Kid A turns 10 next year. I never imagined there was, or ever could be, a future from that record. I guess I thought music was over. It was very clearly a completion of something, a sort of crowning societal achievement that started with the first Little Richard LP and stretched all the way to those last twinkling moments of Motion Picture Soundtrack. Every new and innovative idea had and held in the past thirty years all seemed to culminate there, and end there. While OK Computer can be (and is) praised as channelling the zeitgeist of 90s culture, Kid A channels the zeitgeist of all music, and somehow arrives outside and beyond. I figured there was no way to continue going on the way we had been after that record. 'Turn out the lights, the party's over', that kind of thing.
Now I see it was a bit nieve of me to assume say, Puddle of Mudd would somehow feel obligated to incorporate some jazz fusion or ambient drone into their songs just because some (as I'm sure they would say) “faggy British band” pulled off cross referencing Charles Mingus, Mos Eisley Cantina, Bjork, and Ataris all in one record (without a second of it sounding referential) . Yet it's hard not to see my original prognosis slowly come to life before my eyes as musical ideas have certainly seemed to have dried up since then, although it might all be in my head. It works out nicely Kid A was released at the turn of the century, because it lines up a whole parallel discussion between it's presence then and it's absence in the last ten years, and qualifies that speculation as some kind of big picture, 'state of music in the 00s' kind of discussion. What is music in this 'post-Kid A society' (note a dab of self parody there please children), and has it's impact really been as titanic as hysterical hype men like myself have tried to make it out to be?
This will come at no great shock to you that I still believe that Kid A has changed everything about music insofar as it raises the watermark of excellence for all musicians, regardless of chosen genre. But what might surprise you, and certainly surprises me, is that no one has really followed this record's lead. While it certainly opens up a lot of new doors and avenues down for new and interesting ideas, the music of the last decade has really failed to embrace this progress. Quite to the contrary, it seems as if the whole point of Kid A has been undone.
Kid A stands, or at least was meant to stand (we only use cold hard speculation here at 'hep2step'), to counteract the commonly tossed around parlance 'There are no new ideas'. Radiohead deliberately eschewed their comfort zone for want of something bold, fresh, and exciting. 'See kids', Thom Yorke seemed to say (or at least did say to me when he appeared in this dream I had), 'ideas don't have to be dead! Ideas don't have to be rehashes or reheated references! Music will just evolve with technology, and that will open up a world of possibilities!' Well it seems that instead of leading our collective musical culture into a new era of experimentalism and similarly bold, fresh ideas (much like the titular pied piper from the album's titular track), we being the just right combination of pussies and lemmings have for the past nine years huddled in our comfort corner, perhaps scared of the big new world Yorke and Co. briefly allowed us to see. You might say I'm being a little hard on the state of music, and am martyrizing Radiohead. You would be right, asshole.
But I feel that I have a right to diss music from the 00s, because I'm mad at the 00s. The 00s were handed the ladder by Thom Yorke and the 00s slapped it away from him like a spoiled, wicked child (Hey, that's a Radiohead ref – BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM). Instead of taking the general principle of Kid A and expanding it, which to me seems to be the only logical next step in musical evolution, we have collectively said “No Thom Yorke. No thank you. You keep your 'sleepy jack the furniture', we have...” Well, what do we have?
We have REVISIONISM. Yes, REVISIONISM, the crotchety old Conservative guard that seems to creep in just when things get good and progressive in art. The 00s was spent dressing up noble corpses in tacky, garish stage makeup and jewelry...and then casting said corpses in the MTV remake of 'Citizen Kane' starring Zac Efron and Lindsay Lohan.
To be fair, there's something to be said about the artistic merits of perfecting the past. Filmmakers certainly do it, but the medium of film is an overall far more conservative one than music, which (in my opinion) would collapse in on itself if not for the Kid As, the ...And Nicos, etc. And more to the point, there's something so cynical and shallow about revamping older genres. I'm not talking about referencing your favorite band or style of music by having a few similar chord progressions on accident or maybe channelling your favorite singer in the microphone booth. Those things would be somewhat like accidents, and are to be expected within pop music where everything is a sort of evolution of something older. No, I'm talking about literally lifting chord progressions, instrument tones, vocal styles, lyrical topics, and mixing approaches that were all utilized by an older, or perhaps a collection of older artists who did so originally and authentically, and then presenting that flat out plagiarized product as something new and hip.
A great example here is dance punk. With a few notable exceptions, the original dance punk originated 'neath the umbrella of No Wave music, which was (and still is) about as radically artistic and as far removed from anything like commercialism that you can get in music. The first 'big' (I use the term quite loosely) dance punk group was called the Contortions. Their lead singer/ saxophonist James Chance was in several No Wave bands himself – dance punk, or punk funk, or whatever you want to call it (it was then called mutant disco) was designed entirely as artistic statement, as a sort of diametrically opposed embrace of disco and black music which the punks entirely wrote off. Dance punk was also meant to be an entirely modernist style – a sort of ironic reversal, a using of a music that was predominantly for fun, dancing, and partying in a very un-party way. Frankly, the whole concept of dance punk was intended to be anti-commerical and uncomfortable.
So when a band like the Rapture, or any of those other ten billion fad groups that formed as soon as they realized dance punk was burgeoning as a new scene in the early 00s, receives countless recommendations from critics (No. 1 album of 2004? Really pitchfork?) and makes probably millions, or at least close to millions, with corporate partnerships, car commercials, and the like, it kind of runs counterintuitive to the whole spirit of the music that they're making. I can hear you say, “But Jorin, the Rapture play dance funk for a different audience, for different ends. They jettisoned all of the avant garde elements for sleek sexiness. They improved on the genre, which is what you were blabbering on about a minute ago about being the point of music or something. You're acting like a curmudgeon while condemning the music world for curmudgeon-ness. Suck it up already, or at least get your argument to follow logic and reason!”
Yes, I say in return. Good point, well done, and all that jazz. But if I may retort – the Rapture don't acknowledge their music's heritage in the slightest. The journalists never seem to bring it up, and all of the hipsters who download their album and play it at parties to feel smug at the less informed are too young to remember, and are probably too vain or lazy to trouble themselves to study the history of that 'hot new sound'. Why? Because that's all bands like the Rapture, or Vampire Weekend, or MGMT, or The Pains at Being Pure At Heart, or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or Crocodiles, and any of the other fucking bullshit scam artists posturing as actual artists are; exploiters of a fickle, attention deficient audience that don't care what that hot new band sounds like as long as pitchfork liked it and everyone in the room wearing American Apparel respects them for knowing about it. You can blame it on the hipsters if you like, you can blame it on pitchfork, you can blame it on the record labels, you can even blame it on the alcohol. No matter the origin of this evil, it exists and accounts for 85-93% of all music released in the past ten years.
So yeah, maybe I do hold Kid A and Radiohead in higher esteem than they perhaps deserve. But it's because, retrospectively, Kid A is looking more and more like that last notable, authentic contribution to music that signified anything. The day that the music industry becomes less shallow, and artists stop plagiarizing from dead genres and dead people who cannot even defend themselves or their art and begin to (at least attempt at) making real actual music again will be the day my ice-incased heart finally melts. Maybe Kid A should be made mandatory to listen to in high school or something...
Friday, May 22, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Allo, guvnuhs
I have returned
Hey readers, sorry for the like six month absence. I've been pretty busy adjusting to the rigors of college life/ making music/ listening to other people's music/ battling Intergalactic demons named K'trl Kuku Puffs that spit this kind of lava-ish acid that ruins vintage tees. But for whatever it's worth, here's what would be an apology to you cleverly masked in sarcasm and feigned apathy. Like, whatever, dudes.
So here's what's been up, y'all:
1. I've really gotten into hip-hop. Fallen for it, actually. If you'll notice, hip hop utilizes similies, metaphors, enjambment, parataxis, and all of the other literary devices common with real deal poetry. So it seems kind of like a natural progression for someone like me to get into tha rap game. Plus, I love the idea of a beat - something that has to be simple enough to only change once or twice, but paradoxically interesting enough to hold the listener's attention and compliment the rapper's flow. And then there's the vibe factor (that thing that every good rap beat makes my head do, a sort of chin surfing on the rhythm) So look for more hip-hop stuff on the blog. Or don't, I haven't decided yet.
2. I love Balearic Disco/Pop! I think it's the most laid back, chill form of music known to man. When I listen to this style of music, I'm instantly transported to the Virgin Islands where Daiquiris are free from 10 - 2. I recommend them and them and them
You are actually required to dress like this if you want to make Balearic Pop.
3. Sonic Youth are gonna release a new album soon! They're calling it 'The Eternal', possibly inspired by the length of SY's career Hyuk Hyuk Hyuk.
4.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Songs that give you chills
THERE are times when a song is so fucking good that you lose your cool.
Those of us with refined tastes are supposed to know better than this, of course. We're supposed to acknowledge, with a cool shrug, that there is no such thing as perfect in music - there hasn't been anything worthwhile to happen in music since the 70s. And even then, music fucking sucked.
Sure, when we were kids songs on the radio would absolutely tear us into the stratosphere; they would captivate us, leaving us bug-eyed with dazzled wonderment at how incredible that whole music thing can be. But we're adults now, for Pete's sake, and adults are belabored and crusty with extreme amounts of cynicism. Those days of glowing ebullience are (supposed to be) forever extinguished.
And anyway, in adult world the cooler you are the less that you actually like music, right? After all, what distinguishes pitchfork or cokemachineglow from Rolling Stone, if not higher levels of disdain for mediocrity? Make no mistake, we are never to enjoy music, under any circumstances.
And yet, it happens nonetheless. A certain cadence, or melody, or vocal delivery just grabs you and forces you back to a child-like state. At that moment, you forget to be objective. You forget all of the words to criticize, or how to examine a song's flaws - all of those cognitive processes are thrown offline. For a brief instant, anything other than the beautiful music that swirls around you is immediately forgotten - and when it's really intense, a feeling of incredible, euphoric awe goes creeping warmly across your entire being.
Once you find songs like these, they become your special treasure. You keep them locked up for the tenderest of moments, in some untouched playlist or folder (or shoebox, if you're old fashioned). You hide them from friends, coworkers, siblings, parents - even girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives - and if the song is played, at a party or by someone in your proximity by accident, you ignore its effects, hoping the person next to you won't notice the glaze that has suddenly rolled across your eye. These songs feel like little parts of you, broken off and sealed up in some sublime moment you (and only you) get to relieve again and again, exactly as you remember.
Here are a few songs that have such an effect on yours truly:
Talk Show Host (Radiohead)
Rebellion(Lies) (Arcade Fire)
Unravel (Bjork)
Life on Mars? (David Bowie)
Walking Wounded (Everything but the Girl)
Those of us with refined tastes are supposed to know better than this, of course. We're supposed to acknowledge, with a cool shrug, that there is no such thing as perfect in music - there hasn't been anything worthwhile to happen in music since the 70s. And even then, music fucking sucked.
Sure, when we were kids songs on the radio would absolutely tear us into the stratosphere; they would captivate us, leaving us bug-eyed with dazzled wonderment at how incredible that whole music thing can be. But we're adults now, for Pete's sake, and adults are belabored and crusty with extreme amounts of cynicism. Those days of glowing ebullience are (supposed to be) forever extinguished.
And anyway, in adult world the cooler you are the less that you actually like music, right? After all, what distinguishes pitchfork or cokemachineglow from Rolling Stone, if not higher levels of disdain for mediocrity? Make no mistake, we are never to enjoy music, under any circumstances.
And yet, it happens nonetheless. A certain cadence, or melody, or vocal delivery just grabs you and forces you back to a child-like state. At that moment, you forget to be objective. You forget all of the words to criticize, or how to examine a song's flaws - all of those cognitive processes are thrown offline. For a brief instant, anything other than the beautiful music that swirls around you is immediately forgotten - and when it's really intense, a feeling of incredible, euphoric awe goes creeping warmly across your entire being.
Once you find songs like these, they become your special treasure. You keep them locked up for the tenderest of moments, in some untouched playlist or folder (or shoebox, if you're old fashioned). You hide them from friends, coworkers, siblings, parents - even girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives - and if the song is played, at a party or by someone in your proximity by accident, you ignore its effects, hoping the person next to you won't notice the glaze that has suddenly rolled across your eye. These songs feel like little parts of you, broken off and sealed up in some sublime moment you (and only you) get to relieve again and again, exactly as you remember.
Here are a few songs that have such an effect on yours truly:
Talk Show Host (Radiohead)
Rebellion(Lies) (Arcade Fire)
Unravel (Bjork)
Life on Mars? (David Bowie)
Walking Wounded (Everything but the Girl)
Friday, October 17, 2008
ALBUM REVIEWS: Skeletal Lamping
(certainly the gayest thing you will see on this blog.)
Oh, Of Montreal. How the mighty have fallen. And by fallen, I mean fallen upward. And by falling upward, I mean released a new album that's insanely listenable yet alienating, sexy, determinedly unique and a fucking lot of fun.
For those of you who didn't know, Kevin Barnes wanted to use this record to expand upon musical and lyrical conventions - to take music, and specifically, Of Montreal, to uncharted territory. As a result, the transitions on this album are as copious as they are drastic; there are, for example, six to eight transitions within the first track. This may sound like the makings of an album that overreaches itself, or tries to hard to obtain a gimmick while forgetting about sounding like worthwhile music. Somehow, you are wrong.
Although the motif of schizophrenia remains a constant throughout the work, Of Montreal keep it all together. Their near-autistic bouncing from one musical idea to the next kind of works, when its coupled with the lyrical subject matter of a black shemale soul/funk singer named Georgie Fruit.
Which brings me to the most appealing aspect of Skeltal Lamping; its unbelievably funky sensibilities. Kevin Barnes sounds like Sly Stone, George Clinton, and David Bowie crammed in a blender and pasteurized with scraps of older Of Montreal. It's funky, it's fresh, and its wholly unlike anything around (outside of the aforementioned older Of Montreal, that is).
Lyrically, this is the most overtly sexual Of Montreal has ever been. Barnes' writing style has shifted away from personal and towards kitschy, tongue in cheek dirty talk. It's all in the name of fun and good humor, and done so in a catch-phrase-y kind of way (I'm not sure what a 'Big Cock Creator' is, but it may have something to do with this (NSFW)).
Yet there are times when Barnes' meandering wanders outside of coherency. Every now and then, the ever shifting musical terrain proves to be disorientating. This album has an intense case of ADD, which works to both harm and help the work as a whole. As I've already said, the constant shifting makes for intriguing pop art - but there are times that it jerks out of sync right when the band has locked into a groove, and it leaves you wondering why they didn't just stick with the last three well written melodies and time signatures.
But a surplus of catchy, funky musical ideas could never be a total deal breaker, especially for me. And again, when it works, it's positively brilliant. And more to the point, Of Montreal have been doing this short-attention-span thing since their last record, so you sort of sign up for that with the price of admission. All in all, I'd say Skeletal Lamping has a few sparse flaws, but overall stands out as one of the best records of the year.
PROS:It's funky, It's crammed full of great songs with countless great segments.
CONS: It can become disorientating, and it may scare away homophobes.
ARTISTRY/PRETENSION: 7/10
LIKABILITY/DIRECT APPEAL: 6/10
OVERALL RATING: 9/10
Monday, October 13, 2008
Nothing can stop me now: Why The Downward Spiral is (one of) the best albums ever
It begins with a punch.
It jars you, immediately setting you ill at ease. There is a crackle of soundtrack - you realize that you're listening to silence in another room, from another day. There are tiny clicks as the album revolves in your stereo - tiny barbs blooming soft in the mix, drawing your attention in. Another bludgeon - this time, generating a human groan. You hear background noises, out of focus. What sounds like chatter...you realize is a plea for help. A guttural, wordless appeal to mercy is cut short by yet another hit
- and another -
and another. The punches land mechanically, plodding a sort of rhythm that accelerates into a steady pulse. Those guttural moans are now shouts of pain - any words drowned out by those deafening hits. The tempo of this visceral display of audio violence nears breakneck speed. It all feels as if the whole sample could careen into oblivion at any second...and then it does, hurdling you into a nightmarish soundscape of white noise.
This is how The Downward Spiral begins.
Every second of music on this album retains the tension established within those first few moments. This is one of those rare kinds of records that stands out as truly artistic, authentic and original - one that directly references its creator's influences (Ministry, David Bowie) yet stands out as decidedly unique. Although Spiral produced a single highly popular in the Pop music scene - one that endures constant radio rotation even to this day - this album is decidedly anti-pop. The Downward Spiral is as conceptually diverse as it is aesthetically textured; while every one of these fourteen songs develop Reznor's lyrical vision of a man driven to madness, they all also reflect the artist's incredible attention to sonic detail and nuance. It is, by my estimation and for all intents and purposes, a perfect album.
The speeding locomotive of the album opener (Mr. Self Destruct) combusts in a supernova of static carnage - and in its wake softly croons the blithely nihilistic 'Piggy'. Although not exactly renown for lyrical adroitness, here Reznor delivers his prose straight from the heart; in doing so, he avoids giving the work too pretentious of a vibe and generates a vulnerable human contrast to the album's alienating coldness. When Reznor's protagonist is not shamelessly self-abasing and vulnerable (Mr. Self Destruct, The Becoming, Ruiner, I Do Not Want This, Hurt) he abandons himself unto the embrace of sexual oblivion (Closer, Reptile, Big Man With A Gun). Each wring down the spiral reveals another level of this character's dementia, and we are drawn closer step by step to his inevitable tragedy - be it interpreted as suicide (as the title track suggests) or meek helplessness (Hurt). Reznor is at one moment resolved in his abandoment - "Nothing can stop me now/ 'cause I don't care anymore" - and, in the other, nearly crippled by it ("there's no escape from this/ my new consciousness"). Reznor's outbursts of hopelessness and demand for meaning (I want to do something/That matters) are replaced by deviant lust and severe nihilism ("I want to fuck you like an animal", "smash me/ erase me").
However Spiral's lyrics are not merely self referential - the album is rife with references (both musical and literary). 'Heresy' spouts Nietzsche-influenced caterwauls while the album's only instrumental (A Warm Place) borrows directly from David Bowie's 'Crystal Japan'. Pigs are everywhere in this record, which could either be a reference to Golding's Symbolic Pig from Lord of the Flies or Charles Manson (Reznor recorded Spiral in the Tate murder mansion, after all.)
Musically, the record plays off of the relationship between loud and soft (much as, thematically, it plays off of light and darkness, purity and abasement). While the more visceral tracks are awash with distortion and the lighter tracks seem ethereally weightless, every song on the album (no matter it's mood) is crammed with layers. If there has ever been an album tailor made for headphones, it's The Downward Spiral; tiny noises, sound effects, samples, and musical phrases are scattered all across Spiral's terrain. This gives the record a haunted quality - as if, at any given moment, there's something hidden lurking just beneath the surface, buried deeply in the mix.
Spiral touches upon the darkest hues of human emotion. It spurns, it soothes, it affirms, it denies. At the album's end, we are left in a very similar state of how we began. As 'Hurt' creeps to its somber close, a jarring chord sounds out of nowhere, shattering the song's cadence and with it, our reflective reverie. The chord is left lingering atop the mix for an eternity, as if to say (as Bret Easton Ellis's serial killer Patrick Bateman asserted in American Psycho) "This confession has meant nothing." Well, maybe it didn't, but this thrashing, heaving mess of postmodernism has remained over the years as my favorite record of all time, and certainly one of the greatest albums ever made. I recommend it to anyone who's ever had a bad day (or, for that matter, a good lay).
It jars you, immediately setting you ill at ease. There is a crackle of soundtrack - you realize that you're listening to silence in another room, from another day. There are tiny clicks as the album revolves in your stereo - tiny barbs blooming soft in the mix, drawing your attention in. Another bludgeon - this time, generating a human groan. You hear background noises, out of focus. What sounds like chatter...you realize is a plea for help. A guttural, wordless appeal to mercy is cut short by yet another hit
- and another -
and another. The punches land mechanically, plodding a sort of rhythm that accelerates into a steady pulse. Those guttural moans are now shouts of pain - any words drowned out by those deafening hits. The tempo of this visceral display of audio violence nears breakneck speed. It all feels as if the whole sample could careen into oblivion at any second...and then it does, hurdling you into a nightmarish soundscape of white noise.
This is how The Downward Spiral begins.
Every second of music on this album retains the tension established within those first few moments. This is one of those rare kinds of records that stands out as truly artistic, authentic and original - one that directly references its creator's influences (Ministry, David Bowie) yet stands out as decidedly unique. Although Spiral produced a single highly popular in the Pop music scene - one that endures constant radio rotation even to this day - this album is decidedly anti-pop. The Downward Spiral is as conceptually diverse as it is aesthetically textured; while every one of these fourteen songs develop Reznor's lyrical vision of a man driven to madness, they all also reflect the artist's incredible attention to sonic detail and nuance. It is, by my estimation and for all intents and purposes, a perfect album.
The speeding locomotive of the album opener (Mr. Self Destruct) combusts in a supernova of static carnage - and in its wake softly croons the blithely nihilistic 'Piggy'. Although not exactly renown for lyrical adroitness, here Reznor delivers his prose straight from the heart; in doing so, he avoids giving the work too pretentious of a vibe and generates a vulnerable human contrast to the album's alienating coldness. When Reznor's protagonist is not shamelessly self-abasing and vulnerable (Mr. Self Destruct, The Becoming, Ruiner, I Do Not Want This, Hurt) he abandons himself unto the embrace of sexual oblivion (Closer, Reptile, Big Man With A Gun). Each wring down the spiral reveals another level of this character's dementia, and we are drawn closer step by step to his inevitable tragedy - be it interpreted as suicide (as the title track suggests) or meek helplessness (Hurt). Reznor is at one moment resolved in his abandoment - "Nothing can stop me now/ 'cause I don't care anymore" - and, in the other, nearly crippled by it ("there's no escape from this/ my new consciousness"). Reznor's outbursts of hopelessness and demand for meaning (I want to do something/That matters) are replaced by deviant lust and severe nihilism ("I want to fuck you like an animal", "smash me/ erase me").
However Spiral's lyrics are not merely self referential - the album is rife with references (both musical and literary). 'Heresy' spouts Nietzsche-influenced caterwauls while the album's only instrumental (A Warm Place) borrows directly from David Bowie's 'Crystal Japan'. Pigs are everywhere in this record, which could either be a reference to Golding's Symbolic Pig from Lord of the Flies or Charles Manson (Reznor recorded Spiral in the Tate murder mansion, after all.)
Musically, the record plays off of the relationship between loud and soft (much as, thematically, it plays off of light and darkness, purity and abasement). While the more visceral tracks are awash with distortion and the lighter tracks seem ethereally weightless, every song on the album (no matter it's mood) is crammed with layers. If there has ever been an album tailor made for headphones, it's The Downward Spiral; tiny noises, sound effects, samples, and musical phrases are scattered all across Spiral's terrain. This gives the record a haunted quality - as if, at any given moment, there's something hidden lurking just beneath the surface, buried deeply in the mix.
Spiral touches upon the darkest hues of human emotion. It spurns, it soothes, it affirms, it denies. At the album's end, we are left in a very similar state of how we began. As 'Hurt' creeps to its somber close, a jarring chord sounds out of nowhere, shattering the song's cadence and with it, our reflective reverie. The chord is left lingering atop the mix for an eternity, as if to say (as Bret Easton Ellis's serial killer Patrick Bateman asserted in American Psycho) "This confession has meant nothing." Well, maybe it didn't, but this thrashing, heaving mess of postmodernism has remained over the years as my favorite record of all time, and certainly one of the greatest albums ever made. I recommend it to anyone who's ever had a bad day (or, for that matter, a good lay).
Friday, October 10, 2008
On dissonance
This essay concerns itself with ugliness.
Before there was pop music and before there was even harmony, music was entirely mathematical. For the first hundred or so years of music, artistry and ingenuity meant next to nothing to composers. The priority of the day was, first and foremost, the numerical structure of a piece's progression. The 'rules of music' were seen as gifts from God, and seeing as the only people who could read or write music were members of the clergy, very little deviation was allowed or even considered. The intense neurological effects of musical cadences were (like many things at the time) attributed mainly to the majesty and beauty of God's universe, and (for a little while) music was simply a tool of praise. And even after music became more secular, a similar attitude remained; it isn't what you play, its how closely you stick to the rules.
Thankfully, over time this outlook dissipated. Throughout the Baroque and Classical eras, the rules of tonality and music began to expand - and as such, dilute. By the Romantic era, adherence to music's basic principals was no longer a concern. Composers embraced the artistic and emotional aspects of their art, writing pieces that resolved to irregular cadences and inventing new techniques (secondary dominance, Neapolitan chords, et al) to satisfy their desires to make music as pleasing to the ear and to the heart as possible.
What's more, by the turn of the century, many composers rejected tonality altogether - these early 20th century writers embraced the Avant-garde, and with it, dissonance. From that point, music become wholly an art form. John Cage and a few Polish and French composers (Penderecki, Messiaen, to name a few) began experimenting with Serialism, 'texturing' their instruments, and other really out there techniques. Music, it seemed, had come full circle - from championing the order of tonality to flat out rejecting it.
But then, rock n' roll happened, and the world of music started all over.
Abandoning almost everything of its jazz roots, rock music was inordinately simple - just as the extremely alienating music of the early 20th century borrowed thematically from Anarchy, rock n roll was wholeheartedly populist. It offered to its listener a directly understandable, processable product that anyone could understand. It was only proper, then, that rock music of the time offered little lyrical depth.
And let's not forget that rock n roll's first wave of popularity (the 1950s) marked (in America, anyway) a sharp increase in attention by corporations towards the teenager. The teenager is easily swayable, self serious, and entirely shallow. It was easy for the music business to pick up on upcoming trends within this demographic, and capitalize for a big buck. The music which became popular reflected the stereotypes of its market audience - shallow, vapid, fun to dance to but lacking of any artistry or sincerity.
And then, three things happened that had extensive and direct roles in the subject of this essay, all of which were directly related.
1) The 1960s happened
The 60s marked intense social change across the world. The stereotyped pop songs of the 50s were no longer successful, as the teens of the world became more diverse, opinionated, and involved in scenes both musical and otherwise that the corporate world was unable to keep up.
2) Bob Dylan happened
Bob Dylan was the first real and recognizable artist in pop music. He wrote songs with real depth, with social and political ramifications unheard of in pop. Dylan's music referenced blues and country, yet sounded fresh and new.
and 3) The Velvet Underground happened
These folks were the start of it all. (Well, them and The Fugs, actually.) The Velvet Underground embraced the Advant-Garde, and were one of the first bands EVER to incorporate that beautiful, horrifying technique into pop.
The technique I'm talking about is, of course, dissonance; when a musician plays two tones together that startle our brain - when notes that conventionally don't belong together are made to sound with one another, held together to create intense waves of tension, repulsion. Exposure to this sort of music leads the mind to an inescapable conclusion; that nothing can be taken for granted. That every rule it's ever been taught can be reversed - can be obliterated, ignored, and replaced. In the Velvet Underground's debut album, this technique was first introduced to the world; with it, the seeds for Punk were lain.
It's not pretty - it's anti-beauty, if anything. It doesn't resolve, it doesn't lend the ear peace of mind and clarity, or calm (as music was expected to do for several thousand years). It doesn't affirm God's beauty or majesty, or validate any pretense of conventionality. It undermines all of those things. When generated by a feedbacking guitar, it undermines the conventionality of rock music, as well. Dissonance knows no rules or boundaries - it is pure unmitigated anarchy. With its ear shattering volume and intensity, dissonant music (noise rock and its various cousins) drives a stake into the heart of all things pedestrian and ordinary.
And what, I ask, could be more artistic than that?
Before there was pop music and before there was even harmony, music was entirely mathematical. For the first hundred or so years of music, artistry and ingenuity meant next to nothing to composers. The priority of the day was, first and foremost, the numerical structure of a piece's progression. The 'rules of music' were seen as gifts from God, and seeing as the only people who could read or write music were members of the clergy, very little deviation was allowed or even considered. The intense neurological effects of musical cadences were (like many things at the time) attributed mainly to the majesty and beauty of God's universe, and (for a little while) music was simply a tool of praise. And even after music became more secular, a similar attitude remained; it isn't what you play, its how closely you stick to the rules.
Thankfully, over time this outlook dissipated. Throughout the Baroque and Classical eras, the rules of tonality and music began to expand - and as such, dilute. By the Romantic era, adherence to music's basic principals was no longer a concern. Composers embraced the artistic and emotional aspects of their art, writing pieces that resolved to irregular cadences and inventing new techniques (secondary dominance, Neapolitan chords, et al) to satisfy their desires to make music as pleasing to the ear and to the heart as possible.
What's more, by the turn of the century, many composers rejected tonality altogether - these early 20th century writers embraced the Avant-garde, and with it, dissonance. From that point, music become wholly an art form. John Cage and a few Polish and French composers (Penderecki, Messiaen, to name a few) began experimenting with Serialism, 'texturing' their instruments, and other really out there techniques. Music, it seemed, had come full circle - from championing the order of tonality to flat out rejecting it.
But then, rock n' roll happened, and the world of music started all over.
Abandoning almost everything of its jazz roots, rock music was inordinately simple - just as the extremely alienating music of the early 20th century borrowed thematically from Anarchy, rock n roll was wholeheartedly populist. It offered to its listener a directly understandable, processable product that anyone could understand. It was only proper, then, that rock music of the time offered little lyrical depth.
And let's not forget that rock n roll's first wave of popularity (the 1950s) marked (in America, anyway) a sharp increase in attention by corporations towards the teenager. The teenager is easily swayable, self serious, and entirely shallow. It was easy for the music business to pick up on upcoming trends within this demographic, and capitalize for a big buck. The music which became popular reflected the stereotypes of its market audience - shallow, vapid, fun to dance to but lacking of any artistry or sincerity.
And then, three things happened that had extensive and direct roles in the subject of this essay, all of which were directly related.
1) The 1960s happened
The 60s marked intense social change across the world. The stereotyped pop songs of the 50s were no longer successful, as the teens of the world became more diverse, opinionated, and involved in scenes both musical and otherwise that the corporate world was unable to keep up.
2) Bob Dylan happened
Bob Dylan was the first real and recognizable artist in pop music. He wrote songs with real depth, with social and political ramifications unheard of in pop. Dylan's music referenced blues and country, yet sounded fresh and new.
and 3) The Velvet Underground happened
These folks were the start of it all. (Well, them and The Fugs, actually.) The Velvet Underground embraced the Advant-Garde, and were one of the first bands EVER to incorporate that beautiful, horrifying technique into pop.
The technique I'm talking about is, of course, dissonance; when a musician plays two tones together that startle our brain - when notes that conventionally don't belong together are made to sound with one another, held together to create intense waves of tension, repulsion. Exposure to this sort of music leads the mind to an inescapable conclusion; that nothing can be taken for granted. That every rule it's ever been taught can be reversed - can be obliterated, ignored, and replaced. In the Velvet Underground's debut album, this technique was first introduced to the world; with it, the seeds for Punk were lain.
It's not pretty - it's anti-beauty, if anything. It doesn't resolve, it doesn't lend the ear peace of mind and clarity, or calm (as music was expected to do for several thousand years). It doesn't affirm God's beauty or majesty, or validate any pretense of conventionality. It undermines all of those things. When generated by a feedbacking guitar, it undermines the conventionality of rock music, as well. Dissonance knows no rules or boundaries - it is pure unmitigated anarchy. With its ear shattering volume and intensity, dissonant music (noise rock and its various cousins) drives a stake into the heart of all things pedestrian and ordinary.
And what, I ask, could be more artistic than that?
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
ALBUM REVIEWS: This Is the Sound That Crazy Makes
Typically, I do the best I can to avoid music made before 1977 that isn't already irredeemably cool. Obviously, certain genres are innocent of this embargo - Proto Punk's is, as the kids are saying, so necessary because without it, there wouldn't be a Punk (or a Post Punk for that matter!) Bands like The Stooges, The Velvet Underground and David Bowie will always, always be hip and/or relevant (at least their first few releases). And of course, the early seventies is chock full of obscure-but-great artists (The Modern Lovers, Faust, Can, the New York Dolls, etc, etc). But all of those guys and galls still fit into a similar mold - they're all pioneers, or produced by pioneers, or fans of pioneers. They all make new and exciting music.
(I challenge you to listen to White Light/ White Heat and not get a bit of a music hard on).
One can trace the weight of their influences into the eighties and nineties, and even today. Most of those great bands are considered great today because, throughout the ravages of history, groups of music nerds banded together and stood by their favorite bands, hoisting their original non-re release vinyl copy of Faust IV up for the world to see, insisting upon its importance year after year after year as its imitators redirected, revamped, and rehashed its iconoclastic energy. Some people today who crank Green Day LPs have no idea that that artistic statement has already been made - thirty years ago. From the Sex Pistols! (Well, as the record store clerk Dick from 1997's brilliant snob film High Fidelity assures us, there and from Stiff Little Fingers' debut LP.) And when the Sex Pistols were huge in the late seventies, many a Briton had no clue that Malcolm McLaren plagiarized his 'idea' of children-anarchist-destroyers from across the Atlantic: from Richard Hell, and the New York Dolls, and those progenitors of a revolution.
And on it goes, the story of pop music - one plagiarism after another. But after all, it was John Lennon who told us that it's "not who you rip off, it's how you do it". And at the end of the day what's wrong with borrowing from your favorite bands? Chances are they're going to intervene in your sound, anyway. The general consensus is, let 'em in...as long as they belong there. As long as they're good, recognized as such by critic and fan alike. You'll get a hell of a lot farther impersonating Television and Gang of Four than Nickelback, that's for sure (unless, of course, you want any money; then by all means, go for Nickelback).
But who 'belongs there'? Who makes the cut, what artists rise above their worthless, prattling peers as shining examples of 'what to do' with musical instruments? As far as history's concerned, all significant influences can be traced back to their origins. The Clash were ultra important. The Velvet Underground inspired everything worthwhile (as did the Pixies, but that's a later blog). Like the Velvets and the Pixies, there are a number of bands that did no wrong - that were as perfect as perfect gets in pop music, that inspired only good groups, that wrote only the best music for as long as they were relevant. As far as the 1970s are concerned, this refers to an extremely long and diverse list.
But then there are those groups that the music community has a long history of enmity towards - that were considered so god fucking awful, it provided the original impetus for punk to rise up and sweep its bloated, rotten corpse off the foyer of public consciousness for good. I'm talking, of course, about rock n' roll. You know their names; they are the most notorious offenders, responsible for the most egregious of musical crimes. Led Zeppelin. Van Halen. Cream. Any band that toured between the years 1963 to 1975 and utilized "tasty licks" in one (or all) of their songs. The kind of bands that Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous so perfectly lampoon - bands with members who couldn't care less about art; who write songs strictly about getting laid, and the trauma of loosing a lay - or maybe songs just about the plain ole joys of rock n roll. Bands with 'groupies'. Bands with masturbatory solos, histrionic front men, stadium filling numbers you hear day in and day out on every Classic Rock station on the planet, and who mysteriously conjure the smell of bad pot on every lawn of every arena their now-skeletal authors 'rock n roll all nite' with all the sincerity of wet mops.
(I've had a bad day and I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man.)
And when it comes to rock n' roll crimes, a list of Progressive Rock groups from the early seventies reads like a Most Wanted Chart. Today Prog Rock's ornate orchestrations crackle, like old skin, with age. Genesis's once (probably) captivating excursions into the prog frontier now just sound, well, 'old'. Jethro Tull's lyrics - once intensely far out, I'm sure - are now laughably trite. When Led Zeppelin - while still respected - flirt with the Prog vangard (see: Achilles' Last Stand, Stairway to Heaven), there is no system of measurement to quantify its awfulness.
And who among their ranks is more guilty of sheer crap than that giant green fag dragon of a band, Pink Floyd? While the Punk revolution swept over Britain in the late seventies, the 'Floyd went marching blithely on, bloating to its most superfluousness while the rest of the world set out to trim the fat. And then, like the poor fat bastard who piggies himself to death in David Fincher's Se7en, Pink Floyd got so specious and over the top that they killed guitar music for an entire decade (I'm looking at you, 1979's The Wall!)
NO.
The rumor has it that, when Sid Vicious applied for a job with the Sex Pistols, he was wearing a Pink Floyd tee that the adventurous lad had carved his own commentary into; right above the large, translucent letters that spelled out the band's name, Sid had etched the words "I" and "HATE". These once harbingers of psychedelia had clearly mutated into something sinister - something boring, and up its own ass, to boot. Dark Side of the Moon may be one of the highest selling rock albums of all time, but God bless it if it ain't the worst piece of shit to come out of 1973. Humorless and entirely lacking any semblance of humility, both Dark Side... and The Wall symbolize almost everything wrong with "rock n roll" in the 70s.
BUT I'll be damned if the 'Floyd's debut isn't absolutely dazzling.
All of these people are on heavy drugs.
Before the bloat, before the gloat, and before the goat, 'The' Pink Floyd's debut album sounds (excuse the Space Rock analogy) light years away from its creators' later work. Gone are the constant daddy issues, the obsession with death and insanity and socialist politics - the twenty minute track lengths, the indulgent solos, and the flying fucking pigs. Piper at the Gates of Dawn was penned way before David 'rock out with my cock out' Gilmour ever joined the band - and in his stead (or rather, before his stead) stands tall a handsome, fashionable, black haired man with an instantly compelling voice, a way with child-like imagry, and an unbelievably out-there guitar style. This man is also BAT SHIT FUCKING NUTS. His name is (was) Syd Barrett:
(Meet Crazy McCrazerson.)
And Syd made the band, pure and simple. The minute the sinister chromatic bass riff from Lucifer Sam creeps out of the speakers, any memory of late not-great Pink Floyd is immediately forgotten. First and foremost, Piper is scary; horrifying, in fact. A kaleidoscopic stumble through a forest in the blackest of midnights, high as a kite on LSD. And what's funny, half of the songs on the album could pass (on paper) as kid's songs. Playful lyrics, jaunty music - yet lurking behind even the twee-ness of Scarecrow lumbers the big hulking acid-soaked terror that only fully reveals itself in numbers like Pow R. Toc H. and Interstellar Overdrive (the former creaks with enough dissonance and drone guitar to make me nearly wet myself).
Syd Barrett was a mystery to all - its unclear whether or not he was even conscious of his own genius, or really anything for that matter. Stories of his madness range from mild to absurd - and it becomes difficult to remain skeptical submerged in the Psychedelic dementia that is Piper at the Gates of Dawn. An excellent, excellent album that (nearly) excuses the band from all of its later-day transgressions.
It doesn't take a genius to work out the math at play here - Pink Floyd plus Syd Barrett equals good. Pink Floyd minus Syd Barrett equals wanky. So what was good about this situation in the first place? Obviously, Syd - this higher level reasoning led me to Barrett's first (and really only mentionable) solo album, darkly and promisingly entitled The Madcap laughs. Although at the time of recording, the worst Syd stories had come to pass, and he already been kicked out of the band and replaced by Gilmour, the songs here simply do not fail to astonish.
(The Madcap laughs, indeed!)
The album rolls along with all the consistency of(ha ha ha)a schizophrenic. The slow seduction of Terrapin is banished away from the mind's eye as the album's second track, No Good Trying comes scooting across the stereo. The Madcap's lack of consistency gives the work as a whole an unstable edge, as if the whole thing might collapse together any moment. Syd ranges from quietly admiring (Terrapin) to bizarrely poetic (Golden Hair). The best of the album sound like a Who concert unplugged - the hit Octopus rambles distinctly British nonsense and demonstrates Barret's pop genius.
Yet its the fifth track - Dark Globe - that really stands out from its brothers and sisters as a true work of art. What could be meant for the members of 'Floyd, or just the entire world, this jarring acoustic track will send shivers down any spine. Here Syd is hopeless, dejected, and altogether insane; the man's neurosis on display so vividly one cannot help but feel guilty just for listening to it for entertainment purposes. The Madcap Laughs is a masterpiece, in its own right.
(I challenge you to listen to White Light/ White Heat and not get a bit of a music hard on).
One can trace the weight of their influences into the eighties and nineties, and even today. Most of those great bands are considered great today because, throughout the ravages of history, groups of music nerds banded together and stood by their favorite bands, hoisting their original non-re release vinyl copy of Faust IV up for the world to see, insisting upon its importance year after year after year as its imitators redirected, revamped, and rehashed its iconoclastic energy. Some people today who crank Green Day LPs have no idea that that artistic statement has already been made - thirty years ago. From the Sex Pistols! (Well, as the record store clerk Dick from 1997's brilliant snob film High Fidelity assures us, there and from Stiff Little Fingers' debut LP.) And when the Sex Pistols were huge in the late seventies, many a Briton had no clue that Malcolm McLaren plagiarized his 'idea' of children-anarchist-destroyers from across the Atlantic: from Richard Hell, and the New York Dolls, and those progenitors of a revolution.
And on it goes, the story of pop music - one plagiarism after another. But after all, it was John Lennon who told us that it's "not who you rip off, it's how you do it". And at the end of the day what's wrong with borrowing from your favorite bands? Chances are they're going to intervene in your sound, anyway. The general consensus is, let 'em in...as long as they belong there. As long as they're good, recognized as such by critic and fan alike. You'll get a hell of a lot farther impersonating Television and Gang of Four than Nickelback, that's for sure (unless, of course, you want any money; then by all means, go for Nickelback).
But who 'belongs there'? Who makes the cut, what artists rise above their worthless, prattling peers as shining examples of 'what to do' with musical instruments? As far as history's concerned, all significant influences can be traced back to their origins. The Clash were ultra important. The Velvet Underground inspired everything worthwhile (as did the Pixies, but that's a later blog). Like the Velvets and the Pixies, there are a number of bands that did no wrong - that were as perfect as perfect gets in pop music, that inspired only good groups, that wrote only the best music for as long as they were relevant. As far as the 1970s are concerned, this refers to an extremely long and diverse list.
But then there are those groups that the music community has a long history of enmity towards - that were considered so god fucking awful, it provided the original impetus for punk to rise up and sweep its bloated, rotten corpse off the foyer of public consciousness for good. I'm talking, of course, about rock n' roll. You know their names; they are the most notorious offenders, responsible for the most egregious of musical crimes. Led Zeppelin. Van Halen. Cream. Any band that toured between the years 1963 to 1975 and utilized "tasty licks" in one (or all) of their songs. The kind of bands that Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous so perfectly lampoon - bands with members who couldn't care less about art; who write songs strictly about getting laid, and the trauma of loosing a lay - or maybe songs just about the plain ole joys of rock n roll. Bands with 'groupies'. Bands with masturbatory solos, histrionic front men, stadium filling numbers you hear day in and day out on every Classic Rock station on the planet, and who mysteriously conjure the smell of bad pot on every lawn of every arena their now-skeletal authors 'rock n roll all nite' with all the sincerity of wet mops.
(I've had a bad day and I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man.)
And when it comes to rock n' roll crimes, a list of Progressive Rock groups from the early seventies reads like a Most Wanted Chart. Today Prog Rock's ornate orchestrations crackle, like old skin, with age. Genesis's once (probably) captivating excursions into the prog frontier now just sound, well, 'old'. Jethro Tull's lyrics - once intensely far out, I'm sure - are now laughably trite. When Led Zeppelin - while still respected - flirt with the Prog vangard (see: Achilles' Last Stand, Stairway to Heaven), there is no system of measurement to quantify its awfulness.
And who among their ranks is more guilty of sheer crap than that giant green fag dragon of a band, Pink Floyd? While the Punk revolution swept over Britain in the late seventies, the 'Floyd went marching blithely on, bloating to its most superfluousness while the rest of the world set out to trim the fat. And then, like the poor fat bastard who piggies himself to death in David Fincher's Se7en, Pink Floyd got so specious and over the top that they killed guitar music for an entire decade (I'm looking at you, 1979's The Wall!)
NO.
The rumor has it that, when Sid Vicious applied for a job with the Sex Pistols, he was wearing a Pink Floyd tee that the adventurous lad had carved his own commentary into; right above the large, translucent letters that spelled out the band's name, Sid had etched the words "I" and "HATE". These once harbingers of psychedelia had clearly mutated into something sinister - something boring, and up its own ass, to boot. Dark Side of the Moon may be one of the highest selling rock albums of all time, but God bless it if it ain't the worst piece of shit to come out of 1973. Humorless and entirely lacking any semblance of humility, both Dark Side... and The Wall symbolize almost everything wrong with "rock n roll" in the 70s.
BUT I'll be damned if the 'Floyd's debut isn't absolutely dazzling.
All of these people are on heavy drugs.
Before the bloat, before the gloat, and before the goat, 'The' Pink Floyd's debut album sounds (excuse the Space Rock analogy) light years away from its creators' later work. Gone are the constant daddy issues, the obsession with death and insanity and socialist politics - the twenty minute track lengths, the indulgent solos, and the flying fucking pigs. Piper at the Gates of Dawn was penned way before David 'rock out with my cock out' Gilmour ever joined the band - and in his stead (or rather, before his stead) stands tall a handsome, fashionable, black haired man with an instantly compelling voice, a way with child-like imagry, and an unbelievably out-there guitar style. This man is also BAT SHIT FUCKING NUTS. His name is (was) Syd Barrett:
(Meet Crazy McCrazerson.)
And Syd made the band, pure and simple. The minute the sinister chromatic bass riff from Lucifer Sam creeps out of the speakers, any memory of late not-great Pink Floyd is immediately forgotten. First and foremost, Piper is scary; horrifying, in fact. A kaleidoscopic stumble through a forest in the blackest of midnights, high as a kite on LSD. And what's funny, half of the songs on the album could pass (on paper) as kid's songs. Playful lyrics, jaunty music - yet lurking behind even the twee-ness of Scarecrow lumbers the big hulking acid-soaked terror that only fully reveals itself in numbers like Pow R. Toc H. and Interstellar Overdrive (the former creaks with enough dissonance and drone guitar to make me nearly wet myself).
Syd Barrett was a mystery to all - its unclear whether or not he was even conscious of his own genius, or really anything for that matter. Stories of his madness range from mild to absurd - and it becomes difficult to remain skeptical submerged in the Psychedelic dementia that is Piper at the Gates of Dawn. An excellent, excellent album that (nearly) excuses the band from all of its later-day transgressions.
It doesn't take a genius to work out the math at play here - Pink Floyd plus Syd Barrett equals good. Pink Floyd minus Syd Barrett equals wanky. So what was good about this situation in the first place? Obviously, Syd - this higher level reasoning led me to Barrett's first (and really only mentionable) solo album, darkly and promisingly entitled The Madcap laughs. Although at the time of recording, the worst Syd stories had come to pass, and he already been kicked out of the band and replaced by Gilmour, the songs here simply do not fail to astonish.
(The Madcap laughs, indeed!)
The album rolls along with all the consistency of(ha ha ha)a schizophrenic. The slow seduction of Terrapin is banished away from the mind's eye as the album's second track, No Good Trying comes scooting across the stereo. The Madcap's lack of consistency gives the work as a whole an unstable edge, as if the whole thing might collapse together any moment. Syd ranges from quietly admiring (Terrapin) to bizarrely poetic (Golden Hair). The best of the album sound like a Who concert unplugged - the hit Octopus rambles distinctly British nonsense and demonstrates Barret's pop genius.
Yet its the fifth track - Dark Globe - that really stands out from its brothers and sisters as a true work of art. What could be meant for the members of 'Floyd, or just the entire world, this jarring acoustic track will send shivers down any spine. Here Syd is hopeless, dejected, and altogether insane; the man's neurosis on display so vividly one cannot help but feel guilty just for listening to it for entertainment purposes. The Madcap Laughs is a masterpiece, in its own right.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
