I’ve been trying to get cracking on updating this site more regularly and wondered what has stopped me in the past. Well, I think it’s been a bit boring. I’ve been too polite with the stuff I’ve written on so far. To the point of being a little uptight. So, from today I’m going to write whatever seems interesting or annoying to me at the time. Maybe that will get me posting more. It’s going to be random, not as funny as Charlie Brooker and nothing like as well written as it should be. here goes then… I heard some awful and rather tedious music the other day. I’m not naming names here but there’s a whole lot of it out there. I’m going to call it fake jazz. You know what I mean. Music with a jazzy feel or samples but without any of the ingredients that make jazz what it is. I just hate it. For me, jazz is always an inspiration for music making but never a formula. I’m all for sampling it, I’ve done it myself. I just can’t deal with musak based around slick, super clean production, light hip hop beats, some nice jazz chords and soulless wibbling singers.
I think the sort of music I’m describing has got worse of late. Technology makes higher quality equipment available to more people. That’s great, but it does mean that certain producers will stop at nothing until everything sounds cleaner than clean. Whiter than white. What’s wrong with a bit of grime? Simple four track (or less) recording is great sometimes. Hiss is lovely. Tape noise is a wonderful thing. It’s quite ironic that all those sonic wonders are part of jazz recordings from the 50’s to 70’s and yet the fake jazz producers of today want to avoid that at all costs. It must be slick and polished. 24bit 96khz shinyness. Why? Does it make the music any better?
I would suggest the remedy to this would be to kidnap the offending producers, put them in a room with a decent pair of speakers and play them the complete works of Charles Mingus. They would also be required to read his autobiography (Beneath the Underdog, a great read!) before being allowed back into society.
Phew, glad I shared that with you. I feel better now.
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