Album Rating: 4.0

There is no point attempting a discussion when the other party doesn't even attempt to understand your arguments and is just here to force his view down your throat.

Album Rating: 4.7 | Sound Off

Can we not?

"Did he not mention music theory at least once? How boring."
He talked a lot about the fact that melody and harmony are things that exist in most music. That was about it. I feel I may have jinxed things when I compared this thread's potential to the FI thread. Sorry everyone.

Album Rating: 4.7 | Sound Off

C'mon guys, let's back to the "list is butts"

Album Rating: 5.0

list owns

Album Rating: 4.7 | Sound Off

Sniff owns list butts

Album Rating: 5.0

Sneaking in my 20th something listen rn boys

Album Rating: 5.0 | Sound Off

Almost as good as Wish You Were Here

Album Rating: 5.0

Ugh bout to go into Theres No Horizon. Hold me boys

nocte owns butts

Album Rating: 4.0

I remember loving the hell out of Shrines of Paralysis when it was released, but then I got all dissonanced out and almost completely forgot about it. Stare into Death and Be Still is sounding real good, though. Looking forward to hearing the rest of this.

nice talk but ultimately useless since we all know how it usually ends. him being banned and his posts deleted, moon lands on man

"Has anyone here heard of Unhuman? Their selftitled from 2013 is genuinely impressive especially the vocals. Haven't heard something like them since"

was just listening to it a week ago. great record, they rly created somthing unique there. i was kinda weirded out the first time, but eventually it clicked.

Album Rating: 4.0

butt owns butt

Album Rating: 4.5

I listened it already 50 times, 50 times more and maybe this will end up being one of my most favourite albums of all time. It deserves a solid 4,2-4,4 even after thousands of votes

Album Rating: 4.0

it's that time of the year again fcuk

Album Rating: 4.5

@solrage: It seems my life is still boring enough for me to take this bait (although I will secretly admit I rather adore philosophical debate).

It must be said that my discussion with vastwilderness (the person, whose comments were deleted), at least at the end, revolved more around the existence of universal cultural standards, than matters of objectivity. Nevertheless, it must be said your first definition of objectivity applied more so to our discussion than the second. While I'm willing to admit harmonic and melodic patterns themselves aren't ontologically contingent upon subjective perception, our experience of them is irrevocably phenomenological: our conceptualisation of harmony and melody, as well as our feelings towards them, purely exist within the domain of our own conscious experience. In other words, while the phenomena of harmony and melody can exist beyond subjective experience, in some sort of objective form, we as human beings can only experience them through (subjective) interpretation and can therefore only know them subjectively, never objectively. In this sense harmony and melody must be considered subjective, not only because they are formulated in to a languag which is in and of itself in no way a perfect mirror of reality (to paraphrase R. Rorty), but also because any interpretation of any phenomenon, is itself always relative to the specific way in which the interpreters brain is conditioned. This conditioning is not merely biological, but also deeply cultural, as the brains permanent plasticity allows environmental factors to shape it endlessly throughout our lives.

Now, as far as your last statement is concerned: "My stock answer...very similar brains", I must partially disagree. Although it might be true that human brains unaffected by environment will, safe for specific (epi)genetic mutations, have similar features, it seems reductive to boil down culture to just biology, especially considering that the mechanisms through which cultures are created and the specific environmental factors which facilitated this process, did not exist billions of years ago. Cultural universals, if they were to exist, are ultimately a product of the historical development of any given culture, which might be ultimately reducible to a natural state, but cannot be adequately explained through an appeal to Darwinism. Therefore culture can never be considered a direct adaptation, but merely a product of the various ways in which biologically shaped human brains interacted with their environments and, furthermore, the ways in which these environments have, throughout history, come to shape and condition these interactions. (1)

Album Rating: 4.5

@solrage:

Again, it seems highly reductive to suggest that supposedly universal concepts such as harmony, melody or tonality can be adequately examined as transcendental biological conditions extrinsic to social reality. However, my real problem with this notion of a 'universal cultural form', an archetype if you want to employ the Jungian term, is the presumption that they exist in the first place, regardless of the possible origin of such concepts, were they to exist. A fundamental problem is that any comparison between cultural elements is ultimately tied to the frame of reference of the observing subject. A frame of reference which can not only be situated as a specific product of a certain historical context, making it, as Foucault would say, not a natural inevitability, but a historical contingency, but can also be seen as highly conditioned by, shaped by, the social-cultural, and by extension social-economic, environment where this frame of reference, this perspective, finds its providence. There is a relativism here: what might be considered universal to some, might be considered completely discordant to others, relative to the perspective of the observer. This is my main problem with Jung's concept of an archetype, they are ultimately arbitrary concepts, which are culturally and historically determined, non-objective and relative to time and place. Neither his perspective, nor ours transcends the cultural boundaries imposed upon our perspectives, and the concepts we derive from our interpretations are thus necessarily non-transcendental, non-universal, and instead local, relative to the specific temporal and historical context within which they were defined, formulated and expressed. (2)

Album Rating: 4.5

@solrage:

Back to your example of tonality, we might concur that the brain is genetically predisposed to enjoy pattern finding, but we might also conclude that the specific tonal patterns we as a species appreciate, are derived from how we were conditioned to enjoy certain patterns and not others: why we might find microtones, or atonal passages, or non-diatonic keys off-putting while to others they might sound natural, is a matter of social conditioning and the historical enforcement of that conditioning; it might therefore even be considered a matter of economic power, if you wanted to take the Marxist route. Ultimately, an appreciation of tonality, as in certain types of vibrations, organized into a specific pattern, might be something to be recognized within all cultures, yet which patterns might be considered pleasant, which tonal frequencies might be considered acceptable within a specific cultural context, which rhythmic sequences might be considered normal and so forth, will most certainly depend on whatever specific cultural context one is analysing, as well as the amount of cultural cross-pollination which has historically taken place. in other words: tonal appreciation could be 'universal', but the form of its appreciation as well as the specific tonalities being appreciated, can differ from culture to culture. To suggest there to be cultural universals in regard to music enjoyment or any other social form of expression, which can be readily known through a perspective itself culturally limited and historically contingent, which are to be expressed through a language equally as non-universal and epistemically limited, sounds unbelievable to me. Cultural universalism in this respect sounds to me more so like ideology gone wrong, than any easily applicable and valid concept. (3)

oooooooooook

Album Rating: 4.5

album is beautiful