Autechre - PLUS 20.11.20

[jaderpansen]

1 hour ago, dcom said:

It's called habituation, a psychological learning process where response (dislike, irritation) to a stimulus (music) decreases with repeated exposure (more listens); coupled with the mere-exposure effect, processing fluency, availability heuristic, and familiarity heuristic it leads to "hypnotizing yourself into liking shit by listening to it over and over". It doesn't mean that you actually like something after umpteen listens, it means that you've grown accustomed enough to it which opens a pathway to having a preference for it, because you're no longer getting an adverse reaction from the exposure; you could also call it acquired taste, generalized to apply to other things besides food. It is also expressed by the Wundt curve (that paper's title is Repeated Listening Increases the Liking for Music Regardless of Its Complexity: Implications for the Appreciation and Aesthetics of Music), which states that a pleasurable stimulus becomes more pleasurable with familiarity until reaching a ceiling and dropping off, as happens with songs on heavy radio rotation.

The previous reference to Crazy Frog is an appeal to the extreme, and as such a reductio ad absurdum - of course there are absolutely ridiculous examples that invalidate the habituation process for some, but not for everyone - there are people who actually like gimmicky music like that, and I would wager there are lots of people who have grown to like Crazy Frog because they've been exposed to it repeatedly ad nauseam. I would also think that a sizable portion of us here on WATMM might not be susceptible to habituation as such in relation to the music we're listening and discussing because we tend to very explicitly choose what we listen to (I don't listen to radio, randomized/machine-learning generated playlists, other people's mixes without track listings etc.).

Nevertheless, habituation is not a meme, it's science (although memetics is a (pseudo)science, but let's not go there now).

Yeah. What i meant is mainly the notion of some kind of peer or internal pressure to do so, as in: ppl forcing themselves to like something, "cheating" their "genuine" tastes (which can be aquired fo sho). dunno, to me at least it doesn't feel that way.

[dcom]

1 hour ago, jaderpansen said:

Yeah. What i meant is mainly the notion of some kind of peer or internal pressure to do so, as in: ppl forcing themselves to like something, "cheating" their "genuine" tastes (which can be aquired fo sho). dunno, to me at least it doesn't feel that way.

I have a recurring innate need to try and understand music (and other things) that doesn't click easily; e.g. it is established that Miles Davis' Bitches Brew is a masterpiece, but there are parts of it that I just can't get over unless I force myself to. Having studied music for well over a decade and playing a couple of instruments myself I completely understand what kind of mastery you need to create and play a piece like that; I appreciate the skill and talent required, but I don't listen to Bitches Brew for shits and giggles - it's an intentional exercise to habituate myself to something that's acknowledged to be one of the definitive instances of the genre. I would prefer to listen to Giant Steps, which is sometimes called the most feared song in jazz due to its difficulty - but to me it's way more approachable and definitely not as intimidating as Bitches Brew (although it's a bit unfair to compare pieces with a length difference of over 100 minutes). I do this with a huge spectrum of different music, because I want to expose myself to the widest possible swath of musical expression to really understand what I like, why I like it, to be able to express the relative merits of the pieces and to express my preference of X over Y. I don't think there's an innate musical taste (you're born with), we're all brought up and live in an environment where we're exposed to certain kinds of cultural things that mold our conscious and unconscious preferences, to go beyond them and expand our preferential horizon requires explicit, concentrated effort. This might not apply to anyone else, it's how I've ruminated over these things over the years - I've always been fascinated by the whys and wherefores of personal taste.

I wouldn't discount the effects of peer pressure, WATMM caters to very specific tastes and people are intensely into some of the artists and music featured herein, and sometimes heresy and differing opinions are frowned upon. We're a community, and acceptance within a close-knit one is preferred, if not explicitly sought, so after you've been slapped with a ruler a couple of times you tend to conform or watch what you say lest you make a faux pas.

But I digress, carry on.

Edited December 9, 2020 by dcom

[dingformung]

Your dedication is fascinating. I think Bitches Brew is a masterpiece and possibly my fav by Miles. Not gonna claim I understand all the intricacies and music theoretical concepts behind it, but it's pleasant to listen to.

 

I wonder if AE listen to much jazz and if it has influenced them.

[brian trageskin]

i for one genuinely like crazy frog, fell in love with it since first exposure

i even bought the ep at a discount store, used to play it at every party when i was like 17 and although it was out of irony, i genuinely liked the tune and always will

it's catchy and it's fun, what more can you ask from a tune

[eclipsis]

3 hours ago, dingformung said:

Your dedication is fascinating. I think Bitches Brew is a masterpiece and possibly my fav by Miles. Not gonna claim I understand all the intricacies and music theoretical concepts behind it, but it's pleasant to listen to.

 

I wonder if AE listen to much jazz and if it has influenced them.

I always thought irlite (get 0) is what jazz would sound like if jazz musicians would keep up with new technology like Davis used to throughout the decades of his work.

[jules]

44 minutes ago, eclipsis said:

I always thought irlite (get 0) is what jazz would sound like if jazz musicians would keep up with new technology like Davis used to throughout the decades of his work.

Same with spaces how V

that is super Miles-y to me

[Draft78]

4 hours ago, dcom said:

I have a recurring innate need to try and understand music (and other things) that doesn't click easily; e.g. it is established that Miles Davis' Bitches Brew is a masterpiece, but there are parts of it that I just can't get over unless I force myself to. Having studied music for well over a decade and playing a couple of instruments myself I completely understand what kind of mastery you need to create and play a piece like that; I appreciate the skill and talent required, but I don't listen to Bitches Brew for shits and giggles - it's an intentional exercise to habituate myself to something that's acknowledged to be one of the definitive instances of the genre. I would prefer to listen to Giant Steps, which is sometimes called the most feared song in jazz due to its difficulty - but to me it's way more approachable and definitely not as intimidating as Bitches Brew (although it's a bit unfair to compare pieces with a length difference of over 100 minutes). I do this with a huge spectrum of different music, because I want to expose myself to the widest possible swath of musical expression to really understand what I like, why I like it, to be able to express the relative merits of the pieces and to express my preference of X over Y. I don't think there's an innate musical taste (you're born with), we're all brought up and live in an environment where we're exposed to certain kinds of cultural things that mold our conscious and unconscious preferences, to go beyond them and expand our preferential horizon requires explicit, concentrated effort. This might not apply to anyone else, it's how I've ruminated over these things over the years - I've always been fascinated by the whys and wherefores of personal taste.

I wouldn't discount the effects of peer pressure, WATMM caters to very specific tastes and people are intensely into some of the artists and music featured herein, and sometimes heresy and differing opinions are frowned upon. We're a community, and acceptance within a close-knit one is preferred, if not explicitly sought, so after you've been slapped with a ruler a couple of times you tend to conform or watch what you say lest you make a faux pas.

But I digress, carry on.

I too have a keen curiosity to investigate the patterns that make me select things in the category of good and bad. You say that it is unlikely that we are born with an innate sense of aesthetics, but rather that it is the result of the social context, and of the specific experiences we encounter (acquisition and accommodation: it was not Piaget who described the process of equilibration in "the construction of the real "?). But it is also true that we are born with a genetic makeup that is the fruit of centuries ove centuries of selection, and that this could determine the way in which i process sensitive experience (therefore i introduce an innate and primitive element in the experience of my social and cultural context). A deterministic view in this sense could be excessive, but I am inclined to think that what I am, right now, is a complex combination of innate and acquired characteristics. But of one thing I am quite sure: any function that passes through my brain, even the most seemingly unconditional, such as aesthetics, is connected to the sovereign need of life: to be and persist. Desmond Morris wrote a curious book - more than anything else a collection of experimental observations accompanied by some theoretical suggestions - in which he tries to contextualize the meaning of art within a physiological perspective, looking for the reasons linked to the processes of adaptation: biology of art (here we observe the aesthetic sense of the chimpanzees, imagining that the absence of superstructures can lead to a direct and genuine observation of the phenomenon). Having said that, the effort I voluntarily make to discover and learn about musical possibilities that, on an instinctive level, would initially seem indigestible or in any case very difficult, will still carry the weight of what is my training : the very fact that I decide to make an effort towards understanding the new and the "not immediate" is in turn a legacy of my previous experience. In this sense, I am afraid that I will never have a pure, precategorial listening (now alive completely immersed in the ineffable maze of ensembles). But since I am inclined to read the world in a Freudian echo, I don't hide that all the reasons mentioned above, every articulated or primitive form of this egocentric and self-referential skein that I call "I", bears a sexual imprint. I am obviously not referring to a social or contemporary sense of sexuality, but to a very basic and seminal idea: if I distinguish shapes in space it is because I am alive, and if I divide these shapes into beautiful and ugly, good or bad, it is because ordering these forms makes me survive, and the name that has been given to this taxonomy of the whole, I believe is precisely sexuality (which is the only tool with which life finds a compromise of persistence with death). I probably went a little further, and I will pay dearly for the consequences of this generic and brutally reductive rant, but now it's done 

 

I too am more seduced by Coltraine than by Davis. Bitches is an extremely unpredictable album, it manages to tune distant motifs and tones, sometimes you almost have the impression of listening to two different bands playing in unison (which is very interesting), however I find there are blues and psychedelic influences that takes me back to the regions of the known, to the criteria of a period, while Coltraine sends me right where he wants, without compromise, without mediation. Things like this seem to be out of an era ... who knows if time will prove me right

[Draft78]

23 minutes ago, Draft78 said:

Things like this seem to be out of an era ... who knows if time will prove me right

I had forgotten the reference..

[dingformung]

There are universal mathematical principles of proportionality that transcend culture and conditioning.

Edited December 9, 2020 by dingformung
typo

[Alcofribas]

this is an interesting conversation. i wonder how many watmmers can honestly say they've come to deeply love and connect with music as a result of habituation, rubbing away that adverse reaction due to exposure. speaking personally, i don't feel there's enough time in my life to establish relationships to music in this manner. it's true i may come to appreciate some detail of a specific song while listening to it in the background every day at work, but typically i'd say this has just resulted in being less irritated by something, not growing to actually really like it after thinking i hated it. there have been many times over my life i've come to appreciate something i was originally repulsed by but more often than not this has been as a result of distance, of years of personal growth clearing a space in which i can appreciate it anew.

for me music is essentially about pleasure and i this pleasure is not necessarily enhanced by scrutinizing why this is. to be perfectly honest, if there isn't something ultimately inscrutable about music i highly doubt it would have such an intense appeal. music is an encounter with something mysterious, ineffable. this mysterious surplus is obvious more or less profound depending on the example but in the end if i could just read scientific literature and stare at a memento mori while pondering why i like lush pads, they'd probably lose some of their "magic" so to speak.

[jaderpansen]

1 minute ago, Alcofribas said:

for me music is essentially about pleasure and i this pleasure is not necessarily enhanced by scrutinizing why this is.

well, exactly.

"vermöge der musik genießen sich die leidenschaften selbst." (walrusman)

[Alcofribas]

2 minutes ago, jaderpansen said:

well, exactly.

"vermöge der musik genießen sich die leidenschaften selbst." (walrusman)

Nietzsche was definitely at his finest when he was musical

[jules]

17 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

this is an interesting conversation. i wonder how many watmmers can honestly say they've come to deeply love and connect with music as a result of habituation, rubbing away that adverse reaction due to exposure. speaking personally, i don't feel there's enough time in my life to establish relationships to music in this manner. it's true i may come to appreciate some detail of a specific song while listening to it in the background every day at work, but typically i'd say this has just resulted in being less irritated by something, not growing to actually really like it after thinking i hated it. there have been many times over my life i've come to appreciate something i was originally repulsed by but more often than not this has been as a result of distance, of years of personal growth clearing a space in which i can appreciate it anew.

for me music is essentially about pleasure and i this pleasure is not necessarily enhanced by scrutinizing why this is. to be perfectly honest, if there isn't something ultimately inscrutable about music i highly doubt it would have such an intense appeal. music is an encounter with something mysterious, ineffable. this mysterious surplus is obvious more or less profound depending on the example but in the end if i could just read scientific literature and stare at a memento mori while pondering why i like lush pads, they'd probably lose some of their "magic" so to speak.

There is something to be said that is maybe less about habituation and more about mood though. I'd say my relationship with Burial's music is the best example for me. When that first came out and people were going ape about it, I just did not get it at all. I tried quite a few times but it was just meh to me. A few years later I put it back on, and it was a combo of my mood, the weather and all of that and it hit hard. Since then, I really got into his stuff but only during those moods. I can't play his stuff on a bright sunny day at all. And now, I can't not put it on on Christmas and wintery or grey days. It's attached to a specific mood and time. I'm sure everyone has examples like that with artists. 

 

I think my relationship with ae's music was never about how difficult it was or anything like that. They weren't 'difficult' when I got into them around tri-rep. I was a huge hip hop fan in the 90s and they just struck that chord of something new and hyper creative to me. Since then following their creative journey has been beyond rewarding to me. I love how they compromise nothing. As you had said earlier in the thread, they make no fanfare about shit, don't attach paragraphs to why it is relevant or any of that nonsense. And their stuff is just so dense that repeated listens only become that much more rewarding.

Edited December 9, 2020 by jules

[Alcofribas]

3 minutes ago, jules said:

There is something to be said that is maybe less about habituation and more about mood though. I'd say my relationship with Burial's music is the best example for me. When that first came out and people were going ape about it, I just did not get it at all. I tried quite a few times but it was just meh to me. A few years later I put it back on, and it was a combo of my mood, the weather and all of that and it hit hard. Since then, I really got into his stuff but only during those moods. I can't play his stuff on a bright sunny day at all. And now, I can't not put it on on Christmas and wintery or grey days. It's attached to a specific mood and time. I'm sure everyone has examples like that with artists. 

yeah absolutely. in fact a lot of times i go into something with high expectations and find i'm just not feeling it i will kind of assess my overall mood and environment too and chalk it up to my personal mood or vibe and give it a second chance when those things have changed. 

there's definitely music that seems to only work in specific conditions, i think that's cool!

[jules]

4 minutes ago, Alcofribas said:

there's definitely music that seems to only work in specific conditions, i think that's cool!

Oh yea, for sure. I can't listen to any new ae until the alco review is posted. then it's like the go ahead.

[Alcofribas]

lol

[dcom]

1 hour ago, dingformung said:

There are universal mathematical principles of proportionality that transcend culture and conditioning.

Music is math.

[jaderpansen]

sure, tho i'd argue its quantifiability isn't necessarily the defining trait rly, as in not more or less than that of anything else.

[ignatius]

On 12/3/2020 at 2:28 PM, eclipsis said:

fingers crossed!

i'm here to report it is indeed just static build up. after a spray w/the anti static cleaner and wipe w/a microfiber cloth all the pops and shit disappeared. 

it sounds great.. as usual w/ae vinyl. 

[dingformung]

ae is so:

[jaderpansen]

you mean a golden ratio between cerebrality and viscerality? but which is which?

[brian trageskin]

i just figured out crazy frog was released in 2005 which means i was 21, not 17 like i mentioned earlier 

i'm sure you're all very happy to know that and you're very welcome

 

Edited December 9, 2020 by brian trageskin

[zkom]

One of the Gescom EPs has the title "The Sounds of Machines Our Parents Used" which I think has a deeper meaning than what appears on the surface when you start thinking about it.

[dingformung]

48 minutes ago, jaderpansen said:

you mean a golden ratio between cerebrality and viscerality? but which is which?

No, I mean between Rob and Sean, one of them does at least 61.8% of the work

[jaderpansen]

11 minutes ago, dingformung said:

No, I mean between Rob and Sean, one of them does at least 61.8% of the work

well at least on PLUS (to get somewhat back on topic) my bet's on sean. we know from his jam transmission that ecol and x4 are by him, which are the longest tracks by far, making up roughly 43% of the album alone.