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I was having a barbecue with friends about a month ago and sharing some musician's anecdotes about playing in various bands, how they had sucked or in a few lucky cases, how they might've worked out. Turns out my conversation had stayed with one of my friends, as he got ahold of me recently after he had remembered that one of the bands I'd been in had apparently become a bit of a sensation in the area among people with an interest in postrock and the "indie" scene at large who had heard it.

If you had chosen to interpret the title of this thread any differently, then let me abuse you of that, because this news does not please me. I had a fair but not strong appreciation for the style of music I was playing at the time, and now I loathe it with the might of a thousand suns and would plunge it into the center of the earth given a sliver of a chance to do so. The culture and nature of it's fans are if anything even more irritating; sickly, gaunt scenesters in emo or hipster garb who couldn't defeat a single dried-out blade of grass in hand-to-hand combat or even show the initiative to do so. Postrock is the least evil of the fruits of their culture, but not musically benign enough for me. It strikes me now as anemic, toothless, willowy and lacking any distinguishing features in terms of composition or chord progression, as though it could be written with a magnetic poetry set. The best I could've hoped for would have been for this regrettable episode to fade into obscurity, but now apparently, something I've been involved in has become celebrated and sought after by a subculture anathema to me in every way.

A lot of it might have everything to do with the fact that our small self-financed tour, which I didn't think was a good idea to begin with, was an amateurish disaster and one of the members, my former best friend, deserted me after borrowing money and an amp and rare analog guitar pedal from me. I still think I hate the music on it's own merits, though, so in the SDN spirit of debate, here's Times New Roman in all it's asinine, sophomoric, gutless splendor.

How awful is it, exactly?

So, you're in this band, and while not a huge fan of the style at the time, you sort of liked it. Years later, someone tells you that the band is indie and so now you hate it? That doesn't really make sense and kind of makes you look like a stupid asshole who's more concerned with labels than content.

Then again, the music you linked to is pretty boring and shitty so you're probably right.

Losonti Tokash wrote:So, you're in this band, and while not a huge fan of the style at the time, you sort of liked it. Years later, someone tells you that the band is indie and so now you hate it? That doesn't really make sense and kind of makes you look like a stupid asshole who's more concerned with labels than content.

No, I knew what it was at the time, I just didn't think it'd amount to anything other than me helping out a friend who was short a multi-instrumentalist and needed my help.

I also don't know where you got the idea that I hated it because someone told me it was indie, especially after I elaborated on specific undesirable qualities in the music that stand out to me now. The two are mutually exclusive.

Then again, the music you linked to is pretty boring and shitty so you're probably right.

Danke.

TithonusSyndrome wrote:No, I knew what it was at the time, I just didn't think it'd amount to anything other than me helping out a friend who was short a multi-instrumentalist and needed my help.

Ah, that's cool. Sorry about calling you an ass, then. It's just a pet peeve of mine that I've met people who initially like a band and then hate it once they're told the genre.

This is pretty impossible to miss for postrock, so I'd gladly take an insult to my intelligence if I couldn't see that plain fact.

The sound is junky, but interesting - for about 30 seconds. After that, it falls into repetition and poorly-executed noise, without any real interest. Sort of like lethargically-paced Krautrock if all the licks were generated by a computer and played without anything approaching feel. I imagine that even if I were to smoke a blunt and listen again, I'd still find this boring.

It sounds like you had nice equipment, though.

TithonusSyndrome wrote:How awful is it, exactly?

If we were pals in real life, I think I would hit you pretty hard somewhere painful. That was some serious bullshit crap. Do they do that Deftones slow intro thing on every song. Fuck.

You don't listen to a lot of postrock, do you? That's pretty much the whole point; it's supposed to be dreamy enough to make Pink Floyd sound like a drill sergeant. Which is precisely why I look back on it with distaste.

Nope. I don't listen to any new music anymore actually since I stopped working at seedy/cool bars a shit. You talk about all these different sub-genres and I don't have a clue what you are talking about. I am happy that way.

You are missing precisely nothing on this count, although I don't think postrock would ever be played in any bar, but I was hoping to net some criticisms of the music on it's own merits so I can finally lay this ugly rat around my neck to rest.

Well you know how I am... Sucks or Cool or Enh, pretty much sums up my critique of the actual music since I can't speak on the composition itself. That shit falls under "Sucks". Take and apply what you will to that criticism. At least we agree. Twice in one day. (See the crazy suicidal Swedish girl thread)

Yeah, that's a serendipitous treat.

Anyways, I don't know if it informs your understanding of my question or piques your interest in the slightest or whatever, but bands like Mono, Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You Black Emperor! were the inspirations that were being drawn upon. Probably the most well known postrock band right now is Iceland's Sigur Ros, but they have some lame vocalist.

It's no Jesu. There's a million bands around here that do a bit of postrock stuff, I find them all really amateurish and feel compelled to tell them all to listen to Jesu to work out how to do a dreamy drony sound right.

Jesu is at the far end of the spectrum, they do a more sludge-drone sort of sound.

After listening to that song, I went from a nice guy, a happy-go-lucky fellow.

Now, I am a vengeful spirit hellbent on eliminating every single soul involved in making that shit. It killed a little bit of me inside, and that was the last little bit left.

I can only hope for similar success when I get back to playing and writing metal.

I forgot to add: you are first on that list, if only because that's the only way I can find out who the rest of those fuckers are. If you're lucky, you might actually be last, but I'd probably torture you for the last little bit of your life to make up for it.

For the sake of Earth's future children, never write or play music again.

Since I was not involved with any writing in that band other than the drums (which aren't what made the music unlistenable) I will be taking your suggestion with a train or two of salt.

You don't really get the whole teasing and fucking with you thing do you?

Why do you say that? Is it because my responses seem acerbic? How should I respond, then? I get what he's doing, I just can't think of anything funny to say in return, so I might as well run with it as though it were a literal response.

I thought you were joking along with me when you said "a train or two of salt" but I realized now that's probably just a typo since 't' and 'g' are right next to each other.

...this actually wouldn't be unbearable as soundtrack music or playing in the background of a mellow party, but way, way too little happens for it to be the only thing going on. I absolutely see where the Magnetic Poetry Music criticism comes from too; I could have written either of those up in Finale in a half-hour. "Here's eight repititions of the soft part... now kick up the distortion and play louder! Woooo!"

So, good news: it's lame, but not murderously and unforgivably bad.