How did Amacher ultimately feel about being identified as a heroic “sound artist” instead of a hardworking composer who underwent a heroic rescue mission into the deepest undercurrents of music history?

If society no longer reliably yields a consistent aesthetic framework, and if even the immediate sensations of our own minds can no longer be trusted, how can we hope to reach the inner truth of an artwork?

The question is whether these works are self-critical in their own rebellion against established forms and their limitations, or whether they dogmatically adhered to Schoenbeg’s categories in their quest for the obliteration of the subject in service of musical free will.

A critic might try to pluck TEEN from the growing heap of dance-pop bands and salvage their music by dissecting it scientifically.

Within the essence of postmodern music is embedded a struggle with the necessity to toil against the interpretative and compositional standards of the status quo, and simultaneously, a fundamental confusion about how best to accomplish this.

It is affectless electronic music at its best, and it is an exegesis of self-cancellation. 

The sounds of the tower, both percussed and ambient, are the most interesting dimensions of this project; yet, they are also what become the most compromised through Bertolozzi’s treatment of them.

With A Moon Shaped Pool, the band has officially transitioned from ostensible aesthetic activity to political pseudo-activity.

The Life of Pablo is West’s most dissonant record, literally and figuratively.

The majority of ambient music seems to reside in a form of despair; it exists most often in a state of being, relying merely on the passing of time itself to serve as its dramatic momentum, engaging the listener in a largely static sonic-auratic experience.

Strain Studies indeed sounds strained and tense, definitely not easy listening. But, at the same time, it seems to be verging on a complete and lively spontaneity.