As I suggested in the NNF profile for the Wire, this is the time of the concept-musician, where the framing of projects is essential. A certain kind of music-journalist and blogger loves this kind of thing, because it gives them something to riff on and riff off (the musician generates a stream of fully rationalized, eloquently expressed explanations of what they’re doing, and knows very clearly what they’re trying to achieve, and at that extreme verges on obviating any kind of role for the external commentator). The leading exponents of this state-of-art (Lopatin, Ferraro) operate at a very high level, but as with any genre when you get into the second-division there’s a steadily rising quotient of bullshit. Increasingly with the post-hynagoggy/post-haunty underground I’m minded a little of Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word… the danger zone where music can’t actually be enjoyed or even felt without the intervention of a concept.