in your opinion what is the most radical music ever made ?
kala
3,362 Posts
please to discount image/presentation in your answers???.for instance gwar and gg allin don't count unless you are specifically referencing their music.
food for thought
is it a folkways recording of a jackhammer /factory?
hitler's speeches "sampled' in german oak?
ice cube's black korea?
aphex with the old sandpaper disc on a 1200 trick?
john cage's pranks?
suicide?
zorn's sqawking?
screwdriver[Hail the New Dawn]?
biggie rapping about raping children and throwing them off the bridge?
geto boys with mind of a lunatic?
iggy with the mic innna blender?
christian marclay's sleeveless lps?
peter brotzmann?
burzum?
slayer?
mezbrow?
obviously radical has different meanings to different people so for the sake of argument we can use adjectives such as:
offensive
vulgar
racist/fascist/socially offensive /sexist/misogynistic
repugnant
off-putting
caterwauling
atonal
noise[y]
obnoxious
weird music that sucks
etc
i have yet to come to any conclusions yet save for a few which i will continue to mull over.
food for thought
is it a folkways recording of a jackhammer /factory?
hitler's speeches "sampled' in german oak?
ice cube's black korea?
aphex with the old sandpaper disc on a 1200 trick?
john cage's pranks?
suicide?
zorn's sqawking?
screwdriver[Hail the New Dawn]?
biggie rapping about raping children and throwing them off the bridge?
geto boys with mind of a lunatic?
iggy with the mic innna blender?
christian marclay's sleeveless lps?
peter brotzmann?
burzum?
slayer?
mezbrow?
obviously radical has different meanings to different people so for the sake of argument we can use adjectives such as:
offensive
vulgar
racist/fascist/socially offensive /sexist/misogynistic
repugnant
off-putting
caterwauling
atonal
noise[y]
obnoxious
weird music that sucks
etc
i have yet to come to any conclusions yet save for a few which i will continue to mull over.
Comments
What's Goin On?
DJ Screw
Charlie Parker
The Human BeatBox
James Brown - Brand New Bag
CAN - STOCKHAUSEN'S FINEST STUDENTS
ESG - HIP HOP FOR ALIENS
IT'S MONKTIME!!!
SSAATTOORRII!!!
- damo
And of course Suicide although they never sounded "radical" to me, more like minimalistic, damaged but soulful pop music. I'm actually quite convinced that Alan Vega always wanted to be a pop star and never tried to be edgy.
The debut (and only "real" Skrewdriver album) is actually pretty good pub-rock. It's hard to argue that this isn't a great fucking song:
To which I would add unprecedented.
But once these aspects became ends in themselves, they ceased to be radical, imo. I can't really think of anything post 1980 or so that I consider all that radical. Could be wrong.
Out there for the sake of being out there but doesnt stretch boundaries means what?
If a tree falls in the woods...........
Super-obscure art isnt effecting much.
I think the exposure a piece of radical art gets or the influence it might proceed to have is irrelevant to it being radical or not. If you're in an audience of 10 people and see an act that is not being recorded and will not be heard/seen by anybody ever again it might still strike you as radical.
To the contrary: Once a piece of art becomes a major influence on other artists it ceases to be radical as a wider audience becomes used to its aesthetics.
radical -> influential -> dated
Doesnt radical have to be in comparison to a landscape?
If it doesnt have any impact on its landscape, how is it radical?
Different for the sake of different just vaporizes. Is that enough?
Radical art is always radical in relation to the arts of the era but that doesn't mean that it has to be recognized by corporate culture or become an influence of it. One could even argue that in order to be truly radical the art has to be fully separated from anything that might be or become accessible to the masses at least during the times of its creation.
Take for example Dadaism, one of not the most radical art forms in modern history when seen in the context if its era. Dadaism was way too radical for a wider audience. Decades later Dadaism arguably became the biggest influence for Pop Art and had a huge influence on the aesthetics of Punk but in the 1920s the movement basically remained shrouded in obscurity and eventually got eradicated by the rise of the Third Reich. If history would have taken other paths, Dadaism could have very well remained largely unknown and would have never made it into any museums -which by the way was against the clear intent of its creators as the movement was all about destroying the old and clearing the way for something new.
Yes, but it doesn't have to be part of that landscape, or even perceived by it.
I would say that once it is part of the larger landscape, it ceases to be radical, or is at least well on it's way
Different for the sake of different has been a mainstream aesthetic for decades now - it's over.
Of course you're old and jaded and you're a music shopkeep, so you see music as mostly a commodity these days. And your ego is such that you think your ennui is shared by the rest of the universe.
It isn't.
Every day people who aren't jaded and old are picking up on music new and old and a lot of them are having very powerful reactions to some of it. Some of it can be life-changing, the way the VU, the Stooges, and 77-era punk was for me. So you can play your usual game of harrumph and dismiss but it seems a little shallow.
Meanwhile I saw an old video of Captain Beefheart doing "Ice Cream For Crow" the other day and he STILL seems fucked up and not-mainstream. I was blown away even though I bought that record when it came out and I've played it dozens of times over the years.
Drop the too-cool-for-the-room pose, Papa. What's it good for? Absolutely nothing.
Apparently, this was banned at some point. An instrumental tune banned on the radio, aint that something. Weird I never noticed there being an acoustic guiitar in this tune till now..
And I alas thought jungle brothers jbeeez with the remedy was so Wierd that it was what rap music would sound like in the future. I couldn't have possibly been more wrong.
Still love this:
And this:
- spidey
I think he knew this when he started the thread. My clue was this:
"obviously radical has different meanings to different people"
So the idea seemed to be to not focus so much on pinning a precise definition of radical, but just to post some music that seems radical, and if desired you can expound upon what makes the music 'radical' in your (obviously very subjective) opinion.
L13, Dizzy Bull got your back.
Listening to Jungle on pirate radio had me transfixed (like, wtf is this?!) a few evenings in the early 90s. Again, now it's zzz - breakbeat, bass. I enjoyed the extremeness of Gabba through massive sound systems at Teknivals a few years later - especially coming out of like 7 systems on a site at the same time, there was no isolation so the trax all mingled and competed and occasionally synced up. Positioning yourself between rooms at warehouse parties in general gave rise to this effect and it was gloriously mad. You'd be skinning up, going ?&^%?$.
I bought a 3" cd of "computer feedback" from Sound 323 without listening first. It turned out to be quiet high pitched tones and a touch of static. Bit like my old MacBook sounds now.
Still find some free jazz wild, but funny that a lot of it is just nicely cathartic sounding, like a storm - but totally convetional in its own way. Mind you, I caught Han Blennick playing with Charles Gayle the other year and his snare drum sounded radically shit (loud). He was gleeful; we left.
All about context within your life.
Is this a radical rap (sic) track?
Oh, I dunno. It did for a little while.
Totally subjective of course. What might be a radical experience for me might be what Motley Crue were doing whilst eating breakfast. I guess for something to have a radical effect on a person, it has to be something that particular person has never encountered before. A person would either give it the finger-crucifix or want more.
The former for me are usually blatant attempts to offend and tend to be the domain of young man angst. I am pretty much done with that. The musical equivalent of a snuff video or a public beheading are really not going to warrant repeated listening.
I'd say what sounded radical to me, upon the first time of hearing:
The Message
Funkadelic
Mekong Delta
Pharaoh Sanders sax
Marcus Miller playing slap
Herbie's Rockit
Kerry King's guitar
Satie's Gymnopedies
Coltrane's sax
Jaco
Bjork with the Sugarcubes
One of the problems with having a lot of records is that eventually you can't help joining the musical dots and it gets easier to see which music artists were influenced by or reacted against. The more context you have, the less music falls into the 'groundbreaking' category. With hindsight, some artists I thought of as blazing bright new trails then I now see weren't quite so original - this can really take the fun out of new music and the bottom line is it's harder to be surprised by new sounds.