GY!BE's album 'Yanqui U.X.O.' is one of the greatest instrumental records of all-time

Okay I'll bite. I know you'll be embarassed by them because *I* said similarly stupid things eight or nine years ago and I'm embarassed by them. Mercifully they weren't archived on the internet for all eternity so yay I win.

Anyway, the reason its silly for you to lump GYBE in with Bach/Mozart/Miles Davis/Orbital is because there's no reason to lump those four together other than the fact they're generally venerated (Orbital possible exception) and they made instrumental music. Although the fact you've included Bach in there at all suggests you don't actually know a huge amount about Bach. Or to a lesser extent Mozart.

So you've put GYBE in such exalted company mostly for instant gravitas, and then asked why they aren't held in the same regard. Whereas the primary criticism levelled at GYBE is that they are all gravitas and no substance. They're all Big Serious Face without the inventiveness or creativity to back it up. Because they make (or made) music specifically aimed at the type of listener to whom all you need are big crescendos and long silences and vague statements about religion and politics and making everything SLOW and SERIOUS for it to equal art. To be worthy of being named in the same breath as Mozart. Which incidentally is completely missing the point of Mozart as well.

And because their music is incredibly easy to make, and requires minimal invention or inspiration, whilst sounding Terribly Important. Unlike everyone else you've mentioned. And because they're quite boring.

Alternatively, Tom E's review of a completely different album still pwns them six years on.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/0052,seward,21008,22.html

I wasn't comparing them to each other, musically at least; I was suggesting that the quality of GY!BE's work compared favourably to the undoubted quality of the mentioned artists.

Right, onto Matt DC's reply, much of which I wish to take him up upon.

Although the fact you've included Bach in there at all suggests you don't actually know a huge amount about Bach. Or to a lesser extent Mozart. Yes, yes, the Cantatas, the Requiem, all of these have choral sections as well as orchestras. There's no denying that both composers created great instrumental work as well, and moreover, the choral sections are mostly included for their harmonic and musical value rather than for the somewhat rote, hymnal words that they are singing, thus IMO making the pieces practically instrumental anyway.

Whereas the primary criticism levelled at GYBE is that they are all gravitas and no substance. They're all Big Serious Face without the inventiveness or creativity to back it up. Your first sentence mentions a 'primary criticism'. Mysteriously, your second sentence slips seamlessly into personal opinion (stated as fact), as if your opinion is identical to that of all GY!BE critics, who are all incontrovertibly correct. This would seem to me to be either a subjective flaw or an admission of one-sidedness, which is fair enough as long as it is acknowledged as just your own opinion and not the generally-held truth amongst the musical cognoscenti.

Because they make (or made) music specifically aimed at the type of listener to whom all you need are big crescendos and long silences and vague statements about religion and politics and making everything SLOW and SERIOUS for it to equal art. I have problems with 'all you need'. I also have problems with 'specifically aimed' and 'making everything SLOW and SERIOUS for it to equal art'. I also have problems with 'long silences', and 'vague statements about religion and politics'. In fact, this entire extract is flawed. I shall explain. GY!BE have probably made music much like other worthy bands have made music: they're trying to plough an original, interesting furrow (sorry, lazy journalistic metaphor but we'll let that slide), and they're probably not making music with anything other than their own ideas in mind. Perhaps, however, their music is more appreciable to (rather than specifically aimed at) the sorts of people who...well, the 'type' of listener who enjoys all of the things you mention? Listeners come in types now, do they? I like to think that listeners appreciate anything musical as long as it is done well within the right context. Big crescendos can be boring or sublime, as can long silences, and as for vague statements about religion and politics, well, remove the 'vague' and you've got yourself a whole load of genius and a whole load of shite out there in the music world. In the context of GY!BE's album Yanqui U.X.O, which has been the subject of my argument throughout, even then your claims are misguided. They read, as Tom's excellent review does, as a criticism more of Lift Your Skinny Fists..., which I myself regard as flawed for much the same reasons as Tom does. There are big crescendos in YUXO, but they are more abruptly-reached, more instantly crushing, and more momentous than those which cropped up every so often in the previous album. There are also no words in the album, hence no statements on religion or politics. You'll have to refer to the cover-art for that (although it's still not specifically about religion or politics, more about the relations between record companies and arms manufacturers, and the destruction that these arms are still creating in the world at large, which is a noble enough cause IMO despite the slightly melodramatic means of presenting it). As for 'making everything SLOW and SERIOUS for it to equal art', jeez, these guys have their own way(s) of displaying their creative talents, and just because theirs involves 'slow' (perhaps) and 'serious' (subjective) instrumentation, does this mean that they automatically make a claim to be of higher artistic worth than, say, a speed-punk group? Nope, it's just your own reaction to the music. Were you to think 'This is slow, this is long, this sounds quite dramatic...' but then continue with '...however, something like The Locust's 'Plague Soundscapes' (20 minutes, 21 tracks of hyper-fast electronic hardcore) is more of a serious attempt to create High Art', that would be no less valuable a statement than yours that long and slow equals pomposity. Everyone has their own ways of working, and it is your conditioning that has caused this unfair conflation.

Which incidentally is completely missing the point of Mozart as well. uh

And because their music is incredibly easy to make, and requires minimal invention or inspiration, whilst sounding Terribly Important. Unlike everyone else you've mentioned. And because they're quite boring. This is all subjective, again. You can't claim to win this argument over me by your divine right as a Music Critic to bestow final judgement. Why, if their music is so easy to make, does nobody else (except a few plagiarists and/or labelmates who share some of their bandmembers) sound anything like them? Fair enough that some of their chords and scales might be simple to conceive of or play, but nobody else has presented them in such a manner as they: the difficulty is in the conception rather than the execution. YUXO is chock-full of little twists and turns, little details only picked up after several listens, that create a simply awesome listening experience, unburdened by thoughts such as 'I could play that arpeggio in my sleep!'. Their having 'minimal invention or inspiration' is what you believe, but it is not what I believe. It is fair enough if you think less of me as a listener (as the 'type' who likes long, slow, boring music) because of this, but you cannot dispute my right to defend it. The sounds, the production, the movements; they might not be as note-stuffed as a good recording of Bach, Mozart or Davies, or a decent Orbital album, but they are IMO brilliantly-conceived as a coherent, thought-provoking whole, whose effect upon me is unlike any other record. We've already established that 'Terribly Important' is your own ad hominem assault upon music that dares to stretch things out a little, and in fact I could well say that Miles Davis' stupid whiny look-at-me-jazz-hands trumpet noise pisses me off just as much (I won't, though). And oh yeah, they're boring. For some.

Let's face it, your reply is mired in the sort of music-journalist cliche and subjective holier-than-thou pronouncement that we really ought to be avoiding on here. Before you snap back, accusing me of being similarly guilty (although liking YUXO isn't exactly a cliche), let me say that all of the parts I labelled as 'subjective' in your post are entirely A-OK by me. Mine are the same. However, you seem to think that yours are the law. I asked this question originally with a view to having an interesting, detailed discussion of the record's pros and cons, of a fair-minded appraisal, but all you have come up with is the party line. And what a (cough) self-important, boring, Big Serious Face party line it is.

see what i did there?

Verdict? Really self-important and boring!

godspeed you! blundering eejit?

[/rising to bait]

What Mozart thing?

Plenty of you, however, are using this as a means to attack me. It's sly, unkind and entirely beside the point.

I like this and agree with it. Though, I couldn't give a toss about the band.

In fact, it isn't my opinion, nor was it intended to be my opinion. It was intended to be a summary of a lot of anti-GYBE criticism as I see it and why in that regard comparing them to Mozart might actually undermine your defence of them. So yes, of course it was a party line. It was meant to be a friendly pointer so seriously, calm down. You won't destroy the pompous critical consensus like that.

My opinion on GYBE - liked them at the time, haven't wanted to listen to them once in 5 years, had more or less lost interest by the time Yanqui UXO came out, suspect I would find them very boring now.

(I'd like to take you up on the astonishing wrongness of your Bach argument but suspect that would hardly be constructive at this point)

First, I think that if Godspeed! You Bl!ack Emperor! would've named themselves something bland and neutral like, say, Montreal Orchestra, and stayed away from political statements and refusing to do interviews and publicity, 95% of the arguments and controversy around them would disappear. It's the name, mainly, I think. It's the the type that grabs your attention immediately, and then either you're sort of intrigued by it or you just think it's fucking stupid and the band has to justify their existence from that point on.

Secondly, I don't agree with the argument that GYBE's music is "easy to make". Stars of the Lid and plenty of other ambient musicians have long sections of music involving only one note, and then fucking around with the reverb and equalizer settings. Autechre has been accused of letting their algorithms do all the work for them in certain songs/albums. But no one would never suggest that what they do is easy. If it was easy to do, they wouldn't be (in my opinion) the leaders in that respective genres.

The same holds true with GYBE, I think. True, they stuck with the "quiet sections with crazy street vendor/street preacher rambling on" trick for a bit too long, but, then, a lot of bands have been accused of using the same gimmick for too long. And while people used to express annoyance at Stereolab and Low for not changing their sound enough from album to album, there was never this strange spew of vitriol that always comes out when GYBE is the subject. Perhaps because Stereolab isn't called Stereolab Dawn of Exquisite Light Orchestra w/ La dee Da Da Orchestra?

Incidentally, I only heard Yanqui UXO once, and wasn't all that impressed with it, but I think I've had enough time away from it to give it a good second listen.

Now I'm going to read Tom's review linked to above and regret everything I just said.

That's like comparing Aaron McGruder to Toni Morrison and suggesting you're talking about good writers.

I remember an anniversay issue of Spin magazine where they named the 100 greatest singles of all time. Number one was Rob Base's "It Takes Two" over the Stones and Marvin Gaye and the Kinks and Velvet Undergound and every other song ever released. The obvious point: whatever is the best thing to you right fucking now is the best thing of all fucking time. In sum, enjoy it.

Yep.

louis i think most people's problem with your claim was not that you were comparing GY!BE to bach or mozart or miles or orbital but that you claimed the existence of a single "pantheon" containing all the greats of "instrumental music"--implying that the major division amongst musics for most people is "music with singing" and "music without singing" and that everyone in the second category can be lumped together as though they have more in common with one another than they do with those from their same time who make music from the first category. This is fair. If only that were most people's qualm...although in my defence I have seen threads on 'instrumental music' bandied around before here. Perhaps I should have limited it to instrumental rock music. Music without lyrics is more the issue here than music without singing, incidentally, which takes us onto...

I'd like to take you up on the astonishing wrongness of your Bach argument but suspect that would hardly be constructive at this point. *gulps* Please, don't be too harsh, I just hear the voices and think 'harmony'! I don't know any German! I don't know what they're singing! For me it's just another musical strand to add to the other factions of the orchestra.

As for the rest of your point, Matt, well, even if that isn't your opinion, you yourself have claimed that it's a pretty generally-held opinion on GY!BE. In that case, my words stand, although if I can't take down the critical consensus that way, how on earth could I ever do so?

That's like comparing Aaron McGruder to Toni Morrison and suggesting you're talking about good writers. Sadly, American Studies isn't part of the course I'm on. Although Toni Morrison, she wrote Beloved, didn't she? One of the other classes at school studied that and hated it practically to a man (and woman). So...you're saying that all the artists named are shite? Uh?

Right now, for him, this album is the Greatest Album In The World Not even close. Maybe top 25. ;-)

Greatest Instrumental Album In The World One of. :-D Although we could clarify that again with 'Instrumental Rock'.

even the band thought it was shitly recorded. SEE ALSO: The Beta Band, s/t. Another favourite of mine, despite whatever they thought it could have been. The artist, if not dead, is definitely bound and gagged in the corner by the time his creation reaches my ears. I think it's recorded fantastically.

they're nothing like classical music Never said they were.

Branca who they ripped off heavily Have heard Symphony No. 6 and The Ascension, similarities in guitar tone perhaps, complete disparity in terms of melodic ambition.

deeply uncool SO FUCKING WHAT

OTM, sheesh. That was almost as bad as anything Louis said.

ban louis jagger

;-)

:-D contains no parentheses, btw.

i like optigan one!

yeah, after you and lex turned this into some fucking teen magazine profile feature piece wankfest about how a british virgin -- SHOCKAH -- acquired unusual taste in music, yeah, it got a lot more "damn enjoyable."

what a fucking shockah! now let's all gush like lex over how fantastic this is.

Which explains why I'm posting here a lot. Er.

furthermore, my taste REALLY isn't that unusual. in the context of ILM it's actually quite mainstream! :-)

emjoy: the joy of em

you'll never get any with that attitude

*wuss

I remember it being named in a "songs with great verses, awful chorus" thread. OTM. String city!

Yeah, I thought that too. When real ILX is back you can read the hideous story of how it did happen, replete with vomit.

-- Da Mystery of Sandboxin' (...), December 7th, 2006.

Which? I have 'Clara' and 'Cue' off the latest one (Clara is incredible, brilliant etc), and I have recently bought 'Tilt', although I'm finding that kinda tough to get into (The Cockfighter is great though!). It'll come!

Also, a little bird, possibly known as Matt DC, may have warned me in person earlier this evening that if Dan Perry were to find this thread, my Bach and Mozart claims would be rinsed, dried and stone-baked within fifteen milliseconds. Dan, if you're reading this, you win. :-)