Thousands of reviews of experimental music
October 20, 2015 6:53 PM   Subscribe

Touching Extremes (and the 2001–8 archive, housed separately) houses a wealth of reviews of obscure, avant, experimental, or otherwise not-terribly commercial music by Massimo Ricci, formerly of Bagatellen and Paris Transatlantic (both defunct), and occasionally still also of The Squid's Ear.

Some more or less randomly selected reviews, out of the zillions: The Holly MartinsUpsilon AcruxTwo by Stephan Mathieu ("POST SCRIPTUM: After the review went online, Stephan Mathieu and I entertained a friendly yet frank exchange of opinions.") — Die Geister BeschwörenOren Ambarchi — and many, many more.
posted by kenko (11 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
wowza! super cool. sometimes the internet is useful.
posted by bobdow at 8:02 PM on October 20, 2015


thousands of reviews of experimental music,
music almost no one ever heard...
for every bleat and squiggle, for every micro-tone,
there's a corresponding long descriptive word...
and the folks who made the music? the folks who wrote about it?
in the wider world they barely made a dent...
some went on to jingle work, some switched to writing copy,
cause hey, you got to pay the goddamn rent!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:21 PM on October 20, 2015


Hey, you're in there, flapjax!
posted by kenko at 8:24 PM on October 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Haha! Thanks, kenko, hadn't seen that one!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:26 PM on October 20, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm concerned about the lack of control groups
posted by clockzero at 9:23 PM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Most of what you hear on the radio is performed by control groups.
posted by kenko at 9:25 PM on October 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


The tv that I don't own came with no radio, too
posted by clockzero at 10:13 PM on October 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Massimo is a great, insightful person, always a pleasure to find his usually hilarious, sometimes bittersweet 1st-or-2nd-of-the-month rants in my inbox. Great to see Touching Extremes getting some love here. Fantastic discoveries to be made trawling through his archives.
posted by remembrancer at 9:21 AM on October 21, 2015


Hey, you're in there, flapjax!

“Eschew Obfuscation, Espouse Elucidation”

The present reader would seem at this time to be experiencing the influence of a rarefied yet familiar constellation of emotions concomitant with the modalities inherent in reaction to the apparent steadfast refusal of the writer now under our collective gaze to align himself, however tentatively, with the advice proffered by the artists hereunder reviewed in the hortatory title ironically attached to the composition currently subject to our consideration.
 
posted by Herodios at 9:24 AM on October 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


Not for nothing did Dan Warburton call him “Our own purple prose peddler” .
posted by kenko at 11:13 AM on October 21, 2015 [1 favorite]




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