Listening habits & finding music

#41

tbh musicians rarely turn out especially interesting in interviews

#42

@chava true, especially in print, where the overall tone of the conversation can generally be attributed to the journalist’s nauseatingly generic line of questioning. not always the case, of course, but often so.

having said that, I do really like the RBMA video interviews, which give the artist a chance to really talk passionately about their craft.

#43

Yeah musicians can talk for ages about craft and tech but rarely about anything else other than the usual platitudes. I find it quite staggering so inarticulate or oblivious musicians often seem to be to what constitutes their production and aesthetics sometimes.

But some musicians are really engineering types and often end up producing for others.

#44

totally. I’ve come across a few exceptions over the years, though (see links below): David Byrne, Julian Casablancas (surprisingly), and Daniel Lopatin are all scarily adept at articulating their aesthetic motivations.

http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/oneohtrix-point-never-replication

#45

David Byrne is usually pretty articulate, yes. He is kinda the embodiment of intellectualizing rock, for better or worse.

My favourite interview subject is Thomas Brinkmann, he seems to operate on a whole other level than the majority of music journalists: here’s a good example: https://www.juno.co.uk/reviews/2011/01/20/interview-thomas-brinkmann/

#46

I’m glad I cba about FOMO. I’m not really a type of guy to check out every single release on the front page of a music website like Boomkat or Bleep (although I’m guilty of checking the new releases section at Redeye regularly), and I don’t really check every single release that a label puts out, especially if it’s a big one that releases on a constant basis like Planet Mu or Ninja Tune.

I do admit that my listening habits have varied a lot throughout the years. I really got into “internet-based music communities” through listening to dubstep, which lead me to joining dubstepforum in early 2013, expanding my horizons to the post-dubstep scene that was going about, like the techno / house sounds of Hessle Audio / Swamp 81 / etc. But I was still mainly listening to dubstep cause I didn’t really rate any non-dubstep stuff outside of what was being repped in DSF. I also didn’t really listen to grime until it took soundcloud by storm late 2013 with the war dub season, shoutouts everyone who knew that.

Of course during that time, my main sources of finding music then were Rinse podcasts, dubstepforum threads, youtube algorithms and discogs searching through label back catalogs. That all changed when I finally made a soundcloud account in 2014, despite using it since 2013 cause i was too much of a wasteman and didn’t really find much reason to create one, but i did. Thru soundcloud I started to get hooked more on more clubbier sounds, Jersey club, more contemporary hip hop sounds that were permeating to the UK (ie. Dj Mustard), Her Records, but still, it was all within the general UK hardcore continuum in a way.

That sorta changed as I started digging into soundcloud more, and found music scenes that were entirely internet based. I ended up going through anime trap soundcloud (lack of a better phrase), and despite looking back at it as mostly shit, there were some gems, and it helped me to find some really great producers as well. It was really mind opening as well, showing how there’s many scenes and people out there just making music, however oversaturated soundcloud may be.

short summary before this gets way too long: dubstepforum, as a platform, really influenced the way i consume + check out new music, but its influence was still limited in a way. making a soundcloud account was pretty cool but still sorta limiting because of the echo chamber of reposts + likes, but i still got to check out a lot of new artists and scenes. only when I started to dig for stuff on my own did my mind really open
to the vast amount of out there. However, a lot of the music I found was pretty shit looking back, so it also helped to internalize a quality filter so I wouldn’t be listening to shit derivative music, something we probably all need. Sorry if this post seems a bit convoluted.

#47

thanks for the link. an interesting, if not slightly challenging, read. Brinkmann sounds almost manic…and pretty cranky, no?

#48

He often is because of lousy and unprepared music “journalists”. I regard Brinkmann as an artist-auteur type not a producer guy, he also thinks and acts like an artist (I believe he is originally a visual artist). Anyway, his interviews are always highly entertaining, illuminating and devoid of BS.

#49

So this brings up something for me, a few words that are thrown about so much a to make me cringe when i hear them used in certain contexts - “tastemakers” “curators” and “influencers” are titles that, for me are still useful but that seem to be thrown about ad nauseum in a bullshit and hollow manner.

Giles Peterson, David Bryne, Brian Eno are people whose tastes and selections i really admire. I’ve found so much good music from scouring their interviews, compilations and overall internet archive of connections.

To take this a step further there are little groups of humans I admire (via da internets) that seem to point me in good directions because of the spaces and networks of music pockets they represent. They can be grouped around a record label, Lobster Theremin, Eglo, Whities and Workshop being a certain cluster I’ve formed. They might also be formed around spaces, the way Floating Points, Fatima, FourTet and others will be forever connected (through internet lore) to Plastic People and the musics, artists and styles coming from that ecology.

I think what I’m trying to get at is the sorts of music I find and listen to are usually parsed out by my understanding of who’s working with who where and playing it out where and how are people dancing to it? Or are they just earbudding and podcasting it to themselves alone? We can see well in this forum that lots of music never has much of a physical space associated with it.

just ranting stoned and reflecting on how i find my tunes

Re: listening habits and finding music, at least

#50

wow lots in common here def remember the war dubs and its cool to share that evolution through new podcasts, algorthyms n platforms. then also the actual act of digging, which i feel like wading through all those other podcasts n feeds preps you for, honing your tastes in such a way that you can parse out the bullshit derivs and find the truth. also for me learning about spaces there things work and things dont to hone my ear and understand dance.

#51

Yeah I see your perspective.

Although the thing was, back in 2013 war dub season, I wasn’t necessarily digging for stuff, but I was in the process of discovering new music. Thinking back, a lot of stuff I listened to stemmed a lot from youtube channels. This one channel, AJPuk, posted lots of murky UK post-dubstep club music, DeeperJungle posted Youngsta Rinse FM podcasts, TheLevelsAreVeryHigh posted rips from mixes of all spectrums of grime, etc. I’m saying I was discovering new stuff, not digging, because everything that I was listening to sounded so alien, so fresh, and so new, I had no expectations then before I had a quality filter in place. (pretty sure what I’m saying was mentioned somewhere in some thread here lol). Lots of things change, sometimes for the worst, but mostly for the best.

Bringing in another very niche UK club topic, if anyone was in dubstepforum back in 2013, you definitely would’ve seen the “130 thread”.
https://www.dubstepforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=274711
It was a thread dedicated to all the new evolutions and experimentations with UK club music, specifically with grime. It most mostly spearheaded by Blackdown with his Keysound label and Rinse show, but it included every single “new” producer who were making some sick club beats, Wen, Beneath, Rabit, Visionist, Murlo, Mumdance & Logos, Facta, etc. However, a lot of people made fun of, and gave Blackdown a lot of shit (some good reasons, and some were just criticizing him in the most shit-chat manner possible to him). Does this genre deserve to be coined, One criticism was the whole “130” label being used to pigeonhole producers into a scene that didn’t really exist. Blackdown clarified the whole 130 thing was just a placeholder name, which everyone pretty much knew anyways.

Scenes and communities have never been so blurred compared to even 5 years ago. Even with the internet, things were still fairly isolated. I doubt dubstep heads in 2012 were also huge cloud rap fans at the same time.

#52

I quite like this little Youtube channel for finding lots of weird stuff from the depths of the experimental scene. The admin is super prolific and finds stuff from a wide pool of styles and scenes. Needs more ears on some of this stuff! (the chan is an obvious play on Majestic Casual)

any other secret spots people are using for finding stuff?

#53


Found out about this last night and it’s unbelievably beautiful.

#54
#55

Thank you:)
was being lazy:/

#56

Love this channel its a good mix of stuff i’m already into (discovered it through a total freedom video they uploaded) and stuff I’ve never heard before, have them on soundcloud as well, a lot of the stuff i already follow crops up but it’s good to have as soundcloud is obviously pretty overwhelming.

I go through periods of feeling like I have to keep up with everything, but this year in particular i’ve mostly given up. My usual routine is just to look at boomkat, or just searching nts for stuff i like and playing the shows that have the artist or song I I like in the tracklist’s, but haven’t really been doing that for months either it’s just so overwhelming.

Used to go on Listen To This quite a lot as well, love the writing and made so many discoveries via it, seemed to crop up at the same time I was getting more interested in balearic/newage/ and japanese pop n ambient stuff, it’s such a great resource for that sort of thing.

#57

yeah Listen To This are great too… lots of really soft beautiful things. still think ye olde blogs are the best for finding new treasure. stopmakingsense are great too.

#58

I love this site for finding new stuff http://www.yellowgreenred.com/. He publishes a monthly list of reviews covering quite a wide variety of genres.