And you will come around.
10 October 2007 by jaksoul
Amidst all the praise and recriminations regarding the release of Radiohead’s new album is the tacit admission of the inherent bankruptcy at the heart of the music industry. If Radiohead, first among bands of their era, have put the price of music in the digital age somewhere around ‘what ever you fancy’, how much less the ocean of mediocrity clogging up digital stores and ‘priced about right’ torrent sites around the world.
The value of music in a digital environment is pretty close to nothing, save for conscience and convenience. In a spooky echo of some of the things we have been talking on-Radiohead seem to think it’s more about packaging and performance.
Seems like a pretty good bet.
In a culture which, as any good media studies student will know, the medium and the message are so inextricably linked-the leap from vinyl to cd to mp3 has been a thorough education in the law of diminishing returns.
For the consumer the ‘industry’ part of that most tragic of all non sequiturs ‘the music industry’, has been tirelessly and ruthlessly exposed in hideous antipiracy campaigns, DRM deals with the devil and crazy, suicidal lawsuits.
For the artist, trying to make something meaningful in the an environment where the delicate balance between creativity and fiscal reality (which at one time seemed so easy) has long since tipped in the favour of accountants and endless middle management.
The untold value of context.
What price a chance to wipe the slate? No more protest songs from multinationals, the radical edges of our lives long since outsourced and needlessly spent chasing teen demographics.
No coincidence perhaps that ‘In Rainbows‘ is Radiohead’s strongest album for ages. It sounds like a body of work, rather than a collection of difficult (if often beautiful) excursions beyond their comfort zone. More importantly, by providing a model for ‘artisian musicians’, Radiohead have found themselves in a position few artists can rightful claim.
At the start of something new.
And it’s worth buying just for that-the thrill of something new and the sound of castles burning.
It’s the most vital cultural event of the decade.
Get the whole thing here
10 October 2007, on 4:47 pm
beautiful, aposite and really, really so spot on.
the past couple of years of ‘everyone knows this is nowhere’-floundering feel like that too painful to observe period of displacement and unrest before revolution. while the revolution wasn’t televised before, this time round we’ve been filming the trailers on our cellphones and uploading it to youtube. the capitalist religiocity of £14 for a cd might have been the opiate of masses clamouring for songs to play over the credits of the latest spiderman movie and they’ll undoubtably keep getting their hits. but for the rest of us there’s a riot going on and for the first time in two decades its starting to look like you’re not going to be able to buy the t-shirt in your local hmv.
12 October 2007, on 1:25 pm
hello there.. great new site layout.
thought maybe you might be interested in this>>
Press Release: Climate Camp exhibition starts Tuesday 30th October in London.
It was August 12th - just before midnight - when climate change activists took over a piece of land at Sipson and started to build
Climate Camp 2007.
With access roads blockaded by police, hundreds of people carried everything they needed to build a self sustaining village in the shadow of Heathrow.
Then for ten days concentrated the attention of the world’s press on the stupidity of planning air expansion on a threatened planet.
The Climate Camp exhibition documents in sound, words, installations and images the life, workshops and direct action of those ten days. It examines the issues and thinking of people who seek to stop the
world sleep-walking into a disaster that is manifestly preventable, but hugely profitable for a powerful few.
Opening at The Foundry, 86 Great Eastern Street EC2 on Tuesday 30th October at 7pm the exhibition runs until 4th November before touring UK cities threatened by regional airport expansion.
Workshops, talks and film screenings will appear at http://www.minimouse.me.uk/show as they are confirmed.
Photographs from the show are a selection from those to be seen at http://www.minimouse.me.uk