Alan D
Group: Members
Posts: 3670
Joined: Aug. 2004 |
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Posted: May 20 2008, 16:53 |
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Quote (Matt @ May 20 2008, 19:44) | To me "artistic" would mean they paint some sort of picture or tell some sort of story which, apart from just being nice music (or bad music or fantastic music), seem to be trying to achieve some sort of artistic theme. With this assumption I would put other works far ahead of L+S in this respect. HR for emoting landscape, MusicVR for the various audio renditions that match visual themes so well, The Lake which to me does impart some sense of that area of the world, TSODE which takes me on a journey into space etc. etc. |
I can't answer for Daniel (Nightspore) so maybe he'll explain further, but I'd say your use of the word 'artistic', Matt, is more narrow than the sense in which he's using it. Evoking some kind of mental picture can be part of the process, but I think Nightspore is talking about something broader - about the way in which an artist tries to creat unity within the work of art, so that all the various elements add up to something coherent, something more significant than just the sum of the separate parts. (If you think of something like a Cezanne painting, for instance, the picture is so perfectly balanced in every conceivable way, that it oftens feels as if every brushstroke is related to, and accounting for, the effect of every other brushstroke.)
I think that's the issue here. Personally, so far I've had pretty much the same response as you to Light and Shade. I haven't experienced the sense of unity and artistic coherence that is being suggested here. So far, to me it just seems like a collection of odds and ends. But I'm very willing to believe that I might have been missing something - some crucial way of approaching the album - that's prevented me from hearing it as Nightspore is hearing it. That's happened to me many, many times, with a wide range of music, and it could be happening again now. That's why when I listen again to Light and Shade, I'll try to listen specifically for the kinds of links between the tracks that he talked about in his first post.
This is, after all, Mike Oldfield we're talking about. Even if he's made some music we're dubious about, we ought at least to be able to acknowledge the possibility that he's attempted something quite intricate and unusual that might take extra time and a different kind of effort to appreciate properly?
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