Instagram: GoldfrappCollection

Stranger · Post edited by Stranger at 2013-09-16 23:18:18

I keep coming back to her vocals on Laurel. It's so dark, and haunting but so refreshing to hear her perform like that. It's very dramatic. I love that vocal delivery so much. I can't wait to hear it live. I can't believe they didn't sell out Paradiso (Amsterdam) so people: there are still tickets left and the venue is a CHURCH which is perfect for the new music (they've done Paradiso before and nailed each performance).

The two songs I least connect to are Ulla and Alvar. But the album is a journey, one big narrative for me, and Ulla and Alvar are where they need to be. But songs like Clay, Simone, Stranger, Annabel are my favorites. Thea as well but she is the odd one out, which I love. Especially the marching-like sounds at the end. Clay moved me from day one, and it does not fade. It's so authentic and real and wonderfully translated into a song by Will & Al that it just aimes straight for the heart with me. Very emotional work.

On a sad note I have tickets but I might not make it. I had an accident a while ago which permanently damaged my spine and some times are good and some times, like lately, are so bad I need to take heavy duty morphine pain killers that make me fall asleep and would not make me enjoy a crowd nor a concert. So I'm praying for improvement but it's anybody's guess at this point. Bone is pressing against the nerve root. OUCHx2

Stranger

On a complete sidenote: monster love is cute! :x

Stranger

ping said:
If i were Ali and Will i'd be doing what i want now not what the public wants.

This. Artistic integrity is rare. You can't make records for the sake of pleasing people. You NEED to take risks and comunicate what you need to as an artist. I think, with the exception of Head First which was chart oriented and rushed, Goldfrapp have always maintained their artistic integrity. That means a lot to me as a listener. I'd rather hear them produce a record and go: "what?!" than fullfill my expectations and not (re)invent themselves or be authentic in their artistic expression.

error60091

Have you tried chiropractic, stranger? I think it might help.. i have scoliosis of which my doc was able to correct, so i have faith that it can help you, too..

error60091

Stranger said:

ping said:
If i were Ali and Will i'd be doing what i want now not what the public wants.

This. Artistic integrity is rare. You can't make records for the sake of pleasing people. You NEED to take risks and comunicate what you need to as an artist. I think, with the exception of Head First which was chart oriented and rushed, Goldfrapp have always maintained their artistic integrity. That means a lot to me as a listener. I'd rather hear them produce a record and go: "what?!" than fullfill my expectations and not (re)invent themselves or be authentic in their artistic expression.

Yes. Integrity is surely present here which i think is a reason why many are (quiickly, easily) connecting with this album.. im really happy that A&W are proud of tou, and i amhappy for them.. it all feels natural..

MonsterLove

Stranger said:
On a complete sidenote: monster love is cute! :x

Ahaha, I was just going to comment to say how sorry I am that you can't make the concert! I was always told never to take compliments from 'Strangers'...

Not to worry, you wouldn't enjoy it if you were in pain - hopefully be coming back to tour properly at a later date. I went to both Manchester shows and even though I loved it; standing for 2 hours got a bit uncomfortable, along with the heat in the room. Add painkillers to the mix and you'll be asleep!

Fenlander62

I'll keep mine simple and short:

It'll be lovely to listen to in the bath...........

la_catalina · Post edited by la_catalina at 2013-09-17 11:14:56

Regarding artistic integrity:

People make art for numerous reasons: that they have done so for tens of thousands of years and that art is included in the most fundamental of human activies, gives us some indication of the value art has for human beings.

Art and culture are usually the things a society is remembered for: There is great art, and then there is everything else... stuff that is not earth shattering but just ok. Paeleolithic cave art and Banksy for example, who's to say?

Somehow and somewhere along the line, the notion of artistic integrity creeps into arts assessment and perception. After giving the matter some thought I have come to the conclusion that it needn't necessarily have much to do with aesthetic quality, it's more correct to say that Integrity is bundled up with the artists motivation to make the work in the first place.

And that motivation has to fullfil certain criteria for a work to have integrity.

And we should be aware that the idea of the artist as an individual is a recent historical idea that goes back maybe 500 years and the notion of the artist as a celebrity is even younger say 100 years tops ...

so artistic integrity is a recent idea.

Why would one work be considered as having more integrity than another? What differentiates Van Goghs Wheatfield with Crows from Damien Hirsts Shark in Box? Both are celebrity artists, and both artists work sells for stupid money. Yet why is the Van Gogh the work with the integrity?

I would stick my neck out and say it's to do with money. Poor old Vincent painted because he believed in what he did, he had to do it regardless of the fact that in his lifetime he sold 3 paintings, and was bailed out by his brother when it came to staying alive. The poor bugger had an aweful time materially but made some of the most valued paintings the world has. I would say he believed in what he did, no matter what. Vincent was not about to give the world a nice painting for the Salon wall, that everyone would ooh and aah over just, so he could nip off down the Alimentation with his newly got readies to buy a bottle of absinthe.

Hirst, on the other hand, primed by his tutor Michael Craig-Martin, who saw how the times were a changing in the Thatcherite Yuppie 80's signed up with Saachi, an ad man who by his own admission actually knows stuff all about art, and who threw loadsa money at his newly accquired protege(s). Hirst wanted and knew he was up to make a lot of cash ... I know this because I used to know his girlfriend and she told me in 1991 that he'd told her " I've made a lot of money, and I'm going to make a lot more"

I think Damien was more motivated to make money than to make good, honest art.

... it's a gut reaction type thing. I couldn't say concisely why Hirsts oeuvre is crap, 'one liners' we'd call his type of work at Art School... and yet I can also tell you that the unknown person who drew in a cave 25,000 years ago was the real thing ... it's just ultimately something you know, it's an instinct. Art historians could give you a better set of well argued valid , just why reasons, but I'm just an artist and it's beyond me say rationally why one is good the other shit. You just have to take it from me that I know what I'm rabbitting on about

BUT:

Basically if you sellout you kiss your integrity goodbye!

If money is in there, in the mix of impulses that might motivate an artist, like the serpent in the garden, it corrupts .... it doesn't matter if the art is still aesthetically valid if the motivation is tainted even the slightest bit by profit, and therefore by default public acceptance and approval ... invariably the work will suffer, because compromise creeps in .

Did Goldfrapp sell out with Head First?

Should they have let record company pressures dictate their creative decision?

Did they comproise?

Did they have any freedom of choice in the matter?

Why is Tales a work of integrity in a way Head First clearly is not?

Now these are personal answers, and if they offend anyone I'm sorry, but I'm just out to clarify for myself, why I feel the way I do about the band and their career.

I think they probably did sell out, and I think they should have told the record company to go take a hike, because I think once you compromise once, it's a hell of a road back.

I also think Tales is a concerted attempt to regain some sort of control - though the idea of deluxe box sets at 70 odd quid... well I wince at that a bit.

On the otherhand you have to balance pragmatic choices, Goldfrapp are a commercial concern, they do actually sell records and have a presence in the cultural world, it beats me why, like so many other artists they haven't got their own label?

Why not? Then they'd have artistic freedom?

In the end you have to balance the need to get the work out there, and keeping true to your vision. Some sort of compromise huh? Tough to choose huh?

Would you compromise on what is precious to you if it meant selling either 20,000 copies and just about paying the mortgage? Or do you give the public what it wants and have that new loft in NY and the flash car?

I know what I'd do but...

Who knows?

You can sell your soul to the Devil in so many ways

whisperit · Post edited by whisperit at 2013-09-17 11:44:10

Interesting post, lala, but the "sell out" question is a bit of an academic argument. I'd tend to agree that if you make art in order to get rich, it's likely that you're going to end up with cynical, market-oriented crap. Like Hirst.

And sure, it seems like.HF was produced to meet contractual obligations as much as from purely artistic motives.

But Van Gogh isnt such an exception. He also tried to sell his stuff - he just wasn't very good at the whole marketing thing. Plus, he was insane. The reality is that most of the great art of the past few centuries was made both to fulfill an artist's vision AND to make a living.. Beethoven's late quartets? Written to a commission by the Prince Nicholas Galitzen at 50 ducats a time. Chopin's Preludes? Written to a commission by Pleyel for 2,000 francs for the lot (is that why they're all so short? Who cares? They are still fantastic pieces).

If you're lucky, a commission and inspiration strike together, and your sponsor is sensitive enough to give you the space to do what you feel you driven to do. If not, you produce something a bit rubbishy, like HF. But that doesn't mean you've "sold out" in any definitive or irreversible way. There's always tomorrow.

To my mind, the evidence is that TOU is GF getting back to producing work that satisfies them. If it doesn't work for you, then that's a shame, but it's not because they've "sold out".

la_catalina · Post edited by Halloween_Jack at 2013-09-17 16:29:50

ha ha oh bugger I lost what i just wrote ....

it was just crap ha ha ha

[Edit by HJ: is this what you posted/lost? It was notify-by-emailed to me before you killed it!]

All artists have to keep the wolf from the door. I'm not saying Goldfrapp made a considered decision to sell out. I'm sure they didn't, but somewhere along the line a lot of people, reviewers, fans, have raised the point that they have some how lost their artistic integrity.
Now I'm still struggling with just what artistic integrity is, where it might be located, and the mechanics of it's operation.
A lot of classic pop music has been made with the intention to make cash, and yet those records retain the status of classic or masterpiece thus endowing their creators with the status of having artistic integrity, so it's not about the money...
I don't think Goldfrapp have sold out but I do think they lost some of their integrity along the line. I'm just trying to analyse how, where and why.

whisperit

^ you're doing that invisible writing again, aren't you, you rascal?

la_catalina

No I just fumbled and pressed a wrong key! I should go and get new glasses!

la_catalina · Post edited by la_catalina at 2013-09-17 16:07:09

But there's been some good points raised and I need to think out this whole integrity thing, like is it real, and if so what are the mechanics of it's operation.

I'll get back to you when I've figured it out!

tattmaylor

Bollocks to this 'selling out' phrase... i'm not sure what it stands for in music. Seems in this industry the only way to have interigity is to get great reviews but sell f88k all records (and end up a bitter person).

For me the problem with pop music is all the fans that feel the artists 'owe' them something because they spent £10 on a piece of plastic, and the artists worrying they should do what their fans want because of this. It gets like poiltics If you just react to public demand people will see through you. Any artist who follows this path will eventually fail. All any 'genuine' fan wants is they do something as well as they can and that 'they' are prowd of. If you are a fan you should respect them for that. In someways when you become a fan of an artist, rather than one particular record, you are investing in the artist. So real fans should give artists the chance to make a few errors and mess up now and again. It's part of taking chances (Goldfrapp aren't rich enough to pull a whole album because they decided it didn't work + if they had you'd be desperate to hear it anyway). If they aren't allowed to take chances they would end up becoming very bland.

It's funny Al and Will are such perfectionist's I can't believe they finished mixing HF and thought, 'god, that's shit'.

Archway · Post edited by Archway at 2013-09-17 16:44:52

There is no way Tales Of Us can be seen as sell-out. If Goldfrapp wanted to sell-out, they would have made another pop album. They would have put out proper singles and aimed for the charts (see Supernature). Selling-out is giving the wider public something they want and often means embracing a contemporary sound, working with popular producers (or hit-makers) to reach the widest possible audience in order to make money. Selling-out has nothing to do with artistic integrity. It only has to do with business i.e. sales and money.

If you look at Goldfrapp's UK sales you'll see that Black Cherry (256 000) and Supernature (500 000) were their biggest selling albums. If they wanted those figures again, they would not have made an album like Tales Of Us. They would have made an album to please the public and record company.

Tales Of Us is Goldfrapp taking back control, doing what they want to do, and doing it well. It's an intimate, delicate, folktronica ambient album. It is not an album that will expand their audience and lead to massive sales, which is what happens when an artist/group sells out. They made Tales Of Us to boost their confidence as artists after the fiasco that was Head First. They did not make Tales Of Us to sell records.

I'm sad that La Catalina is so disappointed with Tales Of Us, but I think it has more to do wuth them (particularly their expectations), than with Goldfrapp and Goldfrapp selling out. Just because you don't like the album doesn't mean it is bad and/or Goldfrapp selling out. And it also doesn't mean their artistic integrity is questionable. I questioned it after Head First, and thought it was the end if Goldfrapp, because Head First was a blatant attempt at selling records. I am relieved and thankful that Goldfrapp have not only returned to their roots, but in many ways, expanded and improved on those roots.

You can accuse Goldfrapp of many things, particularly after Head First, but you can't accuse them of selling out with Tales Of Us. I think it is an album for their fan base, and then, not even their whole fan base, because their are fans who prefer Goldfrapp when they do pop, and not this introsoective, intinate sound that is a blend of Felt Mountain and Seventh Tree.

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