Mike Pierry
2014-05-17 14:35:50 UTC
So I'm sure many of you will have read this interview already: http://www.innerviews.org/inner/keneally2.html
The discussion about the waning relevance of the album in popular music made me think about how, in metal, albums still reign supreme. The album also seems to still preoccupy critics at Pitchfork, Stereogum, AV Club, and elsewhere. I know sales have fallen off greatly, mainly due to file-sharing. But still, part of me thinks that, if anything, the downfall of the album has been exaggerated. It still seems like a vital form to me.
An analogous situation might be the novel. While the heyday of the novel has long passed, it's still very much alive and not going anywhere because, as a form, it will always be one of the best ways for an author to create interesting, involving, moving and beautiful works of art. As long as people want to write and read stories, the novel will never die. And I think the same holds true for the album.
To return to music, the bigger problem I see has to do with quantity. There's simply a ridiculous amount of new music being released. And it's all essentially available for free (let's table the discussion about that for now). So for the adventurous consumer of music, it's great but it's also overwhelming.
This is merely an aspect of the same problem with the internet as a whole. There's more content than we know how to comfortably deal with. It's what makes any form of mediation/guidance invaluable. We love lists because they create order, never mind how arbitrary.
For example, one of the more infamously yucky websites on the internet, 4chan, has a music board, /mu, which has crowdsourced a pretty fascinating collection of "essential" album charts for many interesting musical genres, several of which I had never even heard of before: http://4chanmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Essential_Charts
If you already know any of these genres well, you might or might not take issue with some of the choices, but at least it's a starting point for anybody curious about what the hell "brostep" is, for example.
Another interesting thing to me is that the culture of /mu is rich enough to have created its own pseudo-genre, /mu/core, for which there is also a list of essential albums:
http://4chanmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Mucore
You'll note the inclusion of several albums much discussed here. And of course, /mu/core could not help but beget sub-/mu/core:
http://4chanmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Sub-mucore
So in conclusion, the album might be more of a specialty item these days, but it's for the best. As with all great forms of art, it's best appreciated by a fervent minority than a bored majority lured into purchases via over-aggressive marketing.
The discussion about the waning relevance of the album in popular music made me think about how, in metal, albums still reign supreme. The album also seems to still preoccupy critics at Pitchfork, Stereogum, AV Club, and elsewhere. I know sales have fallen off greatly, mainly due to file-sharing. But still, part of me thinks that, if anything, the downfall of the album has been exaggerated. It still seems like a vital form to me.
An analogous situation might be the novel. While the heyday of the novel has long passed, it's still very much alive and not going anywhere because, as a form, it will always be one of the best ways for an author to create interesting, involving, moving and beautiful works of art. As long as people want to write and read stories, the novel will never die. And I think the same holds true for the album.
To return to music, the bigger problem I see has to do with quantity. There's simply a ridiculous amount of new music being released. And it's all essentially available for free (let's table the discussion about that for now). So for the adventurous consumer of music, it's great but it's also overwhelming.
This is merely an aspect of the same problem with the internet as a whole. There's more content than we know how to comfortably deal with. It's what makes any form of mediation/guidance invaluable. We love lists because they create order, never mind how arbitrary.
For example, one of the more infamously yucky websites on the internet, 4chan, has a music board, /mu, which has crowdsourced a pretty fascinating collection of "essential" album charts for many interesting musical genres, several of which I had never even heard of before: http://4chanmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Essential_Charts
If you already know any of these genres well, you might or might not take issue with some of the choices, but at least it's a starting point for anybody curious about what the hell "brostep" is, for example.
Another interesting thing to me is that the culture of /mu is rich enough to have created its own pseudo-genre, /mu/core, for which there is also a list of essential albums:
http://4chanmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Mucore
You'll note the inclusion of several albums much discussed here. And of course, /mu/core could not help but beget sub-/mu/core:
http://4chanmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Sub-mucore
So in conclusion, the album might be more of a specialty item these days, but it's for the best. As with all great forms of art, it's best appreciated by a fervent minority than a bored majority lured into purchases via over-aggressive marketing.