Re: essential loop recordings

[Kim Flint <kflint@loopers-delight.com>]

At 02:44 PM 6/25/2003, mark wrote:
>I've got to disagree with Andre's idea of what an "essential" recording 
>is.  Why should it have to be technically groundbreaking in some way?
>Can't it just be really good music? (In this case really good loop music)

That seems like another fine way for something to be included on the 
"essential recordings" page at LD. Sometimes the first use of a new idea 
or 
technique is not really a very good piece of music. For a list of 
recordings that people interested in looping should really check out, it 
may be much better to find some use of that idea or technique that was 
also 
really good music, even though it came a bit later.

I'll never forget the experience of being in computer music class in 
college listening to discussions of really interesting approaches to 
composition or sound design or instruments or whatever that some academic 
composer had thought up, followed by truly horrible musical examples 
created by that same academic. I sure don't want to repeat that here!

But part of the point of the essential recordings page is that the music 
was significant or influential to looping in some way. One way could be 
that it is simply good music with loops that a lot of people liked, and 
therefore influenced a lot of people to get interested in looping. 
Radiohead could fit there, I don't know really. Can you suggest an album 
and write a paragraph reviewing how it used loops and how it made some 
impact? I think we have a couple of Radiohead albums around here 
someplace. 
I'll have to find them and listen again, after the John Zorn skronk-a-thon 
I've got on now.

We do want to avoid having the "Essential Recording" page be filled with 
hundreds of albums that one person or another happened to like and that 
happened to use looping somewhere. Michael and I have both had the 
experience over the past few years of people emailing us suggestions like 
that where the group had no obvious impact on the looping universe. We 
think the bar should be a little higher for this section. We want to do 
another section where loopers can put up all their favorite cds on their 
own and include little reviews and such. (by the way, is somebody 
interested in helping out with that? I figure there is probably some 
precreated php app out there that exactly serves this purpose, maybe we 
just need to hunt it down and set it up.)

kim


______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com