sublime frequencies

[(<oo>)]

there's a lot i haven't heard. but this one is good, with two of my favorite songs ever

?

the first song on that one is sooooo beautiful. such a pity it fades out.

[franz bieberkopf]

Oh and there is a North Korean one. Never heard it though

[/quote]
and an Iraqi one.

i think there are way more things that are right about Sublime Frequencies than there are wrong about it.
it's true that it is musical tourism to some extent, and i guess the example might be particularly apt if you are following the impatient montage poetic of many of the radio recordings (lovin' you and leavin' you). on the other hand, most tourists would never hear the radio in an exotic country that they visited (certainly most would actively seek it out)--this music is for the locals, it is a part of their daily life in precisely the way that a lot of actual "tourism industry artifacts" are not. you could easily extend that argument to say that the fact that much of the music is derived from field recordings and radio captures makes the audience privy to the music's milieu in a way that most "world music" does not (when musicians are plunked down in pristine studio spaces for the benefit of the global market).
i wouldn't be so disingenuous as to deny that Sublime Frequencies has an aesthetic that they seem to be going for. while of course a lot of these recordings were not made by the SCGirls themselves, they definitely come across like an SCG postcard. an occasionally surrealist travel guide.
on the other hand, i think there is a flaw in the logic that insists that it is their vision and their's alone. it's an idea that is more recognizable to me from discussions about film, but i think it is just as applicable here: Yes, SF chooses what it records, and how it is packaged/presented, but they don't play the instruments, and they certainly don't control the places they are documenting. reflexivity is important but the image (especially here) is ALWAYS bigger than beholder. so yes, it is a Westerner's vision, but it is also a lot more than that, and to insinuate otherwise (particularly to glom onto the inauthenticity of the content) can amount to a backhanded denial of the existence of the people and places documented. the documenter is important, but he/she isn't THAT important.

i think a lot of these recordings have a nasty existential streak, actually. most of it is miles away from easy listening, and makes you work to enjoy it in a fashion that doesn't seem to have much to do with the tourist dynamic as we understand it today (although it might have something to do with the experience of the so-called Orientalists of past centuries).
i think recordings from Iraq and North Korea, for extreme example, have a positive political latency just by being, as they acknowledge a register of these cultures (and without any sort of hedging, might i add and emphasize) that is otherwise utterly absent from our representations of these places.

are they totally innocent? no. but i still find their method refreshing.

[dave quam]

Hope nobody is just throwing all the blame on sun city girls being American and doing this, because there are plenty of European Labels that have been doing an excellent job documenting/reissuing country and other types of American music history.

Good points though Alex.

[will]

whoa... wordswordswords. I think that it's intersting that these guys run around doing what they do. In thinking about the framing of the musicians involved in these projects, what would it do to how we think of them if we talked about the SF catalog as consisting of samples, much the same as a DJ Shadow or RJD2 record? Does the analogy work?
Also, the circuit these things travel doesn't stop at their being recorded, they continue on through the mastering process, they have packaging prepared for them, they are distributed and sold in locally specific ways, and they are consumed by people who have specific expectations of the documents that they buy (or, more likely, steal on the internet). From there, they are reviewed, discussed in print and online, and eventually forgotten. At each junction, new sorts of expectation and fabrication are applied to them.
All of these things shift the nature of the documented music, taking it further and further from whatever context it was in which they first emerged. I'm not saying "ooooh SF is an evil cultural colonizer how dare they do what they do!!", but I am saying that the material they nab undergoes a ton of translations before it gets to our record stotes and online piracy loci, and it's worth bearing that in mind. This is why I ask about sampling as a better analogy.

[dave quam]

No I don't think that analogy works totally.


Alan has claimed before that these cds are in absolutely no way some kind of guide for understanding the music of these places, they are just a taste and you have to do a bit more than just listen to their releases to get a grasp on it.

I for one don't really give a shit if they are "musical tourism" because some of the releases are pretty damn hot to my ears.

[franz bieberkopf]

whoa... wordswordswords.

don't mind me, i was just caffeinated.

it is true that these recordings don't afford the artist anywhere near the creative control that we've come to expect from the average CD release, and these artists are certainly no less deserving of those presentational privileges than any western artist. your point is well taken.

to play the advocate i could say that, all the same, i appreciate this form, and i think it is just as applicable for use in western milieu as it is elsewhere.
This basically amounts to supporting some form of bootlegging i suppose, and i am pretty sure many artists here would have a huge problem with that.
if you use the analogy of documentary film, as opposed to sampling (which is similar, but i think most sampling is a bit more 'hands on'), you could make the argument that this form already kind of exists here.

so yeah, there are definitely huge ethical issues. i guess in my enthusiasm, i had more in mind SF's abilities as an alternative or supplementary view of other cultures for the benefit of the listener. this is an equation that regards the listener and the travelling medium more than it does the performer, which is what you rightfully pointed out in the first place . To my mind i was defending the relative authenticity (or at least value) of these recordings, particularly in relation to many other "world music" media... and i will greedily stand by that i think.
i suck.

[will]

Oh, I'm not talking about ethical issues, I'm talking about practicial interpretation, and I think that the long string of questions I asked and the complex sequence of re-framings I mentioned stand for documentary film as well.

[user_2766]

Does anyone happen to have any sense of how much profit SF have made from these releases and what they've done with that profit? A vulgar question perhaps, but relevant. Perhaps the answer is common knowledge, apologies if so. I ask out of genuine curiosity.

[user_4541]

yo check the clothes that you wear and the shoes that are on your feet, how much do you think those corporations profited from sweatshop workers blah blah blah

unless you buy from places like American Apparell and those that are like that ( I use American apparell as merely an example here), you're dealing with some serious third world diamond digging territory in order for you to get that gold garnishing on your favorite italian desert at said expensive restaurant tonight

[dave quam]

yeah Alan Bishop runs a sweatshop in Thailand where 8 year old kids are assembling Sublime Frequencies cds.

[mudd]

i think i should delete all posts that refer to american apparel.

m

[user_4541]

wow, good job completely missing the point guys! and mudd you're acting as if you were a cop more and more every day!

[jon abbey]

wow, good job completely missing the point guys! and mudd you're acting as if you were a cop more and more every day!

says the guy who begged mark to let him come back after being banned, and who mark let back against the general wishes of the board. good memory, dude!

[mudd]

i am actually a fascist, not a cop. no badge, no billyclub. i have neat boots, though.

now, for the reason i opened this thread:

Does anyone happen to have any sense of how much profit SF have made from these releases and what they've done with that profit? A vulgar question perhaps, but relevant. Perhaps the answer is common knowledge, apologies if so. I ask out of genuine curiosity.

I don't know where anybody gets the idea that Sublime Frequencies makes any money. I certainly haven't made any money from it. Any money that comes in goes to the next project

which makes sense, considering how fast they are putting out records. on the other hand, somewhat more troubling, or maybe just odd:

I also don't know where people get the idea that nothing is given to these musicians who we record. Anybody we deal with directly was given something that they were very grateful to have.

and one final quote, since it seems like something of a mission statement for the label

There's music out there that's disappearing. We want to hear it. We're going to capture it and do our best to preserve it for others to enjoy. It's as simple as that.

hrm.

m

[vegetable mind]

i'm not sure i see what is troubling about artist compensation for something like the most recent LP, which i assume is the type of project he is referring rather than the folk and pop series

[mudd]

"something that they were very grateful to have" totally sounds like beads and trinkets, if you ask me.

not that i'm accusing, only that it sounds evasive. i don't really know how else i'd want him to put it, though.

m

[franz bieberkopf]

"something that they were very grateful to have" totally sounds like random obscure SCG merch, if you ask me.

[mudd]

so these dudes take on rio baile funk this month.

curiouser and curiouser.

m

[kristop]

ya it should be interesting. cool to see that they are branching out and leaving asia/india/etc finally. that latin american psych one looks rad.

[dave quam]

i am really psyched on the baile funk one. I need to pick it up asap. I have only heard one of the newer ones, group inerane, and it was great.