The assumption that music the author doesn't like must be a — likely political – statement is, let's just say, revealing and itself highly political.
People appear to enjoy things which are bitter, or ugly, or complex, or an acquired taste. Either they're all lying posers, which certainly some people believe, or there really is something to Scotch whisky or James Joyce or Autechre which speaks to some people and not to others. I believe the latter, and I feel sorry for the former. The idea that human experience would be so narrow that some forms of expression are good and all others are bad on a single axis! And music, especially, one of the most cultural-context dependent forms.
A bunch of traditions wouldn't even recognise the Western canon, which tends to seriously lack rhythmic complexity, _as_ worthwhile music.
So: taste varies and that's the point. I love Autechre, and I find real beauty in their work, but I would place significant money that more than half of the audience here would find this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev3vENli7wQ – somewhere between modem line-noise and actively painful. Is it pretty in the way, say, Teenage Fanclub (who are also magnificent) are pretty? No. It's not trying to be. It's communicating something else.
People appear to enjoy things which are bitter, or ugly, or complex, or an acquired taste. Either they're all lying posers, which certainly some people believe, or there really is something to Scotch whisky or James Joyce or Autechre which speaks to some people and not to others. I believe the latter, and I feel sorry for the former. The idea that human experience would be so narrow that some forms of expression are good and all others are bad on a single axis! And music, especially, one of the most cultural-context dependent forms.
A bunch of traditions wouldn't even recognise the Western canon, which tends to seriously lack rhythmic complexity, _as_ worthwhile music.
So: taste varies and that's the point. I love Autechre, and I find real beauty in their work, but I would place significant money that more than half of the audience here would find this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev3vENli7wQ – somewhere between modem line-noise and actively painful. Is it pretty in the way, say, Teenage Fanclub (who are also magnificent) are pretty? No. It's not trying to be. It's communicating something else.