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Atton, Chris (2012) Listening to 'difficult albums': specialist music fans and the popular avant-garde. Popular Music, 31 (3). pp. 347-361. ISSN 0261-1430
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract/Description
Difficulty is most often associated, not with popular music, but with the avant-garde. How do popular music listeners listen to albums that present compositional, performance or conceptual elements from the avant-garde? This paper explores where difficulty lies for listeners when they listen to, situate and evaluate albums that sit on the intersection between the popular and the avant-garde. The paper focuses on the online collaborative discourse of readers of a British music magazine (the Word), to explore how, whilst ‘difficult albums’ might be considered sui generis and dislocated from the norms of popular music, the aesthetic discourse of the Word’s readers shows that to engage with difficult albums is to explore how they are able to be connected with a range of musical histories and practices, as well as to multiple personal experiences of popular music.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Print ISSN: | 0261-1430 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Avant-garde music; popular music; "Difficult albums"; "The Word"; |
| University Divisions/Research Centres: | Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Creative Industries > School of Arts & Creative Industries |
| Dewey Decimal Subjects: | 700 Arts & recreation > 780 Music > 780 Music |
| Library of Congress Subjects: | M Music and Books on Music > M Music |
| Item ID: | 4785 |
| Depositing User: | Professor Chris Atton |
| Date Deposited: | 24 Oct 2012 11:46 |
| Last Modified: | 24 Oct 2012 11:46 |
| URI: | http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/4785 |
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