RAPTURE IS THE TRUE RUPTURE


Simon Reynolds

If you had tracked you music listening in 2008, what bands would we see in your top 10?

(...) If it was by band, Vampire Weekend would win by a long distance. But they are a band whose music has an intense playability to it, you can just listen to it over and over, day after day. There are other groups who are very impressive and have a powerful effect on you but are harder to integrate into everyday life. I really liked the Portishead album and admired it tremendously but it’s a little too heavy and intense for that kind of heavy rotation listening. You have to be in a certain mood. (...) There’s a cluster of energy in Brooklyn, kind of “ecstatic/experimental” is my shorthand for it — Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, High Places — groups that are all quite distinctive but have certain things in common, a ritualistic, tribal, often percussive aspect; an interest in combining folksiness or ethnic-ness with technology and modern dance rhythms...


Animal Collective - "My Girls"

I really enjoyed the Gang Gang Dance and High Places records from last year, and the new AC is lovely. But Gang Gang Dance are on their sixth album or something and AC have been going since about 2001 if not before and are on their, what, ninth? So it’s not exactly “new”. (...) “New” is not such a stringent or strident concern of mine these days. I don’t know if anyone really knows what “new” would look like these days. I will settle for rapture! Bliss and delight. Accordingly my favorite record from last year was Vampire Weekend. Although I actually think their sound is “new”, it just doesn’t correspond to any of our existing stereotypes of “new”, it’s not extreme. But extreme is old hat and predictable and meaningless, really. “Extreme” only signifies if something has an intense aesthetic or emotional effect you. And often the softest, gentlest, most euphonious music can do that. Nothing could be more extreme than being brought to tears or made to feel like you’re about to swoon, and most “extreme” music fails in that area. Rapture is the true rupture. (Simon Reynolds ao The Dumbing Of America)

(2009)