philip sherburne

I didn't really phrase my last post well - post-MUTEK/Sónar grouchiness will do that to you. I realize that Sasha was specifically talking about U.S. appetites for UK pop, and there's no reason that he should have felt compelled to fold other countries or styles into the mix.

But I do remain curious about amplifying the discussion: i.e., not asking why U.S. listeners so fickly favor only certain UK pop artists, but rather why U.S. listeners so routinely ignore the sonic world outside their borders.

But then again, phrasing it that way, the answers seem so incredibly obvious that I could understand if all y'all's intelligence felt bruised and bloodied by my even raising the issue. Mayhaps I'll find a way of rephrasing the question; more likely I'll just let it drop.

(I do, however, still think that grime is a red herring and/or apple-shaped orange in the Q&A linked in the last post; grime's relative unpopularity in the U.S. seems to have far less to do with jingoism and far more with the fact that grime isn't particularly popular anywhere, for plenty of reasonable, uh, reasons. Grime may be pop in the broad, sociological sense of the term, but it's not really attempting to appeal to a broad, populist audience. [Or is it?])

NP: Lily Allen. I sort of get it, and actually find the production pretty startlingly good - but definitely not my thing.

Would rather were NP: Root 70 plays the music of Burnt Friedman & The Nu Dub Players and Flanger, aka Heaps Dub - possibly my album of the year so far. Jazz quartet reconstructs hyperreal dub, re-edited by Friedman to make it all perfectly hyper-hyperreal, or maybe that's hyper-really-real. Shockingly, given the dub underpinnings, it sounds more than a little like the Nine Horses album (though Friedman played on that too, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised). Bonus points for titling a track in 5/4, "It Ain't Rocket Science."