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larstangmark Offline




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Posted: June 24 2018, 14:34

As for the "lazy" aspect of Mike's music:

That accusation comes in handy when he puts out an album that one doesn't like. I have defended his earlier work (which I love) with tooth and claw earlier, but now in hindsight I can so that the "lazy" was always there. As was "creative" and "genius".

As much as I love Incantations, I can see that some bits went on for like seven minutes so that it would fill out the LP side.
As much as I love Platinum, I can see that Mike didn't have a f-ing clue what to put on the b-side of that record.
As much as I love QE2, I recognize filler material when I hear it.
As much as I love Five Miles Out, Crises and Discovery, I understand that it took considerable input from very talented studio musicians to flesh out the plinkilty-plonk song sketches made on the fly with cheesy Fairlight Presets (which sounded cool cause only Mike could afford them).

It was *always* zero attention span Mike putting together an album from ideas on rizla papers in between tours. The quicker, the better.
He's still like that. He works quickly. He's not Robert Fripp. He doesn't like to play head games with producers and musicians. Call him lazy if you want, but that's just how he works.


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"There are twelve people in the world, the rest are paste"
Mark E Smith
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tarquincat Offline




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Posted: June 25 2018, 07:20

Quote (larstangmark @ June 24 2018, 14:34)
As for the "lazy" aspect of Mike's music:

That accusation comes in handy when he puts out an album that one doesn't like. I have defended his earlier work (which I love) with tooth and claw earlier, but now in hindsight I can so that the "lazy" was always there. As was "creative" and "genius".

As much as I love Incantations, I can see that some bits went on for like seven minutes so that it would fill out the LP side.
As much as I love Platinum, I can see that Mike didn't have a f-ing clue what to put on the b-side of that record.
As much as I love QE2, I recognize filler material when I hear it.
As much as I love Five Miles Out, Crises and Discovery, I understand that it took considerable input from very talented studio musicians to flesh out the plinkilty-plonk song sketches made on the fly with cheesy Fairlight Presets (which sounded cool cause only Mike could afford them).

It was *always* zero attention span Mike putting together an album from ideas on rizla papers in between tours. The quicker, the better.
He's still like that. He works quickly. He's not Robert Fripp. He doesn't like to play head games with producers and musicians. Call him lazy if you want, but that's just how he works.

And this is related to Berlin 2000 - How ?
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larstangmark Offline




Group: Members
Posts: 1759
Joined: Mar. 2005
Posted: June 25 2018, 08:21

Quote (tarquincat @ June 25 2018, 07:20)
Quote (larstangmark @ June 24 2018, 14:34)
As for the "lazy" aspect of Mike's music:

That accusation comes in handy when he puts out an album that one doesn't like. I have defended his earlier work (which I love) with tooth and claw earlier, but now in hindsight I can so that the "lazy" was always there. As was "creative" and "genius".

As much as I love Incantations, I can see that some bits went on for like seven minutes so that it would fill out the LP side.
As much as I love Platinum, I can see that Mike didn't have a f-ing clue what to put on the b-side of that record.
As much as I love QE2, I recognize filler material when I hear it.
As much as I love Five Miles Out, Crises and Discovery, I understand that it took considerable input from very talented studio musicians to flesh out the plinkilty-plonk song sketches made on the fly with cheesy Fairlight Presets (which sounded cool cause only Mike could afford them).

It was *always* zero attention span Mike putting together an album from ideas on rizla papers in between tours. The quicker, the better.
He's still like that. He works quickly. He's not Robert Fripp. He doesn't like to play head games with producers and musicians. Call him lazy if you want, but that's just how he works.

And this is related to Berlin 2000 - How ?

Read the second post in the thread.

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"There are twelve people in the world, the rest are paste"
Mark E Smith
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Thea Cochrane Offline




Group: Musicians
Posts: 445
Joined: Nov. 1999
Posted: July 15 2018, 12:19

Quote (larstangmark @ June 24 2018, 19:34)
As much as I love Incantations, I can see that some bits went on for like seven minutes so that it would fill out the LP side.
As much as I love Platinum, I can see that Mike didn't have a f-ing clue what to put on the b-side of that record.
As much as I love QE2, I recognize filler material when I hear it.
As much as I love Five Miles Out, Crises and Discovery, I understand that it took considerable input from very talented studio musicians to flesh out the plinkilty-plonk song sketches made on the fly with cheesy Fairlight Presets (which sounded cool cause only Mike could afford them).

There's another side to that, Incantations came after Mike had vanished for a couple of years (doing Exegesis, amongst other things) and maybe he felt that he owed the label a double album to make up for it? To help justify the cost of getting an orchestra involved and so on.

By the time of Platinum, QE2, FMO, etc., there was a definite "album/tour" cycle with no breaks in between to let creative sparks happen - those albums were coming out because there needed to be an album so there was something to tour next year. If it's a double album they can charge more for it and it recoups faster (in theory - and after the first three albums had done well there was no reason to think Incantations wouldn't chart).

Even listening to that run of albums from Platinum through to Discovery - maybe even up to Earth Moving - however you feel about the composition and so on, the pieces are very well put together. Everything is very well mixed and the production is excellent, and lots of stuff in the same time period wasn't as well done even though they had separate specialist songwriters, recording engineers, mix engineers and so on.

Here's the remixes from Discovery/ Crises particularly, really shows how well that stuff was mixed in the first place.
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