#136
Isness wrote:
Squall wrote:
I dont think 4 minutes of a sound constitues a pop song
( Push / Pulk revolving doors )
Or one of the other tracks which is just 3 or so minutes of random nonsense.
I still maintain that the best tracks from Kid A and Amnesiac should have been put on one cd instead of two challenging albums and then being charged full price !
I agree with whoever said that music should be there to entertain and cheer you up. You dont want to buy a cd - take it home and sit down and stare at the speakers for 50 minutes, whilst trying to figure out what on earth the booklet is supposed to mean.
No, Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors isn’t a pop song. There are most definitely no other songs which are ‘just three or so minutes of random nonsense’. It’s all properly written, structured music. Just because it’s moe abstract than music you appreciate, doesn’t mean it’s random - once again, this is why I’m throwing around phrases like ‘you need to listen to more music’, simply because you don’t seem to be able to accept that there are other forms of music that you don’t enjoy.
Kid A and Amnesiac are very different albums. The production on them is pretty different - Kid A is very shiny, cold, clinical sounding, Amnesiac is far noisier, rawer in sound. The mood of the record is very different, I find - other than Like Spinning Plates, which might have fitted Kid A, I don’t think either of them have exchangable tracks. But that’s because I appreciate the records for mood, texture and so on, rather than as a bunch of songs. You listen to music for other - perhaps less ‘challenging’ - reasons, and nobody’s trying to say that’s wrong (least of all me, believe it or not), just that you should understand that what you hear as a bunch of random sounds is actually probably pretty intricately produced and appealing for people who enjoy that kind of music. ‘Its not good’ just seem a bit narrow minded.
As for what music “should be” and how it’s “supposed to be” recorded and so on, that’s… well, I can only speak from someone who studies the subject, but that’s really not the case from the perspective of a hell of a lot of artists. Music is simply the way the musician expresses themself, and by definition has no boundaries of how it should be. Sure, a tight, catchy pop/rock record “should” exist to entertain the listener on a surface level, and is supposed to be recorded from a select batch of songs. But that’s not the only approach to music there is. Some people do enjoy listening to music on a ‘deeper’ level, appreciating all the tightly textured sounds, working out the concepts and meanings, listening to an album a hundred times to get to grips with it. That’s the sort of albums Kid A and Amnesiac are. The problem is that Radiohead weren’t known for that sort of thing, so a lot of people bought them not wanting that approach. That’s the only reason the band get so much shtick for it. As I keep saying, there are hundreds of thousands of albums out there that would make the two records seem like easy listening, it’s just that most people haven’t been introduced to them.
Anyway, I hope you can at least appreciate that. I know this is all very long winded, preachy bullshit really, but… well, maybe you can see where Kid Amnesiac fans are coming from a little better now.
On a slightly different note, I’m not really a fan of Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors, but in the opposite way to Squall - I find the song far too simple/easy, like a poor man’s attempt at IDM. So y’know, the record can be seen from a completely different perspective: I know several people who think it’s too simple and poppy and obvious. ;)
Posted on Sat, 18 February 2006 at 15:27