This year’s been filled with more musical disappointment than I could take. Many of the major releases I was looking forward to with perhaps exaggerated anticipation resulted in being unbearable earsore or, in the best cases, bland and forgettable works. What’s with all this synthetic crap anyway? Some musicians think that since anybody else is doing it, they can, too. Nobody wants to play an instrument without adding gimmicks of all kinds anymore. But there are very few cases in which this can work. I don’t want to hear all the time violins like moribund burping cows and percussion sounding like it’s been digested and regurgitated by ABBA’s otolaryngologist, for FluffyMcButt’s sake! Anyway, I’m not willing to go into this, because it’s Saturday evening and I would like to relax instead of having my blood boiling and my right eye flashing poisonous darts against the laptop’s screen – it’s already quite dirty, I should definitely clean it. I also should not be too critical of music, as I am not in the music critic’s mind-frame. I can simply express an opinion based on taste and/or on what the music does or does not suggest to me. It must be because I am getting old and spiteful, or because I am getting old and cynical, or the two combined, but suggestive music is hard to come by with all this balderdash. Every acclaimed musician, especially if Pitchfork’s hipsters help boosting sales with a score of 8.5 or higher, sells the brain and buys a powerful computer.
I am baffled these days to realize there aren’t anymore many musicians playing without having a computer on stage with them. Samples and actually performed music have become inseparable in live shows. This is OK when it’s really necessary and motivated, which is not the case in 80% of the examples I have in mind. Why does anybody want to play their music exactly as it was recorded for the album version? What the hell, I have the albums at home! When I go to a concert I want to hear something different, if you don’t mind.
This said, I am not going to many concerts these days. I don’t know if I am not in the mood or if the mood is there but it is not in the mood. Whatever. I went to amiina’s gig at Eymundsson bookstore yesterday and it was nice. I should spend a few minutes on it and post a bunch of photos.