BDSM - Bartosso's Daily Saturnine Musings |
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bartosso
MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Location: coffin on Io Status: Offline Points: 1555 |
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Posted: 03 Oct 2014 at 1:08pm |
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Table of contents: *** #1 - Can you actually RATE a work of art? I USED TO RATE not only albums but TRACKS INDIVIDUALLY AND PUT THOSE RATINGS IN REVIEWS! Phew, there I said it. I'm deeply sorry as I think it was unwise of me and just unnecessary. Not because no one wants to know that shit. Not because it's impossible to be THAT objective. No, I'm sorry because rating anything that is art, even whole albums not only doesn't do them justice, it hurts you as the audience. Yes, I think rating music (or books or paintings and other pure arts (movies ain't pure ~art nazi) harms you and makes your perception of art pragmatic where it should be spontaneous and well... not hampered by cold reasoning in the first place. Numerical rating forces you to asses something that can't be assessed precisely. What's even worse it makes you wonder if the rating you've given is objectively justified: "Do I like it as much as this other album? For what reasons?". Also, it often changes the way your review is perceived or even discourages people from reading it - they just check the rating and they're done. First of all, however, the ever present rating system creates a global, common conviction that art is a product to be rated with cold calculation in mind. A product to be sold. YES, I know it all already happened long time ago, it's by no means a reason to think it's right! We live in a world where hotels, fridges, restaurants, TVs and works of art are all rated with the same 5-star scale. And I think it's wrong and corrosive to culture in general. Does that mean I think reviews are bad too? Hell no! I think reviews are a good way of sharing your opinion about a work of art, explaining how you perceive it, its core elements and influences, why do you like it or why you don't. But a numerical rating is a different story entirely. That's why I'd prefer reviews with no ratings attached to them. Just that. Write a review, say what you think and use your extensive knowledge about the music to track the artist's influences. Share your opinion and make people read and think for themselves. EDIT: A good way out of this is the binary recommendation system - you either recommend it or not, end of story. EDIT 2: I've moved it to blog section as I've been thinking about writing something on regular basis and also because nobody was interested in the discussion.
Edited by bartosso - 05 Nov 2014 at 1:35pm |
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ProgMetaller2112
Forum Senior Member Joined: 19 Jan 2013 Location: Pacoima,CA,USA Status: Offline Points: 2490 |
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You rated Babymetal
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"Before you see the light you must die!!!!!!!!!!" - Slayer
"Today is born the seventh one, born of woman, the seventh son" - Steve Harris |
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bartosso
MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Location: coffin on Io Status: Offline Points: 1555 |
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Sure I did, I had no choice. Besides, everyone knows that I actually worship this band and love every single track by them No rating's gonna change that! ^^
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ProgMetaller2112
Forum Senior Member Joined: 19 Jan 2013 Location: Pacoima,CA,USA Status: Offline Points: 2490 |
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"Before you see the light you must die!!!!!!!!!!" - Slayer
"Today is born the seventh one, born of woman, the seventh son" - Steve Harris |
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Bosh66
Forum Admin Group Sludge, MC, HC, Post-Metal & Noise Rock Joined: 14 Feb 2013 Location: Bolton, Lancs Status: Offline Points: 25272 |
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Shame you can't rate blogs - I'm looking forward to the next instalment. Some wisdom in that argument, Bartosso! As for rating down to a track level - it just removes any sense of the album a unified work for me.
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Bosh66
Forum Admin Group Sludge, MC, HC, Post-Metal & Noise Rock Joined: 14 Feb 2013 Location: Bolton, Lancs Status: Offline Points: 25272 |
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Oh and great blog name too. How long did it take to come up with that one? What next - Bartosso's Unique Knowledge and Applied Kreative Insight (BUKAKI) blog?
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bartosso
MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Location: coffin on Io Status: Offline Points: 1555 |
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haha, thanks. I need some sleep cause I come up with this kind of ideas every time I pull an all-nighter Oh man and it took me like 20 minutes or something! I still like your better! It's so graphic!
Edited by bartosso - 13 Oct 2014 at 1:19pm |
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bartosso
MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Location: coffin on Io Status: Offline Points: 1555 |
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#2 - Music, books and how to make them whole.
Before I start, a disclaimer, let's make it a tradition: You have to be a reader and listener in order to understand the following essay. Please do not read if you can't (duh) and also if you don't enjoy/listen to music. As a bonus, kill yourself, no joke. You also should be over 18 years old. *** Music. One word, countless feelings evoked. Ah, yes, so you came here to read something written by this guy that tries soooo hard. Here you go. Today's essay's about emotional/conceptual associations we make between books and music we listen to at the moment of reading. The first time it happened to me was looong before puberty. I think I was 5 - 8 years old at the time. I had a Disney book called "Hercules". It told a disturbing story about a ginger muscle guy, no need to talk about it now. Anyway, somehow I ended up listening to M people cassette while reading the book. Even now, many years later, I still "feel" the book every time I listen to M people... which is never by the way, I don't listen to that crap anymore! So, I felt it, every time I listened to M people. By feeling it, I don't mean any scenes or characters in particular, just the atmosphere in general and feelings the book evoked in me. It's just as if the music were a soundtrack to the story, regardless of how incompatible M People and Hercules are. Another, maybe even sillier example, is Bjork's Isobel, a track from Post. As an avid dinosaurs fan, I read many books about these amazing creatures throughout my childhood. I fantasized about them, I saw them among the trees while looking through the car window, hell, I even pretended to be one! It's not made up, I swear! So, anyway, I used to listen to Bjork quite a lot too at the time. Isobel has become that one track that I instantly associated with dinosaurs. I actually thought it was ABOUT dinosaurs, running through the forest, majestically raising their heads above the treetops. How disappointed I was when I found out, many years later, that the track's name is Isobel (yeah as a kid I didn't care about titles) and what's more, it's absolutely not about dinosaurs. A few years ago I realized that I could actually enhance my reading experience by listening to one album over and over again while going through a book. It creates a bond. Obviously it can't be just any album but rather one that you already know pretty well and like quite a lot. For instance, I've been reading Murakami's Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of the World, one of his most surreal books. As I head some awesome experience with Reisefieber by Mikołaj Łoziński and One Armed Bandit by Jaga Jazzist, I started to associate an album with a book and listen to it. If it worked, I had this book "stuck" in the music for the rest of my life. If it didn't, well, I'd change the music or read without any music at all. So, anyway, I listend to Kayo Dot Choir's of The Eye while reading Murakami. And let me tell you, it worked great. Both the book and the album are great but they're even better as a duo. Kayo Dot gives you the sense of wonder, menace and psychedelia and that's exactly what you need to amplify the mood of Hard-boiled Wonderland. I know it might not be the most groundbreaking thing and some of you have already tried this. Still, if you haven't, give it a shot: pick an album you like, album you think would go well with the books you're reading and listen to it. Bind the album to the book and keep it this way forever. Edited by bartosso - 15 Oct 2014 at 5:09am |
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bartosso
MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Location: coffin on Io Status: Offline Points: 1555 |
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#3 - Coffins on Io, reviews and other astronomical anomalies
Daily Disclaimer: You have to know that Io is one of Jupiter's moons and one of the most hell-like places in our solar system, topped only by Venus (not sure about that). We all know now after all, so no reason to stop you from reading the following mini-essay. Enjoy. *** I've been listening to the latest album by Kayo Dot for a week now (it was streamed legally before release, no worries), and I must say that it's... great. Review's on the way, what I am about to write here about is not one. Just some thoughts on the album and other stories that concern it to some extent. I hope. One thing have been bogging me lately. If you went through my first essay about rating works of art, you know that my approach have evolved quite a bit. Or maybe not evolved, I just realized how futile some attempts at being rational were. I realized that saying that "it's good but not perfect" or that "I don't think it's as good as the previous album" doesn't really make sense. And you know what? I love Hubardo, the previous Dot, and I was even tempted to say that I don't think Coffins on Io is as good. But I decided I won't. It's different. And it's genuinely good, like swimming in a remote lake in the middle of the forest with the night sky above. I think writing an objective and detailed review with arguments backing every observation with profound knowledge is not, or shouldn't be the goal in itself, yet just one of the means to accomplish something much more important. These days a good reviewer is the one who's impersonal and objective but let's be honest, it's much harder to give yourself on a plate to the reader and then make him follow you with your writing without embarrassing yourself. That's why we don't do it. We don't do it because being emotional is not cool. Before we go any further, I want to say that I don't consider my reviews to be a good example of that approach. I try to follow this path, but I most often fail. I try to let myself go and try to capture the soul of the album apart from describing it with cold blood. Let's face it, though I'm not really that well versed in music and English is still a foreign language to me. I'm also pretentious which can potentially be repelling for some readers. I remember reading a review by one of our most prominent reviewers here on MMA, a review of Gnaw Their Tongues' debut. I loved how in this particular review he crossed the line, broke the fourth wall and spoke for himself, exposed the thoughts that the album evoked in him. That leads me to an obvious observation that you don't have to be that deeply open every time, just don't stop yourself when you feel something. It makes of your review a work of art in itself, and there's nothing better than that. *** Edited by bartosso - 16 Oct 2014 at 9:55am |
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Earendil
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I really enjoyed the blog. I like your detached sense of humor, and I added Hard-Boiled Wonderland to my Amazon wish list (for if and if I get to it). I agree that it's impossible to compare Io and Hubardo. Both occupy special spheres inside me that don't really overlap, and they'll remain in different ways, along with most of Kayo Dot, some of the most important music to me.
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bartosso
MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Location: coffin on Io Status: Offline Points: 1555 |
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Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoyed the articles and that the humor suits you. I wasn't sure if the blog were a good idea but now I'm definitely going to continue working on it. Hard-boiled Wonderland definitely is a great book, hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did! Thanks again and hey, stay tuned :)
Also, I posted a Part the Second "review" a day or so ago, it's my 100th review so I celebrated big time. It's more like a BDSM blog post so I strongly encourage you to take a look :)
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bartosso
MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Location: coffin on Io Status: Offline Points: 1555 |
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#4 - Metal and independent thinking
Daily Disclaimer: If the epitome of metal to you is Iron Maiden and nothing heavier than this is listenable, skip this one. You'd look at this text like a dog being shown a card trick. Just kidding, go on. *** I hate statistics. Mostly because there's a significant gap between required amount of critical thinking to interpret them and the actual intelligence of people doing it. Still, a non-metal friend of mine once told me that there's been a study about correlation between music preferences and intelligence and guess what. People listening to metal are apparently, allegedly more intelligent STATISTICALLY than your average rocker or popper (my word for pop music fans, but also THIS). Ha! You listen to metal, right? You feel better now? Don't get excited just yet. So, why is that? Why would we be so awesome, you ask? Isn't it obvious, we're outcasts, living on the edge! I started listening to metal when I was around 12 years old. I remember having a Judas Priest and Overkill cassettes from my cousin and played the shit out of them. Mostly of Painkiller, actually, since Overkill bothered me greatly. I listened to Metallica and System of a Down too. And when I was 14, my girlfriend introduced me to Slipknot, my first extreme metal band. Yep, whatever we might think of Slipknot now, they were pretty extreme back in the day. Then I realized Slipknot sucked, I discovered Opeth and my whole life changed. So, anyway, you may think that my music tastes made me an outcast but that's not true. I was one long before all that. And you know what the life of outcast taught me? Always think for yourself, don't follow the crowd, be yourself. Also: don't look'em in the eye, run before they form a circle, hide in the bushes. According to the study, people listening to metal, and especially to the more underground forms of metal, are statistically more intelligent. I was stumped when I heard that. First of all, most of my intelligent friends (friends that were better at the sciences than me, for instance), didn't listen to metal. The only subject I was really good at was Polish (it's my native language) and history (kind of). I was writing high rated essays, basically. So apparently, from an educational standpoint, I wasn't especially intelligent. Just your average alienated kid that can't play football and hangs out with other alienated kids but they don't form any real group or subculture... although today we could easily be classified as nerds due to our fascination with tabletop rpgs. Whatever the actual level of my intelligence may be, assuming it can be accurately measured by those silly IQ tests, I think the word "intelligence" should be replaced with "independent thinking" in this particular case. We, people of both sexes listening to metal, often are independent thinkers. We listen to music that is harsh, raw, music that most people consider to be an obnoxious noise. We don't follow their judgement, though. We judge by our own standards. And that's the point: why do we consider an ugly, obnoxious noise to be enjoyable or even... beautiful? Good question. I'll try to answer it in the next installment of BDSM. For now, that is all. Almost. Before you go... recent studies have shown that all kids are intelligent and everyone is born with a talent. Don't believe those who try to tell you otherwise. What education (and stupid parents) makes us loose, is the ability to think for ourselves. So, if you're young, don't let the education ruin you! If you're old and listen to some sick music, don't worry, you're fine. Edited by bartosso - 22 Oct 2014 at 5:29pm |
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Earendil
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I thought one line in your review sums up the album just about as well as it's possible to do. It made me pause and go "oh... of course", like it's natural to do when you realize something fundamental. Anyways, I enjoyed reading it. This line: What I say may seem quite vague, but this record really sounds as if it were aware of itself. Every sound, every word is there for a reason and for no reason at all.
Edited by Earendil - 22 Oct 2014 at 12:38pm |
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bartosso
MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Location: coffin on Io Status: Offline Points: 1555 |
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Woah, incredible how every quote sounds better out of context ^^ thanks once again, Andrew, your support and thoughtful commentary is much, much appreciated.
Also, nothing cheesy about your Blue Lambency Downward review. We get more and more scared of going poetic these days. I believe that you can't accurately describe a work of art without transcending literal description of genres, influences etc.
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bartosso
MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Location: coffin on Io Status: Offline Points: 1555 |
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#5 - Deviants, masochists and aesthetics of metal Daily Disclaimer: If the epitome of metal is Iron Maiden for you... what? I've used this disclaimer already? What can I say, I just don't like this band. *** Before you kill me, I'll just say that I actually somewhat like Iron Maiden, I'm just a kind of person that would say anything to seem cool and ironic. Basically a kind of person you wouldn't like to know in real life. I have an excuse, though! I'm sick, I sleep eight hours a day and another ten at night, waiting for something to happen. If I'm to be completely honest with you, this blog marks a transitional phase in my life as I learn to accept my health problems despite their life and hearing impairing implications. I have to accept them. Not because I need it to feel better. It's just that after two years of treatment, surgery and inconclusive diagnosing, I feel like resuming my life would be a good move. I know, I know, it was supposed to be about us, not me. I didn't plan this outburst, I hope all two people who read this won't hold a grudge against me... The question we asked in the previous installment of BDSM was, more ot less, "Why do we like extreme music?". The answer is partly expressed in the question itself (oh how clever!). Extreme situations is what thrills us. Why would people watch thrillers, read horror books or gather around car accidents like idiots, if not for the excitement? It's obviously directly connected to our morbid curiosity and I think at the very basis, that's what gets us hooked on extreme music in the first place. Still music compared to movies, books or real life situations, is abstract. Yeah, sure, Cannibal Corpse lyrics (and cover arts, for that matter) are not particularly abstract and I bet some people find this aspect of their music very exciting. Still, even if you leave aside the conceptual basis of the music, it's still extreme. That's where another thing kicks in - letting oneself go. Extreme music is liberating and helps us relax. It's funny because it usually has an opposite effect on those who don't like it. Okay, but what about those who find the music not only liberating but also beautiful. If you get shivers down your spine upon hearing a Gnaw Their Tongues track or an emotional arrhythmia while listening to Meshuggah, you're one of those freaks. You are one of these sick deviants that listen to atonal noise and still somehow look like a birdwatcher surrounded by nightingales. That's not normal! I mean really, peeking at birds, come on! So, anyway, we are willing to sacrifice social conformity and often part of our sanity just to explore that music and experience something extraordinary. Or maybe it's just that only extreme music is capable of conveying the full spectrum of human nature? All that we know about, all that we accept, but also things we'd rather forget about or don't even know exist in our subconscious? Knowing and accepting all that shit we have inside is part of our evolution. And yes, we're talking metal here, but also avant-garde jazz or RIO, or chamber music. All music that challenges your limits, opens your mind and forces you to give in to it, is extreme. Nowadays, especially nowadays, in the postmodern age, extreme music is a perfect artistic vessel to express things otherwise inexpressible. Bands like Kayo Dot, Unexpect, Cloak of Altering, Thy Catafalque, however different they are, all aim at transcending the borders of art in order to achieve the ultimate goal - ecstasy, freedom, spiritual unity of body and mind. Without dogmas, prayers, or masturbation. Just you and the sounds. And when the silence comes, you're a changed man. *** Edited by bartosso - 23 Oct 2014 at 9:50pm |
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bartosso
MMA Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: 31 Dec 2010 Location: coffin on Io Status: Offline Points: 1555 |
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-> BDSM from now on available also on my refurbished blog.
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bartosso
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bartosso
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ProgMetaller2112
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Is there such a thing as Independent thinking?
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"Before you see the light you must die!!!!!!!!!!" - Slayer
"Today is born the seventh one, born of woman, the seventh son" - Steve Harris |
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Polymorphia
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