I've never really had much time for the cult of the obscure, so when Reynolds has a go at Keenan (clash of the titans innit, the figureheads of the two hegemonies of underground music "locking horns like moose") for championing scantily released music I kind of giggle. Vis a vis Reynolds' turntabilist antics and their potential significance, I remember Ian Penman making a very similar joke about his solipsistic bedroom guitar antics in relation to Loren Mazzacane Connors. Punster laughing out loud that maybe he should be headlining festivals in the German lakes, giving interviews etc. Maybe he should be. Funnily enough just last week I found a tape I'd made in 1992 which has me plucking one note on a violin in time with a metronome for about half an hour. Rubbish of course but I really enjoyed listening to it, had a bit of fun weaving a validating dialogue around it.
The thing is, I have to admit, my love affair with (that old cliche) "socio-culturally significant music" is on the wane at the moment. Isn't that what's at the heart of Reynold's attack on Keenan? That what he's championioning is inneffectual because it's obscure by definition. The common counter-attack of the poor noise-nik (and I'd hazard a guess what Keenan's own would be should he choose to enter the fray, to his credit that he doesn't in one sense, it'd be like entering someone else's gladiatorial arena with only Jon Dale on trident to help out) is that their music is the anti-capitalistic McDonalds-slaying force. The Ying to the Yang. The cape-shrouded other. It'd probably be the yob's riposte that those same qualities of sonic revolt are present in Crunk and Grime; that HIS music is at once commercial and avant-garde. Boomshanka. Check-mate.
However, brushing aside the pieces for a second, it seems to me that the champion of obscure music would do better to dwell on the fragile qualities of their proposition. Obscure music's greatest asset is ATMOSPHERE, an ATMOSPHERE that often ripens with time. This isn't the ATMOSPHERE you get listening to an old ABBA record (though that'll have one) it's something more rarefied. This dovetails with that Johnny Trunk review I just did. I don't think the Japanese Avant-Rock groups or the Folkies can do battle in any proper sense. All these hopeless one-offs, clumsily charming losers are putting down their overalls and delivery bags to deliver snapshots of what it means to be them, then. What's valid in those frail, epheremal visions is the antithesis of what music made for the spotlight contains, alot of energy for sure (energy wanes), but often a dearth of ATMOSPHERE.
Posted by Woebot at July 27, 2004 10:58 PM