Something heavier...?

You obviously have never heard Peter Brotzman Die like a dog Quartet or Albert Ayler live at Greenwich Village.I bet some of ou r head banging classical fans can come up with some feisty fugues.

I always liked a bit of Motorhead,Killdozer,Napalm Death, Extreme Noise Terror myself though.

Killed by Death is a rock classic.

Johnc

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Originally posted by GaryW:
Flicking through this forum it appears that most Naim owners are into the classical,jazz and easy listening side of things.

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And that despite a couple of Crimson threads in the recent past?

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Whilst I listen to odd bit of classical, I predominantly listen to Thrash/Death Metal, Punk, etc. Is anyone else out there into this sort of thing or does the cost of Naim equipment tend to preclude people with these tastes (don't flame me, I am a Naim owner!!! )?

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Not averse to some punk though speed metal never really did it for me. It's fast and loud, but stuff like Crim is much heavier to my ears, with much darker music and much more going on, though you've got the speed and volume too. Larks Tongues in Aspic IV just comes across as farr, far heavier than anything I've ever heard of speed metal or thrash, and the standard of musicianship is higher too AFAICT.

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On another related note, anyone else feel that a well produced, technically excellent thrash/speed metal album would would highlight a whole different set of pro's and con's in a system than a solo guitarist, female vocalist, etc?

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I don't see it would do anything that something like THRAK, or indeed some Wagnerian opera, can't do as well or better already. The classical genre has some incredibly heavy stuff in it and is by no means all "easy on the ear". There's some real kitchen sink and all stuff in the full orchestral repertoire.

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I ask this because at the Bristol show, the majority of music being used for demo's was very easy on the ear. Lot's of Naim label type stuff, classical, bit of jazz. There didn't seem to be any variety. Whilst I could appreciate that the sound itself was often fantastic, there wasn't any attempt to show that the system's capabilities extended into other realms.

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It might frighten people away, and if you play a full active DBL system on something noisy you'll almost certainly attract complaints in the context of a show. They seem to be in hotel rooms which just aren't built to contain that level of noise.

"Naim label type stuff", "easy on the ear". Sound like you need to check out Earwax Control 2 Live or SFX.
Quartet For the End of Time from Concerts Under the Dome 2 might not be fast and it might not be loud, but it's genuinely heavy stuff. In a similar vein (heavy but slow and quiet!) check out Fripp's Soundscapes series, or Threnody for Souls in Torment from the Bridge Between RFSQ CD.

Pete.

Maybe he understands now why I need a pay rise

i posted a thread a little while back about the lack of people on the forum esposing "heavy" music.

i listen to a very wide range of music from thomas tallis, tori amos to tool and find that my naim system deals very well with all of them.

a good hifi system shouldn't preclude any style of music. it should be equally at home with all styles. i find that the rythmic qualities of a naim set-up deal very well with the guitar riffs and driving drum patterns of "heavy" music.

i must say that i'm not all that into thrash / death metal, but amongst my collection i have tool, soundgarden, pearl jam, slipknot, pantera, sevendust, korn, rage against the machine, limp bizkit, lost prophets, incubus, deftones, metallica and many more. all of them sound great on my set-up, which is not at all bothered when i switch from a slipknot album to the tallis scholars.

i went to the bristol show, and agree that much of the music playing was more easy on the ear. as pete said though, the majority of people would be rather nervous about entering a room with death metal being pumped out at high volumes.

i was in the forum demo on the sunday afternoon, and paul was kind enough to put my tool cd (lateralus) on the "big" system, and i thought that it sounded fantastic. i use the album as a test disk because it does have so many complicated things going on. tool are a very inventive band, well removed from the "head-down-riff-in-4/4" brigade, using complicated time signatures, tempo changes and the like, and the album highlights a systems ability to deal with the important stuff, namely rythmn, pace, timing, and the "boogie" factor. i had a smile on my face and was certainly tapping my foot during the demo on the cds2, 552, 500, sl2's, so surely that's the goal that the system is trying to achieve?

as far as your next upgrade goes, if you have a reputable dealer, then you should just book an appointment, grab a load of cd's and listen to whatevr you want. if you like the sound the system makes, then you're sorted.

cheers

matt

This claim that there is nothing new and good is so outrageously false that I can only infer that the people who make it are utterly ignorant of what's available; otherwise they would realize how embarassing these claims are and not make them. I hasten to add that I'm someone who grew up on -- and loves -- the great loud British and New York acts of the late-60s. But come on, the fact that there were a few grim years (1974-7, 1983-7, e.g.) doesn't mean it's all been bad and stayed bad.

Maybe a good question would be; where are people finding good stuff? Here are two of my sources:

i. www.insound.com. I've found their recommended lists to be pretty reliably good so far (click on "lists" on their menu). These get updated regularly -- I've had probably a 60-70% keeper rate buying from these lists, which is quite high for me.

ii. living in Austin, TX (until recently )

In the spirit of things I've confined myself to albums that I think have appeared in the last 6 months or so. I've stuck to rock acts with a punk edge. Two are brand-new bands, the third an oldie-but-goodie:

i. Detachment Kit: They Raging/Quiet Army.

ii. Panthers: Are You Down. (Don't confuse these guys with THE Panthers.)

iii. Fugazi: The Argument.

If your record stores are like mine, you'll have to find these online (allmusic.com, insound.com, etc.).

Notice I avoided the "old fart" moniker in my above post, being perilously close myself .

Let me know...
Eri

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There is nothing heavier (or more demanding of a hi-fi) than Bruckner

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I beg to differ:

Mahler's 8th is more demanding than any Bruckner.

Explosions in the Sky: Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever, is more demanding than Mahler 8.

Dies Irae from Verdi's Requiem

I rest my case!

If you are still not convinced check out:

Mahler, eg 10th Symphony
Large (bleeding) chunks of Richard Strauss
Stravinsky 'Rite of Spring'
Shostakovich, eg 4th Symphony
Messiaen, eg Turangalila Symphony
Harrison Birtwhistle eg Earth Dances

Lets face it, given a 120 strong late-romantic orchestra, it's sometimes hard to resist letting rip...

My best heavy classics experiences have been the (UK)national youth orchestra concerts at the Proms. Anyone for 13 double basses in repertoire similar to above?

And my first post actually got some replies! Yippee!!!!

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Flicking through this forum it appears that most Naim owners are into the classical,jazz and easy listening side of things.

Whilst I listen to odd bit of classical, I predominantly listen to Thrash/Death Metal, Punk, etc. Is anyone else out there into this sort of thing or does the cost of Naim equipment tend to preclude people with these tastes

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I have a sizable amount of pretty noisy stuff lurking within my record collection – Stooges, Sonic Youth, Big Black, Fugazi, Pixies, Husker Du, Killdozer, Minutemen etc, plus some punk eg. Pistols, Ramones, Wire etc. I even have a couple of Napalm Death albums, so I am more than familiar with the concept of a bloody good racket. I do however have a problem with the current wave of metal / thrash stuff, its just too muso and “clever” for me, its all too tight, rigid and athletic. These guys need to take far more drugs and drink way more beer.

As an example I bought the recent Tool album Lateralus, and whilst I certainly admit there is something very good about it in places, there is also an unbelievably anal quality to it. Every bass note or drum beat seems to have been carefully aligned with a set square on a drawing board, nothing sounds left to chance, nothing sounds “real”. It is polished beyond belief. It is this that I find hard to deal with. Rock music should IMHO be raw and chaotic, it should be on the verge of collapse.

I also invested in the Linkin Park album, and again that has something good about it, but also something that sucks big time – once again there is a degree of music student polish that makes it sound tame and contrived. There are so many of these bands about at the moment – Alien Ant Farm, Puddle of Mud, System of a Down etc. They all blur together for me to the point I forget which one I am viewing on MTV2 or whatever. The common denominator is incredibly good musicianship which leads to ultra tight and ultimately bland songs with any rawness or edge totally played out. There is a manufactured quality to this stuff too - a designer rebelliousness, nu-metal boy bands made by the major labels to get sales from the kids who don’t buy Robbie or Kylie. The majors own the boy bands and the alternative.

A friend of mine describes all this new metal stuff as jock-rock – i.e. the music of the high school bores who were good at sports / being an arsehole, whose idea of a good time is setting a new high school bench press record. This is not the typical demographic of rock ‘n’ roll! Rock music should be played by losers who need to take loads of drugs and drop out of school to get chicks.

I guess the other side of the coin at the moment are White Stripes, Strokes, Hives etc, all of which are beautifully raw and have exactly the edge I miss in the new metal stuff. I have a couple of White Stripes albums, and whilst they are obviously breaking absolutely no new boundaries they are fun. Each song is teetering on imploding under its own weight, and the band sound like they learnt to play their instruments last week (probably towards the end of the week too). This is exactly how rock music should be played.

Tony.

>> A friend of mine describes all this new metal stuff as jock-rock <<

Surely Jock Rock is more your Blink 182, Alient Ant Farm, etc. (Which, as my 11 yerar old nephew Josh will tell you, is for kids and you should really be listening to NOFX's "Punk in Drublic" or even better the first Adolecents album).

Matthew

Try some Metallica on your Naim system, it'll put a smile on your face

As for nu-metal, yep, most of it is horrendously dull. All sense of fun has been replaced with perfect production.
Some thrash stuff does require good production or it can turn turn into a noise (even on a good system), but if they don't keep the intensity and feeling, then what's the point?
That's what put me off a lot of the music coming out in the early 90's. It was all too clean.

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Originally posted by GaryW:
Following the earlier posts about King Crimson, I went shopping...
Got "In the Court...". Had a few listens and still not sure, but I'll give it a few more.

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21CSM is a monster, but a lot of the rest has aged fairly badly if you see it from outside of its context of late 60s prog laying the way for some of the excesses of the 70s. You can avoid that sort of feeling if you look at the later incarnations of the band (Fripp is the only constant over the 33 year lifespan). Personally I'd start at Discipline, though mileage varies and others would start you at different lineups. But I don't think Discipline shows its age (released 1981) much at all, where the debut album certainly does (but the guitar/sax solos in 21CSM and the drum part in the bridge... Wow!).

Pete.

Maybe the lads at Quad appreciate that kind of thing...

Andrew

Andrew Randle
Currently in the "Linn Binn"

One evening they showed a music compilation and titled it 'Yes we have no Nirvana'. One of the bands that they'd recorded in the studio was 'Rage against the machine' doing (IIRC) 'Bullet in the Head'. So I went out and bought the album...

Paul

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friend of mine describes all this new metal stuff as jock-rock – i.e. the music of
the high school bores who were good at sports / being an arsehole, whose idea of
a good time is setting a new high school bench press record. This is not the typical
demographic of rock ‘n’ roll! Rock music should be played by losers who need to
take loads of drugs and drop out of school to get chicks.

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Tony,
I agree; certainly most of the stuff on the radio is dreadfully overproduced and contrived. But there have been plenty of bands in recent years with a sense of humor and a real edge. Rarely do these receive airplay, often because the stuff is deemed too offensive. Some example bands and albums of the last decade have been:

-The Butthole Surfers (especially "Hairway to Steven", "Locust Abortion Technician" and "Electriclarryland")
-The Flaming Lips (especially "Transmissions from the Satellite Heart" and the recent "The Soft Bulletin")
-Ed Hall ("Gloryhole")
-The Boredoms (a very noisy band, but "Pop Tatari" is interesting and funny).
-The Jesus Lizard ("Liar")

Most of the bands stem from the American "Bible Belt" south (Oklahoma, Texas, etc.), which is unsurprising.

In a lot of ways, these bands are 90s versions of The Soft Boys (I'm thinking of "Underwater Moonlight" especially, which was a subversive album in many ways) and The Damned (first two albums). In other words intelligent, funny, edgy music without being too punk or arty-farty. Bands like Sonic Youth and The Fall are influences as well

If you want my opinion of really heavy(as in War Pigs heavy), the only thing heavier is the Young Gods. Their song Skinflowers off of the T.V. Sky album is HEAVY!! (BTW, any of you Europeans see them on their latest tour?)

Regarding Metalurgica; IMO, they always sucked, but when they recorded a Bob Seger song, they became a parody of their own selves. Sad. I feel sorry for you youngsters who grew up on them. Listen to The Slider by T-Rex, or Fireball and In Rock by Deep Purple, or Ace Of Spades and Overkill by Motorhead, or any of the first 7 Black Sabbath records,.......then throw that crap-rock away.

In Rock, on 10, on a Naim hi-fi; Now that'll put a smile on your face!

Ron The Mon