What Have You Been Listening To?

[Thricegreat]

Boulez's conduct of Stravinsky is always autistic and good. It is laughable that he just looks at the score. :) Though it is far better to close the eyes and focus on the sounds, if you don't read the score.

I think it might be kinda hard to not use a score with the rite of spring haha. I usually don't get too autistic about the recording and just stick to the big names (Karajan, Solti, etc.) or go with what our bald gay jew anthony fantano (dave hurwitz) says. Sometimes ill hate a piece and then switch recordings and find out that i love it, which is probably a sign that i should proactively explore different recordings. Attentively sitting through multiple multiple recordings of the same thing is kinda a big task for my zoomer brain, but maybe ill start doing it for some of my favorite pieces. The only recording im set in stone on is the igor levit beethoven piano sonata cycle. I've listened to the whole thing probably a few hundred times and no other recording sounds right now. Do you have a favorite conductor/performer/recording that you would recommend i check out?

I've been listening to a lot of Wagner recently and have grown to love him a lot. I got my hands on the book The Wagner Operas by Ernst Newman and im looking forward to reading it. I've just been listening to the music but I feel like im missing out on half of his appeal by not experiencing the gesamtkunstwerk. Do any of you have recommendations for full productions (preferably not ones that change to story to be about gay aliens from mars)?

I'm not really autistic about conductors too. It is just that I have listened to too much Boulez and I cannot come back. His conduct sounds in my mind even when I listen to others. It eventually became a matter of Boulez vs non-Boulez in my mind sometimes. So you should filter my words a bit out. Though I'm totally fine for music not conducted by him.

What's weird about Boulez is that I don't necessarily think it's good when I first listen to it. It usually feels like the Taklamakan desert. But when I listen to others after that, it feels so lukewarm. Especially it is almost only Boulez who made every note on the scores clearly hearable. That is the peak autism.

By the way his conduct of Beethoven's 9th symphony has totally corrupted me:




To talk about other big names, well... One thing I want to say is that I quite enjoy Karajan's "Performances". :) It is the total opposite of Boulez.

About Wagner, although I have listened to him because of the importance like the famous Tristan chord, I do not deeply know about him. I like him being a Schopenhauerian, but I don't like things like German mythology. These "Aryan" mythologies like German or Nordic are almost the only mythologies I rarely don't like. But I think Boulez's Wagner was ridiculously autistic and cool. That was truly the work of a person who said "Schoenberg is too conservative".

I'm inclined to Mahler more. Partially because I like Webern the most among composers. And he was influenced by Mahler in addition to Schoenberg who was his teacher. Or Debussy recently because of his influence on Bartok. This unironically leads to Boulez. Maybe because he studied math before music?

But again, please filter my words out. Considering the posts you wrote, I think our tastes are still a bit different. Also consider that maybe I like music, but still I'm not a musician myself.

[AsaFromNasa]

Boulez's conduct of Stravinsky is always autistic and good. It is laughable that he just looks at the score. Though it is far better to close the eyes and focus on the sounds, if you don't read the score.

I think it might be kinda hard to not use a score with the rite of spring haha. I usually don't get too autistic about the recording and just stick to the big names (Karajan, Solti, etc.) or go with what our bald gay jew anthony fantano (dave hurwitz) says. Sometimes ill hate a piece and then switch recordings and find out that i love it, which is probably a sign that i should proactively explore different recordings. Attentively sitting through multiple multiple recordings of the same thing is kinda a big task for my zoomer brain, but maybe ill start doing it for some of my favorite pieces. The only recording im set in stone on is the igor levit beethoven piano sonata cycle. I've listened to the whole thing probably a few hundred times and no other recording sounds right now. Do you have a favorite conductor/performer/recording that you would recommend i check out?

I've been listening to a lot of Wagner recently and have grown to love him a lot. I got my hands on the book The Wagner Operas by Ernst Newman and im looking forward to reading it. I've just been listening to the music but I feel like im missing out on half of his appeal by not experiencing the gesamtkunstwerk. Do any of you have recommendations for full productions (preferably not ones that change to story to be about gay aliens from mars)?

I'm not really autistic about conductors too. It is just that I have listened to too much Boulez and I cannot come back. His conduct sounds in my mind even when I listen to others. It eventually became a matter of Boulez vs non-Boulez in my mind sometimes. So you should filter my words a bit out. Though I'm totally fine for music not conducted by him.

What's weird about Boulez is that I don't necessarily think it's good when I first listen to it. It usually feels like the Taklamakan desert. But when I listen to others after that, it feels so lukewarm. Especially it is almost only Boulez who made every note on the scores clearly hearable. That is the peak autism.

By the way his conduct of Beethoven's 9th symphony has totally corrupted me:




To talk about other big names, well... One thing I want to say is that I quite enjoy Karajan's "Performances". It is the total opposite of Boulez.

About Wagner, although I have listened to him because of the importance like the famous Tristan chord, I do not deeply know about him. I like him being a Schopenhauerian, but I don't like things like German mythology. These "Aryan" mythologies like German or Nordic are almost the only mythologies I rarely don't like. But I think Boulez's Wagner was ridiculously autistic and cool. That was truly the work of a person who said "Schoenberg is too conservative".

I'm inclined to Mahler more. Partially because I like Webern the most among composers. And he was influenced by Mahler in addition to Schoenberg who was his teacher. Or Debussy recently because of his influence on Bartok. This unironically leads to Boulez. Maybe because he studied math before music?

But again, please filter my words out. Considering the posts you wrote, I think our tastes are still a bit different. Also consider that maybe I like music, but still I'm not a musician myself.

I didn't like the Boulez recording nearly as much as the Karajan one i normally listen to. It sounds way too detached and cold to me, which is probably not helped by the poor audio quality. I was missing a lot of the brass that Karajan has (except for some horn rips in the second movement and that crazy trombone at 58:35). I actually liked the vocal soloists (particularly the male singers) in the Boulez more than in the Karajan. I could pick out large parts of what they are saying which is new for me. I just like the wall of sound Karajan makes that i think Boulez lacks. I'm not a music critic or anything so all of this could be trivial.

I was resistant to Wagner and opera in general until pretty recently. I don't really care about nordic mythology either but I'm suspicious of the modern trend of trying to make his work more palatable by "reimagining" it (not that this is what you are arguing for). I'm under no illusions about the kind of person he was or about the kind of people he inspired, but I don't think setting Das Rheingold in Brooklyn helps anyone understand him. For good and ill he was purely German composer I think. I'm thinking about picking up a book by Bryan Magee called Wagner and Philosophy which is about his connections to Schopenhauer, but i don't know if i like him enough to read two books on him back to back. Bryan Magee also has some wonderful old video interviews with his contemporary philosophers if you're interested.

Mahler was actually my first musical love and his 9th has been, and will probably forever be, my favorite piece of music. I also like Webern, Schoenberg, and Bartok but maybe not as much as you do. I probably need to listen to more Debussy before i form a solid opinion on him.

[Thricegreat]

It sounds way too detached and cold to me, which is probably not helped by the poor audio quality.

That is the literal definition of Boulez. :) He doesn't have any intention to move people's hearts. That is why some people like me absolutely love him while others absolutely hate him.

Also when I say "autistic" on this matter, it is not the meaning of new and interesting. It is rather about the actual mental condition. Boulez's music always sounds like that of the actual autistic people.

Don't get me wrong. I'm nothing against feelings or mythologies at all. That's why I like Mahler too. Also that's why Boulez is not my most favourite composer although he is my most favourite conductor. It's just that as you could see from the painting thread, I'm a person who enjoys both Byzantine frescos and Duchamp at the same time.

And when it comes to "classical" music, I think Bach and Handel were already modern. So why not? If I want those things, I would listen to medieval chants or other traditional music instead.

Speaking of Mahler, Boulez's conduct of Mahler is where Apollonian meets Dionysian. Mahler's sorrowful nature soothes Boulez's autism. It might not be that famous compared to his iconic conducts of Bartok, Stravinsky, &c. But it might be the golden mean.

[Amlux]

I can enjoy basically all genres of music but this shit filters me so hard. I listened to one of the albums from your top ten per year thing and it sounded like a bunch of seals dying. I like weird atonal and experimental music but that was too much for me. I feel like you sort of broadly lock in your music taste in highschool and then stick with it for the rest of your life, so my hopes of ever getting into this music is pretty slim i think.

Edit: i did not mean for this to come off as harshly as it did but I'm sure you're used to this kind of reaction haha. Are there any beginner albums you'd recommend?

Lol, no need to apologize. I think what you say about high school is interesting and true to some extent. I just happened to listen to a LOT of extreme and crazy shit in high school. For me, I just love extreme metal for a lot of reasons. What's interesting is that I actually see a lot of parallels between my love of metal and of otaku culture. I like it precisely when it's the most repulsive and uncompromising to outsiders. So when it's an anime/manga, I want all the shit that normies hate and get embarrassed by. Give me all the fucking pantsu shots and harems and chuunibyou powers and so on! Of course, there's something effervescent about this where you get the sense that there's real authenticity behind it versus when you feel it's hollow, and it's the same in metal. But at it's best it should cause precisely your very reaction IMO, haha.

That said, the most extreme music I ever was into wasn't even metal but was harsh noise, especially the Japanese stuff like Incapacitants, C.C.C.C., Hijoukaidan, Merzbow, Masonna, Astro, and the like. In fact, my username itself is from a Merzbow album. However, I have a lot of trouble listening to it as much these days. I have to be in the right mood and usually I find it somewhat hard to latch onto anything in even when my ears don't find it painful. But I still respect it very much for the degree of uncompromising extremity and balls it takes to make music this far removed from "music" as most understand it:



As for your last question about beginner albums... well, I've never been a metal "evangelist." I always find these people who have to get everyone else into their hobby to be weird and usually to not be the kind of people you want into a hobby because they seem to do it out of a sense of insecurity and thus are more likely to try to bring normalfags into the fold. So my first response is always "If it's not for you, that's fine. Listen to what you like." But if you are interested, these are some albums I listened to that really made me appreciate black metal and death metal. They're pretty classic oldies, but that's often the best place to start:



Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness (1989)
This is like the platonic ideal of old school death metal. A lot of people would point to the band Death instead (obviously, look at their name haha). But I think the first three Morbid Angel albums shit all over even Death's best work, and I like Death quite a bit.



Atheist - Unquestionable Presence (1991)
Some people who have trouble with the death metal mainstays like Atheist better, but their direction is weirder and more off-beat, with a heavy jazz influence that makes it almost whimsical and dreamy as opposed to pure evil.



Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark (1987)
One of the all-time classics, from a time when black metal was still not that distinct from thrash and was a lot more sloppy and messy and RAWKish. Blood Fire Death is an album that might be even easier on the ears as it's more epic and melodic (I like it more too), but this one is nastier and more representative of the genre as a whole.



Gorgoroth - Pentagram (1994)
If you truly hate this album, I'm afraid you just might never quite like black metal as a genre unfortunately. It doesn't mean it's the best BM album ever (it's not my favorite), but it's about as archetypal as it gets.



Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (1994)
Well, it's one of the most important bands for the history of the genre and this is the album with the most amazing lineup and thus definitely their magnum opus. Euronymous and Varg on the same album, for fuck's sake! And many who are turned off by the more ear-piercing shrieks of black metal might enjoy Attila Csihar's strange growly vocals more.

I could have suggested more poppy/rocky stuff, which there are certainly many good examples of, not to mention all the more classic heavy/thrash, but I figure those might be easier choices. I wanted to give stuff that really falls in the "extremes" of the genres we're talking about.

I'm also curious what album sounded like seals dying, lmao. It just makes me think of one of the most sick fucking slam death albums in the past 10 years or so, Deformity of Human Consciousness (2017) by The Dark Prison Massacre, because the cover is... well, this:


This track is fucking amazing and I can't listen to it without headbanging. DO NOT LISTEN IF YOU COULDN'T HANDLE CRYPTOPSY, THIS WILL CRUSH YOUR SKULL!!! Though I can't lie, I'd be amused by your reaction haha.

[Thricegreat]

I can enjoy basically all genres of music but this shit filters me so hard. I listened to one of the albums from your top ten per year thing and it sounded like a bunch of seals dying. I like weird atonal and experimental music but that was too much for me. I feel like you sort of broadly lock in your music taste in highschool and then stick with it for the rest of your life, so my hopes of ever getting into this music is pretty slim i think.

Edit: i did not mean for this to come off as harshly as it did but I'm sure you're used to this kind of reaction haha. Are there any beginner albums you'd recommend?

Lol, no need to apologize. I think what you say about high school is interesting and true to some extent. I just happened to listen to a LOT of extreme and crazy shit in high school. For me, I just love extreme metal for a lot of reasons. What's interesting is that I actually see a lot of parallels between my love of metal and of otaku culture. I like it precisely when it's the most repulsive and uncompromising to outsiders. So when it's an anime/manga, I want all the shit that normies hate and get embarrassed by. Give me all the fucking pantsu shots and harems and chuunibyou powers and so on! Of course, there's something effervescent about this where you get the sense that there's real authenticity behind it versus when you feel it's hollow, and it's the same in metal. But at it's best it should cause precisely your very reaction IMO, haha.

That said, the most extreme music I ever was into wasn't even metal but was harsh noise, especially the Japanese stuff like Incapacitants, C.C.C.C., Hijoukaidan, Merzbow, Masonna, Astro, and the like. In fact, my username itself is from a Merzbow album. However, I have a lot of trouble listening to it as much these days. I have to be in the right mood and usually I find it somewhat hard to latch onto anything in even when my ears don't find it painful. But I still respect it very much for the degree of uncompromising extremity and balls it takes to make music this far removed from "music" as most understand it:



As for your last question about beginner albums... well, I've never been a metal "evangelist." I always find these people who have to get everyone else into their hobby to be weird and usually to not be the kind of people you want into a hobby because they seem to do it out of a sense of insecurity and thus are more likely to try to bring normalfags into the fold. So my first response is always "If it's not for you, that's fine. Listen to what you like." But if you are interested, these are some albums I listened to that really made me appreciate black metal and death metal. They're pretty classic oldies, but that's often the best place to start:



Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness (1989)
This is like the platonic ideal of old school death metal. A lot of people would point to the band Death instead (obviously, look at their name haha). But I think the first three Morbid Angel albums shit all over even Death's best work, and I like Death quite a bit.



Atheist - Unquestionable Presence (1991)
Some people who have trouble with the death metal mainstays like Atheist better, but their direction is weirder and more off-beat, with a heavy jazz influence that makes it almost whimsical and dreamy as opposed to pure evil.



Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark (1987)
One of the all-time classics, from a time when black metal was still not that distinct from thrash and was a lot more sloppy and messy and RAWKish. Blood Fire Death is an album that might be even easier on the ears as it's more epic and melodic (I like it more too), but this one is nastier and more representative of the genre as a whole.



Gorgoroth - Pentagram (1994)
If you truly hate this album, I'm afraid you just might never quite like black metal as a genre unfortunately. It doesn't mean it's the best BM album ever (it's not my favorite), but it's about as archetypal as it gets.



Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (1994)
Well, it's one of the most important bands for the history of the genre and this is the album with the most amazing lineup and thus definitely their magnum opus. Euronymous and Varg on the same album, for fuck's sake! And many who are turned off by the more ear-piercing shrieks of black metal might enjoy Attila Csihar's strange growly vocals more.

I could have suggested more poppy/rocky stuff, which there are certainly many good examples of, not to mention all the more classic heavy/thrash, but I figure those might be easier choices. I wanted to give stuff that really falls in the "extremes" of the genres we're talking about.

I'm also curious what album sounded like seals dying, lmao. It just makes me think of one of the most sick fucking slam death albums in the past 10 years or so, Deformity of Human Consciousness (2017) by The Dark Prison Massacre, because the cover is... well, this:


This track is fucking amazing and I can't listen to it without headbanging. DO NOT LISTEN IF YOU COULDN'T HANDLE CRYPTOPSY, THIS WILL CRUSH YOUR SKULL!!! Though I can't lie, I'd be amused by your reaction haha.

It is interesting that you think harsh noise is the most extreme genre. For me it was quite an accessible one. Maybe because I was already familiar with noise by listening to Musique concrète although there are some differences. If one already listens to Boulez, Stockhausen, Xenakis, &c., I think the entry barrier is quite low.

I like Merzbow and Japanoise in general too. I like Merzbuddha the most. And it is funny that he deeply cares about environment while composing that kind of music. Also it is a meme, but I unironically think Pulse Demon is genuinely a good meditation album. In the Rinzai Zen sense like Koan, Keisaku, &c. But he releases way too many albums.

In contrast I'm not interested in metalheads that much. While I see the point of metal. I'm just not naturally inclined to them.

On weirdness, your explanation was interesting. Because I don't intentionally try to be weird and in fact I don't really enjoy it. I just pursue what I thought "This is good" or "This is interesting". I don't even have a sense of doing weird things while pursuing them. But when I realise I can't communicate with normal people and that is a bit painful.

By the way I like this track by t+pazolite & Nanahira. When it comes to the doujin sphere.



The album itself is completely a joke, but soundwise I think it is actually good. This might be also true for Nanahira herself. I like that she is always serious when it comes to music while doing genres like denpa. That makes her music unserious on the surface but actually serious compared to other denpa singers like Choco. In other words, irony. Though I like Choco too. Especially when the composer was Risshu or maybe Athan Lily. That feels an orthodox denpa.

[drummyfish]

A Czech song some people liked recently on cytube Stream, with lyrics and translation. Ruda z Ostravy and Morčata na útěku are another Czech meme, sort of like ZNK, feel free to research if you want. It's hard to appreciate it fully just from the translation because big part of the thing is the accent and language, but still.

Spoiler

Code: Select all

rana jak hrom                         banging the wall
to tata ide dom                       dad is coming home
a funí jak slon                       with heavy breathing syndrome
a hlavou opírá se venku o vrata       and he's leaning on our front door
to je celé náš tata                   so typically him again
                                      
rovnováha v řiti                      equilibrium's dead
žaludek mu svítí                      stomach glowing red
kurde zas to nedal                    lost the battle again
všeci čumí na tatu                    everyone's eyes are on him right now
jak zas přebral                       how he's drunk as fuck again
klíčema šermuje jak Nadal             swinging keys like Raphael Nadal
a cely barák řve:                     our whole house starts to scream:
                                      
CHORUS:                               CHORUS:
                                      
ségra chudák brečí                    poor sister she's crying
mama se tu v mdlobách kácí            mom in shame denying
tata, tata zvrací                     my dad is, spewing vomit
brácha na něj křičí,                  brother insane yelling
baba hrozí, že ho bací                grandma wants to hit him
tata, tata zvrací                     my dad is, spewing vomit
                                      
muselo to ven                         he had to let it out
toš všeckym kurde přeju               so damn I'll just wish all of you
dobrý den                             good night
krev se z hlavy valí                  blood pours from his head
svět se před očima ztrácí             he's almost dropping dead
tata, tata zvrací                     my dad is, spewing vomit
                                      
s pitim vždycky spíchá                booze he's always rushing
šulin moc to míchá                    mixing all the shots in
a potom sotva dýchá                   then he's hardly breathing
už to taky není žádné Pitt Bred       he is no longer a young Pitt Bred
to má z těch svéch cigaret            because of all the cigarettes
                                      
na léčení už byl                      sure he's been to rehab
všechno synek zkusil                  fucker tried all he could
furt nic nepomáhá                     nothing showed any help
on se ale šulin vůbec nevzdává        but motherfucker will just not give up
to je celý naš tata                   that's so typically him
a barák zase řve:                     and the house now screams again:
                                      
CHORUS                                CHORUS
                                      
pak v tom spad a jeb se do hlavy      all of a sudden he falls on his head bad
o tom jak ho vezlo auto houkavý       and of the ambulance trip he then had
zpívá Yetty a Ruda z Ostravy.         is rapping Yetty and Ruda z Ostravy
a on zas křičí.                       and he's yelling again
chcu zas pít a blít                   let me drink and puke
                                      
CHORUS                                CHORUS

EDIT: more parodies of internationally known songs for those interested, let me know if you want something translated

Spoiler

[Amlux]

On weirdness, your explanation was interesting. Because I don't intentionally try to be weird and in fact I don't really enjoy it. I just pursue what I thought "This is good" or "This is interesting". I don't even have a sense of doing weird things while pursuing them. But when I realise I can't communicate with normal people and that is a bit painful.

I kind of feel this way too. Nothing turns me off more than the feeling that someone is intentionally trying to be "weird" or "quirky" for its own sake. But I like things that are challenging or present a very different version of how to see the world, I suppose. And things that are rich in strange atmospheres. So things that might be difficult for outsiders but make perfect sense once you manage to "click" with it. I suppose I would explain it that way.

Anyway, another band I love to shill is デスマーチ艦隊 [Death March Kantai], which is kind of like punk-inspired visual kei but with a heavy retro WWII military aesthetic (lots of military march melodies). Fans of eroguro stuff that uses a lot of Shouwa military imagery will probably like it:

[Thricegreat]

Anyway, another band I love to shill is デスマーチ艦隊 [Death March Kantai], which is kind of like punk-inspired visual kei but with a heavy retro WWII military aesthetic (lots of military march melodies). Fans of eroguro stuff that uses a lot of Shouwa military imagery will probably like it:

I see why you recommended it. I quite agree with that.

Genres are very different, but this is the military music I like the most.

[drummyfish]

Military music always reminds me of this soundtrack from Chicken Run that I often listen to:



It's one of my all time favorite soundtracks and movies as well, and no just because I have a strong connection with chickens This soundtrack is guaranteed to give me goosebumps even though I am generally quite emotionally numb otherwise.

[Thricegreat]

Military music always reminds me of this soundtrack from Chicken Run that I often listen to:



It's one of my all time favorite soundtracks and movies as well, and no just because I have a strong connection with chickens :happy: This soundtrack is guaranteed to give me goosebumps even though I am generally quite emotionally numb otherwise.

Nice. And I guess the second one is a bit like Prokofiev?