The Album Review Club - Week #146 - (page 1935) - Ocean Rain - Echo and the Bunnymen

[bennyboy]

I’m sorry, it’s utterly risible shite.
How can anyone call that music.
I never thought I’d do this but its…
0/10

As bad as Rush.lol.

 

[BlueMoonAcrossThePond]

For some reason, when I read that "Surrender" was being reviewed, I thought of this :-):

 

[RobMCFC]

I’m sorry, it’s utterly risible shite.
How can anyone call that music.
I never thought I’d do this but its…
0/10

Rounded up to 1, as per rule #4.

Not listened yet but i cant believe it's that bad.

Although I was just looking on Wikpedia for the release date for the spreadsheet and I saw the album credits:-

• Tom Rowlands – production
• Ed Simons – production

WTF? No banjo, no acoustic guitar, no sitar, no piano, no euphonium?

 

[threespires]

How can anyone call that music.

Well, playing this with a straight bat, a definition of music is:

"The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre."

And that is what The Chemical Brothers are doing.

However, I think your question is a reasonable one that I imagine has been asked throughout history. Imagine someone who is familiar with the harpsichord as the most sophisticated instrument of the day suddenly hearing feedback from an ES-335, they would definitely have asked that question.

The difference is the rate of change of technology for someone living at the time when the harpsichord was at the height of it's popularity was much slower than it is now.

Technology has always evolved music, it's just that as with most aspects of life these days it's doing so at a speed that is hard for us to keep up with and assimilate.

Is it 'assisted' creation yes, but then so is my son's pedal board because he certainly can't create the sounds he does without that assistive technology. I was winding him up by pointing out that Walter Trout would say that it's all in the hands not the signal processing that goes on via his feet. The fact that there's a bagload more signal processing going on in this album is only a quantitative difference not a qualitative one to me.

You can have a discussion about various aspects of this type of music, especially the ethics of sampling which I think is interesting, but it is definitely music.

This album is obviously very beat heavy and rhythmically dominated but that just makes it music with a specific emphasis. It might be an emphasis I do or don't like but it is still music.

As others have said, and maybe counter intuitively, The Chemical Brothers are at their best live. I've been pleasantly surprised how much I have enjoyed them at festivals where they weren't the main attraction for me. You wouldn't mistake one of their sets for anything other than a music event.

All that said, I suspect you weren't really suggesting it's not music, more vehemently stating that it wasn't for you which is fair enough but I think your statement implies it is without musical merit which I think is objectively wrong.

Now Moby on the other hand, don't get me started on bloody Moby :-)

 

[Coatigan]

I’m sorry, it’s utterly risible shite.
How can anyone call that music.
I never thought I’d do this but its…
0/10

This one is likely to divide opinion, no doubt about that. Never been my thing (as a genre/style) at all, hence I've never tried listening to it. And hand on heart I'm probably more apprehensive than intrigued going into it.

But I have to give Hammer full credit here for being bold enough to put it forward, knowing fine well it won't be for many on here. That in itself deserves recognition.

 

[BimboBob]

And what do you hate about this one?

I'll let you know later.

 

[RobMCFC]

Well, playing this with a straight bat, a definition of music is:

"The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre."

And that is what The Chemical Brothers are doing.

However, I think your question is a reasonable one that I imagine has been asked throughout history. Imagine someone who is familiar with the harpsichord as the most sophisticated instrument of the day suddenly hearing feedback from an ES-335, they would definitely have asked that question.

The difference is the rate of change of technology for someone living at the time when the harpsichord was at the height of it's popularity was much slower than it is now.

Technology has always evolved music, it's just that as with most aspects of life these days it's doing so at a speed that is hard for us to keep up with and assimilate.

Is it 'assisted' creation yes, but then so is my son's pedal board because he certainly can't create the sounds he does without that assistive technology. I was winding him up by pointing out that Walter Trout would say that it's all in the hands not the signal processing that goes on via his feet. The fact that there's a bagload more signal processing going on in this album is only a quantitative difference not a qualitative one to me.

You can have a discussion about various aspects of this type of music, especially the ethics of sampling which I think is interesting, but it is definitely music.

This album is obviously very beat heavy and rhythmically dominated but that just makes it music with a specific emphasis. It might be an emphasis I do or don't like but it is still music.

As others have said, and maybe counter intuitively, The Chemical Brothers are at their best live. I've been pleasantly surprised how much I have enjoyed them at festivals where they weren't the main attraction for me. You wouldn't mistake one of their sets for anything other than a music event.

All that said, I suspect you weren't really suggesting it's not music, more vehemently stating that it wasn't for you which is fair enough but I think your statement implies it is without musical merit which I think is objectively wrong.

Now Moby on the other hand, don't get me started on bloody Moby :-)

Not listened yet but wanted to step in and respond to this comment as it's an interesting discusssion.

The comment you make about your son and his pedal board vs other technology that I assume will be on display here is not accurate in my eyes. In the former case, a musician will be using pedals to assist in getting a certain sound from the guitar. This will happen in real time and still require the requisite level of skill to pull off.

Creating electronic music is also undoubtedly a skill - however, in this case, an artist (I won't necessarily assume a musician) has the luxury of a number of hours/days/weeks in the studio to achieve the required effect.

Given enough time, you or I or anybody else could probably produce a symphony on a music editing suite with little musical knowledge.

I don't know what to call the difference I am highlighting here, but let's call it the "human performance element". This is important to me when listening to music - like an artist singing their own material. These factors may not be important to others, but they are to me.

If I were to produce the world's best AI software package that could sing like the world's greatest vocalists across a number of genres, this would undoubtedly be extremely skilfull. But I certainly wouldn't consider myself worthy of praise in the music world - the praise I would expect would be from the technology world.

This one is likely to divide opinion, no doubt about that. Never been my thing (as a genre/style) at all, hence I've never tried listening to it. And hand on heart I'm probably more apprehensive than intrigued going into it.

But I have to give Hammer full credit here for being bold enough to put it forward, knowing fine well it won't be for many on here. That in itself deserves recognition.

Agreed. I'm happy to have a broad range of music nominated on here.

 

[BimboBob]

This one is likely to divide opinion, no doubt about that. Never been my thing (as a genre/style) at all, hence I've never tried listening to it. And hand on heart I'm probably more apprehensive than intrigued going into it.

But I have to give Hammer full credit here for being bold enough to put it forward, knowing fine well it won't be for many on here. That in itself deserves recognition.

I think he didn't think he was being bold as this band were all over everywhere in the late 90's/ early 2000's.

 

[Saddleworth2]

Well, playing this with a straight bat, a definition of music is:

"The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre."

And that is what The Chemical Brothers are doing.

However, I think your question is a reasonable one that I imagine has been asked throughout history. Imagine someone who is familiar with the harpsichord as the most sophisticated instrument of the day suddenly hearing feedback from an ES-335, they would definitely have asked that question.

The difference is the rate of change of technology for someone living at the time when the harpsichord was at the height of it's popularity was much slower than it is now.

Technology has always evolved music, it's just that as with most aspects of life these days it's doing so at a speed that is hard for us to keep up with and assimilate.

Is it 'assisted' creation yes, but then so is my son's pedal board because he certainly can't create the sounds he does without that assistive technology. I was winding him up by pointing out that Walter Trout would say that it's all in the hands not the signal processing that goes on via his feet. The fact that there's a bagload more signal processing going on in this album is only a quantitative difference not a qualitative one to me.

You can have a discussion about various aspects of this type of music, especially the ethics of sampling which I think is interesting, but it is definitely music.

This album is obviously very beat heavy and rhythmically dominated but that just makes it music with a specific emphasis. It might be an emphasis I do or don't like but it is still music.

As others have said, and maybe counter intuitively, The Chemical Brothers are at their best live. I've been pleasantly surprised how much I have enjoyed them at festivals where they weren't the main attraction for me. You wouldn't mistake one of their sets for anything other than a music event.

All that said, I suspect you weren't really suggesting it's not music, more vehemently stating that it wasn't for you which is fair enough but I think your statement implies it is without musical merit which I think is objectively wrong.

Now Moby on the other hand, don't get me started on bloody Moby :-)

He very nearly beat Kate in @BlueHammer85 song contest :-(

 

[RobMCFC]

He very nearly beat Kate in @BlueHammer85 song contest :-(

He was robbed :)