What the h... is wrong with music today?

Qvist

Well-Known Member
I just have to get this off my chest.

Over the past few years I dropped out of the habit of following contemporary music thoroughly, partly due to being otherwise busy (kids etc) and partly due to being on a retro rampage in the late 70s and early 80s. Over the past few months however I've tried to pick it up, making a concerted effort to check out things that seemed worthwhile on the basis of various "best of the year" lists, reviews on Quietus and elsewhere and also recommendations encountered on this site. Partly by buying records, partly by means of Myspace.

After making the attempt with maybe 40-50 different acts, I must admit I find most of it vapidly samey, bereft of any apparent artistic ambition and just very, very tame. The expression "landfill indie" may already be a cliche, but now at least I know how it came to be so widely used that it became one. The various folk/pop acts seem largely content to remain whimsically competent, forgetting perhaps that obvious idols Belle and Sebastian amounted to something not by sounding jangly, but by writing very powerful tunes with sharp melodic qualities, which now seems to have been replaced by a preference for Jeff Buckleyish non-melodies without the artfulness (as well as yammering Buckley/Yorke-style vocals). Electronica seems to be on a self-reference trip, with the most acclaimed acts being praised for their ability to raid the larders of Detroit and marry it to the spirit of Ibiza, or whatever.

To be sure, there were things I liked, more or less. The Horrors, The Maccabees, the Leisure Society, Trashcan Sinatras, TV on the Radio, Soulsavers, Six Organs of Admittance. But none of them are exactly earth-shattering. As John Peel put it in the late eighties concerning the music of that period, "I don't even like the records I like" - surely the best of the crop ought to be better than this. About The Maccabees for example, I'd say their best work reminds me of Whipping Boy and their second-best reminds me of Big Country. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for future inclusion into the pantheon of Bands Who Will Never Be Forgotten. The Horrors? Ranging from Gary Numan meets My Bloody Valentine to what frankly amounts to reinventing The Mission, with better production. But at least these bands achieve some sort of distinctive and recognisable character, unlike most of the rest - Deerhunter, Glasvegas, Fanfarlo, Nadja, One More Grain, Beach House and others. By the time I'd gotten to the third track of Nudge's Myspace offering, I frankly found myself wondering whether there was any good conceivable reason for this music to even exist. Simon Bookish - described in the Quietus review as eccentric pop and the antidote to landfill indie. Sounded completely unremarkable and ordinary in every way to me. Not actually bad, just entirely unremarkable. If that's eccentric, what the F happened while I was napping?

I don't know, most of these acts sound to me like they're content to reference their extensive record collections. You can be a really worthwhile band without any particularly distinctive signature, but that requires songwriting of exceptional quality, which I found nowhere in evidence. Beyond that, I find it's always been down to succeeding in developing some sort of distinctive character - if not downright originality, which after all is rare and difficult after 50 years of rock music, then at least a new and fresh take on familiar elements. And the ability to use your music to create something that corresponds to some sort of artistic, or personal, or political vision, something that couldn't just as well have been done by 25 other bands. Something that shows you've understood that the important thing to take with you from two decades of listening to My Bloody Valentine isn't that charming combination of jangliness and wall of sound that you'd quite like to reproduce, but the courage and ambition to create something that wasn't there before and which could not have been done in quite that way by anybody else than you. Anything else is to treat music as something less than art, which is to take yourself too seriously and what you're doing not seriously enough.


cheers
 
I still can't believe tht I was so stupid as to buy Beach Houses's album.
I agree with your point very, very much.
Students are worst for it, utter pricks. Those dreadful Uncle Fester type who bully you all the wy through school for not taking interest in the ''norm'' and then scamper off to ''Uni'' and suddenly like all the music they took out of YOU for.

Utter twatfaces. So with their shit music and their shit style I think they go hand in hand. There's still Wire magazine to rely on, Kid.
 
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Yeah, and they don't think properly anymore either, and don't take what they're doing seriously.

........

Hey, maybe we're just getting old? :)

No, seriously. I refuse to believe there araen't better things out there. There has to be. And if not, we are surely due for another revolution. Come Armageddon, come.

cheers
 
I notice that years can go by between cycles of good music.

Right now I think the music industry has really created nothing worth owning.

Maybe next year there will be a lot of new bands on the scene. Maybe the year after. I remember being a teenager and there was always something new to listen to. Now, even when a band comes along with a song I like.. for example.. Sex is on Fire by Kings of Leon.. they follow it up with 3 crap songs.

The only band to come out in the past 5 years that I think has anything going for them at all are The Killers (Hot Fuss in 2004) and their debut album really outshines what has followed.

Sure Death Cab for Cutie has a couple good songs but they aren't that new. Sure, 2004 was the year that Soul Meets Body came out and I like Cath but they have a lot of filler that goes nowhere.

Interpol started great in 2002 with Turn on the Bright Lights and the follow-up album Antics is great but their last release, Our Live to Admire has 2 or 3 tracks I can listen to.

We are definitely in a drought. Years of Refusal was the only record I bought this year.
 
Heres a few that I listen to and you may be interested in:-
Arcade Fire
THe National
Andrew Bird
Okkervil River
Shearwater
The Antlers
ST.Vincent
Sigur Ros
Amiina
Broken Records
Magnetic Fields
Wintersleep
Beirut
Broken Social Scene
The Decemberists
Colin Meloy
Grizzly Bear
Midlake
The Dears
The Hidden Cameras
Jeffrey Lewis
Neutral Milk Hotel
Of Montreal
The Outside Royalty
Patrick Wolf
Plants and Animals
 
THe National

a really great band, and AMAZING live.

i actually somewhat disagree with the OP...music is actually really good right now. naturally mainstream music sucks because by nature it must. but there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. there's always the tendency to be nostalgic about music, to falsely remember "music was great in 1995," but it's very rarely true

i don't think there's been an act as unique and consistently brilliant as Foals in years. then there's the highly entertaining "New Rave" stuff from Klaxons and Late Of The Pier. The Horrors manage to be completely derivative to the point of making it their own thing...and Friendly Fires, so much fun!
 
Have you listened to Neutral Milk Hotels' In the Aeroplane Over the Sea?
 
The only band to come out in the past 5 years that I think has anything going for them at all are The Killers (Hot Fuss in 2004) and their debut album really outshines what has followed.

I tend to agree. I thought Sam's Town was a decent enough follow up, but difficult. Day & Age I found somewhat bland. Did you listen to the b-side compilation (the title of which escapes me)? If so, what did you reckon? I've not yet heard it.

Alas, the only contemporary band I've heard to show glimpses of talent. They're definitely worth keeping an eye on.
 
i actually somewhat disagree with the OP...music is actually really good right now. naturally mainstream music sucks because by nature it must.

Well, but then the OP wasn't about mainstream music.

but there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. there's always the tendency to be nostalgic about music, to falsely remember "music was great in 1995," but it's very rarely true

Who's being nostalgic? On the contrary, I'm loooking hard for current acts to like, eager to be pleased. I'm not expecting 1977 all over again. It's just that what I'm finding doesn't impress me.

Anyway, the general point you make isn't very well-considered. It would only "very rarely be true" to compare the music of one period unfavorably to the music of a previous period if rock music had consistently kept getting better and better and better. Looking back at the past 30 years or so, I can't say I see much to suggest that is the case. Rather it seems to me that bored is right, and that bursts of creativity alternate with duller periods.


i don't think there's been an act as unique and consistently brilliant as Foals in years. then there's the highly entertaining "New Rave" stuff from Klaxons and Late Of The Pier. The Horrors manage to be completely derivative to the point of making it their own thing...and Friendly Fires, so much fun!

Good summation of the Horrors (and I do like them) but again, if that's how you sum up one of the four or five best bands of the day, don't you think that's a bit worrying? Foals and Friendly Fires, thanks, they go on the check-out list.

cheers
 
Heres a few that I listen to and you may be interested in:-
Arcade Fire
THe National
Andrew Bird
Okkervil River
Shearwater
The Antlers
ST.Vincent
Sigur Ros
Amiina
Broken Records
Magnetic Fields
Wintersleep
Beirut
Broken Social Scene
The Decemberists
Colin Meloy
Grizzly Bear
Midlake
The Dears
The Hidden Cameras
Jeffrey Lewis
Neutral Milk Hotel
Of Montreal
The Outside Royalty
Patrick Wolf
Plants and Animals

Thanks Battersea, much appreciated and more names that will hopefully make for food for thought rather than grist to the mill.:)

I know a few of them. Magnetic Fields and Neutral Milk Hotel have already been good for a decade. Of Montreal, Decemberists, Broken Social Scene and Okkervil river are sort of half-shrug OK from my perspective. I might buy their records if I found them in the bargain bin, to put it like that. Arcade Fire, good point. Beirut, so-so in my opinion. Sigur Ros, generally not that great I find, and also essentially a turn-of-the-millenium act.

But oh, how could I forget Fleet Foxes? They at least show a very real talent for songwriting.

cheers
 
I just have to get this off my chest.

Over the past few years I dropped out of the habit of following contemporary music thoroughly, partly due to being otherwise busy (kids etc) and partly due to being on a retro rampage in the late 70s and early 80s. Over the past few months however I've tried to pick it up, making a concerted effort to check out things that seemed worthwhile on the basis of various "best of the year" lists, reviews on Quietus and elsewhere and also recommendations encountered on this site. Partly by buying records, partly by means of Myspace.

After making the attempt with maybe 40-50 different acts, I must admit I find most of it vapidly samey, bereft of any apparent artistic ambition and just very, very tame. The expression "landfill indie" may already be a cliche, but now at least I know how it came to be so widely used that it became one. The various folk/pop acts seem largely content to remain whimsically competent, forgetting perhaps that obvious idols Belle and Sebastian amounted to something not by sounding jangly, but by writing very powerful tunes with sharp melodic qualities, which now seems to have been replaced by a preference for Jeff Buckleyish non-melodies without the artfulness (as well as yammering Buckley/Yorke-style vocals). Electronica seems to be on a self-reference trip, with the most acclaimed acts being praised for their ability to raid the larders of Detroit and marry it to the spirit of Ibiza, or whatever.

To be sure, there were things I liked, more or less. The Horrors, The Maccabees, the Leisure Society, Trashcan Sinatras, TV on the Radio, Soulsavers, Six Organs of Admittance. But none of them are exactly earth-shattering. As John Peel put it in the late eighties concerning the music of that period, "I don't even like the records I like" - surely the best of the crop ought to be better than this. About The Maccabees for example, I'd say their best work reminds me of Whipping Boy and their second-best reminds me of Big Country. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for future inclusion into the pantheon of Bands Who Will Never Be Forgotten. The Horrors? Ranging from Gary Numan meets My Bloody Valentine to what frankly amounts to reinventing The Mission, with better production. But at least these bands achieve some sort of distinctive and recognisable character, unlike most of the rest - Deerhunter, Glasvegas, Fanfarlo, Nadja, One More Grain, Beach House and others. By the time I'd gotten to the third track of Nudge's Myspace offering, I frankly found myself wondering whether there was any good conceivable reason for this music to even exist. Simon Bookish - described in the Quietus review as eccentric pop and the antidote to landfill indie. Sounded completely unremarkable and ordinary in every way to me. Not actually bad, just entirely unremarkable. If that's eccentric, what the F happened while I was napping?

I don't know, most of these acts sound to me like they're content to reference their extensive record collections. You can be a really worthwhile band without any particularly distinctive signature, but that requires songwriting of exceptional quality, which I found nowhere in evidence. Beyond that, I find it's always been down to succeeding in developing some sort of distinctive character - if not downright originality, which after all is rare and difficult after 50 years of rock music, then at least a new and fresh take on familiar elements. And the ability to use your music to create something that corresponds to some sort of artistic, or personal, or political vision, something that couldn't just as well have been done by 25 other bands. Something that shows you've understood that the important thing to take with you from two decades of listening to My Bloody Valentine isn't that charming combination of jangliness and wall of sound that you'd quite like to reproduce, but the courage and ambition to create something that wasn't there before and which could not have been done in quite that way by anybody else than you. Anything else is to treat music as something less than art, which is to take yourself too seriously and what you're doing not seriously enough.

Exactly my sentiments.

After being in underground bands for a long, long time I burned out, and gave up on music for a while. When I got that old urge and came back, I found that everything sounded like a pastiche (if not an outright rip) of an earlier style. What I'm hearing is real talent, but not innovation. It's just too safe; the originality, the groundbreaking, never-heard-before, make-music-or-die spirit of it seems to have gone. Everyone thinks that they're from New York in the '70s, or Northern England in the '80s

Some of it may be my ears, which have been around for a while. Some of it may be the fact that the technology has changed so radically - music is so much easier these days.

Few people are socially isolated anymore, few are still trapped in dead-end towns or urban industrial wastelands. Actually, something should be coming out of Michigan any day now...

On another thread, it was decided that the NEXT REAL THING will come from the Middle East, or South East Asia - someplace where music is still a life-or-death proposition, where the global monoculture has yet to take hold.

I heard a pretty good Mongolian band a few days ago, and they didn't sound a bit like New Order.
 
Qvist, your thoughts reflect my own in many ways.

Years ago I realized that Morrissey was right when he said pop music was dead. I'm referring to the interview in 1987, I think it was, when he said "the ashes are smoldering all around us" or whatever gruesome imagery he used.

But rather than despair about the end of an era I started to think about music differently. Instead of seeking bands, I started listening for sounds. Instead of buying albums, I started downloading individual songs. Instead of trying to make the new breed of artists fit the now-anachronistic paradigms of yore, I got myself into a "post-rock" state of mind. The only good music around today is almost without definition. It's easier to say what it isn't.

Today I don't love a handful of bands the way I once loved The Smiths, New Order, The Jam, and so on. I love dozens of songs across a broad spectrum of styles. I have no expectation that if I like one song I will like any of the band's other offerings, or that if one album is good the follow-up will be worth a damn. Whereas in my youth I loved bands and loathed "one-hit wonders", today my iPod is a carnivalesque heterocosm comprised almost entirely of flashes in the pan. Lately I've been enjoying songs by Amanda Blank, Major Lazer, Phoenix, Metronomy, Vampire Weekend, and Zomby. Some of their songs are brilliant; none qualifies as one of my "favorite bands".

I'm much happier. I get a simliar thrill to the one I used to feel. And I find that the older music ages so much better when I place it back in time and stop trying to sail my boat against the current. When I play "Hatful of Hollow" I think, "This is what 1984 sounds like" instead of "Why the hell can't Deerhunter sound like this?" Because one thing's certain: one would demonstrate enormous generosity in calling guitar-based music moribund. They're not even pasticheurs anymore, because the word implies a knowing critical distance. The "rock bands" we're hearing now are nothing more than slick simulacra, from The Killers to The Jonas Brothers. As Morrissey put it, "All modern groups state the expected - fluently, but who cares?" The key word is "fluently". He's admitting the bands sound decent-- you might find yourself tapping a foot or singing along-- but the songs suffer from a weird emptiness. To find "real" music you have to look elsewhere.

Anaesthesine, I laughed about your Mongolian band. :)

The thing is, the next "genuine article" (in pomo scare quotes) isn't going to escape the monoculture at all, she's going to reshape our "outmoded" cultural productions into something new. You don't have to talk hypothetically about it, either. M.I.A.'s "Kala" was one of the best albums in years, and it was half-in, half-out of the global corporate leviathan, as the best music will be from here on out. Abandon hope: indie rock will forevermore languish trapped inside the whale.
 
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When I was young my Mother used to say "today's bands all sound the same, it's boring or borrowed. Not like when I was a teenager".
People are saying the same thing now.

One of my workmates said
"I practiced guitar for four years trying to sound like my favourite artists. Then I spent the next four years developing my own style." His band is on the verge of getting a deal. (fingers crossed).

It's not enough to write a few catchy tunes, 'cause like Worm says, listeners are more likely to pick and choose their favourite tracks and pay less attention to following an artist/group than previously.
Record companies try to create a strong brand image in order to win more committed listeners, where playing the publicity game is as important as the musical output.

Modern recording techniques can cover a multitude of weaknesses. the growing emphasis on touring might sort the wheat from the chaff, as bands have to win over an audience live.

It's easier to get a band together nowadays. the cost of instruments is relatively less. You can record decent quality demos in you basement.

Pop idol and such like have turned making music into a career choice for those with looks and just enough talent. Five minutes of fame. Are those who make music because they have to getting a look in, when control over their artistic process is less likely to be negotiable?

Songwriting is about writing universal truths about people in a memorable and entertaining way. like any art, it deserves a decent apprenticeship, self-application to improvement over time. Many minor bands are not given time to develop, but quickly dropped when the sales falter.

I heard a Mongolian band a few years back. (Hun Huur Tuu). One of the best musical events I had the priviledge to share. :)

There are good bands out there. It's just harder to see the wood for the weeds.
 
I tend to agree. I thought Sam's Town was a decent enough follow up, but difficult. Day & Age I found somewhat bland. Did you listen to the b-side compilation (the title of which escapes me)? If so, what did you reckon? I've not yet heard it.

Alas, the only contemporary band I've heard to show glimpses of talent. They're definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Sawdust?

I really like The Killers. I think Day & Age is more of a pop album for them. It does have a lot of my favourite Killers songs on it (Joy Ride, A Dustland Fairytale.)

I think they just go through different styles for each album. I enjoyed Sam's Town (especially Read My Mind and Bling) I don't know why it got so much crap.
 
I don't mean to offend anyone here, but in my experience anybody who says pop music is stagnant is probably ignorant of just what exactly is happening in pop music. I myself was once a member of this camp. No longer. An enormous amount of good music is being produced now. What we have to understand is that the structure of popular music has dramatically shifted -- it is no longer as monolithic an entity as it once was. The proliferation of the internet and other new media is principally responsible for this. The result is a kind of intense splintering and simultaneous mixing of genres -- there is just a startling amount of types of music now, with very specific audiences for each one. And those types often blur the old distinctions between genres. There is something out there for everyone. If you restrict yourself to modern rock radio, as I did, then yeah, music is going to suck. But use the internet. Use blogs. Use independent publications. You'll see.

To be concrete about it, here's a random list (somewhat similar to battersea's) of groups producing work today of high artistic merit, meant objectively as I do not like all of these artists: Phoenix, St. Vincent, Jens Lekman, Animal Collective, Passion Pit, Arcade Fire, the Decemberists, LCD Soundsystem, the National, Dirty Projectors, the Big Pink, Grizzly Bear, Jay Reatard, Stars, the Strokes, Bat for Lashes, Interpol, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Islands/the Unicorns, Annie, Battles, Japandroids, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beirut, Deerhunter, Los Campesinos!, Girls, the Dodos, Feist, !!!, Glass Candy, Frightened Rabbit, the Hold Steady. A familiarity with even a handful of artists on this list could not possibly lead to a conclcusion that popular music is stagnant. I could go on and on. And I'm betraying my ignorance of hip-hop, funk, rap, and jazz, which I know shit about but which are exciting areas right now. So if you think music is dead, I humbly submit that you don't know what you are talking about.
 
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I don't mean to offend anyone here, but in my experience anybody who says pop music is stagnant is probably ignorant of just what exactly is happening in pop music. I myself was once a member of this camp. No longer. An enormous amount of good music is being produced now. What we have to understand is that the structure of popular music has dramatically shifted -- it is no longer as monolithic an entity as it once was. The proliferation of the internet and other new media is principally responsible for this. The result is a kind of intense splintering and simultaneous mixing of genres -- there is just a startling amount of types of music now, with very specific audiences for each one. And those types often blur the old distinctions between genres. There is something out there for everyone. If you restrict yourself to modern rock radio, as I did, then yeah, music is going to suck. But use the internet. Use blogs. Use independent publications. You'll see.

There is still modern rock radio? Where do you live?

To be concrete about it, here's a random list (somewhat similar to battersea's) of groups producing work today of high artistic merit, meant objectively as I do not like all of these artists: Phoenix, St. Vincent, Jens Lekman, Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, the Decemberists, LCD Soundsystem, the National, Dirty Projectors, the Big Pink, Grizzly Bear, Stars, the Strokes, Bat for Lashes, Interpol, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Islands/the Unicorns, Annie, Battles, Japandroids, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beirut, Deerhunter, Los Campesinos!, Girls, the Dodos, Feist, Glass Candy, Frightened Rabbit, the Hold Steady. A familiarity with even a handful of artists on this list could not possibly lead to a conclcusion that popular music is stagnant. I could go on and on. And I'm betraying my ignorance of hip-hop, funk, rap, and jazz, which I know shit about but which are exciting areas right now. So if you think music is dead, I humbly submit that you don't know what you are talking about.

I like several of those bands. But nothing I've heard sounds really new, nothing really grabs me. It becomes impossible not to compare to things you've heard before, and if you've been around long enough, nothing sounds new anymore.

There is also the fact that bands finding success now are my age or slightly younger, and therefore probably listened to a lot of the same music I did.

It's also possible that I'm already married to things I heard long ago. Nothing can ever be quite like your first love.
 
You don't think Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors, Deerhunter, Beirut, Battles, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Islands, Joanna Newsom, and St. Vincent sound original? Please clarify. And of course there's still modern rock radio, in every major US metropolitan area. It's a dying breed, but "mainstream rock" still exists, unfortunately.
 
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To be concrete about it, here's a random list (somewhat similar to battersea's) of groups producing work today of high artistic merit, meant objectively as I do not like all of these artists: Phoenix, St. Vincent, Jens Lekman, Animal Collective, Passion Pit, Arcade Fire, the Decemberists, LCD Soundsystem, the National, Dirty Projectors, the Big Pink, Grizzly Bear, Jay Reatard, Stars, the Strokes, Bat for Lashes, Interpol, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Islands/the Unicorns, Annie, Battles, Japandroids, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beirut, Deerhunter, Los Campesinos!, Girls, the Dodos, Feist, !!!, Glass Candy, Frightened Rabbit, the Hold Steady. A familiarity with even a handful of artists on this list could not possibly lead to a conclcusion that popular music is stagnant. I could go on and on. And I'm betraying my ignorance of hip-hop, funk, rap, and jazz, which I know shit about but which are exciting areas right now. So if you think music is dead, I humbly submit that you don't know what you are talking about.

And I humbly submit that I made it quite clear that I haven't followed contemporary music closely for a while, and that I was giving my impressions based on checking out a relatively limited number of bands. If my impression so far should be proven wrong, believe me, no one will be happier than me.

I do however know a good handful of the bands on this list, and they do lead me to the conclusion that pop music is stagnant. Japandroids, The Big Pink and Phoenix are complete shite in my opinion. Los Campesinos! is semi-fun, in a way that is neither particularly interesting nor very original. Deerhunter I had high hopes for and perhaps they'll win me over yet, but they didn't strike any nerves with me on the first few listens at least. The Decemberists held my interest for about a week. Jay Reatard was OK, and may grow on me yet, but again I found it hard to see what all the fuzz was about. Beirut, again, semi-interesting. I loved The Strokes' first album, but that's a good while ago now. Glass Candy has some interesting retro elements and a certain style, but in the end I simply don't enjoy listening to them that much, perhaps because they are a quintessential pastiche band. LCD Soundsystem and Fleet Foxes I like. I'll take the other recommendations with me though.

cheers
 
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One thing. Several are voicing the opinion or suspicion that as you get older you just lose the knack of buying into new music. It's a natural suspicion, but ultimately I don't buy it.

I can only speak for myself, but I've found that if anything the journey through life has brought periodical ventures into new fields of music. I grew up with pop music, in my late teens I went into classical, in my early twenties jazz and ethnic music, in my late twenties (neo)folk, industrial and much harder rock than I had listened to earlier and recently it's been stuff I would never have dreamed of listening to ten years ago, like 70s prog and soul. I bought a Traffic album recently, for chrissakes. I suspect it's the same with a lot of music people. So I find it hard to see why any such thing should be the reason for being less than impressed with today's music. If indeed that is not just due to not having looked in the right places yet.

BTW, Worm: As always, thought-provoking post. I'll have to give that some thought before responding.

cheers
 
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