Weekend Reads (August 17): ’90s Ambient, the Death of ”Indie,” the 2028 Olympics, Omaha Nostalgia
Recommended weekend reading for August 17, 2024.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
Adam Douglas has compiled a list of essential ambient albums from the ’90s, including The Orb, Global Communication, and of course, Aphex Twin.
The cliche goes that if you can remember Woodstock, you weren’t there. In the same way, if you can remember the early ’90s, then you weren’t a regular fixture of the chill-out room of a massive warehouse rave. In much the same way that psychedelic rock pointed out the doors of perception for kids looking to expand their minds, rave — and its ever-attendant cool-down partner, ambient — offered Gen X a much-needed societal escape hatch.
Combining elements old and new — the Quaalude party synthesizer vibes of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis, loosey-goosey mind rock from Gong, proto-New Age pioneers like Steve Halpern and Iasos, and high-pass filtered rhythms from peak-time rave records — ambient provided the perfect comedown soundtrack. It was also an expansive genre in and of itself, with a large following of dedicated home-bound fans who just liked the music.
Related: Warp Records is releasing an expanded version of Aphex Twin’s landmark Selected Ambient Works Volume II on October 4, 2024.
Lars Gotrich highlights eight artists who revisisted “old bands, former sounds and beloved songs,” including Starflyer 59, Smashing Pumpkins, and LL Cool J.
On this Herbie Hancock-sampled beat by Q-Tip, LL Cool J sounds just as hungry now as when he made his debut at 16. LL shouts out his contemporaries — not to mention (lovingly) challenges André 3000 to get back in the rap game — and his accomplishments (“For references, check Smithsonian” is a sophisticated flex). But most of all, you can hear the smile in his swagger. When an artist revisits their younger self, the person staring back at them can intimidate or inspire; LL sees that kid in the Kangol hat and wants to show him the world he’s made.
Sean O’Neal argues that 2004 was the year that the term “indie” — once used to describe edgy, unconventional music that existed outside the walls of the mainstream — lost all meaning.
Perhaps what was most notable about indie’s sudden ascent to the mainstream was the change in those artists’ attitudes. For much of the lifespan of alternative music, there had been no greater crime than the appearance of “selling out.” Most of those first-generation alt-rock bands would have revolted over their songs being used in commercials, while the very idea of appearing on a show like The O.C. would have been seen as cred-destroying and deeply uncool. On the rare occasion that someone dared to cross over, they tended to laugh it off as a subversive piss-take, like that time The Flaming Lips “rocked the house” on Beverly Hills 90210.
But by 2004, no one really cared about that stuff anymore. When The Killers released “Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll” as the bonus track to 2004’s Hot Fuss — with singer Brandon Flowers sneering at rote hipster signifiers like thrift stores and coffee shops — the band seemed to draw a line in the ideological sand. “There’s so much snobbery,” Flowers later recalled. “It’s bullshit. I just didn’t want to be like that. We like big songs and we’re going to embrace it.” This new wave of indie bands made no apologies for its ambitions, and felt zero shame about “selling out.”
Writing for Reactor, Robert Repino sings the praises of movies “that are not very good, but are still very cool.”
There are some movies that I cannot exactly describe as good, but which arguably overcome that by being cool. This is not the same category as “so bad it’s good,” as I would not necessarily watch such a film to laugh at it. Nor are these movies in the category of “the critics were dead wrong, and here’s why!” These are, instead, movies that have obvious flaws that may have ruined their chances with audiences and critics at the time of their release. But, with the passage of time, we recognize and appreciate their coolness.
Breakdancing had its Olympics debut in Paris, but it won’t be returning for the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Taking its place will be some old and new sports, including baseball, flag football, and squash.
Gymnastics, as other mainstream international events — think athletics, aquatics, basketball, volleyball, wrestling, cycling and fencing — will of course be part of the 2028 Olympics.
Flag football and squash have been approved as first-time additions in Los Angeles, while baseball, softball, lacrosse, and cricket will be added after various lengths of absence. Lacrosse has not been an Olympic sport since 1908. Cricket was contested once, in Paris in 1900.
Companies are spending billions on AI, but there’s just one problem: consumers don’t like it.
This issue was on full display at the Olympics, where Google face-planted with an ad for its Gemini AI tool. The “Dear Sydney” ad, which showed a dad using AI to help his daughter write a letter to her athlete idol, sparked widespread backlash, leading Google to pull the spot. In a statement, Google said it was trying to show AI’s ability to enhance human creativity rather than replace it, but critics derided it as tone-deaf.
“There seems to be this fundamental misunderstanding of what we should be using AI for,” said Iain Thomas, who cowrote a book on AI, What Makes Us Human?, and is a founder of Sounds Fun, an agency that helps marketers harness AI. “We shouldn’t be using it to write poetry or books, but take care of the grunt work so we can expand our creativity in different ways.”
Related: The FTC is cracking down on AI-generated fake reviews. “By strengthening the FTC’s toolkit to fight deceptive advertising, the final rule will protect Americans from getting cheated, put businesses that unlawfully game the system on notice, and promote markets that are fair, honest, and competitive” Violators could be charged up to $51,744 per violation.
Also related: Casey Newton reports on California’s controversial new AI bill. “Tech companies would love to see a kind of Section 230 for AI, making them immune to prosecution for what their users do with their AI tools. But California’s bill takes the opposite approach, putting the onus on tech companies to assure the government that their products won’t be used to create harm.”
Also also related: X/Twitter recently rolled out a new version of their AI tool Grok, and users are already pointing out its flaws, like generating violent and even illegal imagery. “Intelligence Analyst Christian Montessori says he was able to generate imagery of Musk carrying out mass shootings and also found that you can trick Grok into generating violent images by telling the chatbot that you’re conducting ‘medical or crime scene analysis.’”
There are life goals, and then there are life goals: Ibrahim Al-Nasser set the world record for connecting 444 game consoles hooked to a single TV.
Al-Nasser’s collection seems quite extensive, including both common modern consoles and relative rarities like the Asia-exclusive Super A’Can. To get to a record-setting count of 444, though, Al-Nasser had to include a lot of non-traditional “game consoles,” including cheap plug-and-play devices, mini-console re-releases, gaming computers, Android-based HDMI sticks, “consolized arcades,” and more.
Finally, I recently came across a site called Omaha Exploration that delves into the history of my hometown, including the origins of Skateland, a local rollerskating rink that was the place to be if you were a kid in the mid-to-late ’80s. I attended numerous skate parties there, either for birthdays or for school events, and probably begged my parents to take me there on countless occasions. Between the rollerskating, the loud music, and the video games, Skateland was the coolest.
From the Blog
The aforementioned Starflyer 59 released their seventeenth(!) album this week, and it’s one of their best in recent memory.
But what makes Lust for Gold doubly affecting — and doubly enjoyable for those of us who’ve been riding with Starflyer 59 since day one (on a sidenote, Silver turned 30 earlier this year) — is how Martin incorporates classic Starflyer 59 sounds into these eight songs. The syrupy thick distortion and note bends on “909” recall Gold while “My Lung”’s crunchy guitars and eerie feedback hearken back to Silver’s “The Dungeon.” Meanwhile, collaborators like Frank Lenz and Fine China’s Rob Withem flesh out the album with cinematic string arrangements, mournful synths, and weepy slide guitar.
Read my full review as well as a list of 15 of my favorite Starflyer 59 songs.
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