Very Grammatic - E.A.R. (Ear Accidentally Rosak); the Original Intended Post
*Very Grammatic is an unscheduled, published-whenever-I-feel-like-it column for Hafeez, a resident blogger for this blog. This column is centered mostly on Hafeez's other main interest: unusual, unique, arty, and weird music that sane people only listen to while high on drugs.
...and yes here is the second part of the entry I posted yesterday, which was Monday actually. Ignore the date and time of the post. The timezone set must be somewhere in America I imagine and I can't change the setting - I'm just a guest columnist, a position title I dreamed up myself.
All along this week I have to say I do find a lot of free time doing things that I am not supposed to do at work. Since next week is the Mid-Semester break, I figured I'll have the presentation for the first assignment throughout the entire week. So, no before class preparation of finding notes and exercises on Google search, and no printing out sheets of notes on virus-infested computer at the Lab and going to the Photocopy room making hundreds of copies for the students. This week it is strictly clock in, sit in front of the PC, surf the internet, check my e-mail, download songs/movies, go to class and watch presentations, go back to my room, check the progress on song/movie download, have lunch, punch out, go home, do stuff, sleep. I leave the going out and do stuff with friends out of the cycle because it is an independent variable. Whatever that means.
Which then, speaking of presentations, it reminds me of those days when I was a student myself. Hated presentations - but loved presentations. Hated it because most of the time (and when it was done by other people) it is a yawn fest. None of the presentations that I've seen done by my peers are exciting. It was so mind-numbing that in comparison, sitting through a five hour Add Math symposium feels as exciting as a roller coaster ride diving straight into ocean while the car is on fire. Imagine your own worst version of Hell and I bet you it is not as Hellish as this. It is complete torture. But then I loved presentations because that is the only time throughout the semester where I know that I'll be attending the class and I don't have to learn anything.
It's the same thing about the outputs of (this person that I've been wanting to talk about) Kevin Shields throughout his career (if it can so be referred to as) with My Bloody Valentine and his one-song-output Experimental Audio Research. I know, and I can say this confidently because I've read about it many times before, that Kevin Shields is a perfectionist. Not the most brilliant songwriter obviously but an anal one at that. Which kind of really begs the question of what or where in the part of his music that really needs that kind of attention to detail? Because My Bloody Valentine is certainly not Kraftwerk; it's just a fuzzy puddle of guitar distortion noise with a 'female high on orgasm' hush lullaby floating in mid air, mired in the heavy drift. It is not a structured entity like a Georges Braque's painting; in fact, if it is a painting, it'll be more like Henri Matisse's. It's not too outlandish either like a Salvador Dali's painting, but almost quite restraint like Kazimir Malevich's. And I haven't got to his one song output with E.A.R.
Make no mistake - I both loved and hated Kevin Shields' output with both M.B.V and E.A.R. I loved it because no one makes hazy music beautiful like M.B.V does. Because it's a complete wanker; it's an un-academic, miseducation approach to music. Every single technical notion and approach to music was thrown out the window. It is very much like a presentation class - you attend the class feeling happy because you know you're not going to learn anything, you don't have to learn anything. But I hated Kevin Shields' output with E.A.R because, blame me for my lack of technical nous, I cannot for the life of me understand why does he have to be so perfectionist because all the materials that he have produced needs no eye for details. There is absolutely nothing in his output that needs such a thorough checking. It's like drinking a glass of water over and over again because you're not doing it correctly. You're not doing it with the correct amount of sips, or you're drinking it 0.325 seconds too fast, or you tilted the glass about 2 degrees more than you should have, or that the water slides down your throat at the maximum velocity of 0.3 G, which is 0.05 more than you should have. It's madness.
What really irritates me though is that because of his perfectionist stance, his output with M.B.V does not go beyond 1994, and his output with E.A.R does not go beyond the first track of the ensemble's debut long player. Which is a loss. Because otherwise he is brilliant.
*Very Grammatic is an unscheduled, published-whenever-I-feel-like-it column for Hafeez, a resident blogger for this blog. This column is centered mostly on Hafeez's other main interest: unusual, unique, arty, and weird music that sane people only listen to while high on drugs.
...and yes here is the second part of the entry I posted yesterday, which was Monday actually. Ignore the date and time of the post. The timezone set must be somewhere in America I imagine and I can't change the setting - I'm just a guest columnist, a position title I dreamed up myself.
All along this week I have to say I do find a lot of free time doing things that I am not supposed to do at work. Since next week is the Mid-Semester break, I figured I'll have the presentation for the first assignment throughout the entire week. So, no before class preparation of finding notes and exercises on Google search, and no printing out sheets of notes on virus-infested computer at the Lab and going to the Photocopy room making hundreds of copies for the students. This week it is strictly clock in, sit in front of the PC, surf the internet, check my e-mail, download songs/movies, go to class and watch presentations, go back to my room, check the progress on song/movie download, have lunch, punch out, go home, do stuff, sleep. I leave the going out and do stuff with friends out of the cycle because it is an independent variable. Whatever that means.
Which then, speaking of presentations, it reminds me of those days when I was a student myself. Hated presentations - but loved presentations. Hated it because most of the time (and when it was done by other people) it is a yawn fest. None of the presentations that I've seen done by my peers are exciting. It was so mind-numbing that in comparison, sitting through a five hour Add Math symposium feels as exciting as a roller coaster ride diving straight into ocean while the car is on fire. Imagine your own worst version of Hell and I bet you it is not as Hellish as this. It is complete torture. But then I loved presentations because that is the only time throughout the semester where I know that I'll be attending the class and I don't have to learn anything.
It's the same thing about the outputs of (this person that I've been wanting to talk about) Kevin Shields throughout his career (if it can so be referred to as) with My Bloody Valentine and his one-song-output Experimental Audio Research. I know, and I can say this confidently because I've read about it many times before, that Kevin Shields is a perfectionist. Not the most brilliant songwriter obviously but an anal one at that. Which kind of really begs the question of what or where in the part of his music that really needs that kind of attention to detail? Because My Bloody Valentine is certainly not Kraftwerk; it's just a fuzzy puddle of guitar distortion noise with a 'female high on orgasm' hush lullaby floating in mid air, mired in the heavy drift. It is not a structured entity like a Georges Braque's painting; in fact, if it is a painting, it'll be more like Henri Matisse's. It's not too outlandish either like a Salvador Dali's painting, but almost quite restraint like Kazimir Malevich's. And I haven't got to his one song output with E.A.R.
Make no mistake - I both loved and hated Kevin Shields' output with both M.B.V and E.A.R. I loved it because no one makes hazy music beautiful like M.B.V does. Because it's a complete wanker; it's an un-academic, miseducation approach to music. Every single technical notion and approach to music was thrown out the window. It is very much like a presentation class - you attend the class feeling happy because you know you're not going to learn anything, you don't have to learn anything. But I hated Kevin Shields' output with E.A.R because, blame me for my lack of technical nous, I cannot for the life of me understand why does he have to be so perfectionist because all the materials that he have produced needs no eye for details. There is absolutely nothing in his output that needs such a thorough checking. It's like drinking a glass of water over and over again because you're not doing it correctly. You're not doing it with the correct amount of sips, or you're drinking it 0.325 seconds too fast, or you tilted the glass about 2 degrees more than you should have, or that the water slides down your throat at the maximum velocity of 0.3 G, which is 0.05 more than you should have. It's madness.
What really irritates me though is that because of his perfectionist stance, his output with M.B.V does not go beyond 1994, and his output with E.A.R does not go beyond the first track of the ensemble's debut long player. Which is a loss. Because otherwise he is brilliant.
Labels: experimental audio research
posted by Hafeez at 5:25 PM
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