by imcvspl/Primus Luta (http://avanturb.com)

One of the things that has haunted me forever has been something my composition professor once told me:

"Fading out a song is a lazy man's ending."



Now you can argue about it for days, and cite counter examples where it fits perfectly, or even find classic orchestral scores which end in decrescendo's. But from a composition perspective he's absolutely right. When you think about a song as a beginning middle and an end, the beginning pulls you in, the middle leads you to the climax and the end punctuates the sentiment. In that regard a fade out is like saying well the climax was really my ending so let me just be out. It isn't really adding anything at all.



I'll counter that perspective though with that of one of my favorite author's Sam Delany who refused to provide 'endings' to any of his books. He said in real life things don't ever end so why should they in a book. It's a witty statement, that can be like ugh after you've given how ever many hours of your life to get through his 1000 pages of literary genius. It's not even anti-climatic, just unresolved. And yet it's pure genius.



Okay, okay what's this got to do with the beat generation? Well, everything. I just listened to Ampexian and I can't even say I was underwhelmed, because I have a serious interest to go back in and disect it some more, but at the same time wonder how much more I can pull from it. 29 tracks in an album the majority of which are under 2 minutes. There are some nice transitions but transitioning to my ears between completely separate thoughts. It's like listening to a stoner for an hour. You'll get 29 random trains of thoughts and if you're lucky a couple of them will be related. If you were paying close enough attention there may have actually bend something profound, but it was bookended by some stoner statement that made you forget it anyway.



To be honest its similar to what I felt the first time I heard Donuts (not actually comparing the albums just my subjective feeling about them), are those songs or thoughts. As songs there's a lot lacking. As thoughts though they are fucking genius. And so if you string a bunch of those genius thoughts together and call it an album, who am I to knock you for not finishing a song. I guess that's why it's called the beat generation and not the song generation.



Still there are some phenomenal exceptions to the rule. Folk that are really taking the aesthetic and completing their thoughts to make songs. Compare Ampexian with Polyfolk Dance. 29 thoughts verse 6 songs. By the numbers Prefuse has at least twice as many moments of genius as HudMo, but the song context which Mohawke gives his makes them that much more powerful. I could take any one of the six songs out of Polyfolk and sit with it for hours to disect the subtleties. Save for a few exceptions (notably the longer selections) if I pull a track off of Ampexian, it may or may not contain genius, and even if it does the odds are it will seem quite random, lacking beginning and end, just an out of context thought.