One of the things that’s interesting about these discussions is that we’re all exposed to the record in question to varying degrees — I was very familiar with this one, much more than I have been with either of the upcoming releases we’ll be discussing next. It’s fascinating for me to gauge people’s initial reactions, and then to see if and how they develop.

The other is that, and this isn’t something I’ve done a great job making clear, everyone’s initial post (with the exception of folk who join in later) was written before they’ve had a chance to read what anyone else has written — hence the references to Brian Eno’s definition of ambient by both Alan and Julian a couple discussions prior, and likewise both Matt and my references to David Lynch’s beloved film-score composer in this conversation.

For me, in the end, Gentleman Loser remains a soundtrack — a soundtrack to our discussion, both subject and context. Thanks again.

Taylor Deupree: http://www.12k.com/video/balance.mov

Shuttle358: http://www.12k.com/video/frame.mov

Taylor Deupree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc_uKx8NTa4

Pillowdiver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WJUjksKJfM

You’ll hear how this once Cutting Edge Post-digital Minimalist Glitch Electronica (blah) label has moved towards the cottage industry post-rock organic ambient drone sound of something like early/mid 90s Kranky (see esp. Pillowdiver). (I use the word ‘regressive’ not evaluatively, but descriptively, i.e. to indicate movement away from and back towards another earlier paradigm)

Oh, and… remember ‘indietronica’? Another similarly-oriented study could be to consider how the n5md label shifted paradigms from being a dyed-in-the-wool digital electronica/IDM imprint (around 2001) to being purveyors of wishy-washy post-indie-shoegaze with a half-arsed bit of ‘tronica thrown in (circa 2007 onwards).

OK. So, the above has nothing to do with the GLs discush, but I wanted to address the question, and in the meantime Joshua mosied on into the salo(o)n and waxed mighty (and appositely) lyrical, rendering any blather I might have thought to dribble out on the subject otiose.

Alan, thanks for the links to Slim Westerns, sounds like something that merits closer listening. As Marc said, it sounds even more conventionally song-bound than Dustland, at least after a quick scan, and it may well be more successful for it. I’m still listening to an enjoying the album but I’m afraid this conversation–which has been enlightening in many ways, and thanks, Marc, for inviting me–hasn’t significantly changed my initial reaction.

Joshua made a lot of good observations and distinctions about the difference between wallowing in retro-nostalgia on the one hand, and, on the other, marshalling earlier production techniques, instrumentation (including twang!), and song forms (ballads, lullabyes) in the service of creating something that points, if not to the future, than to somewhere we haven’t quite been before. I think we would all agree (let me know if I’m wrong) the latter is what TGL are aiming for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwPk3T_J2c0

If the first album was the winter rumination of an empty summer cottage, the second seems almost the sense memory of the walls themselves, as if each song heard off the elderly Grundig valve radio had left a trace as it passed through the walls before evaporating in the sauna steam. If this record has anything to do with country music, it is with the recollection of the feeling produced by that music, with the reference points of a world in which that music is in the background, reminding me in this way of the KLF’s use of Elvis on Chill Out, Brian Eno’s (yes, Eno again) outer space pedal steel on the second side of Apollo, and David Sylvian’s desert Americana on the second LP of Gone To Earth. (Strangely, as a fan of O Yuki Conjugate and A Small Good Thing, I still have not heard Slim Westerns, although Alan’s mention of these records is a well timed reminder that I should do so.) This is not, to me, the sound of two Finnish men in cowboy drag doing instrumental rock only until they perfect their Texan accents for the vocals on the next record; rather, it is the sound of warm music refracted through a cold and distant place. And even if there is a clear point of reference in the sound, which to me reminds of Sky Records and, yes, Music For Films, I do not detect the sort of retrograde longing found, for example, in the beautiful records of Porn Sword Tobacco, which immediately conjure for me Volvo 120s and Roy Andersson’s mid-1970s Swedish Love Story. Since for me this music works and is meant to work at an emotional level, perhaps what I feel while playing Dustland is the same thing I sense in myself while listening, for example, to Kraftwerk’s Autobahn or Cluster’s Sowiesoso: that at a certain moment, the world conjured by these records was a world of possibilities, among which was the possibility of going into a studio and recording such record, as well as, more intoxicatingly, that of inhabiting the landscapes extending out beyond these sounds. Rather than nostalgia, perhaps these Losers are simply using musical and technological references to evoke the otherness of their imaginary present, the one in which this music is heard through the walls of one’s flat off the neighbor’s radio, the one in which one goes out the door into the other possible. There is a faint touch, too, of the hermetic here, as if this is a private or closed world, a slideshow left running with the bulb burned out, until we realized it was just the shadows of trembling leafless trees through dirty glass.

That’s all on a cursory listen. I’m gonna pick up the full set and give it some attention.

In pop music, even with the advent of digital recording techniques and CDs, the appreciation for, and even the fetishization of the “crackle and pop” has stayed healthy. Even in the 90s, when pop sounded very clean and shiny, the underground always made space for a lo-fi. Granted that sound went a bit deeper underground then — but I think it always existed in tandem.

I hear a lot of dusty sounding faux-vintage-or-not in today’s leftfield pop. Is both pop and electronic music in a reactionary swing away from the glossy 90s?

Here’s a thing: the film soundtrack and Western/Americana concept suggested by (some of) Dustland prompted me to go back and indulge in a little compare/contrast exercise with A Small Good Thing’s ‘Slim Westerns’ project from the mid-90s. The more ambient-inclined of our group here might know of this as several members of veteran ambienteers O Yuki Conjugate in a faux/neo-Western genre exercise. Links to samples here:

http://leaf.greedbag.com/buy/slim-westerns-vol-i-and-ii/

http://www.last.fm/music/A+Small+Good+Thing/Slim+Westerns

See what you think. Personally, I find the ASGT/OYC project more interesting and satisfyingly resonant, albeit arguably just as much based on a conceit as the GLs.

This is a carefully composed record; from its formal and repetitive guitar notation to its “Hauntological intent,” and its subtle use of distortion to add texture. And I think that the “Losers” were deliberate in their attempt to create future-past music.

So we have a couple of egg-head Finns dealing with both stasis and decay. God forbid they should be called clinical — though I would imagine the artists themselves would agree and perhaps be flattered.