Only English, really.
I have probably a 6-year-old's reading comprehension level in German, though.
Getting a little better at recognizing the gist of (archaic) Italian from the amount of opera I listen to/memorize though.
Update #14 (15 April) - Puzzgal stays the frontrunner and now has a 10 film advantage on mightysparks. No changes in the top 10 this week.
Seven players have an average of more than 1 film/day. I'm one of them. I saw seven films and stayed 6th.
Pink Floyd and Queen not being on the list is as if they are trying to make some sort of point. Did they not watch Live Aid? Queen totally, and unexpectedly, stole the show at the biggest rock concert of all time.
Don't think anyone else has mentioned it so this may not be a popular view, but I think The Bee Gees should be on there for their writing talent if nothing else.
* Delgo 2008
* King Dick (Adults Movie)
*** more Barbie movies:
Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper 2004
Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus (2005)
The Barbie Diaries (2006)
Barbie: Mermaidia (2006)......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie_(film_series)
* Alvin and the Chipmunks 2007 + Sequel
* Bambi 2
* Brother Bear 2
* Cars 2
* Charlie Brown - 4 movies only
(the rest is 25 min specials like the great pumpkin)
* ice age 3+4
* Kong Fu Panda 2
* Lilo and Stitch 2 + Leroy and Stitch
* The True Story of Puss n Boots
* (Shrek) Puss in Boots
I think that your list is very good yet still very inaccurate. I noticed all of the top 10 albums require a very high degree of abstract thought and a fine tuned musical ear in order to enjoy them. While this list is an oasis for those who long for deep and abstract music, I don't think think it describes the very best in electronic music.
A song that is good can only hold a certain amount of complexity in specific ways. If there is too much complexity in too many ways, the song feels scrambled or overwhelming. If the song lacks complexity, then anything it tries to express will be handicapped and toned down. The songs you consider to be the very best hold their complexity in their deepness, therefore the list is being prejudice against songs that are not as deep but still complex in different ways.
For example, Skrillex may get a bad rep from music critics as being overrated, but even so there aren't very many musicians who are able to express as much raw intensity as him. This intensity just happens to be what the mainstream audience is looking for in electronic music. Even Skrillex himself said in an interview that his music is "stand up and dance" music, not "sit down and listen" music. With this being said, a vast amount of people who are able to understand and feel the intensity of a Skrillex concert may not be able to enjoy music that is complex in ways that are deep and abstract. So how can we say that the very best in deep and abstract music (aka this list) is actually any better than Skrillex's music?
For this reason I believe that a "Top 100 electronic music" list is too broad to have any accuracy. A list that has the potential to be accurate might be titled "Top 100 electronic music: songs that inspire dance" or "Top 100 electronic music: songs that are simply beautiful" or "Top 100 Electronic music: songs that innovated" etc. etc.
I also must thank you for writing this list since by looking at the list and writing this reply I've looked at music through a lens that I seldom look through
I can't even begin to assertively declare who I think is the greatest artist! There's so many incalculably great geniuses, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Rembrandt, Mozart, Michelangelo, Henry James!... what would we do without art!?
The fourth stands in marked contrast to the ninth; it expresses a completely different attitude, it's much more lively. What I like about it is that it never really settles into a singular tenor, Mahler's operation is so wonderfully diverse. Not at all like the ninth which is characterized by an incessant darkness which can be, I think--depending on one's mood--a little taxing. I'm just realizing that his fifth is still on my Favorite Music list (which, despite marginal efforts, is doing a poor job of representing my tastes; I need to build from the ground up); while I think it is a beautiful piece (the fourth movement!), I have a suspicion the third is a greater success in terms of all its units developing something more cohesive and magnificent, though I would need to spend more time with it to be certain... I've heard the eighth only once, if I recall correctly, and it struck me as something I must return to, although I sadly have yet to do so. I haven't heard the others.
Speaking of Beethoven, his String Quintet Op. 29 has been occupying a good amount of time this past week. Bellissimo!
Wow, that's a fascinating analysis. I agree with you re: Beethoven. I think there is virtually no question he is the greatest artist to have ever lived... his late works are so structurally modern, so emotionally revealing, insightful and intellectually stimulating... they are practically a completely new art form ... several of them must've seemed unapproachable in the 1800's...
Amazingly (to me), I haven't yet heard Mahler's 3rd or 4th (!!!). I want to hear all his symphonies as he seems to have the potential to be equal or maybe even surpass Beethoven in that respect. I'll be starting to go through them soon -- not necessarily all of them one after the other -- but one here, one there, soon... I've only heard his 5th (which is probably 8.8/10+) and, of course, his 9th (which may be the greatest work of art ever). How do you compare his 3rd and 4th to his 5th/9th? Anything alike?
It may not be too helpful, but I like JWN Sullivan's attempt at summarizing the late works of Beethoven:
"The chief characteristics of the fully mature Beethoven's attitude toward life are to be found in his realization of suffering and in his realization of the heroism of achievement. The character of life as suffering is an aspect that our modern civilization, mercifully for the great majority of people, does a great deal to obscure. Few men have the capacity fully to realize suffering as one of the great structural lines of living.
[...]
Beethoven does not communicate to us his perceptions or his experiences. He communicates to us the attitude based on them. We may share with him that unearthly state where the struggle ends and pain dissolves away, although we know but little of his struggle and have not experienced his pain. He lived in a universe richer than ours, in some ways better than ours and in some ways more terrible. And yet we recognize his universe and find his attitudes towards it prophetic of our own. It is indeed our own universe, but as experienced by a consciousness which is aware of aspects of which we have but dim and transitory glimpses."
Sullivan is obviously being a bit reductive, to listen to Op. 111--note by note--is to be exposed to something much more complex than a single attitude, but I think the above does a good job at accomplishing the heroic task of communicating what it is that makes Beethoven so great (although his remarks seem particularly applicable to the sonata's last, exultant movement). Beethoven's final works--the last symphony, the late sonatas and quartets, Missa Solemnis--are some of the greatest achievements of all time in my mind, it is incredible that after a productive life full of astonishing music--the concertos, the earlier symphonies, Fidelio, etc--he was still reaching new heights. I also listen to Kempff's performance.
AfterHours, what do you think of Mahler's Fourth? I'm becoming increasingly fond of it, the expressive variation--its constantly shifting tones--unceasingly entertain. Not to mention the astonishing conclusion to the Third!...
You guys make too much of Telepathic Surgery. Besides Drug Machine in Heaven and Chrome Plated Suicide, I can't see what makes it by far the best Flaming Lips album.
I agree with you -- not strange at all. The way that works best for me is to listen to many different great works (the more varied the better) while continuing to come back around to the ones that are more difficult/have more depth/require more listens. One's experience with the others will sooner or later lead to an understanding of the more difficult ones (especially if one had listened to its influences).
I think the single most important things to uncovering the total experience of a work is to, while listening to it, (1) REALLY being there, distraction-free (or at least mostly), and listening to it (can't listen to great music as "background" music). Only if one is already familiar with it should he listen to it as "background" but even then it's not necessarily recommended. (2) While listening, mentally noting the emotions/changes/climaxes/vocals/instrumentation/development -- whatever the qualities or characteristics on display, observing and defining what one is hearing is essential to fully grasping the work. The more one does this the better he becomes at it and really starts to assimilate the work(s) and gain a greater and greater understanding of them. Sooner or later one can approach what the artist him/herself was thinking/experiencing because one has, through observation and understanding, worked himself up to having done just that (even if vicariously).
Those are the main things I'd recommend to anybody. If I am struggling with a work I am usually forgetting to do the above, and once I get back to those basics I usually grasp it in very short order.
One strange thing I've come to discover is that spaced-out listening is a more reliable way to come to understand a complex work than repeated, back-to-back listening. If I listen to something over and over again consecutively, I get nowhere with it. However, if listen to it once and come back later to it, the music makes more sense to me. I guess that's the way the neural processing of music works. Strange, is it not?
Goodness! Based on what you said it sounds like it will end up being one of my favorite compositions once it eventually comes around to me. After all, many of my current favorites are the ones I struggled the hardest to understand (Ives's 4th, Gesang der Jünglinge,...). Thanks for shedding some light on that bewildering work for me. And thanks for the link. Now that I've given it another listening the forcefulness of the pounding of chords are starting to sound tragic rather than banal. Perhaps I should also move on to the 2nd movement. The 1st movement might make more sense if the sonata is listened to as whole.
I've liked it a lot for a long time but it's moving up really fast now, and currently, there's a very good chance that I'm underrating it. It's an extraordinary work, one of the most touching masterpieces in the solo repetoire. The 2nd movement is an elegant, utterly miraculous fugal stream-of-consiciousness, a series of trips down memory lane, eventually entering a state of dreams and magical sweetness, and perhaps even acceptance of the afterlife. The whole work is something of a precursor to Shostakovich's 15th. Beethoven is looking back on his life, facing his deafness, facing death, in elongated variations of themes and emotional waves running over him, weaving in and around eachother, coalescing, namely nostalgia, moments of gentleness and sorrow and touches of heaven and whimsy. The sheer scope of emotions it runs through and how evocative it is of Beethoven's interior mental imagery, is unprecedented and extraordinary. The 1st movement features those stuttering chords of defiance -- in your face, forceful yes, but also inept. Amidst the force, there's a simultaneous inertia and struggle to them; the energy is that of an old man, someone who's partially lost his will. This isn't the resolute, heroic, impervious strength of his 5th Symphony anymore.
I've been struggling with Beethoven's 32nd Piano Sonata. I haven't listened to the second movement yet because I want to figure out the first one first. But I just don't get it! The main theme just seems too blunt and forceful, too in-your-face. Beethoven is notorious for his defiant gestures, but this time he went too far! For me, it just sounds rather banal. But every critic (including Scaruffi) raves it as his greatest piano work. So now I've got this feeling that there's something deceptively ingenious about it and I just haven't figured it out yet. For that matter, I'll wait before I rate.
NOTE: Sister Ray, Ascension, 1st Movement of Mahler's 9th, and 4th Movement of Beethoven's 9th are all under very strong consideration for a 9.3+ rating... any one of them, along with Atlantis, could be the greatest track/movement of music ever... I am approximately 97.265% certain that no other tracks/movements currently listed could be 9.3+ ... NOTE #2: meticulously rating all these tracks in exact order ain't easy :)
how do you put buddy guy at 30 and just call him a blues guitarist and put jimmi hendrix at 1 when jimmi hendrix learn all his licks and stage presence from watching buddy guy learn your history wouldnt be a jimmi without buddy even eric clapton learn from buddy guy and calls him the best
Yes, it's great. At worst a "high" 7 (7.2), but probably should be on this list ... just haven't watched it in a few years and need to see it again to be sure
Only English, really.
I have probably a 6-year-old's reading comprehension level in German, though.
Getting a little better at recognizing the gist of (archaic) Italian from the amount of opera I listen to/memorize though.
Update #14 (15 April) - Puzzgal stays the frontrunner and now has a 10 film advantage on mightysparks. No changes in the top 10 this week.
Seven players have an average of more than 1 film/day. I'm one of them. I saw seven films and stayed 6th.
Oh, and also you should check out some of Kenna's stuff. It probably won't make the list but it's definitely worth a listen to.
Pink Floyd and Queen not being on the list is as if they are trying to make some sort of point. Did they not watch Live Aid? Queen totally, and unexpectedly, stole the show at the biggest rock concert of all time.
Don't think anyone else has mentioned it so this may not be a popular view, but I think The Bee Gees should be on there for their writing talent if nothing else.
* Delgo 2008
* King Dick (Adults Movie)
*** more Barbie movies:
Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper 2004
Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus (2005)
The Barbie Diaries (2006)
Barbie: Mermaidia (2006)......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie_(film_series)
* Alvin and the Chipmunks 2007 + Sequel
* Bambi 2
* Brother Bear 2
* Cars 2
* Charlie Brown - 4 movies only
(the rest is 25 min specials like the great pumpkin)
* ice age 3+4
* Kong Fu Panda 2
* Lilo and Stitch 2 + Leroy and Stitch
* The True Story of Puss n Boots
* (Shrek) Puss in Boots
I think that your list is very good yet still very inaccurate. I noticed all of the top 10 albums require a very high degree of abstract thought and a fine tuned musical ear in order to enjoy them. While this list is an oasis for those who long for deep and abstract music, I don't think think it describes the very best in electronic music.
A song that is good can only hold a certain amount of complexity in specific ways. If there is too much complexity in too many ways, the song feels scrambled or overwhelming. If the song lacks complexity, then anything it tries to express will be handicapped and toned down. The songs you consider to be the very best hold their complexity in their deepness, therefore the list is being prejudice against songs that are not as deep but still complex in different ways.
For example, Skrillex may get a bad rep from music critics as being overrated, but even so there aren't very many musicians who are able to express as much raw intensity as him. This intensity just happens to be what the mainstream audience is looking for in electronic music. Even Skrillex himself said in an interview that his music is "stand up and dance" music, not "sit down and listen" music. With this being said, a vast amount of people who are able to understand and feel the intensity of a Skrillex concert may not be able to enjoy music that is complex in ways that are deep and abstract. So how can we say that the very best in deep and abstract music (aka this list) is actually any better than Skrillex's music?
For this reason I believe that a "Top 100 electronic music" list is too broad to have any accuracy. A list that has the potential to be accurate might be titled "Top 100 electronic music: songs that inspire dance" or "Top 100 electronic music: songs that are simply beautiful" or "Top 100 Electronic music: songs that innovated" etc. etc.
I also must thank you for writing this list since by looking at the list and writing this reply I've looked at music through a lens that I seldom look through
I can't even begin to assertively declare who I think is the greatest artist! There's so many incalculably great geniuses, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Rembrandt, Mozart, Michelangelo, Henry James!... what would we do without art!?
The fourth stands in marked contrast to the ninth; it expresses a completely different attitude, it's much more lively. What I like about it is that it never really settles into a singular tenor, Mahler's operation is so wonderfully diverse. Not at all like the ninth which is characterized by an incessant darkness which can be, I think--depending on one's mood--a little taxing. I'm just realizing that his fifth is still on my Favorite Music list (which, despite marginal efforts, is doing a poor job of representing my tastes; I need to build from the ground up); while I think it is a beautiful piece (the fourth movement!), I have a suspicion the third is a greater success in terms of all its units developing something more cohesive and magnificent, though I would need to spend more time with it to be certain... I've heard the eighth only once, if I recall correctly, and it struck me as something I must return to, although I sadly have yet to do so. I haven't heard the others.
Speaking of Beethoven, his String Quintet Op. 29 has been occupying a good amount of time this past week. Bellissimo!
Wow, that's a fascinating analysis. I agree with you re: Beethoven. I think there is virtually no question he is the greatest artist to have ever lived... his late works are so structurally modern, so emotionally revealing, insightful and intellectually stimulating... they are practically a completely new art form ... several of them must've seemed unapproachable in the 1800's...
Amazingly (to me), I haven't yet heard Mahler's 3rd or 4th (!!!). I want to hear all his symphonies as he seems to have the potential to be equal or maybe even surpass Beethoven in that respect. I'll be starting to go through them soon -- not necessarily all of them one after the other -- but one here, one there, soon... I've only heard his 5th (which is probably 8.8/10+) and, of course, his 9th (which may be the greatest work of art ever). How do you compare his 3rd and 4th to his 5th/9th? Anything alike?
It may not be too helpful, but I like JWN Sullivan's attempt at summarizing the late works of Beethoven:
"The chief characteristics of the fully mature Beethoven's attitude toward life are to be found in his realization of suffering and in his realization of the heroism of achievement. The character of life as suffering is an aspect that our modern civilization, mercifully for the great majority of people, does a great deal to obscure. Few men have the capacity fully to realize suffering as one of the great structural lines of living.
[...]
Beethoven does not communicate to us his perceptions or his experiences. He communicates to us the attitude based on them. We may share with him that unearthly state where the struggle ends and pain dissolves away, although we know but little of his struggle and have not experienced his pain. He lived in a universe richer than ours, in some ways better than ours and in some ways more terrible. And yet we recognize his universe and find his attitudes towards it prophetic of our own. It is indeed our own universe, but as experienced by a consciousness which is aware of aspects of which we have but dim and transitory glimpses."
Sullivan is obviously being a bit reductive, to listen to Op. 111--note by note--is to be exposed to something much more complex than a single attitude, but I think the above does a good job at accomplishing the heroic task of communicating what it is that makes Beethoven so great (although his remarks seem particularly applicable to the sonata's last, exultant movement). Beethoven's final works--the last symphony, the late sonatas and quartets, Missa Solemnis--are some of the greatest achievements of all time in my mind, it is incredible that after a productive life full of astonishing music--the concertos, the earlier symphonies, Fidelio, etc--he was still reaching new heights. I also listen to Kempff's performance.
AfterHours, what do you think of Mahler's Fourth? I'm becoming increasingly fond of it, the expressive variation--its constantly shifting tones--unceasingly entertain. Not to mention the astonishing conclusion to the Third!...
You guys make too much of Telepathic Surgery. Besides Drug Machine in Heaven and Chrome Plated Suicide, I can't see what makes it by far the best Flaming Lips album.
Thank you
I agree with you -- not strange at all. The way that works best for me is to listen to many different great works (the more varied the better) while continuing to come back around to the ones that are more difficult/have more depth/require more listens. One's experience with the others will sooner or later lead to an understanding of the more difficult ones (especially if one had listened to its influences).
I think the single most important things to uncovering the total experience of a work is to, while listening to it, (1) REALLY being there, distraction-free (or at least mostly), and listening to it (can't listen to great music as "background" music). Only if one is already familiar with it should he listen to it as "background" but even then it's not necessarily recommended. (2) While listening, mentally noting the emotions/changes/climaxes/vocals/instrumentation/development -- whatever the qualities or characteristics on display, observing and defining what one is hearing is essential to fully grasping the work. The more one does this the better he becomes at it and really starts to assimilate the work(s) and gain a greater and greater understanding of them. Sooner or later one can approach what the artist him/herself was thinking/experiencing because one has, through observation and understanding, worked himself up to having done just that (even if vicariously).
Those are the main things I'd recommend to anybody. If I am struggling with a work I am usually forgetting to do the above, and once I get back to those basics I usually grasp it in very short order.
Thanks, no problem :) I definitely recommend listening to it all as a whole work.
One strange thing I've come to discover is that spaced-out listening is a more reliable way to come to understand a complex work than repeated, back-to-back listening. If I listen to something over and over again consecutively, I get nowhere with it. However, if listen to it once and come back later to it, the music makes more sense to me. I guess that's the way the neural processing of music works. Strange, is it not?
Goodness! Based on what you said it sounds like it will end up being one of my favorite compositions once it eventually comes around to me. After all, many of my current favorites are the ones I struggled the hardest to understand (Ives's 4th, Gesang der Jünglinge,...). Thanks for shedding some light on that bewildering work for me. And thanks for the link. Now that I've given it another listening the forcefulness of the pounding of chords are starting to sound tragic rather than banal. Perhaps I should also move on to the 2nd movement. The 1st movement might make more sense if the sonata is listened to as whole.
I've liked it a lot for a long time but it's moving up really fast now, and currently, there's a very good chance that I'm underrating it. It's an extraordinary work, one of the most touching masterpieces in the solo repetoire. The 2nd movement is an elegant, utterly miraculous fugal stream-of-consiciousness, a series of trips down memory lane, eventually entering a state of dreams and magical sweetness, and perhaps even acceptance of the afterlife. The whole work is something of a precursor to Shostakovich's 15th. Beethoven is looking back on his life, facing his deafness, facing death, in elongated variations of themes and emotional waves running over him, weaving in and around eachother, coalescing, namely nostalgia, moments of gentleness and sorrow and touches of heaven and whimsy. The sheer scope of emotions it runs through and how evocative it is of Beethoven's interior mental imagery, is unprecedented and extraordinary. The 1st movement features those stuttering chords of defiance -- in your face, forceful yes, but also inept. Amidst the force, there's a simultaneous inertia and struggle to them; the energy is that of an old man, someone who's partially lost his will. This isn't the resolute, heroic, impervious strength of his 5th Symphony anymore.
Kempff's is the best performance I know of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8Z7KdfdYZc
I've been struggling with Beethoven's 32nd Piano Sonata. I haven't listened to the second movement yet because I want to figure out the first one first. But I just don't get it! The main theme just seems too blunt and forceful, too in-your-face. Beethoven is notorious for his defiant gestures, but this time he went too far! For me, it just sounds rather banal. But every critic (including Scaruffi) raves it as his greatest piano work. So now I've got this feeling that there's something deceptively ingenious about it and I just haven't figured it out yet. For that matter, I'll wait before I rate.
Maybe I'll win the antipathy of many, but the truth is: many of Beatles's albums are overrated.
NOTE: Sister Ray, Ascension, 1st Movement of Mahler's 9th, and 4th Movement of Beethoven's 9th are all under very strong consideration for a 9.3+ rating... any one of them, along with Atlantis, could be the greatest track/movement of music ever... I am approximately 97.265% certain that no other tracks/movements currently listed could be 9.3+ ... NOTE #2: meticulously rating all these tracks in exact order ain't easy :)
how do you put buddy guy at 30 and just call him a blues guitarist and put jimmi hendrix at 1 when jimmi hendrix learn all his licks and stage presence from watching buddy guy learn your history wouldnt be a jimmi without buddy even eric clapton learn from buddy guy and calls him the best
You missed Snow white Happily Ever After love this one BTW not a disney movie more of a spoof i guess you could say
Many songs were left out from this list :(
Another thing, why isnt Dion on this list?
Yes, it's great. At worst a "high" 7 (7.2), but probably should be on this list ... just haven't watched it in a few years and need to see it again to be sure
Have you watched Alien?