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Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

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Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#51

Post by lordfrito »

drannex wrote: post #34
lordfrito wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tron 2 soundtrack was such a huge disappointment from me, and I'm a die hard Daft Punk fan. Listened to it once, never went back to it. The original Tron soundtrack is such a joy, totally underrated... Amazing how she blended electronics with orchestration... in my memory it feels like a purely electronic soundtrack but it's not at all. The artistic impulse would be to go full electronic with something like this, she…

Marginally off topic here, but Occams Laser created a 'sequel' album to the Daft Punk score, and I feel it more closely feels like an updated original Tron soundtrack. There are two complete albums they've released: The Grid[1], which is a concept album based on the 1982 original, and Return to the Grid[2] which is a reimagined concept album for Tron Legacy, both that I absolutely love listening to. 1. https://occams…

Listened to a few tracks, this is right up my alley, thanks!

It's a little less Tron and a little more 80's film soundtrack vibe (which is also awesome).. The style seems to have come back in vogue a bit (Stranger Things etc.).

This reminds me a lot of the Le Matos soundtrack for Turbo Kid. [1] Their soundtrack to Summer of '84 has the same synth vibe but adds the horror soundtrack vibe, also recommended.

[1] https://lematos.bandcamp.com/album/chronicles-of-the-wastela...

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#52

Post by shadytrees »

danidiaz wrote: post #25

Adult Swim's "Lords of Synth" comedy short contains a homage to Wendy Carlos in the form of a certain "Carla Wendos" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXgNo5Smino There's also the documentary "Sisters with transistors" about women pioneers of electronic music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r-3hlzpV7M

+1 Sisters with Transistors. I watched this in the dark at the Metrograph, a theater in the outskirts of Manhattan, with maybe six other people, and the experience was transcendental.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#53

Post by 8zah6q7 »

sassyonsunday wrote: post #28
gertrui wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

edit In retrospect this was sort of mean of you to say: > It doesn't help either when males who opt-in to this beauty standard Do you go around telling girls they have to try to look less pleasing to men and more pleasing to your own sensibilities? Aren't you just taking the place of the "male gaze" at that point and replacing it with your own gaze and your own demands to be satisfied? I like looking a certain way. I…

Transphobes don't want trans women to be masculine, androgynous, or feminine. When they're honest, they just don't want trans women to be.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#54

Post by anamexis »

TchoBeer wrote: post #32
anamexis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Discogs marketplace seems to have plenty of them. https://www.discogs.com/artist/16261-Wendy-Carlos

You have no idea how long I've looked for this, thank you so much lol. edit: wait, is this just a place that sells physical copies?

Yes, Discogs is basically the IMDb of musical recordings. Its marketplace is probably the best place on the internet to find and sell physical copies of pretty much any musical recording.

They don't sell or host digital recordings, presumably for copyright reasons.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#55

Post by jancsika »

howinteresting wrote: post #26
jancsika wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now. That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence. Off the top of my head: 1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale , you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael…

I'm trans myself, and my general belief is that Steinem's position is far more defensible if we didn't have our personal lived experiences with gender dysphoria, or the evidence for things like regret rates for gender-affirming surgeries being very low. Second-wave feminism on trans issues was largely incorrect and harmful, but that is mostly a contingent fact rather than a necessary one. This is as opposed to second…

> Second-wave feminism on trans issues was largely incorrect and harmful, but that is mostly a contingent fact rather than a necessary one.

Not sure I understand what that means.

Just to clarify: I don't have the research in front of me, but I'd be willing to bet that by 1977 there were at least two or three decades of research on trans issues relevant to Steinem's words about trans people. E.g., more than enough to persuade any good faith writer on the topic (or even a writer who knew and talked to a friend in that field of research) that the "shoe doesn't fit" quote is at best wildly misleading.

In other words, I'm claiming Steinem was wrong by 2022 standards, wrong by 1977 standards, and non-apologetic by any standard.

> Of course, anyone spreading the same propaganda now will not be part of the global struggle against fascism, as Judith Butler put it.

I agree.

For some reason, Steinem's words on this topic irk me, it's my day off, and I want to keep writing this post. :)

I get that Steinem was writing a political essay. And I can even imagine a line of thinking that says, hey, good for trans people, but that's a medical intervention for a specific condition (that turns out to apply to both sexes, btw), and I think it's a distraction from the specific feminist battle against oppression I'm trying to describe.

Then all she would have had to do in 2014 is say, "Sorry trans people, your battle should have been part of my battle all along. Accept my apology, and let's work together!"

But nooooo, she had to concoct her own artisanal justification to exclude trans people, using only wit and first principles, and add a little zinger for book sales. Then, when called out, shift the conversation away from her previous lack of knowledge, and claim a lack of understanding on the part of her opposition.

She's like the original HN troll account.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#56

Post by headhasthoughts »

howinteresting wrote: post #50
mallvinegar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is as opposed to second-wave feminism on, for example, sex work issues, which is necessarily bad because it is more interested in moralizing than in caring about freedom or materiality. The radical feminist position on prostitution is about reducing harm to women as a class. That a minority choose to willingly engage in sex work doesn't negate the structural issues at play here. Most women in prostitution are…

I'm specifically talking about people like Andrea Dworkin, who said: "Prostitution in and of itself is an abuse of a woman's body. [...] In prostitution, no woman stays whole. It is impossible to use a human body in the way women's bodies are used in prostitution and to have a whole human being at the end of it, or in the middle of it, or close to the beginning of it. It's impossible. And no woman gets whole again la…

Dworkin had to prostitute herself in order to survive in the 1970s. I think you're barking up the wrong tree. If anyone was sympathetic to the struggle, it was Dworkin. She just acknowledged that it was also harmful and contributing to oppression.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#57

Post by jancsika »

thewebcount wrote: post #33
jancsika wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was an oddity, but trans was perhaps not the cultural flashpoint like it is now. That's a wonderful wish, but I don't think it holds up to the evidence. Off the top of my head: 1. If you watch HBO's Lady and the Dale , you'll see that in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael…

> in the mid 1970s a local reporter was hounding the company not because he suspected fraud. (Apparently the entire company was fradulent.) Nope, he wanted to reveal that Carmichael was really a man who was dressed as a woman. That local reporter was Tucker Carlson's father, Dick Carlson.[0] Let's just say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Carlson

OMG that is amazing!

Did they mention that in the documentary? If so, I can't believe I missed it.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#58

Post by jacquesm »

thefounder wrote: post #42
bane wrote: post #19

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film p…

Quoted post unavailable.

In Amsterdam drag and trans people always were part of the background and not considered anything special, they sometimes looked extravagant but they were simply also people. We're talking 1970's or so here, my earliest memories of that.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#59

Post by jacquesm »

I still have the vinyl of switched on Bach and one day I'll get a record player hooked up and play it from there instead of the mp3s. Fantastic record and given the time when it was made absolutely incredible, keep in mind that this was before MIDI and most music related software that we take for granted today.

Re: Wendy Carlos: The brilliant but lonely life of an electronic music pioneer

#60

Post by jacquesm »

bane wrote: post #19

I grew up in a very religiously conservative household and was raised to not think "well" of trans people. Simultaneously one of my favorite soundtracks of all time was the music to the original 1982 Tron. I had never heard anything quite like it compositionally, or sonically. Sweeping orchestras blended in with synthetic beeps, and bold vistas. It fit the aesthetic of the movie perfectly and was such a daring film p…

Thanks for the recollection, it is a nice testimony to how prejudiced we can become due to our environment, and props to you for recognizing it for what it was and dealing with it the way you did.
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