'An Empty Bliss ' Turns 10: How the Haunted Ballroom Defined a Generation | Hacker News Reader

'An Empty Bliss ' Turns 10: How the Haunted Ballroom Defined a Generation

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37 pointsb0ner_t0ner7 comments

I think the author missed something quite important in its analysis. For me, what's gripping about Everywhere At The End Of Time is that all my grandparents are alive, and this will probably not be the case in a few years. My grandmother has Alzheimer's, and it's hard to put into words what I feel when she doesn't recognize me. Listening to this album is a way of knowing that I'm not the only one struggling with these feelings, and it helps. It's like that one time I googled "phobia of sticky paper" and found out other people like me, that get really disgusted by stickers. I know some people are going through the same things as me, and it helps. That's one of the things really unique and that I love about internet and the social media.

"The Caretaker has come to define a youth culture ravaged by unchecked mental health crises, economic disparity, looming climate catastrophe, and technological malevolence."

Music journalism is hilarious when you realize how full of shit modern music critics are.

The above comment is projecting all of this onto ambient music with no lyrics.

"Ambient musicians aren’t meant to become famous, and particularly Kirby, in his experimental deconstructions of old sampled ballroom music, is perhaps the last musician you would expect to gain any significant recognition."

What's funny is... he isn't famous.

Why does it have to have lyrics to convey anything? Ever heard "yackety sax" or "in the mood"?

Duelling banjos, the duel of the fates, the theme from jaws?

Its not a stretch to ascribe modern horror to old ballroom music if you have ever been to an old folks home. They are packed with faded visions of a future that never arrived and horrors you are guaranteed will.

I'm a huge fan of ambient music and have been since 1995 when I first heard Aphex Twin and Brian Eno.

My point is that this author/critic has absolutely no idea what the musician was thinking when he created this music and he certainly doesn't really know why it rings true with it's fans.

Maybe it's exactly why he says it rings true.... But he has absolutely no data or surveys or anything to back this up and he is just projecting his own viewpoints and those of a current cultural Zeitgeist.

His review read like the parody Pitchfork review David Cross wrote.

At first I thought this was a well written review. Then I got an eerie feeling that it was one of those GPT-3 gotchas.. now I’m just not sure of anything anymore

It's bizarre and amazing to me that The Caretaker found success as "meme music." I think the author is correct to lump him in with artists like Vektroid and OPN; I've seen more than one commenter describe The Caretaker as "like 1920's vaporwave." In this case, the meme was taken to its greatest heights with a full-length Minecraft-themed mashup album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3gpdZrT0eA

Even weirder is that, despite the top comment on this album calling it "the highest effort most obscure meme of the year," it has over 1 million views. Can a piece of art still be considered "obscure" if a million people have seen it? On the internet, perhaps!

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