I was told about this band today and a coworker showed me a youtube video of what they're like.
My question is not a joke, but the existence of this band may be?
Help me understand? Wtf this is? Is this an attempt to troll the world that people have accepted as "rock music" so they kept going?
Is this "real music" and I'm the idiot?
It feels like elevator music for people in the "Beavis and Butthead" universe.
WTF IS HAPPENING?! (And no I'm not just talking about their absolutely ludicrous appearance, I'm talking about the whole package. The music sounds like LSD fueled song intros looped together without ever reaching a chorus, ever.
A lot of Lemmings have already tried to explain the appeal of AdP. I'm not going to pile on. Partly because I don't want to beat a dead horse. And partly because I don't "get it" either. Or more specifically, I couldn't get lost in the music the way I wanted to. And I gave it an honest shot. But here's the thing. This isn't the first time that's happened to me. It actually happens to me quite a lot.
As a weekend hobby, I like to get high and just listen. An album, a live set, whatever I can find. Any genre, any era. And why some people connect to music that does nothing for me, and vice reversa, is something I've chewed on for years. It's a massive topic and I won't pretend to have the full answer. But there's a line of research worth mentioning here. Especially given your feeling that this is all a giant joke and everyone's trolling you.
To oversimplify, we don't listen with fresh ears. We learn what music "sounds like" over our whole lives. There's a study on this. Six-month-old babies could pick apart complex Balkan rhythms just fine. By twelve months, that ability had already narrowed to the rhythms they grew up around. Adults raised on Balkan music keep both. The rest of us lose the ear for it. And this just keeps going, every new thing we hear, we hear through all those accumulated biases. Eventually you hit music so far removed from your frame of reference that it barely registers as music at all. For you, that day came. And that's okay.
But if you want to break down that wall, you can get closer. When I find music challenging, I look to its influences. Branches of the tree nearer my own roots. Then I work my way back from there. The catch is you can't go in trying to prove it's bad. For lack of a better phrase, you have to listen with sincerity.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Hope you keep giving new music a chance.
I find that I have to watch them play it, rather than just listen to it. their technical ability to manage the loops live so seamlessly is what really does it for me.
Oh, totally agree with that. I watched their performance on KEXP, and was blown away by the skill and craftsmanship they showed.
Woah, that's so interesting! Thanks for sharing!