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Most Inaccessible Album of All-Time?

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imapiratearg:
I think he just means albums that a majority of people find hard to get into.  But I know this would be really hard to find, because everyone has a different taste, and what is accessible to one person is inaccessible to another.

carrotosaurus:
Chinese Democracy.

Scandanavian War Machine:
I'm gonna have to go with Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica

Same vein as Zappa (same record label too) but it hardly resembles conventional music unlike Zappa who, sometimes, actually sounded like "normal" music.

Johnny C:

--- Quote from: tommydski on 21 Jan 2007, 08:55 ---While we are on the lunatic fringe, I'm going to talk about an album that few of you have heard, none of you own and even fewer will enjoy. If you really want to hear something challenging try to find a copy of an album called 'The Gap' by Chicago band Joan of Arc. If you find standard rock a bit tedious and long for something a bit progressive in the musical and academic sense of the term or just basically want to test the limit of your tolerance, this is the album for you. It took me roughly one hundred full listens not to despise it, fifty more to appreciate it and fully two hundred to love it.



If you are even faintly offended by grandoir and conceptualism don't even bother flicking through the artwork frankly. If however, you can stomach the idea of a collection of strange, off-kilter compositions of analogue instrumentation and ambient noise digitally re-arranged into extended instrumental passages then you might like this eventually. In terms of context, it is a sort of response to Guy Debord's 'The Society of the Spectacle', which was in turn a sort of reinvention of Marxist Philosophy by a French surrealist reactionary.

To explain a bit about this ridiculously intimidating album, it's possibly best to look at some of the critical response. I have never seen a good review of this album and to be honest I don't see how one could grant it one. Every critique I have found calls the album pretentious and the reviewer is often thoroughly confused with both the music and any potential meanings it might be attempting to convey. This probably has a lot to do with the unconventional nature of the structure. To expand, if you listen to Anti-Flag's album 'Die for the Government' it is immediately obvious what Anti-Flag is trying to get across. Look at a picture of the band and they dress as you would imagine a reactionary punk influenced band would dress. Put on the album and the songs sound like one would expect a punk-influenced band to sound, with vaguely anarchistic polemic and conventional song structure. Can you argue with that? For a reviewer this album is perfect to encapsulate in two hundred words or less because it does exactly what it says on the tin. Hand the same reviewer a copy of 'The Gap' and he will have an enormous amount of difficulty writing about it using the same methods he used to review the Anti-Flag record.

So how would one classify Joan of Arc? If you look at Joseph Campbell's work 'Hero with a Thousand Faces' or Northrop Frye's 'Anatomy of Criticism', an outline of the predictable means to critique popular culture is formed. However, when popular culture challenges these conventions, critics become obfuscated. French surrealist reactionary Guy Debord strongly influenced Joan of Arc's music. If one watches Debord's movie 'Howlings in Favour of Sade' could one make a critique using formulas set up by Joseph Campbell, Lester Bangs or, God help us, Ryan Schreiber? Would it be fair to send a film reviewer the latest Romantic Comedy designed to appeal to the masses at large and a copy of 'Un Chien Andalusia' by Salvador Dali? Would his opinion of each film be equally measured? Personally I don't think we could. So, does 'Un Chien Andalusia' or 'Howlings In The Favour of Sade' make a strong statement despite its removal from convention? Not only do these works present a clear break from mainstream ideology but they represent an alternative to popular culture we previously outlined. I believe Joan of Arc is the same way in many aspects. The music is very difficult to understand from a normative view-point because it does not follow a consistent pattern. Once we appreciate that although this album may arrive in the same format as the Anti-Flag record, it is not really of a similar ilk.
 
'The Gap' is probably the greatest example of this dichotomy. Tim Kinsella even mentions Guy Debord in a song title. How confused were people when this record came out? There were no real songs, the ones that do eventually take shape overlap one another and end abruptly mid-stream. Several of the songs have up to 200 tracks playing. The song titles are nonsensical arrays of words and symbols. The last track is completely blank. The album is unconventional in the truest sense of the word. Thus, it is easier for a reviewer to label the album pretentious than go through the two hundred or so listens it took me to appreciate 'The Gap'.

Thus, as previously mentioned, 'The Gap' is a series of audio images created to convey some fairly esoteric concepts. Namely, the record is concerned, much like the Debord book of the same name, with 'The Society of the Spectacle' and how the defiance of convention can perpetuate a certain sense of independence from normality. This interests me as a person who feels utterly marginalised from most aspects of modern society so it does not seem like an inappropriate subject for a rock band to approach. Appropriately, the album has as a subject the very dichotomy we explored during our examination of its critique. The relationship between what is and what appears to be or if you will, 'The Gap' between the real and the spectacle. Of course, the album also shares its title with a popular clothes shop that strives to create a sense of individuality but in actuality provides the reverse. The pernicious genius of the spectacle is its ability to mobilize the image of what it actually militates against. So while every customer who leaves the store may in their mind truly believe they have defied conformity (after all that's what all the marketing and advertising tells them right?) they have actually subscribed to an even greater encroaching homogeny. Did the reviewer of the Anti-Flag record make a similar mistake?

By conjuring images of corporativism within the title of the album itself it reminds us of the juxtaposition between the haves and the have-nots that is synonymous with the teachings of Karl Marx, a massive influence on Debord himself. Both thinkers were inspired by the idea of commodity fetishism, a central ideology of all capitalist society. On 'Me And America (Or) The United Colors Of The Gap' Tim Kinsella explores what he considers to be the final capitulation of his own country to the gestalt forces of the spectacle, as America succumbs to the seductive power of cultural hegemony. Indeed, by invoking the names of those pillars of independence in the song 'John Cassavetes, Assata Shakur, And Guy Debord Walk Into A Bar...', he is showing an almost perverse sense of optimism (that the three are still regarded by many as auteurs) or maybe the futility of standing against the torrential flow of mediocrity (Shakur was imprisoned, Cassavetes died in obscurity and Debord shot himself dead through the heart).

Of course, there's a whole album's worth of interpretations to be found beyond my own cursory examination but I have a cold and I thought I'd share a few thoughts since there's nothing to do but sit in bed with my laptop. Like I said, if you want a challenge and you consider yourself to have an open mind, maybe look for a copy of 'The Gap'.

--- End quote ---

Joseph:
I really haven't found The Gap all that terribly difficult to listen to.  I actually rather enjoy it.  Am I doing something wrong?

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