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There's a lot of talk in music forums about albums not having a flow, or that some record doesn't work as an album because of filler and stuff. when did this idea start? the word album (as in photo album) means a collection of things. not a conceptual piece in itself. in the past, albums were just compilations of singles released previously. It get on my nerves when people say they don't like certain record throwing arguments like 'it would be ten times better if it were a single album (as opose to a double)' or 'there's too many unnecesary tracks on it' (no matter how 'good' this 'unnecesary tracks are'). I feel this is a relatively recent aspect of appreciation. I also think that it's useless given that in this age we can burn our desired compilation of songs in the order we want, with the flow we want, etc. It's like, ADD. applied to music, we're so spoiled with so much music being thrown in our faces. we can't be bothered to change a CD that is playing. now we expect musicians to make CDs we don't want to skip or stop. And this goes even further. sometimes we don't skip a track because we asume that the artist intended it to be heard in one sitting. sooo... anyway. when did all this nonsense begin. if I had to guess I'd say it's radiohead's fault. |
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I think it's from the 70s-80s when people started doing "concepts" in their music or something. |
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""I think it's from the 70s-80s when people started doing "concepts" in their music or something."" I agree, but that started in the sixties. supposedly, albums in general weren't that great until the beatles and others came along. |
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"It's like, ADD. applied to music, we're so spoiled with so much music being thrown in our faces. we can't be bothered to change a CD that is playing. now we expect musicians to make CDs we don't want to skip or stop. And this goes even further. sometimes we don't skip a track because we asume that the artist intended it to be heard in one sitting." that really is bullshit - it's much more ADD to constantly switch cd's than it is to sit down and listen to one (1) cd in one go. it's more a sign of these times that people think more in single tracks, than in collections - the iPod/iTunes generation. it's thinking in mp3s instead of records. I find it a real feat if someone can pull off the album-thing - it isn't strictly necessary but it certainly elevates the whole kaboodle above itself, giving it a much more interesting and enjoyable quality. |
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I said "more" a lot, there. |
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but kaboodle, once. |
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better luck next time. |
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word! I hate constant song changing and people who "just can't stand to listen to the whole thing!" |
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Haha, you've gone insane! "now we expect musicians to make CDs we don't want to skip or stop. " We expect musicians to make good records, oh no!!! Don't worry about that mate, stick the single on as the first track, don't worry about the rest, the true music fan will skip them but still think you're wicked. Isn't the point, maybe, that sometimes you shouldn't make an album? I can think of hundreds, thousands of GREAT albums, that work as an entire piece. Most have got great singles on them too. Mentioning Radiohead shows your embarrassingly limited sense of muiscal history. But I can think of lots of albums that yeah, have a couple of good singles then filler and "b-side" tracks to pad it out. They're not good albums. If you can't write an album, don't make one. Now whether the Record company gets involved and cobbles one together or pressurises the artist, is another matter. Either way the only person diddled is the consumer. If it's an album, it should be considered a full, self contained work. Yes it should flow, or if it jarrs, then it should be part of the theme, not just because of bad sequencing. Otherwise its a Compilation Album. And this goes even further. sometimes we don't skip a track because we asume that the artist intended it to be heard in one sitting. - the very nature of an album is it should be heard in its entirity. I could go further, sometimes I listen to whole tracks misguidedly thinking the artist wanted me to give a shit at all. Sometimes I just read the fucking tracklisting and remember briefly what I thought the song sounded like. |
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there are doors that let you in and out but never open |
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stabarinto, ladies and gentlemen, let's have a little round of applause.. thanks guys! |
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there's pop attitude, which is the attitude I have towards rock and other silly musics I don't normally listen to; I have Johnny Cash - Hurt and Highwayman and Ring of Fire and stuff like that, but I don't care much for his other stuff.. thus I only got those single-ish thingies. however, when it's music I do care about and normally listen to, I get entire albums and often I get the 12" as well for those silly nights when partying ensues and there are impatient fuckers who don't listen to what I normally listen to.. and when people get drunk, they have a tendency to want to scratch stuff, and I find it's better to leave a crap-ass 12" on than a 300 gram album then. however, I do not automatically assume that because I don't like the other songs on albums where, for instance, ring of fire is on, that those other songs are "fillers" or silly. I don't know what I'm getting at here, but I love albums and I love 12"s (and occasionally mp3s when the 12"s are impossible to come by), but I wouldn't want an album that was thought to be a collection of singles (like all those "absolute music 123213" or "trance mania 38y7683.pi") if it was music I really cared for and liked.. in a way it makes more sense to only like certain songs, as there of course are songs of varying quality on albums, but there's something with music you care for that makes it so that not even the worst songs on a good album are all that bad.. however, if you see that bad song in an mp3 playlist (and none of the other songs from the album), you just don't put it on. I'm still not sure what I'm getting at, but.. HANALS ASS IS ON TV!!! |
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It started when artists didn't have to think about fitting the album into an LP, I think. 40 mins is perfect time for an album. But that's maybe because I'm a pop-judas in disguise. |
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RDJ album. Now THAT'S flow! |
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i dident read the tread but i say tits rules |
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there arent many albums that do "flow". Orbital's Middle of Nowhere is the best example I can think of though |
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When an album is good from start to finish plus has some killer tracks, I skip sometimes to hear just the best tunes anyway. It depends : sometimes I like listening to the whole album and feel the mood of it, sometimes I want to hear tracks I love only. Come on have you never skipped RDJ album just to ear Fingerbib or MHTRTC to listen to ROIGBIV ?? Selecting tracks (mp3s for example) one by one and making his own playlist isn't something recent, it's simply a new form of djing and I don't see why it would be bad. It's a lot better than listening to fillers imho. |
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i hate lame little filler/linking tracks. the Black Dog were awful for it, did it all the time. aphex and squarepusher do it a lot too. |
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It depends, I love those on Gegaddi for example. |
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classical composers were trying to stretch a mood over a period of time, for ages sometimes, it began there i reckon, messing around with time and sound, it seems like a progression from there, and just depends on what form/shape you want to take it personally i dont think some albums should have a flow |
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You meant to say "there arent many albums that I've listened to and out of those few, not many "flow", in the sense that I understand the term "flow" (I think it means putting in little segue tracks, or maybe not). Orbital's Middle of Nowhere is the best example I can think of though, but that's because I haven't really listened to all that much music" |
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This isn't a new phenomenon, (billions of years older than Radiohead) although with some silly new ''movements'' they sort of had to build themselves up to be taken more seriously. Album craftsmanship in ROCK music probably didn't really take off until the Beatles or Dylan, then rock really became a man. It's just another technique though, lot of my favorite albums are just grab-bags and mishmashes of weird ideas and myopic melodies. Then there are albums I'd love to whittle down a bit. |
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you'll have to explain what a myopic melody is about.. does it get worse the farther you are from the speakers? |
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"that really is bullshit - it's much more ADD to constantly switch cd's than it is to sit down and listen to one (1) cd in one go. " well maybe ADD wasn't the term i meant. what i meant is that we're just freaking mentally lazy to make up our minds about something. we can't decide to like/not like listen/not listen certain piece of music. we want to 'know' what the artist wanted to do. we blindly WANT to follow the artist 'orders'. and your close mindedness in your paradigma is proof. |
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If we follow your argument, maybe we should rip up the pages of books and rearrange them to read "our own" book, flick through the TV endlessly creating "our own" schedule, rip mix and remix movie clips to create our own films etc. |
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first radiohead thing was obviously a joke. the fact that you think it could be taken seriously shows how much you like radiohead. (yes this is a joke too) and you're totally missing the point. lets face it the music we listen. or at leats the music that's discussed here is mostly short pieces of music, (most often) artist make them at different points in time with no artistic or conceptual link between them. they choose the ones they like to release, they are all compilation albums. most of the times they only link between the tracks in an album is that the pieces were composed in the same time period. and it seems you didn't read at all. "the very nature of an album is it should be heard in its entirity. " Album means compilation, compilation album is redundant. that's why they invented the term concept album. the fact that you don't know that albums were called that way because they compiled singles, shows your embarrassingly limited sense of muiscal history. summing up. I just hate it when people say X album isn't good when every single track is a good track, arguing that it doesn't work as an album. that's all i'm saying. don't make misinterpretatoins, i'm not saying artists should meake records with bad tracks. i'm questioning us, listeners not musicians. anyway i'm closing this thread, |
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sure why not? |
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Yeah, let's fuck albums and just buy 11 singles instead, a la Analord. |
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eres un idiota. |
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Eres un maricon de mierda. I don't know what your argument is, albums are bad, people shouldn't expect very much, some music is good, most is bad? Artists are forcing us to listen to their music how they want us to? If you don't like music, mate, which is what I suspect, find another hobby, culiao pesado. |
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You know what your problem is, and a lot of people in your position? You want to reinvent the fucking wheel and you just come up with something shitter. |
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"summing up. I just hate it when people say X album isn't good when every single track is a good track, arguing that it doesn't work as an album. that's all i'm saying." yes, that is all you are saying. because you haven't given any valid arguments why this is supposed to be an evil that we must get rid of. |
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wait, I'm 'close minded in my own paradigma' because I refute the use of a term by YOU, a term YOU now say YOU did not even mean to use? ha ha! |
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the whys, the whats... these are just useless semantics. the important thing is that album, flow must be stopped, or the music fans of the world will never attain complete freedom to listen to one track at a time. if you don't agree you are stupid bourgeois music. |
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I am a Music Fascist. |
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OK |
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yeah it's pretty clear you don't know what my argument is. i'm not trying to invent the wheel. your problem is that even when you admit you don't understand, you don't try to understand you just refute the argument with points beyond the case. and qrter i didn't mean you as in you, qrter... argh nevermind goodnight. |
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ok the question is. when did we, music messageboard freaks, started judging records (because that's what we do) based on the 'integrity' of a record as a whole piece instead the quality of the music contained in it? --- of course there are records that have this quality on them, but not all of them.. most of them not. bleah |
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I think an album is better when it's good as opposed to bad |
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it probably always has been this way, no ? |
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squarre 1. |
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since the arrtist intended us to judge the album on its 'integrity' as a whole. it's rreally as simple as that. that's the answerr to yourr new question. |
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It's just, like, a Van Dyke Parks song where the melodies and hooks and song segments are just all over the place with no regard for what's coming next, it just sounds good. I dunno, I just used ''myopic'' because of alliteration. Kind of gay. |
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kind of |
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For me, MHTRTC sums up the whole idea of an album with great flow. In spite of it being in my top 5 albums of all time, and listening to it regularly, I cannot ID about 1/2 the tracks if someone plays it to me (I know it's from MHTRTC), it's just that I only ever listen to it as an album, rather than skipping about (and hence learning the names of tracks I like/dislike). I'd say something I really like about IDM in general is that there are a lot fewer albums that only have 1-3 good tracks and the rest are filler, which happens an awful lot in more popular genres of music. |
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I agree with ya Ceri --- I remember a time when i used to know every track on every album i had , and how many minutes and seconds long they were ( now youre jus bein daft mouse - shup!! ) , but since comin online , there is so much music out there , that its impossible to listen to everything and get really absorbed in an album the way i used to.We're spoiled for choice now. |
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I kinda get what OK is talking about here, not that I'm against flowing albums (and neither is he). On a not so related subject: One thing I've found to be the case with many electronic/experimental albums is that 1-3 tracks on it might be the best thing you've heard in a month but the rest of the album might be utter shit...and this is way too often the case. |
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i didn't really read this thread but i vote for albums that flow some of my favorites albums have a constant feel/sound to them all the way through just think of it as listeners being spoiled and wanting one gigantic 60+ minute track |
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Is it a conscious thing to actually sit down and make an album that flows from start to finish , or is it something that seems to have happened as a fluke , in retrospect ? as well as MHTRTC , another album i fire on from time to time that flows soo well is the beach boys " pet sounds ". melodically , there is a common thread runnin thru the whole thing that unites it -- i dont know if they meant it , or just said they meant it afterwards - but its a bloody hard thing to achieve continuity like that !! |
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Oh the tyranny of the album tracklisting!!! Rise up people. Do you buy records? Because one reason an album with bad tracks on is considered.. bad, is value for money. But beyond this., there's all sorts of albums, there's the "flawed album", the end of contract compilation, the quick cash-in on a single, the threadbare album with two singles and 5 fillers + 4 remixes to pad it out. The box set, the quadruple concept album, the mp3-lp, the rerelease with bonus features. If you don't enjoy albums, and you just there fuming, scowling at the stereo crying "Ha, I'll never kneel to your track sequence, I'm putting you on SHUFFLE" then, ok, whatever makes you happy. But some people enjoy an album in its entirity, might read a book in one sitting, might take the time to appreciate something. I'm not sure what artists you're refering to that create this albums that aren't meant to be listened to in order, or in one go, or in some cases at all. I'm sure there's avant garde examples. But a single's a single, and an album's an album. An ep's in between, well it's a single. |
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