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The Inevitable Rant about Art and the Goth Scene

8/22/2013

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"All you know about me is what I've sold you, dumb fuck.
I sold out long before you ever heard my name.
I sold my soul to make a record, dip shit.
And you bought one.

So I have got some great advice for you, little buddy.
Before you point your finger you should know that I'm the man.
And if I'm the fuckin' man, then you're the fuckin' man as well,
So you can point that fuckin' finger up your ass."

-- Tool, "Hooker With a Penis"


Lately I've seen a lot of anger on the Aesthetic Perfection FB page and it's sort of triggered some thoughts in my head that really wanted to get out.

Lucky you, darklings! You get to read them!

So, Daniel from AP has been launching into some rants over the last few days, taking umbrage with some of his "fans" that are basically bashing the relatively new "Antibody" single, and some of the fans have been lashing back concerning the fact that he seems, at best, uninterested in their opinions and, at worst, telling them to fuck off.

Daniel has posted at least one sorta-apology entry, admitting that his response hasn't been the "most gentlemanly", which is true.

That said, Mr. Graves has made some really solid points over the last few days, and his objections are something that I see infecting entirely too much of the scene across the board.

So, what's the complaint about "Antibody"? From what I gather, it's basically that it sounds "too techno" compared to his earlier work. And Graves concedes that people are entirely welcome to their opinion. His objection is, of course, them inviting themselves into his "own house" (the AP FB page) in order to bandy their unwanted critiques and club him over the head with them.

Here's where this conversation involves "the scene" in general.

People, including many of us in the darkling crowd, are in entirely too much of a hurry to stick things in boxes. We call it "classification" and seem to be under the impression that, if something falls into one box, it cannot possibly fall into another box. But the fact of the matter is that all "classification" is really just a series of continuums with an arbitrarily-set "midpoint" that is chosen to "define" any given continuum.

But even scientists and biologists and historians spend a lot of their time quibbling over when a wolf stops being a canine and starts being "something else entirely" or whether a particular piece of pottery is Late Paleolithic or Early Neolithic or evidence of "some other thing that's completely different that we now have to make up a name for".

And the "Goth scene" seems to be more egregiously infamous for this over-reliance on classification than many other "scenes"... Though, to be fair, goths were being hipsters before being a hipster became cool. So. Y'know. Par for the fucking course.

The problem is that art -- all art, whether music, or painting, or sculpture, or fiction, or poetry (or anything else that I'm accidentally leaving out) -- is even MORE continuum-based than biological science and history. Especially since all art is derived, influenced, and drawn from, guess what... PREVIOUS ART. And that all art is born SPECIFICALLY from the EVOLUTION of PREVIOUS ART within the SOCIO-POLITICAL CULTURE in which that evolution was formed. (And then it's all judged on another continuum based entirely upon PERSONAL TASTES that's just plain arbitrary as fuck.)

So when a particular "goth kid" (drawing from an example in my personal experience), says something along the lines of: "why aren't there more bands doing old-school goth, but, y'know, being innovative?", it leaves me somewhat boggled. Because, what this young gent is actually asking for is the OPPOSITE of innovation. He wants something that sounds a whole lot like what he's already heard (which was born out of a burgeoning punk scene that is now nearly 30 years dead), but he wants it to be "different". But there's only so much difference before he arbitrarily classifies it as "not goth", which, if he were being more honest, actually equates to "falling outside my own continuum of like/dislike" and has nothing to do with whether or not it's actually "goth" at all.

What he's actually asking for is for musicians to cater to his specific idea of what their art "should be" and ignoring the fact that a) they can't read his mind; b) what he wants was born from a culture that doesn't exist anymore; and c) his personal tastes are not the end-all/be-all of how their art is judged.

And, as Daniel himself pointed out: catering to what "makes fans happy" over what "makes Daniel happy"? We've got a name for that. It's called "selling out". That's putting the value of your dollar over his own integrity and evolution as an artist. You don't have to like what he's doing, nor do you have to support it. But you don't get to dictate the direction, either.

But going onto his page and shitting all over it? That's just fucking tacky. And pretending that he "owes you" something, artistically, because you're a consumer? That's just fucking ignorant and greedy and self-obsessed (oh, hello cultural results of American Capitalism!).

How does this relate to the scene and then back to the original issue of certain AP fans being obnoxiously vocal about their dislike of the newest single? I'm glad you asked! (No, really. You asked... Okay... No you didn't, but you're getting an answer anyway.)

"Music scenes", like all art, evolve or die. Eventually, a given scene becomes something else entirely, but is close enough that it is still obviously related and it takes a while before the differences become so pronounced that classifying it into a separate continuum makes sense.

The "Goth Scene" is unreasonably schismatic on this, whereas the actual unifying trait of the "Goth Scene" is a combination of "dark music AND morbid, shocking, and/or retro fashion". But you have "Old School Goths" and "Hardcore Industrialists" bitching about how all this "New Electronic Shit" is all over what they perceive to be "their withered lawn of shadows."

The issue is that Goth, as a scene, evolved to survive the fact that Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, and Siouxsie Sioux ran out of steam. So it added Industrial and darker Electro music because, face it, some of us wanted to dance to a beat when everyone else in the world got Techno. And from that, we got Darkwave and EBM and Aggro-Tech, all born from various mixtures of these continuums... And the same goes with fashion, where you get BabyGoffs in their Manson-shirts, next to Deathrockers in their mohawks and punk-wear, having a drink with some Industrialist in giant platform boots stomping away to Combichrist, mingling with swirly neo-Victorians and Pagan-Goths and their not-so-distant Steampunk cousins, dancing with someone that looks like a mashup between ol' Siouxsie herself and Gaiman's Death, while some darling Gothabilly in victory rolls and a pencil-skirt is sipping on whiskey while showing off her tats (I said "TATS" not "tits". Though we're talking Gothabilly, here, so, it's quite possible that she's showing those off, too).

And, without this ever-evolving continuum, we would have never gotten this music in the first place. If the dying of punk hadn't spawned the morbid nihilism of "original Goth", then we'd have gotten no Bauhaus or Siouxsie Sioux. And if it had not been for techno and the fading of "Old School Goth" artists, we'd have never gotten Throbbing Gristle and NIN coming in to fill the space... which means that we never would have gotten the stuff that the angry fans got from those first three AP albums, being that those albums were almost entirely born of the Industrial and Electro music that came as a result of those earlier acts.

So, what is Mr. M's overly-long rant really trying to say?

Mostly? Stop trying to choke the life out of your own scene by shitting on things that other people in the scene like. Stop screaming about how bands that evolve out of your taste range have somehow "sold out". The Goth Scene is expansive. It's growing because otherwise it will die out (and nearly has a couple of times, already). It's adding new things to its repertoire, it's cross-pollinating with other fringe cultures, and it's expanding its range. Whether you like specific changes or not, it will survive and evolve without you.

You're welcome to "like" or "not like" a given innovation. But you do not get to define what Goth is or "What counts as 'real' Aesthetic Perfection" as though it were only a single continuum based solely upon your personal tastes.

As to my opinion on the "Antibody" single? Eh. It leans a little further into the techno continuum than I'd prefer. But it's not a bad song and I happily dance to it at club. I'd have preferred to see Daniel head more into the grim waltz-y stuff that he did with the "All Beauty Destroyed" track... So more industrialized waltzes, some tangos, maybe a dark cha-cha... Can you even make a dark cha-cha?

But then you'd have people making the same complaints. Except me. I'd love it. :)

But, as many others on the AP FB page have stated: if I want to listen to "more of the same", I've got three full albums worth of that already. Daniel and AP don't owe me a damn thing. Except maybe to grow artistically, even if it's in ways I don't like.

-- Mr. M.
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Going to Solace tonight. What about you?

7/13/2012

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"Night the voluptuous, night the chaste
Spreads her dark limbs, a vaulted splendour,
Above the intolerable waste."
-- Aleister Crowley, "A Fragment"

So, last month I got myself out to the revival of Solace at its new venue, the Prop Box Theater out in Oakland. (Yes, I'm only just now getting to writing about it. No, I refuse to take responsibility for my own laziness.)

Solace, itself, was exceptional and elegant as always, with Persephone and Burning Skies spinning for us while some of those with better dancing skills than your own dear Mr. M made excellent use of the new dance floor.

The new venue is really lovely. Bigger dance floor than the previous space - or maybe it just feels like it. Definitely more room for a bigger and better bar (provided by Lorelei). The only complaints I have are: a) that there is less seating (tired legs); and b) less parking.

That said, I'm going to be in attendance at tonight's Solace anyway because, as always, I love the ambiance and the culture of the attendees and the ability to converse over the music and dance in a variety of fashions (well, observe others dancing in a variety of fashions, anyway - I am learning to waltz, though, with the help of Persephone and her main squeeze Charles).

In further catching up news: I also managed to make it out to the Aesthetic Perfection show back on 6/24. Amazing performances by Blackopz and [X]-RX as the opening acts, building the energy up for the headliner. And, of course, the AP part of the show was, to put it bluntly, really fucking awesome. They did an excellent job of taking the "turned up to 11" energy from the openers and cranking it up another notch or two with a lot of stuff off of the last two albums.

Anyway, hope to see you out and about, my darklings!

-- Mr. M.
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Album Review: Aesthetic Perfection's "A Violent Emotion"

11/22/2011

2 Comments

 
Picture
_"I don’t feel no remorse. And I don’t feel sympathy.
Well I don’t feel anything, but, right now, I’m feeling you."
-- Aesthetic Perfection, "The Siren"

Artist(s): Aesthetic Perfection

Album: A Violent Emotion

My Thoughts: Aesthetic Perfection is another of those bands/artists that I learned about from Digital Gunfire Radio, for which I cannot thank Shirow enough.

I'll admit that I'm a bit behind the times, as this album's been out for a few years now. But that's okay, because it is 100% pure Grade A awesome. Brutal industrial beats, combined with a steady mix of distorted and un-distorted vocals, and themes meandering between self-destruction, mutual condemnation, fairy-tale creepiness, and other strange and complex ideas - this is one of my go to albums right now if I want some solid industrial with intelligible and coherent lyrics that aren't just about murder and unbridled aggression (I've got Dismantled and Combichrist for those).

"A Violent Emotion" is just a really, really good "general" industrial album that doesn't get too caught up in itself and provides a good mix for the aural palate.

Highlights: Honestly, I really like every single track on this album. Daniel Graves did not waste a single jot on half-assed filler-tunes or sub-par experimentalism of any kind.

If I had to choose, I say "Pale" and "The Ones" are my two favorite tracks, but they've got stiff competition from everything else on this release.

"Pale" mostly because the subject seems to be one of emotional manipulation in the face of the search for truth, a particularly resonant topic. The repeated chorus of: "And I'd lie for a chance to taste joy/And I'd die for a chance to keep going on..." just kicks home that sense of internal desolation and compromising of the self that comes with relationship dissolution. The song evinces strong upbeat techno roots, but without the dull repetition that plagues most techno - maybe synthpop might be a better term than techno then. Either way, it's still got an inexorable sense of accusal and despair in the lyrics to make it less hopeful than most synth- and future- pop.

"The Ones" strikes me as some kind of dark fairy tale version of the tooth fairy (in fact, it specifically reminds me of the little blue tooth fairy monsters from Hellboy: The Golden Army). The whole song smacks of some kind of paranoid schizophrenic delusion after a week off one's meds. The creep factor is excellent, but that creepiness is accompanied by a solid industrial beat, a discordant "out-of-tune" synthesizer piano, and voice distortions that sound more like buzzing than a voice.

Final Thoughts: Definitely one of the albums I take with me everywhere - I literally keep the CD in the car just in case my MP3 player dies so that I can keep listening to something on repeat that I'm unlikely to get tired of and switch out or have to repeatedly skip tracks on.

Seriously, it really is that "all around" good as an album, with frequent mood changes - so whether you're a hardcore industrial fan or just someone who likes a little industrial while driving or playing video games, "A Violent Emotion" is a no-holds-barred win, musically speaking.

In fact, I'd even say it's an excellent entry-album for anyone interested in learning whether they like industrial music. Even if industrial isn't your thing, you're still likely to find a couple of tracks you'll enjoy.

Based on this album alone, I already know that I absolutely want to pick up their previous album "Close to Human" (which I've been able to sample a little on Digital Gunfire) and their latest release from this year "All Beauty Destroyed". And I think that's probably compliment enough, all by itself.

-- Mr. M.
2 Comments

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    MisterMephisto is a pretentious prick. That's why his opinions are so much better than yours.

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