2010 Overrated, Underrated and Disappointing

[hatta]

I brought this up in the Wire thread, that most of the other arts are able to discuss things that they didn't like or thought were overrated without imploding so lets give it a shot. Its always useful to define ones terms, so the working definition of something being overrated is that it is overvalued. That is to say it isn't necessarily bad or disliked by the poster, it's just not necessarily god's gift to music. I'll leaven the topic by including underrated as well. Disappointing are those you had high expectations for and they didn't live up. Again this may or may not be "bad" ,it just didn't live up to expectations. As always a couple of words of why you think something rates (or fails to) is expected.

Most overrated release in 2010
Michael Pisaro/Greg Stuart July Mountain (Engraved Glass)
A list of overrated IHM artists would be an interesting topic, but one I'll leave to someone else to start. This year saw releases by the bulk of those that'd make my list (for the record that list would be: Kevin Drumm, Jason Lescalleet, Joe Colley, Graham Lambkin) but I've long since stopped buying albums by them. Like many on this board I've been quite enjoying Pisaro's work this year (though I've been listening to him for several years, he really seems to have captured the IHM zeitgeist this year. Not to mention has had his most releases in a single year this year) and the concert I saw him perform in Seattle this year would be among my favorites for the year. So after reading the breathless praise for July Mountain I secured a copy of the original Engraved Glass recording (I haven't heard the expanded Gravity Wave release). I've listened to the cd quite a few times this year and I have to say, its pretty good. But something about it always niggled at the back of my mind, as if I'd heard something like this before and it was really just making me want to hear that. Finally I realized what it was: Jonathan Coleclough's Period (Anomalous) released in 2002. One of my favorite albums from that year and one that I still listen to plenty. July Mountain of course starts off different with a single field recording but by the time the piano arrives the layered field recordings have become a wash of sound which the single notes and isolated chords sound through. Period uses the piano resonance layered electronically to build a similar (though more brooding) wash upon which single notes, isolated chords and rather Feldman like sequences and arpeggios sound out from. Period is frankly a better piece, if not necessarily so through composed. So while I found July Mountain enjoyable and another fine piece from Mr. Pisaro, I find it pretty far from his best (my favorites so far are to be found on Hearing Metal 1) and the platitudes heaped upon it a bit much.


Most underrated release in 2010
John Cage/Terry Jennings (perf. John Tilbury with Sebastian Lexer) Lost Daylight (Another Timbre)
Tilbury's superlative touch is very much on display for the criminally under-recorded Terry Jennings pieces which have earned much (well deserved) praise in these parts. But it is the Electric Music for Piano that is the real triumph on this release. Once again the superb pianism of John TIlbury is on display here with a fine performance of John Cage's Music for Piano 4-84 with electronic processing by Sebastian Lexer. Lexer's work here is for the most part superb, transforming the music in an interesting way that both acknowledges David Tudor (for whom the piece was composed and originally performed it) and yet right in the soundworld of the current milieu. It is by far the most beguiling bit of electronics I've heard from Lexer (who tends a bit toward cliché at times with his processed piano) and is among the most interesting electronics I've heard this year. Furthermore the application of Cage style chance operations to chop and mix the piece up proves once again that Cage was onto something there - it keeps one constantly on the edge of ones seat, builds tension and makes for non-obvious flow (obvious flow is rather a hallmark of a lot of contemporary improv and composition in my opinion). This is a challenging piece in all regards and I think it's a pity that so few were up for the challenge. Way too many people acknowledged the beauty and the brilliance of the Jennings (again deservedly so) but couldn't find a way into this piece. In a year where too much was too safe, where too many tropes were overused (I'm looking at you field recordings) nothing was I think better this year. The sum total of the pieces on this disc make this the release of the year IMO (definitely in the composed music category) but if it'd just been a disc of Jennings (which lord knows we could use) it'd probably only be top ten. Anyway I wrote more on this here, so I'll leave it at that.


Disappointments
Frankly my hopes were never that high this year for much and my buying reflected that. By which I mean music in the areas primarily championed on this board; I actually bought about as much as ever just in all the different areas I/we don't discuss as much here. I definitely heard about as much good music as ever, much of it released this year. Improvisation, of what little I heard this year was probably my biggest disappointments, but again my hopes weren't that high. Rhodri Davies/John Butcher Carliol would qualify as a number of people whose tastes I respect a lot said this transcends the recent crop of boring Davies eBow albums and Butcher ego exercises but I didn't find that at all. I gave it a number of shots and am not really willing to give it another go to flesh out my disappointment in it. However my biggest disappointment is that the David Tudor Bandoneon ! dvd didn't contain the complete performance of the piece. I would actually still rate this as an essential release and a must have for anyone interested in Tudor, 9 Evenings and experimental/electronic music, but am still bummed out that we only ended up with a 10 minute extract from the piece. In an ideal world it would have both performances on it as an audio extra but alas it is not an ideal world. More from me on this one here.

[jon abbey]

I'd strongly disagree about that Cage piece, and I've really tried hard with it. I think the first half of the disc (the Jennings pieces) are stunningly gorgeous and gorgeous in an entirely different way from Feldman, it's in my top 15-20 releases of the year easily just based on that.

but the Cage piece just leaves me cold every time, I don't like the palette, I don't enjoy listening to it, I don't find it challenging in an interesting way, I just get nothing out of it. it of course doesn't surprise me that you're championing it and slamming much of the rest of what's out there in passing, given that your tastes seem to be almost entirely New York School these days.

I think I'm going to pass on answering the question/s myself, sorry.

[jon abbey]

and I sold my copy of that Coleclough disc a while back (you always liked him much more than me, I only ever really dug 'Cake'), but now I'm curious to check it out again. my guess before doing so is that your comparison is as offbase as your take on The Breadwinner was, though, too stuck on superficial resemblances and missing the fundamental, crucial differences. I'll report back if I do a comparison, though.

[leroysghost]

i totally agree with the Lost Daylight assessment, and actually i think that July Mountain might be the most overrated of the year, but the Period comparison is incomprehensible to me. aside from the fact that field recordings and piano are involved, they sound entirely different (and i think July Mountain is the better piece by far). for me the thing lost in July Mountain's rapturous reception is how oppressive the percussion is. it's far from a bad piece (i like it a lot if i'm in the right mood), and for droning percussion lovers obviously not a problem, but i find the oppressive percussion factor to be a definite caveat in certain Pisaro compositions (Hearing Metal, Ricefall etc.).

i was very disappointed with the Necro Acoustic box this year, but seeing KD perform live was a highlight.

i'm most disappointed that people are disappointed in Colley/Lesscalleet/Lambkin though.

[P. Wretch]

I haven't listened to enough new music to participate in this thread anyway, but the game of 'most overrated' always seems more about denigrating the (conformist, insufficiently individual) taste of others - and by implication asserting one's own supposedly greater critical discernment - than anything else.

That said, in the commercial arena it would be difficult to think of anything more overrated than Kanye West's new album (Pitchfork 10.0, etc).

Shifting the subject to film, I thought that S. Coppola's Somewhere (Golden Lion from ex-boyfriend Tarantino) was overrated, but that Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee... (Palme d'Or) lived up to the critical praise.

[jon abbey]

That said, in the commercial arena it would be difficult to think of anything more overrated than Kanye West's new album (Pitchfork 10.0, etc).

this I can get behind, I was just telling Dave Quam yesterday that I don't understand the appeal of him at all.

[jon abbey]

one record that I don't think was talked about enough, possibly because of the almost simultaneous release of 'motubachii' (Krebs) and 'A Wave and Waves' (Cathnor), is the superb Ernst Karel/Annette Krebs-Falter 1-5 on Cathnor. I still need to spend more time with this one myself, but whenever I do, I find it very rewarding, probably in my top 10-15 for the year.

[mudd]

i'd actually take the opposite position and place lost daylight firmly in the 'overrated' stack. like jon i found the cage piece difficult to enjoy. but further i found the jennings piece too pretty - tilbury exposing only the beautiful half of his musical range leaves a strange taste in my ear. certainly not a bad record, by any stretch. but i find nothing there to recommend it over other tilbury performances that i prefer. i'm not sure i would really count it my most overrated record of the year and in fact i might be convinced that it's rated exactly correctly.

underrated for me is easy - pedestrian deposit's 'east fork/north fork'. it's an excellent record and a graceful departure for what is still nominally a noise band, but until it somehow snuck into the wire best-of list i hadn't seen talk of it anywhere. it helps that i saw PD perform in april of this year and was quite blown away by that as well.

disappointment i will have to think about more. my biggest disappointment is surely missing the neon mushroom festival without managing to pass on my ticket, but that's not really the same thing.

m

[leroysghost]

one record that I don't think was talked about enough, possibly because of the almost simultaneous release of 'motubachii' (Krebs) and 'A Wave and Waves' (Cathnor), is the superb Ernst Karel/Annette Krebs-Falter 1-5 on Cathnor. I still need to spend more time with this one myself, but whenever I do, I find it very rewarding, probably in my top 10-15 for the year.

yes! i think Heard Laboratories was superb as well, great sequencing on that record.

[notoriousd]

the recent crop of boring Davies eBow albums

I don't understand some of the boring electronic / overdubbed stuff that Butcher and Davies have been doing recently. I love Davies' work on the regular harp, like on the great Vortices and Angels album with Derek Bailey and John Butcher, but his ebow stuff is so boring he might as well use a tone generator.

[bedouin]

i'd actually take the opposite position and place lost daylight firmly in the 'overrated' stack. like jon i found the cage piece difficult to enjoy. but further i found the jennings piece too pretty - tilbury exposing only the beautiful half of his musical range leaves a strange taste in my ear. certainly not a bad record, by any stretch.

I wonder if the inclusion of the Cage track was to balance the perceived prettiness of the first part of the album. Personally I liked them both, but I would have preferred if they had been released as 2 separate albums. Commercially I also think that the Jennings part could potentially have made big waves on its own, simply because there doesn't seem to be much available from this musician.

Most disappointing disc of the year was, for me Seth Nehil's "Furl", coming straight after the surreal and wonderful "Flock & Tumble".
I also thought that Teem (Block/Bruckmann) on and/AOR was pretty off from what I expected, in a -ve sense.

Underrated:
(Not sure if it is, but) I agree the Karel/Krebs-Falter 1-5 on Cathnor is electric.
Yoshihide/Dörner/Sachiko M/Brandlmayr: Allurements of the Ellipsoid (Neos). Released very late in the year to have much impact, but I think this is a classic. Hard to say exactly why, but I think Brandlmayr's drumming is some sort of gravitational force that pulls the music together wonderfully. (I also think Sachiko M has finally realized there more interesting frequencies than the ones I've heard her digging before).

[Dan Warburton]

Happy New Year folks. Anyone got an aspirin? I'm with Robert on the Cage, Pisaro (that particular release - I like others much more) and Lambkin / Lescalleet, but not on Colley or Rhodri, fwiw. Most overrated album for me is the Sugimoto / Pisaro.. am trying hard but really not getting much out of it, at least Taku's bits (and bits they are). Someone give me a key.

[leroysghost]

in a -ve sense.

huh?

i was also a bit disappointed with myself. is it normal to wish that an artist or label release 4 records or less per year, or am i just getting burnt out? who has the time and/or money to listen to all this stuff?

edit: "a bit disappointed with myself" ugh that's a whiny statement. must be the new year's resolution atmosphere...

question still stands though.

[leroysghost]

Most overrated album for me is the Sugimoto / Pisaro.. am trying hard but really not getting much out of it, at least Taku's bits (and bits they are). Someone give me a key.

might be just coincidence, but lonely road trip listening on headphones and car stereo are what did it for me. different volumes/audio quality/atmospheres/environments/landscapes. ditto for Lambkin/Lescalleet.

[Dan Warburton]

is it normal to wish that an artist or label release 4 records or less per year

Who / what are you thinking of here?

or am i just getting burnt out?

That I can't answer for you.

who has the time and/or money to listen to all this stuff?

Certainly not the money (see other threads) and not enough time, but we keep trying.

[jon abbey]

Yoshihide/Dörner/Sachiko M/Brandlmayr: Allurements of the Ellipsoid (Neos). Released very late in the year to have much impact, but I think this is a classic. Hard to say exactly why, but I think Brandlmayr's drumming is some sort of gravitational force that pulls the music together wonderfully. (I also think Sachiko M has finally realized there more interesting frequencies than the ones I've heard her digging before).

I think it actually came out a while back, but it just has no distro in our circles. how did you get it? I have yet to hear it.

[bedouin]

Indeed, recorded 2005.
It's a double disc available at the Noes site: https://neos-music.com/

in a -ve sense.

huh?

-ve (negative)

[sevenarts]

Underrated:

Yoshihide/Dörner/Sachiko M/Brandlmayr: Allurements of the Ellipsoid (Neos). Released very late in the year to have much impact, but I think this is a classic. Hard to say exactly why, but I think Brandlmayr's drumming is some sort of gravitational force that pulls the music together wonderfully. (I also think Sachiko M has finally realized there more interesting frequencies than the ones I've heard her digging before).

Funny, after seeing this mentioned here I went and downloaded it to give it a listen, and while I don't know if I can say it was a disappointment because I didn't exactly have high expectations going in, I definitely was not impressed. I like all those musicians individually, but this is just such an odd grouping, and not in a good way - it seems obvious that Dörner and Brandlmayr are not in their element, and nobody really does much of anything to drive the music anywhere. It's just boring, a big blah mass of sound.

I totally agree with hatta on Lost Daylight, a great disc where each half is fantastic individually, and the contrast between them is fascinating. Weird that I agree on that, considering the rest of that overrated list (Colley, Drumm, Lescalleet, Lambkin, July Mountain) reads like a list of my favorites.

I hate calling things overrated, but Carliol and Falter 1-5 have come up a bit as good discs this year, and while I like both, neither of them exactly strikes me as anything to get excited over. Not sure why, they both just seem like decent improv records that I'll have forgotten in a year.

I much prefer citing underrated gems, but most of what I liked this year seems to be pretty popular. I'll second Mark in praising Pedestrian Deposit. I haven't heard anything from him since Volatile, and this was really a huge and very pleasant surprise - not that I disliked Volatile, this is just so different and really on another level. I also liked the Seijiro Murayama/Eric La Casa disc a lot, not sure how much attention that one is getting. And as I was telling Jon on Soulseek earlier, I love Pisaro's Ricefall(2), which I sense is probably the least loved of his widely admired outpouring of releases this year. It may be my favorite from him other than the Sugimoto collaboration.

[mono tony]

motubachii - krebs/unami (overrated here). i listen to this cd a few times a month, usually losing interest halfway through it. the large dynamic range of the album makes it hard to enjoy at a moderate volume because of the jarring quality of some of the sounds.. nice quality sounds, but the overall patterning of the sounds lacks desirable flow (for me). much of the sound reports and their placement feel(s) very deliberate and conscious, to a fault. there is nice space to the recording, though the spaces also feel very deliberately shaped. the only thing compelling about the record has been the unanimous praise for it that i see on this site.

[monorail]

underrated for me is easy - pedestrian deposit's 'east fork/north fork'. it's an excellent record and a graceful departure for what is still nominally a noise band, but until it somehow snuck into the wire best-of list i hadn't seen talk of it anywhere. it helps that i saw PD perform in april of this year and was quite blown away by that as well.

thanks for the kind words. the record has no distribution because, like all other monorail titles, i can't get anyone to carry it. hopefully it will be at mimaroglu soon.

overrated: jefre cantu-ledesma - love is a stream lp
underrated: k.p., virgin spring, antiquity tape on ekhein, grasslung
disappointing: well, nearly everything else