From multsanta Sent Thu, Jan 1st 1998, 03:27
From multsanta Sent Thu, Jan 1st 1998, 03:27
xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx writes: > do you think 80% of the list would buy a release on a-musik, erzatz audio, mego or >rastermusic? probably... with the right exposure. hell, with your last post, you probably got a half dozen people running to the store to pick up the latest rastermusic. nice work, gil! the problem is that if every post had mego, a-musik, etc. in the header, you'd have to find some new, even more 'underground' labels to hype. you say: >even in the small-potatoes rebellion of being into "IDM" (instead of >just buying Bush and Spice Girls records like all our 'less clued-in' fellow >humans) there is a staggering amount of conformity. you are the perfect example of this. Except you just take it one step further... you're into Soup Disk and Rastermusic (instead of just buying the aphex and the autechre records like all the 'less clued in' IDMers and the fellow human beings buying bush and spicegirls) eventually you're just gonna run it into the ground. if i'm the first person on the list to bring up karaoke kalk or Musik Aus Strom, now it's a regular disscussion, does that make me more or less 'underground'?? should i swap all my kk and Mas discs for rastermusic and soupdisk??what happens when rastermusic gets popular??then where do i go? the rest of the list is experiencing the same woes... "shit!! they're playing 'come to daddy' on MTV, what if the spicebush kiddies find out about 'our' scene, i better find something more underground quick, like skam" it never ends. If an artist/label/style is that good, it's just going to get more exposure, causing the 'underground' kids to abandon it for something more obscure, until that finds its way into the mainstream... and the cycle continues. >Skam seem a little too eager to throw a >smokescreen in our faces - confusing the picture and distracting >people from the label's lack of forward-thrust. this nonsense with >mega-ultra-limited-editions and label identity games is VERY suspicious. well, you do have to realize that they are business men. The limited edition thing is a marketing technique: (1)you press 500, your bound to sell out (2)the limited technique generates much more interest and gets the people who do get it to urge the others to search them out (3) it leads the buyer to believe that future (and past) releases are also limited/hard to find, causing them to purchase it on site. how many times have we seen a newbie post how excited he is that he found the latest Cylob EP at tower... the joyrexes are rare so this one has to be at least somewhat rare (4)four years later they can repress them in massive amounts, add one or two new tracks, and sell out all over again to the people who have been shelling dough for the originals (see rephlex's brilliant repress of ab3!) as for v/vm's limited releases, it appears to be just a financial issue. >look at Rephlex! i mean, Richard is conducting the most diabolical >social experiment here and people are playing RIGHT INTO HIS HANDS! the man >is a genius - i have no doubt - if he can perpetrate crap like Freakwincey and Sam >& Valley and have people tear their brains to bits searching for words about >how Rephlex is putting out 'cutting-edge', 'challenging', 'brilliant' music. we >always say that 'x' could publish his grocery list - or 'y' could record himself >farting and loop it infinitely - and the droves would buy it without a >complaint. but nobody ever had the balls to prove it. well, Richard just did! people >wanted farts. here you go - bon apetit! and while you're gorging yourselves >on this shit - and that's what it is, shit - marvelling about how delectable >it is, know that you've just proven yourself to be a sad lot of mindless morons. i don't know which idm list you're reading, but the general idea (with the exception of maybe gonzi and robert merlak) around here is that the recent rephlex output is shit. i think we're a little more 'intelligent' than THAT ;-) >>i feel that vvm have benifited a lot from the association with skam >>and list members have utilised this as a sort of secular pecking order to >>be seen as being 'down' with the next big thing first, to my ears vvm havent >>really released shit that justifies the plaudits once again, it falls back onto a marketing issue, put a jega track on a mego comp or get bola to remix noto, and see how many people will be hailing farmers manual and rastermusic as 'the next big thing', why didn't vvm001 sell out until recently, but vvm002 sold out instantly?? >it would polarize the list, and 9/10 of those following >my lead would go, "yeah - he's right. it's all crap." missing the point >entirely - AGAIN! then there is the one person who manages to understand you... >so few people think for themselves. that's the real tragedy of >the IDM fiasco. this is where you're argument falls apart, not everybody is a journalist and get promos from every homegrown, mom-n-pop label that starts up. the majority of the list has to buy their records, and can't go blindly though the store, picking up an a-musik disc cause it looks pertty. if the rest of the list seems to be enjoying it, it must be worth picking up. >adieu, IDM-L. keep playing with merry little yourselves. ~~~happy new year~~~ thanks for the rant, mult.