“People who say they like all kinds of music actually like NO kinds of music”
-Chuck Klosterman
Thanks for visiting The Decibel Tolls, a blog that hopes to be a resource and community for psychedelic rock and psychedelically influenced jam hives, shoegazing, electric and freak folk, kraut, post rock, baroque, noise, library music, dream pop, no wave, ambient, insane garage rippage, reverb and tremolo swells, and generally off-kilter yet structured music from yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Allow me to acerbically meander for a bit.
I tend to think of the Decibel Tolls as a blog that functions slightly differently than many other MP3 blogs. A lot of bloggers out there, more or less, put themselves in the mindset of a journalist – seeking out the “cutting edge” and the artists of tomorrow while posting up-to-the-minute news. If you’re looking for that, this is not necessarily the right place. Though the Decibel Tolls will contain news and new music, I tend to think in the mindset of a radio DJ, piecing together songs in a form of continuity. The Decibel Tolls aims to cultivate a sound and mood more than create an aggregate for news and storms of publicity. If people visiting the Decibel Tolls are seeking out a certain sound of music, then I’ve succeeded.
Most importantly, though… The Decibel Tolls was started, in part, as a response to the world of music blogging. Instead of music blogs demonstrating breadth and depth in musical taste, genres, and commentaries (the original reason why blogs were revolutionary, right?), to act as a counterbalance to big media and the notion of giving the power of agenda setting to those who own large media outlets, the “blogsophere,” as it were, has since cultivated more of a collective mindset. Instead of blogs being a “power to the people” type institution, they’ve since adopted the same mechanics as a large record or media mogul. Blogs tend to jump on the same buzzword bands, chew them up, and spit them out. If you’re supposed to blog about, I dunno, Lykke Li… then you do, because you have a music blog and that’s what you’re supposed to do, goddamit. And that’s super lame. The Decibel Tolls isn’t here to create hype – it’s simply a collection of genre-specific music that I love and find significant. There will be a few times when me and the big guys will agree (Deerhunter is an example that comes to mind), but only few and far between does that happen. So in a sense, music blogs have become the same creature as Viacom. But instead of just bitching about it, I decided to up and start my own music blog. So there ya go – democracy in action.
Though Rolling Stone tends to be as in touch with what’s going on today as Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens and Abe Simpson, they did notice this trend a couple of years ago, and made a rather handy chart presenting the evidence. Interestingly enough, I found it on Stereogum:
