U2, the height of Atmospheric Minimalism


Peter M Asman ([email protected])
Fri, 25 Dec 1998 13:33:33 -0600 (CST)


Seasons greetings. :)

I was listening to the Chautauqua Institute's program on National
Public Radio today. The speaker was "media critic" Martha Bayless,
and her talk (taped Summer of '98) was called "Healing the Hole in Our
Soul". Ms. Bayless seemed to have the respect of her audience, and
she seemed quite knowledgeable about various genres of music. The
part of her talk that got my attention was a few sentences on a genre
of music she called Atmospheric Minimalism.

Ms. Bayless said that Atmospheric Minimalism reached its height with
U2. She also stated that the genre had two significant weaknesses:
the music isn't very easy to sing to, nor is it very easy to dance to.
She did say, tho, that Atmospheric Minimalism is a genre that seems to
work very well in movie soundtracks and in videos.

I wish I had a transcript of the talk, but I think you can get the
point from the above paraphrase.

Let me know what you think. I'm most easily reached by email.

Pete



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Fri Dec 25 1998 - 11:34:27 PST