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Jonathan Coulton's New Dystopian Album Becomes a Graphic Novel (jonathancoulton.com)
An anonymous reader quotes NPR's report on one of Slashdot's long-time favorite musicians: In April, musician Jonathan Coulton released Solid State, a sci-fi concept album that represented a significant departure -- both from Coulton's wry, bright, tuneful back catalog and from any conventional understanding of what a sci-fi concept album sounds like... On first listen, with its shout-outs to futurist Ray Kurzweil, comment-section trolls, thinkpiece-gluts, and hack memes, Solid State seems a caustic critique of the internet -- which would be, as Coulton notes, "a little-off brand for me." Spend a bit more time with it, however, and its muted, melancholy songs reveal their true target: the toxic culture of glibness and hot takes that's leaching from the internet into every aspect of our lives.
The album features multiple perspectives and timelines, but its soundscape is allusive and impressionistic, resisting strict narrative. For that, Coulton turned to writer Matt Fraction and artist Albert Monteys, who with Coulton's input have taken some of the album's words, images and thematic preoccupations and crafted a graphic novel set largely in a future that will seem familiar to any reader of science fiction: a corporate-owned dystopia where humans have become dutiful, unthinking, unfeeling worker bees attending to menial tasks amid a culture engineered to keep them unthinking and unfeeling...These three creators believe that the roots of this dystopic future are all around us, but we're collectively choosing to ignore them in precisely the same way we blithely click past online Terms and Conditions agreements without bothering to read them.
The official music video for one of the songs takes the form of a text adventure.
The album features multiple perspectives and timelines, but its soundscape is allusive and impressionistic, resisting strict narrative. For that, Coulton turned to writer Matt Fraction and artist Albert Monteys, who with Coulton's input have taken some of the album's words, images and thematic preoccupations and crafted a graphic novel set largely in a future that will seem familiar to any reader of science fiction: a corporate-owned dystopia where humans have become dutiful, unthinking, unfeeling worker bees attending to menial tasks amid a culture engineered to keep them unthinking and unfeeling...These three creators believe that the roots of this dystopic future are all around us, but we're collectively choosing to ignore them in precisely the same way we blithely click past online Terms and Conditions agreements without bothering to read them.
The official music video for one of the songs takes the form of a text adventure.
What's truly dystopian is a future (which largely is already here) where people don't read novels but need them pre-digested as picture books.
There's a youtube video out there that has the full album if you care to listen to the whole thing. So far it's a pretty interesting blend, that's really hard to put a label on. One song reminded me of The Postal Service and another sounded a little like something Fleetwood Mac could have done. I'll have to finish the whole thing, but so far it's something I'd consider purchasing.
Yeah, I feel that way about movies.
Need their music made into best selling picturebooks because they are too lazy to listen or *READ* stories :)
The dumbing down of music is also well underway. Music consists of melody, harmony and rhythm, but melody and harmony require a slight amount of attachment, and are on the way out. Harmony is largely gone already; single notes are complex enough.
There are also signs that the already short ~4 minute "radio edit" for songs is becoming too long. Some modern stations are cutting to 3 or less - presumably attention span is not what it was.
You aren't really grasping this whole "information" concept are You? If they were telling you about music everyone already knows about, and everyone has heard / experienced via the medium everyone already has in their collection, THAT would be the time to complain.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Congratulations on your complete lack of reading comprehension mr stalker!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
So you are saying what you just wrote has zero value ... agreed.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Thanks for the ad for the new album. Totally didn't realize he had something new.
That being said, that's one sad music video.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
It's nice, I guess, to see people talk of what they are passionate about and want to share with others. I'll say good things about music, books, movies, and such I like with anyone that asks, and a few that don't ask.
This Jonathan Coulton music and book sounds like something I might want to try but unless I hear it's good from someone that does not financially gain from the sale I'll have my doubts.
So, is it any good?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Whats the difference between comic books and graphic novels? Number of pages? Existence of a plot?
For me, lyrics alone can make a song. Traditionally it was already difficult to find truly poetic lyrics that discussed something worth discussing, but now it's almost impossible.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What does song length have to do with quality? A 25 minute rap song will still be total shit, because song length is independent of quality. Even just 30 seconds of some of the best classical music is more expressive than any rap song of any length could ever be.
Length doesn't matter for crap, but for many great works of music (old or modern), you need the time to build up, transform, and paint the bigger picture. There are plenty of great music that isn't played on the radio because it doesn't fit. NPR and BBC seem to only want to play longer pieces of classical music, nothing else, which is a shame.
I think the complaint isn't that "dumbed down" music exists, it's that it's become incredibly difficult to find anything else via radio.
I think they might have identified him explicitly, but I don't think it's too far of a stretch to have an article about the musician from Portal - Still Alive (This Was A Triumph); Now I Only Want You Gone - plus a few other geek-known tracks here and there. Agree they should have given a quick lead-in on background though.
I used to think that too, but then I heard that my favourite song, John Cage's 4'33" has been remixed into an extended 10 minute version on itunes. So much better than the original.
How can so many people with reasonably low Slashdot UIDs apparently not know who Jonathan Coulton is? Even setting aside his cred as a geeky tech-loving musician - stories about him have been featured on this site for years.
Heck, he even recut "Code Monkey" and sent it to CmdrTaco in celebration of Slashdot's 15th anniversary.
#DeleteChrome
Jonathan Coulter did the music on the three main portal games, Lego being the third and Harry101UK does some smash-up work in that department. You can go as low fi as text or as hi-fi as full blown musicals and there's even an unofficial musical of Portal.
Lilium https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Hosea https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And just about anything by Harry Calligan, aka Harry101UK. He also has Portal comedy and fangames footage.
Jonathan Coulter did the music on the three main portal games,
Portal and Portal 2 are certainly famous games, but not for the music. if you ask random people who played the games what the music was like, I think you'll get a lot of "um" and "er" replies, unless they remember the turrets and GLaDOS "singing". And the main body of music wasn't by Coulton either.
For some good video game scores, try Civilization IV, Homeworld or Red Dead Redemption.
The dumbing down of music is also well underway.
That was already successfully happening in the 90ties.
If you utter the words "This was a triumph!", anyone who has finished the game will remember the song about making science, even if they don't remember their writer's name.
If you don't ask about "the music" in abstract but about "the songs", it's likely that anyone (who finished the game) will remember it, because it makes a very strong emotional impact.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
If you utter the words "This was a triumph!", anyone who has finished the game will remember the song about making science, even if they don't remember their writer's name.
I finished both, and all I remember was some children's music with vocoder-mixed turret/GLaDOS voices meant as comical relief. If that passes as great music now, we're doomed.
"a corporate-owned dystopia where humans have become dutiful, unthinking, unfeeling worker bees attending to menial tasks amid a culture engineered to keep them unthinking and unfeeling..." I don't think that's future. It's the present.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
You, sir, should return your geek card. The lyrics of the song were perfectly crafted to the narrative you had just experienced, and it contributed to build the best written antagonist of the decade even after the story had finished.
Lyrics don't define the music that hosts it. Whether you sing "Ein Vogelfaenger bin ich ja" or "tadum ta dumdum dum dum dum" only changes the performance, not Mozart's music.