Coherence and Parts

[My Man Mahmoud]

If you read a lot of album reviews, you end up seeing "coherence" and "incoherence" bandied about alot. But what does it really mean to be "coherent"?

I was thinking about this as I listened to Lykathea Aflame a band a friend of mine has been pimping for years now. He said, "So what do you think." And I answered, "You know, this band has a lot of...ah...parts." It was all superbly played, and the individual fragments of song were well thought out and brilliantly executed. But there was no unifying concept, nothing to tie it together into a meaninful whole. Nothing but parts. Taken individually, each of the riffs 'stands out' - but viewed as a whole they blur together, always going some place, but never getting anywhere.

Our society demands novelty, a freshness of style - something that rolls around in the aisles and announces its uniqueness without the need for us to pay any real attention to discover it. It puts a premium on parts and kicks coherence - the marriage of meaning and execution - to the curb.
Ask fans of Drudkh or Sunn o((( or Opeth why their favorite bands matter, and all you'll get is a litany of parts. Oh, they have folk interludes, dissonant feedback, clean vocals etc. etc. fill in the _________.

But where's the MUSIC?

 

[byrne]

thanks for pointing out the obvious.

i disagree with drudkh though. well forgotten legends and autumn aurora, as im not particularly familiar with the remainder of their catalogue.

 

[Cythraul]

I thought this thread was going to be about Lesniewskian mereological theory.

 

[R.I.P.2]

I thought this thread was going to be about Lesniewskian mereological theory.

 

[stefan86]

Yeah, for me musical coherency is being able to successfully mold different parts and aspect of your sound to songs and a decent full concept. Music that is overly technical or experimental usually screws the whole aspect of this, rendering it useless.
I'll take Death Metal as an example:
I by far prefer solid driving songwriting like Vader and Dismember to all these modern technical overload kinda bands. For bands like them it's simply about delivering a solid base of riffs that in the end is a good song.
Most modern tech-death bands is simply musical masturbation that would never play a tremolo riff to save their lives. Psycroptic is the only real exception I've found.

 

[hibernal_dream]

thanks for pointing out the obvious.

It's a very conservative view of music. Although it's one that I agree with, who says music needs to have coherence or a unifying concept?

Further, a lot of music is divided into parts - symphonies have movements, popular music has a verse/chorus dichotomy, while metal has riffs and riffs have a sequence of notes. I understand that movements may encompass a broad theme across a symphony, but what makes the constitutive notes of a given movement or riff coherent? All a matter of interpretation.

 

[stefan86]

For me, bands with a lot of forced start/stops seem incoherent. Seems many today are incapable of creating a song that's just plain flowing.

 

[hibernal_dream]

For me, bands with a lot of forced start/stops seem incoherent. Seems many today are incapable of creating a song that's just plain flowing.

Then why do you cite Psycroptic as an exception? They're notorious for that sort of thing. The only tech-death band i'd commend for "flow" is Spawn of Possession, but they suffer the same problems as Mahmoud raises - they don't go anywhere.

 

[byrne]

nope. disagreed. you are both narrowing your view of "coherence" to very aesthetic levels.

coherencey is required for good music. when MMM said the marriage of execution and meaning, he left interpretation open to the floor. i have no doubt we would disagree on what was meaningful and possibly what is "well executed" (as it would imply), but thats a whole other point and its not one that i think would be beneficial, nor do i care, to discuss.

 

[skeptik]

coherencey is required for good music.

Completely fucking wrong.

 

[DarkBliss]

I honestly think that Lykathea Aflame are very coherent, and certainly a lot more intriguing musically than some passable Suffocation worship like Spawn of Possession, but that's just me

 

[Demilich]

I always found "incoherence" to be a very misleading tag when used in reviews of metal albums by bands like Opeth, and I'm surprised you mention bands like Sunn O))) who clearly create albums with the intent of then being digested as a whole.

I think this amounts to "getting" what the band intended with their songwriting. Sometimes parts may not seem to be thematically linked, but may create an atmosphere, an emotional response, or may simply represent the best arrangement as the songwriter saw fit. A lot of times, people are going to pass this off as incoherent, but I see songs like "The Night and the Silent Water" flowing and building very well.

 

[Cythraul]

For three-chord rock, there is no coherence.

Sure there is.

Posers like Opeth and apparently Lykethea Aflame (wasn't that Kevin Federline's old band?) are trying to make complex music out of three-chord ideas.

I'm not defending these bands but are you trying to come across as a total idiot?

 

[Carcassian]

Proof that "obvious" is a relative term.

For three-chord rock, there is no coherence. It's rhythm music. Posers like Opeth and apparently Lykethea Aflame (wasn't that Kevin Federline's old band?) are trying to make complex music out of three-chord ideas. ZZZZ.

Gorguts' Obscura is the mastery of coherence in trying circumstances.

Lemmy disagrees.

Original poster raises exactly the point I ponder when I listen to about 3/4 of new DM albums - technicality and progressive influences aren't worth shit if you can't write a memorable song. For me, music is about the song, not about how technical the player is. Sure, in some fantasy wank fest the guitarist from Dragonforce might destroy Phil Campbell (Motorhead) - but I know which band has the better songs...

 

[MasterOLightning]

I'm thoroughly confused by some of the statements in this thread.

Obscura the mastery of coherance?

Sunn 0))) made up of parts?

I was hoping someone would do a better job of defining coherence and incoherence.

Albums like Opeth's My Arms, Your Hearse and Drudkh's Blood in Our Wells are what I would consider extremely coherent. MAYH uses the story to drive the music, which suitably accompanies the emotions of the main character. It's a good narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. It does "go somewhere", and by the Epilogue there's a definite feeling of having been on a journey with the protagonist and going through the stages of the story.

Blood in Our Wells is clearly driven by the band's nationalism, but unfortunately the lyrics aren't accessible. Still, the songs lead the listener in a cathartic journey of sorts, with the emotional high point at the end of Solitude, and the joyous opening of Eternity. The final track has an open ended feeling to it, signifying the rest Ukranian history to follow, and the rest of the bands work to come.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

But there was no unifying concept

Haha what.

Edit: OK I realize you don't mean a unifying conceptual theme, but you really mean more like nothing to connect the songs. I think the album functions well as both a collection of songs and as a long-playing album, but whatever.

 

[Carcassian]

i don't want to bring the intellectual nature of this discussion down, but I assumed that by coherence, the thread originator was discussing making a satisfying holistic song, rather than a collection of technically excellent yet unsatisfying components.

I might be wrong though. I often am.

 

[DarkBliss]

I'm thoroughly confused by some of the statements in this thread.

Obscura the mastery of coherance?

I think what he's trying to say is that Gorguts somehow managed to write an album that is both absurdly complex and yet amazingly coherent throughout
And being a big fan of the album I agree. I'm sure the people who have gotten the hang of it do too. This doesn't discredit Elvenefris, though from being an excellent well-written album

 

[byrne]

Completely fucking wrong.

care to elaborate on such a stupid statement? you clearly didnt read my post properly, so your statement is "completely fucking wrong".

 

[Mort Divine]

Posers like Opeth and apparently Lykethea Aflame (wasn't that Kevin Federline's old band?) are trying to make complex music out of three-chord ideas. ZZZZ.

Gorguts' Obscura is the mastery of coherence in trying circumstances.

Lykathea Aflame's music will be forever more coherent than Obscura could ever hope to be, that is one of the most disjointed albums I've ever had the displeasure of hearing.