ANUS.com?
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Saparmurat_Niyazov
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Perhaps if you wish to have a private debate, then you may want to attempt using PM's. Otherwise it's open season.
Cythraul
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- Dec 10, 2003
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My Man Mahmoud said:
Words that "represent" things do so in virtue of standing in a denotative relationship to something or other. How do musical sounds stand in a denotative relationship to anything? I'm not saying that they can't. What I'd really like to know is what makes you think that the vast majority of music (or all of it?) actually does stand in such a relationship to anything.
Thasis
Canadian Black Metaller
Well in my opinion ANUS is a great site. It's full of people who share like-minded opinions about music. If you guys don't like the site then meh, don't go. But some of us find their opinions intressting.
Review-wise, I'm not keen on reviews period. Sometimes it's fun just to see what other people think of it, and what they got out of the album, or their interpetations, or whatever, but people need to make their own god-damn mind about music before they can judge it.
Review-wise, I'm not keen on reviews period. Sometimes it's fun just to see what other people think of it, and what they got out of the album, or their interpetations, or whatever, but people need to make their own god-damn mind about music before they can judge it.
Carcassian
Utopian Blaster
Eyes Of The Insane
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DarkBliss
...And okra for all
Cythraul said:
The same way words do - a combination of some level of social agreement (denotation) and placement in structure (connotation). Music leans more to the connotative end of the spectrum (but then, so does poetry, the literary form that most closely resembles music) - so the complexity involved in communicating its meaning is greater.
Astrum
Psion
Carcassian
Utopian Blaster
MasterOLightning said:
I use to like death a lot more when younger for reason. I can't really stomach anything after human anymore. I use to really like Symbolic. I put this album on recently and it was so boring. I don't even really like chucks vocals either, he sounds like someone taking a dump.
I would rather listen to the following florida death metal cds over death.
Brutality-screams of anguish,when the sky turns black. These are gold and no one even gives a flying fuck.
Morbid Angel-first 5
Monstrosity-imperial doom. You think this would be reissued already.
DarkBliss
...And okra for all
The Greys said:
These are great but I don't think Symbolic has aged poorly, it's actually very good. In fact, I don't listen to it enough. TSOP however is overproduced garbage, imo.
Carcassian
Utopian Blaster
To: The ANUS chaps.
From: Carcassian.
I think I may have missed the intentional humour in the site. Found myself chuckling at many a juncture. It is supposed to be satire, yes ?
From: Carcassian.
I think I may have missed the intentional humour in the site. Found myself chuckling at many a juncture. It is supposed to be satire, yes ?
Saparmurat_Niyazov
Member
ANUS.com do shamelessly do admit to being trolls, so yes, there is a great deal of humor on their site. However, they do seriously support ideologies and political agendas I find to be misguided and historically/socially ignorant.
Cythraul
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My Man Mahmoud said:
Ok, so you think that there are in fact musical sounds that denote, and this is a common phenomenon? So a sequence of chords in a minor key might denote the idea of sadness in the same way that "Eiffel Tower" denotes the Eiffel Tower? It's no mystery that music can evoke certain associations in listeners, but that neither adds up to representation nor denotation. What would a sequence of suspended and 7th chords represent? I can think of one right now, and honestly, I have no clue what it would represent. Furthermore, it barely evokes any associations for me. Are referents determined socially for these sounds? That's just not clear. At any rate, denotation is in a very significant sense arbitrary. So, would you accept the following counterfactual? If social agreements had differed in the right ways, then Britney Spears' music would represent the heroism of ancient Aryan values.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by that.
edit: Oh I just thought of something. I've always wanted to pose this question to you: You think that aesthetic properties of musical works are in some sense irrelevant, or subordinate to the meaning expressed by the work. You also, earlier in this thread, made the claim that music is something like philosophy in sound. If this is the case, then why do you care about music? What is the point of listening to music? Music, as you define it, is not significantly different from say, philosophical texts or something like that. So why waste your time with music? Why not just stick with reading stuff if you could get the same thing out of that medium and in a much clearer way?
Cythraul said:
Certainly within a given cultural (or subcultural) tradition, this is true (the association of minor keys with 'sadness' in the Western tradition being a classic example.
Music rarely deals in concrete subjects - it is usually representing abstract and conceptual ideas: love; power; pain; triumph; death etc. - things that can never have a one-to-one representative correspondance at the symbolic level. In any event, much of the meaning (in words, images or sound) conveyed by any work is connotative, and is carried not in agreed upon definitions, but in the association between signifiers or the associations evoked by signifiers.
You would be changing the signs - but not the signified. The absolute quality (or lack thereof) of Britney's music would remain the same - all that would change is the way we talk about it.
This is probably the most useful insight to come out of structuralist theory. The idea in structuralism is that meaning is not produced by a given sign, but by the relative positioning of signs in a text. Essentially, the argument is that signs do not have a fixed relationship to that which is signified (i.e. words and other symbols have no absolute "meaning"), and thus the meaning of a given text is produced by the way its signs are placed in its structure.
This explains, for instance, how poetry works, despite playing fast and loose with denoted 'meaning'.
Music is, in a sense, a carrier of philosophy, but it fills a very different function.
Valerie
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I think (and actually hope) everyone agrees that music is connotative. Music itself, I believe, can not allow you to denote specific emotions and details about what the writer is trying to express, that is where lyrics come in, if the writer so choosese to include them.
TylerTheNuke
I have eaten you
Quote:Originally Posted by TylerTheNuke
Obviously bigdave cares more about the music then the philosophy, so this post was wasted on him. Let me add my 2c here though. A genre of metal isn't confined by a philosophy.
Any musical form is in part defined by and created from an underlying philosophy. Change the philosophical emphasis and you end up changing the music. Why? Because music is symbolic expression - a way of representing ideas, beliefs, emotions etc. (in other words, 'philosophy') in sound.
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quoteYou accuse him of reverting, but I disagree. Does "to forgive is to suffer" seem like a hippy sentiment?
Suffering and martyrdom are the highest form of 'heroism' in the liberal/hippie ethos...
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Quote:Lots of the post-human lyrics are less focused on philosophy and more on effect, so they don't seem as deep, but they are just as good. Death still finds the fundamental valuse of society twisted, but their later albums have more hope and faith in our ability to persevere and move forward.
Except that they embrace the values of the dominant society and defend those values against any who attack them ("The Philosopher"/Mis), undermine them through hypocrisy ("Crystal Mountain") or propose other values ("Spirit Crusher"/"Story to Tell")...
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Quote:Call me a fool for saying so, but statistics show that each generation is getting smarter according to IQ,
Evidence? The sources I've encountered indicate that median IQ in the Western world has remained virtually unchanged over the last century.
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Quote:we are getting taller
Incrementally... On the other hand, we're growing fatter at an exponential rate.
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Quote:we are developing greater technologies
And rapidly diminishing the envrionment in the process.
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Quote:I do not find chuck's hope to be misplaced of foolish or dumb or insulting to my intellegence.
Congratulations! You're a fucking moron!
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Quote:As for the music itself, it has clearly progressed. Jam band pretensions layered hopelessly over predictable rock'nroll structures? Wow, this is retarded. Jam band? How is death anything like a jam band?
It couldn't be the profusion of pointless wanking solos where actual music should go, could it?
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Quote:As for the predictible structures, that is simply a non-issue. Who seriously cares about the structure of songs like these? SUre, Hvis Lyset Tar Oss, for example, employs unconventional structures to great success, but is there anything that says something with regular structures is bad?
In music, structure is the framework of meaning. When you don't have much to say, you just string it together in verse/chorus format, slap on a few solos and shit it out. There's not necessarily anything wrong with it - but it's not a good sign, and it's never going to have the kind of depth that more structurally complex music has.
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Quotebtw, your type are so predictable. the last name you mention in regards to romanticism, hmmm, nietzsche, go figure.)
It's pretty difficult to talk about late Romanticism without talking about the influence of Nietzshe, genius.
Well, I don't like going point by point as it disrupts the flow of argument, so here it is in a big old paragraph. (edit: I guess people can't read a big paragraph, so scratch that, now it is several paragraphs organized by one paragraph per general topic of argument)
First off, music is not merely a philosophy. Some music is philosophical, but obviously lots of music isn't. Music is like any artform. Sometimes its a deep and profound piece that unveils the nature of the universe, sometimes its a puzzle to find out what it means, such as the lateralus by tool, which is unlocked when an astute observer notices that the singer sings in fibbanacci sequence (the literary equivelent to a dectective novel), sometimes it is designed for enjoyment and fun, and sometimes it tells a story, using impressionistic devices, sometimes it is meant for emotional stimulation. The point is, to confine music to philosophy is doing a disservice to millions of musicians who are ingenious at making non-philosophical music.
To move on, "to forgive is to suffer" isn't glorifying suffering. Rather, it is deglorifying forgiveness, something hippies wouldn't do. Deaths lyrics do not embrace our society at all, and to think so makes you a fool. Yes, I will admit that the lyrics of death aren't exactly satanic and nietzschian, but they certainly don't embrace christian values and our corrupted society.
I'm surprised you haven't heard of the flynn effect. It shows that our IQ is going up slowly. And yes, we are getting fatter. Hopefully some sort of natural selection will kick in when all these fat people can't get any. As far as the environment goes, that really is a tragedy. Mabye 200 years from now, this will be seen as the worst blotch on the history of mankind. But still, that doesn't mean we are a hopeless race. I can find plenty of hope for mankind. We've gotten pretty far so far.
As far as wanking solos go, Chucks solos are tasteful and enhance the mood of the music. A jam band is completly different then a band that utilises a typical guitar solo. One of phishes final concerts had a 55 minute jam on it. I don't think I've heard chuck solo more then 1-2 minutes. You may not appreciate this, but a good solo isn't replacing actual music, but rather is the highlight of the song. Otherwise, its just riffage. SOlos require more skill and creativity, and are directly from the heart. You can't really lie during a solo, at least not lie and have a good solo. Structures, I will admit, you have a good point on. A generic verse chorus format does detract from making truly epic music that is organic, but not all music has to be that way. Not all music has to possess the depth which requires an epic structure. The advantage of a verse chorus format is that it makes a song that is more enjoyable to listen to. Perhaps that is the intention of death. Mabye Death is suppossed to be music that you can headbang to and enjoy from a more emotional/primal standpoint rather then from a mental masturbation standpoint. Mabye death is a metal band at heart.
And finally, nietsche is a great guy, but it is funny how nietsche is the greatest philosopher ever and you anus guys can't stop talking about him ever and have to mention him in every conversation and blather on and on about him.
Guys, seriously, who is falco?
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