Music is a product of the time in which it's made

Jacques Attalli had a point. Music can be prophecy - it can reveal the times in which you find yourself and the truth behind them. That's not to say in a Mystic Meg way and it's certainly not true of all music but sometimes it reveals where we're going culturally and sometimes politically too.

I thought of this while listening to an old Mp3 of Moby's Heaven, a deep house track he did before he started raiding Alan Lomax's collection for sample material. Deep house is music that could only be made in the late eighties to now. Even so, the stuff made now isn't the same - it doesn't have that beautific calm that was a million miles away from rock, rap or even folk. Deep house sounds like love, it sounds like your ego dissolving. Is it right for now? Well, Moodymann still sounds good but post 9/11, the idea of chilling to me seems blasphemous. The interesting point I guess, referring back to the prophecy was that music was moving in this direction before that fateful day.


Men of the moment, Franz Ferdinand. They teach us that dancing in rock music is back, and tucking your shirt in is the way forward :)
posted by Neil at 10:56:00 PM

Katie King

There was a program tonight on spiritualism, when I got back from Ben and Stu's. Katie King was supposedly a spirit, controlled by a medium Florence Cook in the 1870's and 80's. The photo above was taken by eminent Victorian scientist, William Crooks - who was taken in by the charade, possibly the programme revealed because he was in love with Katie. Guests at the seances that took place in Dalston complained of how he was 'inappropriate' with the ghost.

This lead me to website and this page. Borley Rectory in Essex was supposed to be Britain's Most Haunted house until it burnt down in 1939.
posted by Neil at 3:20:00 AM