Drone Music : boring?
 

I was wondering : am I the only one who finds drone music quite boring?
I don't want to start a deep discussion about drone music and the musicians that can be "linked" to such genre, just curious about your general view on the matter and the feelings you guys have about this music.

At least for me....it's like, when i got deeper into ambient music and discovered the true gems of the genre, I've loved it ever since.
Drone music is awesome.

I should of went with "I love the following "drone" bands (specify in your posts), all the others are useless." because I do love Boris & Bardo Pond who both do a lot of really drone-y stuff, but the rest I find incredibly boring..

I've tried really hard to understand it, but I just don't get it.

_slavo_ , I knew you could be one of the first boarders to answer, i remember an old thread where you asked for some suggestions/reccomendations about drone music... You know, I'm not that fond on this genre, but I think that in a (maybe) near future I'll give another listen to some of the records I have ( mostly sunn O))) ) and probably I'll end up finding them less boring and more interesting... Dunno, time will tell, but right now I can't stand more than a few minutes of this music, I quickly lose attention and that is NOT a good thing. This prevents me enjoying this music. Shame on me.

no, fuck, no! everyone's got his/her own taste in music and there's nothing bad about you not liking drone stuff. I can't stand No-Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand of the Man, for example, and I know that majority of this board are nuts about them. But still can't understand why ;-)

It's all about personal taste.:)

Version 1: Ultimately, it depends on the artist, but mostly, yes.

Version 2: Ultimately, it depends on the artist (in reciprocation, it depends on one's own mindset while listening as well), but mostly, yeah, it's boring.

when drone is good, its great- boris, some sunn o))), axolotl, sunburned (most of)
when its bad its boring- too many to list

up to the listener i fear... also up for interpretation. i mean some folk class spacemen 3 as drone.............

Good point, but considering i love Paik's stuff, even the "heavier" tracks (and, even if it's not "pure drone", there is a resemblance..), i meant that there's probably something I could appreciate in drone's mare magnum, I need to manage and give enough attention to some good records... but it's not the right moment for me.

For a second I thought you meant Nam June Paik, the video artist that died recently. Ubu has some files of him accompanying Henning Christiansen on piano...some good stuff...Joseph Beuys does something or another with a telephone.
But yeah, this would be an example of good drony avant-garde music. The pieces consist of a meandering piano line over multi-textured noise & sound patterns...no guitars on it though.

...maybe look to Branca, Thurston, Lee, and Fripp for that.

I know a lot of people who find it very boring (so you're not the only one nicfittt) however I find it quite enjoyable.
Haven't seen it live though but I've heard that's it usually pretty boring.

if you don't like drones all your opinions on music are henceforth invalid.

What's the first album that can be considered "drone music" in your opinion?
p.s. my opinions on music are valid only for me, it's an undeniable fact :).

I like a lot of drone stuff but I take it on a case by case basis as with all things. I don't think anyone has really mentioned anything that I would call drone. Sunburned and NNCK aren't at all really. They can sometimes be a bit droney but only on occaision.

Things like Theatre of Eternal Music I would call drone and that is obviously mostly great.

You'll probably find that drone music predates records themselves by, I imagine, several thousand years. I don't really understand what is meant by 'drone music', as drones are as indistinct and varied and aspect of music as anything else. You might as well say, "What's your favourite melodic music?" I like some of the current bands who use drones, but not because they are 'drone music', but because they are 'good music'. Make sense?

Edit: I will put a shout out for Iraq's finest Munir Bashir though.

Boris .. drone? What? They have some droney stuff on their albums, but I'd hardly call any of their stuff straight-up "drone".

Drone is an amazing genre, however. And not boring in the least. In fact, it's usually more interesting than so-called "harsh noise".

i really enjoy listening to drone as much as possible. not only can it be a beautiful listening experience, but dissecting it and completely understanding what's happening can be really rewarding.

Certainly there are those who find drone music boring, and I can't come up with a way to argue against them just because I love it and find it satisfying. What I'm curious about, is how somebody could wind up posting on a board centered around Sonic Youth who finds drone music boring? I suppose if your favorite album by them were Rather Ripped, I might understand, but even Dirty has a fair share of droniness at points.

I'm a huge fan going back (at least) to the Theater of Eternal Music that the Velvet Underground evolved out of. As for boring live, it all depends on what you are trying to get out of the experience. In general, you can't "mosh" to drone (though I've seen it done at SY shows, so it's not impossible) but if you are more intested in listening to something as it is happening, then it's as interesting as on recordings. I agree with val-holla-ing that finding out how something is made can be very interesting, but then I've seen people like Andrew Liles who supplied really great video imagery timed to the music instead, and that was just as good in a different way.

Not at all boring. Very emotionally inducive under the proper circumstances. I can understand how some may find it rather boring, but I find it's more of mood-altaring music than anything

Exciting, will survive the test of time.

Drone wiki

Some drone I like, some I pretty actively dislike. Tony Conrad really grates with me, I can't find any musicality in his work whatsoever, but there is plenty of guitar-based drone (Phill Niblock, Rafael Toral, Keith Fullerton Whitman) that I fnd quite beautiful. It also depends on the tone of the drone - bassy drones don't do much for me, and so a lot of heavy-metal type drone loses my attention quite quickly. Harmonic layering goes down very well with me too.

I would go for "Untitled #99" by Francisco Lopez - it's long and heavenly.
But only at 1 pm, when it's all quiet and you feel drowsy - as Bytor said, the perfect drone listening conditions.

really? i think he's great! the gig he played here in november was one of the best i've seen lately, he just played violin drones for over an hour but it was never boring...

as for (more) good drone, anla courtis is great!


EDIT: WTF? i wrote that tony played over a year, but actually it was just an hour...

How is drone a genre? How? That makes no sense? Or does it? Surely 'drone' means a long continuous note/ chord? Surely that applies to several million things? Are Sunn O))) part of the same genre as the overwhelming majority of Asian music? Or large parts of African music? Or most European medieval art/ eccesiastical music? Or Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, Spanish, Balkan, Russian (etc) folk traditions? Or large parts of Western/ East Asian 'avant-garde' music? Or early Electroacoustic music? [etc, etc]


I understand that some words are used in several sense, and that genres are often given confusing names, but is drone actually considered a genre by anyone? Am I the only one here who is utterly baffled by this thread? No offence to its progenitor, but I am mightily confused.

One of the most enthralling live pieces I've seen happened last fall when tomutonttu used a toy whistle to create a beautiful collage of droning sounds.

Taste is taste but it is terribly wrong to assume that a sustained chord by one musician will essentially sound like the one by another.One of the criticisms that drones generally get(and often by people who haven't listened to enough of them to see that there is a huge variety) is that the sound is kinda static.That's terribly wrong and technically incorrect because fluctuations,modulations,effects,envoirement etc will play a big part in the way the music will sound and affect the listener.

isn't this just talking about music that uses drones or music where drones are the predominant feature rather than a discussion about the fictional genre Drone?

Very true, Mr Marras. A Sarod is a different instrument to a Tabla or Duggi, both are different from an amplified electric guitar, all three are different to an synthesised keyboard tone, and that's not to mention Hurdy Gurdys or a looped Saxophone or any number of instruments, let alone mentioning the different ways in which drones are used on those specific instruments.

Edit: And a hell yeah to Mr & Bowels, to whom I'd like to enquire "how's it going boss?"

The sacred name of 'The Drone' has been dragged into this filth so i guess the discussion will concentrate on it generally rather than the more often than not unexciting way it is used by musicians from a more rock orientated background.

No offence taken. To make things more clear when I started this thread I meant to discuss mainly bands like sunn o))) , boris, earth and so on, sorta "modern" drone, not "droning" guitar sounds/electronic experiments etc.etc., which are waaaay older and to an extent waaaay more interesting to my ears.

i'm glad you're aknowledging the hierarchy that exists between us mr glice. things are OK at the moment. and yourself?

It was an ironic gesture, obviously. I like to make you proles feel better about yourselves. It's all a précis to my crushing you like an ant, or similar-sized arthropod.

I'm well, thanks. Strapped for cash like a silly person, but new job and that sort of gayness. I've cut down my masturbation habit, which is quite exciting.

Nefeli: I generally refer to that sort of thing as doom music, which I understand to be a sort of post-black metal thing, although I don't really understand metal genres in the slightest.

there is clearly a drone scene, it's been mostly on tiny cdr-labels... of course it's not all the stuff is exclusively drone, but droney elements are used... bands like birchville cat motel, uton, vibracathedral orchestra, yellow swans, hototogisu, bjerga/iversen, thuja, drunjus, anla courtis, A.M., my cat is an alien, taurpis tula, double leopards, skaters, rameses III, peter wright etc. etc.

Oh, shit, sorry Nefeli. I meant Nicfit. Sorry sorry sorry, that's me not paying attention and assuming that only one person could possibly think of a name that begins with a N.

doom has been around since the 80s, it's not a post-black metal developement

Drones infiltrated western music for as long as i can remember.What you're basically saying is that there is a resurgence or,better still,some attention is being paid to them again.Doom IS a subgenre of Metal and therefore a development of it.

What in the name of satan is "post-black metal"? This description has been used to categorize anaal nathrakh for instance...

Oh yeah, drone music. I like drone music.

i love drone music. its where i feel most at home.

Racist.You're basically saying that whoever has a username that starts with the letter N is the same.Shame on you.Racist.

worse than that goody one i heard.