animal collective / 'freak folk' / manitoba etc.

[kid cue]

Originally Posted by Strangelet

so basically you're saying its just not your cup of tea? so cool. Beyond that I have a few problems with what you're saying. HOw can it be a problem hearing a particular kind of religious quality when we agreee experiencing music can be religious in nature? This is kind falls flat when you take away the first premise of your argument: you don't like animal collective. I happen to know from previous conversations that you appreciate the music of bach, which you must understand emotes the kind of religiousity that only someone with his religious sentiments could create. other artists evoke different religious principles. BUT ALL OF THIS is irrelevant because I never said Animal Collective is shooting for a religious experience. I never read that anywhere. That's completely my own reaction to the music, independent of any desired effect. Which means I can pretty much say it as much as I want. Its not a math equation, its art.

umm, please chill out a little

of course you can say whatever you want. it's not like i've decided that i officially dislike the band and am thus presenting an algorithm to justify that dislike (where the hell did the math equation comment come from?????). i said the quasi-religious feel of the music doesn't sit well with me--to which you responded that all music is or can be somehow religious, to which i responded: yes! but it doesn't have to be music with Religion in it. especially not nature and animal spirits and Gaia, Earth's mother. i know you brought this up because you were just responding to the sounds (so was i), but let's take Religion in Animal Collective as an axis of discussion: Bach was making music in a highly religious atmosphere, where his music literally had a religious function, so I have a much easier time accepting it as part of the music. (also, as music, i like Bach's music about 100000000000x more than Animal Collective's.) meanwhile, i think it's reasonable to say that Animal Collective are either consciously or semi-consciously choosing to suffuse their music with religious or proto-religious themes, but in a secular environment. this is an aesthetic choice that i could either take or leave. i kind of can't stand it by nature, so i'm leaving it.

i mean, in theory. what i'm actually now going to do is go and listen to Feels a couple more times -_-

??!! what is your definition of "prententious?" I consulted google and got this to come up on top....

making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction

which implies observation, which implies the existence of audience. what definition are you using?

sure, and my dictionary says that to "pander" means to "gratify or indulge". if anything pretentious is necessarily "pandering" to anyone, it's to the artist himself. going back to your original point, i thought it was kind of ridiculous to claim that i can't hear Animal Collective's music as pretentious simply because they are "doing their own thing."

[dubman]

Originally Posted by kid cue

i mean, in theory. what i'm actually now going to do is go and listen to Feels a couple more times -_-

that part you said about them attempting to get a 'religious' reaction out of primitivism and necessarily limiting that type of experience by putting it through that scope? all that cloying ends with 'loch raven'

song is f'n BEAUTIFUL.

but all that stuff about new age echoes and gaia n stuff... '#1' on the next album is either gonna get a lulz or a hate-on or both from you. it's like they found stock fx samples from jean michel jarre, alan parsons, and those people that do carl sagan documentaries. i love it because it's the fun kind of drunk, but maaaaaaan....

[Strangelet]

sorry if I seemed amped. not intended. nothing but love for all the commentaries I've seen you post on here and I think you're probably brilliant. I meant it when I said I might later decide the music and my interpretation is pretentious, if for no other reason that I take stock in your comments.

That being said I just have to clarify a few things.

1. what I mean by I can say what I want and that its not a math problem is that on some level, there's no point in criticizing someone's response to art. On some level. As long as its a genuine response. If someone listens to wagner's tristan and isolde overture and thinks its the most jovial fucking music ever made, as long as the response is unforced, there's not a lot you can say to tell them they are wrong, imho.

On the other hand if I said "Pop goes the world" is a song about consumerism and marx's theories that capitalism alienates man from his natural state you could say I was a twat. Just like if I said animal collective's music is about an earth based religious experience. Luckily that's not what I said. I said that my unforced reaction is that of an earth based religious experience. Which may be as foreign to you as finding wagner jovial, but hey, what can you do? ONe then you absolutely CANNOT do is come at someone and say "I don't like this music, therefore how you feel about it is wrong"

There's two ways to criticize art at play here. You can pay attention to your response and come to conclusions, or you can make a conclusion and then criticize the resposne. I'm kind of a fan of the former and not so much of the latter.

2. here's my thoughts on pretense. It describes the relationship between the artist to the audience. Withouth either audience or artist there's no pretension. (nor art for that matter). I agree that the artist can treat themselves as the audience just as someone can lie to themselves, but that's a kind of weak force of pretense. Scott Stapp singing arms wide open to a crowd after drinking himself tits up back stage would be the strong force of pretense (larger audience). I also agree that the word "pandering" doesn't completely encompass the actions that artists do to make their art pretentious. There's several ways of engineering the audience's experience without pandering. But here's the thing. No you can't find ac pretentious by definition as long as you concede that they are "doing their own thing" or in other words definitely NOT trying to engineer the affect of their art on the audience. that's by definition.

[Strangelet]

Originally Posted by kid cue

i mean, in theory. what i'm actually now going to do is go and listen to Feels a couple more times -_-

i actually might like sung tongs better than feels, depending on my mood.

[kid cue]

Originally Posted by Strangelet

1. what I mean by I can say what I want and that its not a math problem is that on some level, there's no point in criticizing someone's response to art. On some level. As long as its a genuine response. If someone listens to wagner's tristan and isolde overture and thinks its the most jovial fucking music ever made, as long as the response is unforced, there's not a lot you can say to tell them they are wrong, imho.

On the other hand if I said "Pop goes the world" is a song about consumerism and marx's theories that capitalism alienates man from his natural state you could say I was a twat. Just like if I said animal collective's music is about an earth based religious experience. Luckily that's not what I said. I said that my unforced reaction is that of an earth based religious experience. Which may be as foreign to you as finding wagner jovial, but hey, what can you do? ONe then you absolutely CANNOT do is come at someone and say "I don't like this music, therefore how you feel about it is wrong"

i just don't understand why you are making this a personal issue. i wasn't criticize your response at all. but you asked me what my response was (to Person Pitch, which i hadn't heard, so i decided to respond to the rest of your post). if there is one thing i really can't stand it's this idea that opinions can't be talked about simply because they belong to someone. when i put it into words--which is what anyone does when they talk about music, including yourself--my response to everything is based on operating principles that are completely subject to debate & discussion. when you bring up the presence of religion in all music as a response to my distaste for Animal Collective's pseudo-religious quality, that comment in itself is something that i'm able to respond to. it doesn't have to be about you or the validity of your response at all. but when you articulate the reasons why you like something, i'm allowed to offer my thoughts on those reasons; anyone is.

my responses to music have changed so many times based on what people have said. these dialogues only strengthen my understanding of why i like or don't like things, and sometimes make me change my mind. is that such a bad concept?

but i wasn't trying to change your mind at all. sometimes the problem with talking about such abstract concepts is that every answer implies an all-encompassing framework within which a given opinion is necessarily wrong. of course every opinion is valid, but when we try to act like rational human beings and talk about subjective things, one would hope that that's a given, and that all the talk is happening because people just want to talk.

There's two ways to criticize art at play here. You can pay attention to your response and come to conclusions, or you can make a conclusion and then criticize the resposne. I'm kind of a fan of the former and not so much of the latter.

i already said the latter was not the case. i've made no conclusions, and i was responding to your response. by all means i'd love to LOVE Animal Collective (why not?), but everything i say is based on my response too. put simply, i'm coming with a bottom-up approach to the music and to your comments, which your'e interpreting as some kind of top-down dismissal.

No you can't find ac pretentious by definition as long as you concede that they are "doing their own thing" or in other words definitely NOT trying to engineer the affect of their art on the audience. that's by definition.

yes i still can. any artist has a relationship to his/her own work. you define an aesthetic/style/artistic 'mandate' from subjective impulses. how you think about & shape that aesthetic can be pretentious or it can be not-pretentious. of course you don't have pretension when you excise thoughts of how others will react to your work, but you as an artist are the first audience member. art only exists with a concept of an audience. i refuse to accept this idea that the band exist in a creative hermetic bubble and their choices thus can't debated. as creative people (not just artists, everybody) we should constantly be taking stances on how we feel about these choices, just like talking about art should be encouraged.

[Strangelet]

its not like you offended me or anything. I think if you reread this thread you can see why someone might confuse your comments as arguments that conclude the limits of experience based on the premise of distaste for the music. (which would be the second kind of art criticism we talked about)

All of a sudden I don't believe in talking about art? I wouldn't even be having this discussion if that were true. No what I stressed is that *on some level* there's no point to pursue a discussion. There's parameters and limitations and a universal language to talk about art but there's no algorithm, as you said. So when you say animal collective has a pseudo-religious quality and I say I am affected in a religious manner by the music, at that point I'd like to say, ok we disagree. Unless there's anything actually specific you want to say about the music where we could come to a better understanding?

To say that their chanting is cloying and obvious as a religious expression is irrelevant unless you can find an interview where panda bear says "yeah what we're trying to do is evoke a gaia principle religious experience in the spirit of starhawk's spiral dance" The religious response is completely my own unsolicited response. Not their intention. So its not a valid criticism of their work, only my response. see where we're getting confused?

With regards to pretentiousness - ok let me be more specific in my thoughts. We talked about pretentiousness as a quality of the reliationship between artist and audience. You respond that you have to have that relationship as no artist lives in a vaccuum and yes that's true. What I was trying to say is that to thave that relationship is not pretentious. to have a certain KIND of relationship can be pretentious. IE a dishonest relationship. Dishonesty is the sine qua non of a pretentious work of art. So I have to ask, how are you able to determine that ac is pretentious and do you even think they are or are you just taking exception to the idea that their audacity is sufficent enought to exclude the possibility of their being pretentious?

edit: edited for readability (sorry for all the errors).

[kid cue]

ok, i basically agree with you, and my last post was about why i think it's inherently hard to pursue any discussion without seeming to "conclude the limits of experience based on the premise of distaste for the music" (well put). i did get that the part about religion is your "own unsolicited response" and not their stated intent. i said that (not very clearly) here:

i know you brought this up because you were just responding to the sounds (so was i), but let's take Religion in Animal Collective as an axis of discussion...

but, i don't think there's any point in considering what is or is not the band's intent (and to attempt to separate that idea from one's own response, which must always relate to one's personal, underlying concept of what the artist is "about"), and using that to determine what to say and not to say about it. to me, the music comes across as being pseudo-religious--and it's not the implied philosophy, but simply the sound of it, that strikes me as a little cloying and obvious. i'm just making an aesthetic judgment, not a moral one, about the effect of that sound.

pretension: i use the word as a subjective qualifier of the music: a description of how i personally hear it, not a label for the artist which would invalidate their every move. i don't know what "the truth" about them ultimately is, but that's a moot concept, because that word is more about how i'm responding to the music than about my understanding of whatever their intent is (obv. the latter follows from the former, but i'm only talking about one specific record and why i don't like it too much.....).

are you just taking exception to the idea that their audacity is sufficent enought to exclude the possibility of their being pretentious?

yes that's it! for all the praise they get, i feel they should sound much more audacious & radical than they actually seem to me. i'm not at all saying pretension is inherently bad (most great artists in history must have been at least quite pretentious) but if the music doesn't justify that sense of pretension, then it annoys. lately i've been listening to the Ghost record Hypnotic Underworld, a meandering, totally religious-mystical trip by a bunch of hippies who rehearse in abandoned temples and etc. i may or may not decide that this is "pretentious," but it doesn't matter to me, because i'm moved by the music before i start caring about that. meanwhile, whenever i hear Animal Collective i mostly think of some dorky guys trying really hard to be different (even if they are being 100% true to their impulses). the fact that they have such a hipster following does not help me to believe in them either, obviously. anyway, yeah.

[Strangelet]

Originally Posted by kid cue

ok, i basically agree with you, and my last post was about why i think it's inherently hard to pursue any discussion without seeming to "conclude the limits of experience based on the premise of distaste for the music" (well put).

yeah I'm starting to see that now. This conversation really put that into light for me. The seeming and the doing are very subtly different in discussions like these.

pretension: i use the word as a subjective qualifier of the music: a description of how i personally hear it, not a label for the artist which would invalidate their every move. i don't know what "the truth" about them ultimately is, but that's a moot concept, because that word is more about how i'm responding to the music than about my understanding of whatever their intent is (obv. the latter follows from the former, but i'm only talking about one specific record and why i don't like it too much.....).

ok so I guessed right that we are operating under different definitions of the word. Mine has a much more negative connotation and the existence of pretense is, for me, assuming a certain knowledge of the artist's intentions.

What I like about your definition is that it handles the problem of esotericism. What I mean is there are certain artists like Jackson Pollock who people generally want to call pretentious. Especially when they throw a fit when they see their splatter paint being hung upside down at the Met. Unfortunately nobody knows if his splatter paint really does say something about his worldview because its done in a language that only he is fluent enough to discern. You would have no problem calling him pretentious based on the experience of seeing his paintings.

What I like about my definition is that actually provides an objective measure on art where you can say an artist is pretentious or not definitively. Just as you can tell whether or not a lie is a lie definitively. And my experience is usually its pretty obvious when there's a deliberate facade or falsity about a work. And if it isn't obvious it soon will be. (right, moby?) This is why I'm hesitent to say AC is pretentious. For now.

yes that's it! for all the praise they get, i feel they should sound much more audacious & radical than they actually seem to me. i'm not at all saying pretension is inherently bad (most great artists in history must have been at least quite pretentious) but if the music doesn't justify that sense of pretension, then it annoys.

yeah well artists always struggle with the fact that they are represented by not only their art but also the quality and behavior of their fan base.

lately i've been listening to the Ghost record Hypnotic Underworld, a meandering, totally religious-mystical trip by a bunch of hippies who rehearse in abandoned temples and etc. i may or may not decide that this is "pretentious," but it doesn't matter to me, because i'm moved by the music before i start caring about that. meanwhile, whenever i hear Animal Collective i mostly think of some dorky guys trying really hard to be different (even if they are being 100% true to their impulses). the fact that they have such a hipster following does not help me to believe in them either, obviously. anyway, yeah.

Yeah I'm with you on hypnotic underworld. That's a wonderful work. I think you raise a great point about their audacity not giving them a free ticket out of pretense-ville. Let me say this about AC, their dorkiness also registered for me on first encounter. ANd it was actually something that I had to overcome to appreciate the music.

That's either saying something about their talent or the fact that I'm more accomodating to dorkiness. one of the two

[kid cue]

at the risk of making this more confused....

Originally Posted by Strangelet

What I like about your definition is that it handles the problem of esotericism. What I mean is there are certain artists like Jackson Pollock who people generally want to call pretentious. Especially when they throw a fit when they see their splatter paint being hung upside down at the Met. Unfortunately nobody knows if his splatter paint really does say something about his worldview because its done in a language that only he is fluent enough to discern. You would have no problem calling him pretentious based on the experience of seeing his paintings.

What I like about my definition is that actually provides an objective measure on art where you can say an artist is pretentious or not definitively. Just as you can tell whether or not a lie is a lie definitively. And my experience is usually its pretty obvious when there's a deliberate facade or falsity about a work. And if it isn't obvious it soon will be. (right, moby?) This is why I'm hesitent to say AC is pretentious. For now.

i still think that reading an artist's intentions into his work, and reading the work itself, need to be two separate experiences. underneath the framework with which you consider Pollock, i'd probably agree that he would by definition have to be "pretentious." but i don't actually see him or his work as pretentious--largely because i see his splatter arrangements as conveying a pure visuality: his work retains such a visceral power even without having any knowledge of his process or stated intentions. the paint isn't an obtuse language meant to communicate some arcane worldview; the paint itself IS the communication. partly this is Pollock's genius (he accomplished what any artist wants, to become one with his medium); partly it's the abstract expressionist era he was a part of.

but this is tangential--the point being that if you simply read Pollock's work, without trying to read into it too much, then you can see what the work itself has to say (not that you don't know this, but for the sake of this point) ... i acknowledge that Pollock's methods were audacious without getting hung up on their audacity, and the issue of whether or not he was "pretentious," because to me, the paintings are amazing, and i HAVE to accept all the splatter as a totally pure extension of the artist's self.

this is similar to what i was saying about the Ghost record--the music is powerful enough to negate the word "pretentious" altogether. i could maybe retroactively apply the label "pretentious" to the band, but it is completely beside the point. whereas a less successful artist is going to need to deal with his work coming across as pretentious (not that we can't enjoy pretentious-seeming work anyway; we all do)--until he hits upon that ideal balance of audacity (inspiration) and execution that transcends the issue entirely.

i'm not really disagreeing w/ you, just attempting to clarify my stance .. if only for myself

[Strangelet]

Originally Posted by kid cue

i'm not really disagreeing w/ you, just attempting to clarify my stance .. if only for myself

one thing that kind of strikes me as paradoxical in your thoughts is that you don't allow for pollock to be speaking an "obtuse language to express an arcane worldview" but you also admit that you have no choice but to accept that "his art is an extension of himself." I'd argue that this extension is too similar to one's worldview. to debate this would require we drudge up all the nuanced differences of the world's affects and one's opinion of it and one's "self"

The fact that you "have to accept" means it's kind of giving the benefit of the doubt for lack of contrary evidence that it isn't an extension of his "self". but I have to ask: who is Jackson Pollock anyway? what is his self? How is this communicated to you as the audience so that you have a certain understanding? So that you feel something was communicated?

I understand the existence of the visceral power of the painting itself. Perhaps it moves one to feel a certain way. In this way I agree that pollock is great. (I read recently that his most popular works exhibit pleasing mathematical proportions). But because there are no visual clues, no common, shared iconography, its kind of a crap shoot what that visceral power entails and what its nature is. Is it hopeful, is it a staggering critique on racism? Is it expressing his jubilence at being alive? No it isn't so important that the paintings are any of these things, but it is important to know what they actually are.

This is the problem with the abstract expressionism movement as a whole. Its esotericism is the ultimate form of selfism, a demand that the audience shouldn't even be bothered or trusted to understand the meaning. They should just sit back and enjoy it, like the sounds of humpback whales communicating. It's supposed to be freeing to the artist to more perfectly express themselves, because they are no longer fettered by the ambiguities of a shared language. but this is a cop out, imho. And at best we can say that the movement was important, it brought up several questions about the relationship between artist and audience, but the answer was that art was required to move on, to accept the responsibility of communicating something. To intend to communicate something.

When people tell me they read Ulysses by James Joyce and found it so "meaningful" and a work of genius, I have the same reaction as when someone tells me Pollock's artwork is so meaningful and a work of genius. I either think they are much smarter than I am or they are lying. If for no other reason than how obvious it is that these artists were *not trying* to be meaningful to us. That was tangential to the point of the art. To me they give academics jobs. They do *not* speak to the common man. And that's a real artistic crime. This is why I want to call them pretentious. But I can't because just as I question anyone's ability to find hte meaning of their work, I'm unable to see any lack of truth to it. But I'm sure its there. If nothing else its a pretense that the art is meant to communicate.

Art is a language. Its intention should be to communicate. My favorite artists are those who have said something to me and I know what they said. I understand their world (which is also the world I live in) more clearly because of them.

This brings us to what you said about viewing the art and delving into the artists intentions as two different pursuits. I totally agree with this. But to me it's important that the art should speak so clearly that you wouldn't even need to query the artists intentions external to experiencing the art. The degree to which you need to is the degree to which the art failed to express itself in its own language. In this line of thinking, art truly exists as an independent entity - the existence of the art's meaning is not dependent on the existence of the artist.

And yes its true that what the audience experience can be far removed from the experience that was intended. Its also possible to look at a sunset and feel a new sense of inspiration about one's life and rediscover one's youthful idealism to focus on the things that really matter. But none of this was the intention of the sunset. Just like a lot of how we experience art is not the intention of the artist. We don't call the sunset art because there was no intent behind it to be art. beautiful yes, but not art. Likewise we can judge art by its ability to evoke what the artist intended. (not to mention judge our ability to be open to the experience)

so yes the two pursuits are different and should be. But the fact that you have to go outside of the work to discover pretentiousness is not a problem with pretense being dependent on intent. It's a problem of the artist being incapable of expressing his intent. But a lot of the times, because of the dishonest core of pretense, the audience has no choice but to investigate the intentions of the artist because they are lying in their art. Britanny spears suggest virginal innocence at the same time having dancers lick sweat off her body. This is a clear pretense. A dishonest attempt to affect a reaction of blossoming womanhood at the delicate and dangerous point of being plucked. Moby packages detailed essays that read like instructions on how to see his art as pretentious with every album.

anyway I'm done blathering.