Billy Corgan - TheFutureEmbrace

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Billy Corgan - TheFutureEmbrace

Postby Mortis » Thu Jun 30, 2005 12:38

I'll have to write a review based on my experiences and what I've read and heard Billy say.

This album seems to be one of those albums that get three stars from every reviewer because they fail to understand how to award the extra two. It's intriguing.

To me, it feels like listeners fail to understand two things:
1) BC is trying something new that doesn't necessarily conform with music standards - this does not make the music bad or unmemorable
2) The concept is larger than life, take it or leave it... if you don't appreciate someone's monstrous efforts at creating a solid unified catalogue of work then whatever, but you can't deny the genius of it.

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Postby Guest » Wed Sep 14, 2005 10:45

Ugh. I really need to flesh this out.

Before, BC was seen as a pompous egomaniacal asshole pulling all the possible strings like a dictator. Now he is seen (in addition to that) as a fickle perfectionist jumping idly from task to another never finishing anything or carrying out his promises.

During the last five years, he's talked about putting out
1) Glass and the Machines of God cartoon
2) Album of MACHINA remixes
3) Zwan Acoustic DVD
4) Metro Last Live DVD
5) Soundtrack to Spun
6) "The Chicago Songs" EP/Album
7) His "confessions" on MySpace

And hasn't really delivered. Now for a lot of fans I do see that as a problem, it gets tiring to anticipate moves by an artist that eventually always fall through, but honestly, when did it become easy to finish an art project of the quantity all of these things?

It's quite sad that a solid vision and the urge to create can turn you so much into a bag of hate... he's getting denigrated even by his fans to a point where it's hard to be portrayed as anything but a stereotype.

It's as though the public expects him to be what he is made out to be; http://us.geocities.com/xera1/rudest.htm is an interview from 2000 that was published in Entertainment Weekly, the one where he was playing the character of "Glass" for the forthcoming album.

Are the things he says - even in character - so bad and rude?

I also found an interview where the word KAKA is mentioned xDD http://www.angelfire.com/sd/main0/int1.html Fantastic!

I'll leave this here now and think about it more. I need to set the fact straight as far as how I feel about all of this.

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Postby Guest » Wed Sep 14, 2005 10:57

So it's like...

Why does an album like TheFutureEmbrace get only those three stars when I think it's largely perfect in every aspect?

1. Not everyone wants to follow a formula
2. Someone might want to follow a different formula
3. Not all sounds are derivative
4. All sounds are derivative but of what
5. Is derivation in music good or bad
6. Is music supposed to carry a function
7. If so, what is the function
8. What is an album
9. What is a song
10. How does music stand in context to
a) old work / old musical climate
b) current musical climate
c) future musical climate

It's very mysterious

Btw why am I not carrying my small earplugs with me at the university? I could listen to music if I would. Darn.

Guest

Postby Guest » Wed Sep 14, 2005 11:09

So on a scale of one to ten, what's ten?
On a scale of 1 to 5, what's five?
On a scale of bad-mediocre-good-excellent, what's mediocre?
On a scale of redundant-derivative-original-inventive, what can be original or inventive in a human society?

I've noticed that oftentimes in Allmusic reviews the musical climate of the review date has an effect on all of the reviews per artist OR has effect on the review of one or two albums. It's always like that.

http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists ... ureembrace 56
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=am ... fde5cqr~T2 ***
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-re ... race.shtml 6.2
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/ ... 50,00.html ****
http://www.cokemachineglow.com/reviews/ ... e2005.html 30%
http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/alb ... .0.12.1040
http://www.kludgemagazine.com/reviews/B ... reEmbrace/ 7
http://www.popjournalism.com/pop/review ... rgan.shtml 3
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/enter ... _bros.html 2
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/reviews/ ... 97,00.html ** (live)

Why is the climate like this? :p I don't get it! I don't get it!

Guest

Postby Guest » Wed Sep 14, 2005 11:09

Why aren't links working >_< Is it 'cus I'm not logged in

Guest

Postby Guest » Wed Sep 14, 2005 11:10


Guest

Postby Guest » Wed Sep 14, 2005 15:35

It would make sense to divide music or art itself into five categories of accessibility (I will articulate this before taking into account the quality of the music):

If we take an average joe with a musical taste worth Zero, to him music falls into categories such as

Music that has the capability of being beautiful
Music that has the capability of being easy-listening
Music that has the capability of being unnoticeable
Music that has the capability of being annoying
Music that has the capability of being unlistenable

Is there enough definition in a five-step approach like this?

Next, we can roughly grade that by layman terms, which would result in

Music that is "my favourite" ie niche music
Music that is good
Music that is okay
Music that is bad
Music that is shit

How can one work in grading something in an environment where the gradable object is measured by a set of likes/dislikes instead of the inherent abilities or qualities of the music? Many reviewers pursue to find an objective path but often an objective path is nothing but a collective path.

Also, how can music be graded when there is a need for human beings to build up polar oppositions in order to digest and or maintain a concept of what is "good" and "bad" about something that inherently does not -have- a quality of good and bad.

So what qualities does music have?

I would like to see it as a set of "features" or "capabilities" as termed earlier. There is a set of features in a song that is the reason you grade it with your layman terms.

Why is rap music worse than rock music to some? Because rap music inherently has certain features such as
1. Beat
2. Flow
3. Culture
4. Rhythm
5. Style
6. Technique

that differ from "rock" music which would be built on features such as
1. Melody
2. Rhythm
3. Structure
4. Style
5. Technique

Can you say sampling is worse than playing an instrument when it is in fact an inbuilt feature of a genre? My answer to this question is yes or no depending on how the particular sampling measures up to other sampling in the same area of music and/or how the playing measures up to similar playing.

This is fine. But is this a binary opposition? 1-0? I don't think so. There are numerous examples of a new trend or concept or technique coming into the field of art and it is always
1. Shunned upon at first
2. Accepted by freaks, homos and other retards
3. Creeping from indie to outdie
4. Becomes everyday
Repeat steps 1-4 every now and then

Now this is where I can draw a parallel to Billy Corgan's new album which I was originally talking about;

Billy is using
1. Song structures that are untraditional (new?)
2. Album structure that is somewhat untraditional, moreso seen in concept albums (TFE is not a concept album per se)
3. Instruments that are untraditional or borderline
4. A voice that is hard to like
5. Solid in his vision

It reminds me very much of the first step of everything new; It's panned, it's shunned upon, it's spit at, it's met with an austere reaction, it's being pushed away and nobody really knows WHY.

That's the point of this whole monologue.

Why is something good? Why is something bad? Why do I need to ask this question?

Guest

Postby Guest » Wed Sep 14, 2005 15:39

I have a feeling I am finally going somewhere. Now I need to read all the reviews at home and conclude the main positives and negatives regarding what people are saying and then turn this rambling into a cohesive article about not just Billy Corgan, not just TFE, not just his reviewers, not his interviewers, not his fans, but

Using BC/TFE/R/I/Fs as examples, travel all the way to the core of why and what can happen to music when it stands before a backdrop that doesn't suit the outlook of the music itself. Like a black sheep in a herd of white sheep. You know the saying. This is the point.

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Postby vrap » Mon Mar 06, 2006 00:01

This has made for some fascinating reading. I was listening to a band called Breaking Benjamin, a pretty much mainstream nu-metal band, with whose recent album We Are Not Alone Corgan gave some help, and even co-wrote and provided bancking vocals on one of the songs, Forget It. In that song each successive verse and chorus is sung and played half a note higher, a subtle effect. It's a pop song at most, but again it's another one of those things, the urge to try something slightly different, and it does make an average sounding song just a bit more interesting.
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Postby Mortis » Mon Mar 06, 2006 18:06

Yeah! While I didn't really enjoy the album on the whole, it was a nice song and I think I specifically read that it was a suggestion of Billy's.

Shame I never got around actually writing an article based on these mindblasts :p

Very nice to hear of you!


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