamie this fri night!!! finally!!

hope to see any melb no-futurists there!!

yar, can't wait!
will cya there!
2nd time i've seen him this year and it's only june!

[circuit_freak]

Originally posted by bitch one


that paragraph can be condensed to 'i think jamie lidell is really good.'

takes a lot less time to read.

Haha, exactly.

It's an unfortunate trait of music journalists to assume that what they aren't hearing simply doesn't exist. In the UK and Aust in 1985 I recall music journalists everywhere declaring that synths were out and guitars were in - just as Chicago and Detroit were starting to boil. It didn't occur to many people back then to look beyond the usual places in the UK and Europe for electronic music.

[stitchey]

...agree with you, circuit_freak. i lived in london 84/85, walked out of a jesus & mary chain gig @ ambulance station (was it their first in london? can't remember) and never looked back. earlier the same day i bought a couple of residents albums i was never able to get as u.s. imports (as well as two henry cow albums), second hand. i subsequently got into all the "acid" stuff, putting my bass away for a full nine years. 'looking back' from then on looked different. in this regard, i can't make much out of philip sherburne's
statement. but then, it's a blog... --isn't he the writer who coined the term "microhouse"? THAT got me really puzzled...

[circuit_freak]

I didn't know he coined the term! You learn something every day.

The idea of house being micro is rather unappealing to me, like it's been co-opted by molecular scientists, or maybe it simply has a very small wanger. Personally, I like my house macro: a big heart, a big kick drum, a big celebration. To each their own.

I do enjoy Sherburne's writing, however, even if I don't share his taste in electronic music. He's a pretty good writer I think, always got something interesting to say. He's sort of yin to Simon Reynolds yang. There is a limit to how much music journalism you should read, I am sure. Maybe one article a month is safe.

[circuit_freak]

I suspect that the desire to shrink house music, make it manageable, make it tiny and controllable, may have an oedipal aetiology. That is, house is the teacher, the ancestor, the father of techno; and it dominates the landscape, towering above electronic dance music. This general perception of house as a father, the poundingly male rhythms underneath the ecstatic female vocals, and, perhaps, above all, the sexual confidence of all classic house unconsciously reminds us of our own fathers, with whom of course we could never compete, underendowed as we were in every way. What better revenge on the father than to shrink him (and perhaps his member) down to minute proportions? If we make the kick drum smaller, the hat tiny, each sound microscopic, we may then study the father with all the anal sadism of a scientist, between the speakers, away from the dance floor, away from women, away from mother above all: there are no ecstatic female vocals in microhouse. Learn his ways, perhaps; win back our mothers.

And yet, as is the way with unconscious phantasy, the spectre of the enemy remains embedded in the solution: and in microhouse, the enemy is the bassline. It looms large behind the neurotic, finicky, asexual loathings of the rhythm, the shadow of the father, looming at the door, to catch the child engaged in sexual misbehaviour. No wonder, then, that microhouse sounds so paranoid and neurotic.


Of course, this is all absurdly far-fetched, and I hope no-one takes these idle speculations too seriously.

[Frankie]

http://www.comics.com/comics/getfuzzy/archive/images/getfuzzy2004060174316.jpg

[aljones15]

Originally posted by bitch one
who is this guy philip sherburne btw? i keep hearing his name recently. does he write for a rag?

that paragraph can be condensed to 'i think jamie lidell is really good.'

takes a lot less time to read.

phillip is one of the bigger electronic music critics. he writes critical beats for the wire, a columon for sonomu, and freelances for everything in between. really cool guy too.

peace,
a

correction

actually that's neumu not sonomu and yeah he writes for xlr8r also.

[audiofelch]

i have to say...witnessing jamie live incites similar reactions in me.. id say by the time he's midway through a set im ready to abandon all musical aspirations and offer my free lifelong service to him as a lowly leadwinder and effects box polisher...
ive already developed the zeal of a jehovah witness in my Lidell-live-set-cdr distribution... spreading the gospel far and wide.

its not healthy.

[bitconductor]

yeah for about 10 seconds i get inspired to go and try and do the same sort of thing then i think what's the point he does it much better than you'd ever be able to, plus he came up with the idea and the set-up himself so you'd only be copying. you complete idiot.
audiofelch, perhaps maybe you could 'convert' me with some of your live-set cdrs? i mean, i'm ALMOST there...

[audiofelch]

well.. too be honest i havent got the Defininive live set yet .. i think steev too is after such a show : ie the elusive "cargo" set ..or the ehter 2003 queen elizabeth hall show, still i would be happy to send u the recent belfast gig with a few trax from sonar 2003...there are some great moments...and preview of new song..

unfortunately my work firewall stops people slsking any of my files.. so pm me an adress..

--

i have fouind the lidell shows really inspiring for the thing im doing as long as i focus on his methods and ideas of creating a technological platform to allow you to follow any spontaneous creative whim .. the moment i get near any similar stylistic territory it gets a bit disheartening.. ie: with a voice like that, you instantly have an amazing and versatile raw material, and because its such a "classic" soul voice, u can play with subverting your own lineage... you can be experimental and classic/totally out there and accessible at once...you can warble away for an hour and not sound wankey..

dammit he just always sounds Right!
bastard.

[invisibleplanet]

Reports about 'The End of Music' have been greatly exaggerated :)

Like the recent rare transit across the sun of the normally hidden beauty of Earth's sister planet, Venus, Jamie Lidell emerges from the outer-reaches of electronic-music-space, powered by the Warp engines of his leftfield past and current Super-Collider co-project with Cristian Vogel et al.
Lidell is everywhere: back in 1999 he could be found in the back of your 'Daddy's Car' or 'Hide in from the day' with fellow electronic soul-muses Super Collider. He's been 'Spillin' Visions' in a variety of soulful performances with Super_Collider and visual-wizard/costumier Pablo Fiasco, swinging with Dani Siciliano and Matthew Herbert's Big Band to international acclaim during Spain's Sonar 2003.

Lidell's voice heralds ‘the Beginning of a New Muse’ born from the warp-driven chaos of an experimental electronic fusion of world music

reply to blog: http://www.philipsherburne.com/

[invisibleplanet]

btw. that paragraph can also be condensed to 'i think jamie lidell is really good.'
lol

[Hagbard]

I have the cargo set. I am online on slsk now as badgoose.

[bitch one]

Originally posted by invisibleplanet
btw. that paragraph can also be condensed to 'i think jamie lidell is really good.'
lol

no, i disagree - it contains information as opposed to mere writewank

[Lady E]

excellent

philip is a lovely bloke and has given us much support, im always interested in his views on music.

and i know how he feels...even though jamie is just a normal person and our friend, he is incredible and we have always been in awe of his talent. live he does blow you away, but you all know that.

i know that cristian and i feel very lucky to work with him.

[bitch one]

wish i'd seen him when he was in glesga

[decadnids]

Originally posted by invisibleplanet
Like the recent rare transit across the sun of the normally hidden beauty of Earth's sister planet, Venus,

venus, not really hidden. is venus not known as the "evening star" as it is the one that is first visible as night falls??

[invisibleplanet]

as this transit has only been happened 5 times since the 1600s, this makes it rare ;) it's not often one can view the venus transiting directly across the solar disk due to the angle of planetary orbit, and so yes, it's rare beauty is normally hidden from us in that we either have the morning or the evening 'star' venus. the change from morning to evening star is after an inferior conjuction such as this one, when an evening venus appears to become invisible, before reappearing as the morning star. because of this phenomenon, the ancients used to think that venus was two separate stars.
http://analyzer.depaul.edu/paperplate/Transit%20of%20Venus/JayRyan.htm

but i digress somewhat from the original topic...

[arar]

Originally posted by emef
early subheads, sativae 13 safety in numbers ep, mosquito 8 freekin the frame for great JL action
try ebay... most pop up quite often
muddlin gear on warp... easily available i imagine

Hmm thought "Muddlin Gear" was one of the worst records Ive ever heard..he has got to have been completely taking the piss with that one..

[Lady E]

Originally posted by arar


Hmm thought "Muddlin Gear" was one of the worst records Ive ever heard..he has got to have been completely taking the piss with that one..

thats bollocks arar
sorry
even if you dont like the really abstract numbers, daddy's car, daddy no lie and the one where he sings 'im so damn tired' (not sure of title) are worth the money on their own.

its a great album.

[aleks]

muddlin gear is awesome.i wish jamie would go really abstract while playing live.

[audiofelch]

muddlin gear is amazing.. yeah yeah its 'difficuilt' here and there.. but it has a quality to the sounds that ive never heard on another electronic release.. its got the electric ambience of Bitches Brew running through it.. really dirty and organic ..

any album that brings together dark funk, mashed breaks, dada vocalising, barbershop quartets, sprawling post rock melancholy (the cop it suite) and stockhasen-esuqe electro-acousrtic collage... all with a latent classic lidell techno pulse (that skippy shuffly thing that kind of matches his onstage chicken strut dancing).. is gonna be kinda wierd..

[Lady E]

Originally posted by audiofelch
sprawling post rock melancholy (the cop it suite)

aah thats the one.

[audiofelch]

its really gorgeous.

particularly good for passing out drunk on a hairy carpet too ive found...

[grobelaar]

No this Phil geezer is right - there is nothing after Lidell...

I even heard that the UN was going to reset the date...

its now 0001AL (after Lidell)

[decadnids]

Originally posted by invisibleplanet
as this transit has only been happened 5 times since the 1600s, this makes it rare ;) it's not often one can view the venus transiting

ok i get ya, your other post kina implied that venus itself was rare, not the transit.

g

[content]

don't you usually think the last concert you went to is the best? i am sure he didnt literally mean what he said.

do we have any mutek reviews from any1 on here?

[invisibleplanet]

Originally posted by decadnids


ok i get ya, your other post kina implied that venus itself was rare, not the transit.

g

i think this is the same kinda mistake being applied to lidell and prince here...one listen to both of their voices can tell us that they're in possession of beautiful 'rare instruments', and such voices as these don't come along all that often. sometimes, recognition of such outstanding voices, such as Björk's (or in some people's opinion, Diamanda Galas, whose work i'm unfortunately unfamiliar with) is made with clumsy and ill-thought comparisons.
I don't believe that it's wise for us to compare Jim 'La' Lidell's voice with the voice of Prince; i feel that all that's needed is an undersanding that such beautiful voices are worthy of comment and high appreciation for the delight they bring to the listener, who wordlessly appreciates their resonance in & upon ear, heart, and soul.

la la lidell ;)

[grobelaar]

Originally posted by content
don't you usually think the last concert you went to is the best? i am sure he didnt literally mean what he said.

do we have any mutek reviews from any1 on here?

No, the last thing I went to see was Matthew Herbert's Big Band and that was really good. But still not as enjoyable and as entertaining as the Lidell one-man extravaganza... (it is of course worth noting that this could have been for a number of different reasons - most notably being the difference between sitdown concert type action, versus bouncing around at the front of a stage type action...

[Hagbard]

I thought the Lidell Cargo gig was incredible.. a few days after most good gigs I generally start thinking 'maybe it wasn't that good'...

But I have an mp3 of the cargo gig, and it's still mindblowing, the hard funky shit AND the abstract shit :)

[psherburne]

I think Jamie Lidell is really good.

No, but really: I didn't mean to try to be cryptic or apocalyptic with my brief blog entry. It was a thought that came to me in the middle of Lidell's set from thinking (as much as one can think coherently during such a set) about the longstanding carping about laptop performance, and how Lidell had pretty much obliterated all that. It was not a "laptop performance," it was pure performance, and in fact the music could not have existed without its performative aspect (despite his vast recorded output). Perhaps I should have said "all laptop musicians" instead of "all musicians." For what it's worth, I shared my thought with Krikor after the show and he said that he felt the same way the first time he saw Lidell -- and every time thereafter.

Anyone who knows my writing knows to take my occasional hyperboles with a grain of salt. But I do think that Lidell's was one of the most complete fusions of intent and execution that I've ever seen on stage.

And don't feel bad decadnids, I've never heard of you either. ;) (Of course, I don't come around here that often.)

[Spandex]

That decadnids is a bastad decadnids.

Saw Lidell live once many years ago in the Skyy club in Notts... I remember Hardy (Spymania) managed to clear the back room by playing scary noises for an hour or two.. then he put the (then unreleased I think?) "Head On" album on.. and I have vague memories of Jamie singing along from under a table :) Was pretty damn good. Oh.. I just remembered.. I saw him again in a field near Chelmsford... making wibbly noises down a trumpet, along with a band with that there squarepusher on bass I think... I wish I had a better memory.

Would love to see the recent live stuff. Steev's been raving about it :)

[emef]

Originally posted by psherburne
I think Jamie Lidell is really good.

No, but really: I didn't mean to try to be cryptic or apocalyptic with my brief blog entry. It was a thought that came to me in the middle of Lidell's set from thinking (as much as one can think coherently during such a set) about the longstanding carping about laptop performance, and how Lidell had pretty much obliterated all that. It was not a "laptop performance," it was pure performance, and in fact the music could not have existed without its performative aspect (despite his vast recorded output). Perhaps I should have said "all laptop musicians" instead of "all musicians." For what it's worth, I shared my thought with Krikor after the show and he said that he felt the same way the first time he saw Lidell -- and every time thereafter.

Anyone who knows my writing knows to take my occasional hyperboles with a grain of salt. But I do think that Lidell's was one of the most complete fusions of intent and execution that I've ever seen on stage.

And don't feel bad decadnids, I've never heard of you either. ;) (Of course, I don't come around here that often.)

i liked what you said, i thought it was funny, in a flippant way i thought a similar thing about giving up music when i first saw him play live, he blew me away that much.

but its not really right to call JL a laptop musician, he uses a shedload of other stuff too never mind his amazing live vocaltrack constructs so its not a laptop performance in the usual geek hiding behind single screen sense
when i saw him play he was playing basslines through a bassguitarsynth with a microphone, absolutely fantastic

[stitchey]

oorrch, emef, you needn't mention that lil "bassguitarsynth"-box. now everybody's gonno wonno have one like that.:D

hey psherburne, how very nice you're here. as opposed to that bastard circuit_freak down there in sydney, a quasi-neologism like "microhouse" just has me puzzled, an attempt to further the morphology of what other ppl call "coherent zones of intensity" is always welcome at my house (which is not a home most of the times),... 'after all'(!)...
like them "hyperboles", keep them coming. you're also a damn fine dj, more ppl should know about this.

what i've been missing so far is...jamie liddell live in texas.
come on...

[circuit_freak]

Hey Stichey, how did you find out I was a bastard? You have spooky powers.

[Lady E]

well philip its very nice to see you here!

[decadnids]

Originally posted by psherburne

And don't feel bad decadnids, I've never heard of you either. ;) (Of course, I don't come around here that often.)

thats ok mate, wouldn't expect you to have heard of me, i dont write critical stuff on electronic musick.

[decadnids]

Originally posted by Spandex
That decadnids is a bastad decadnids.


cheers dude, gonna breed myself a new brother.

[bitch one]

Originally posted by psherburne
Anyone who knows my writing knows to take my occasional hyperboles with a grain of salt. But I do think that Lidell's was one of the most complete fusions of intent and execution that I've ever seen on stage.

hey, don't worry, i was only slagging off your writewank because i can. it's a blog, if you can't wank there where can you wank?

(oh, ok in private...)

or on a messageboard, perhaps.

[circuit_freak]

Thanks for that visual image, I will always treasure it.

[stitchey]

originally posted by circuit_freak:
how did you find out i was a bastard?

sorry i'm always late, freak. work is horrible since weeks. plus the time-lapse etc. ...well, since you asked me that question, lets have a look back at my horoscope from yesterday (also to acknowledge both invisibleplanet's and decadnids' observation of the stars...):
"Transmute your notorious sensitivity into prescience (predicting the future). Point this powerful talent toward your own life. Why wouldn't you be able to predict the future? You are, after all, creating it right now with your choices."
lol redeculous...

[cut out]

Originally posted by content
don't you usually think the last concert you went to is the best? i am sure he didnt literally mean what he said.

do we have any mutek reviews from any1 on here?

i tell you what, i saw the dillinger escape plan last night and after/during really did believe that music is dead... my god that was the most furious, precise hardcore shit i have ever seen... jaw dropping.

fortunatley suzi recorded the nina nastasia session off john peel last night so on my into work this morning i was able to listen to it and have my faith restored :)

[audiofelch]

oohh.. dillinger escape plan.. thats some awesomely deranged heaviness..

...did they do come to daddy?

[cut out]

dunno - only just a hold of their LP and havent listened to it yet.... is that come to daddy as in the aphex tune!>!>!?