New review at PopMatters
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
David Toop Explains it All
There's a fascinating interview with David Toop conducted by Geeta Dayal over at Rhizome.
Toop has a new book coming out called Sinister Resonance, which seems worthy of a read. The interview is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the fact that much of Toop's current thought seems to have evolved either in tandem or directly as an engagement with the discussions on hauntology (which were surely themselves partially an outgrowth of Toop's own Haunted Weather). The new book relates these ideas to the history of sound in visual art, particularly how it was portrayed before recording technology came around.
“Sound is a haunting, a ghost, a presence whose location in space is ambiguous and whose existence in time is transitory.”
I was particularly taken by his notion of sound as a medium that's naturally uncanny. Whereas seeing and touching are believing, hearing is a sense that is manipulative and defined by uncertainty. We can rarely relie on hearing alone. Without recording sound, you can never be sure what was said because it is no longer being said (sound is transitive). You can never be sure of the source of the sound unless you are looking directly at it (combining hearing with another sense).
Toop also articulates the dangers in minimalism/extremism in art, which I've too expressed elsewhere(such as in this article which touches on free jazz). To Toop (and me), the 20th century modernist project was stalled largely due to the race to the margins. The problem was not so much whether art was ready for its own dissolution into bare essence (in the case of minimalism) or to move beyond representation (in the case of abstract expressionism/free jazz/freeform/noise), but where to go thereafer:
"In a sense, that has been our dilemma ever since -- for the artists, or for musicians, and the audience. Where do you go from there [after the nothingness and void of minimalism]? Do you go backwards? Do you go back to 19th century romantic music, or do you go back into figurative painting, or do you go into pure philosophy? Where do you go after that? It created this colossal dilemma, and you could characterize that as a kind of silence."
After you've mapped the territorial boundaries of how far an artform can go, is there any coming back? What can now reside within those boundaries except existential despair? Does the introduction of minimalism and abstraction to a form spell an end to all novelty of the form?
Toop has a new book coming out called Sinister Resonance, which seems worthy of a read. The interview is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the fact that much of Toop's current thought seems to have evolved either in tandem or directly as an engagement with the discussions on hauntology (which were surely themselves partially an outgrowth of Toop's own Haunted Weather). The new book relates these ideas to the history of sound in visual art, particularly how it was portrayed before recording technology came around.
“Sound is a haunting, a ghost, a presence whose location in space is ambiguous and whose existence in time is transitory.”
I was particularly taken by his notion of sound as a medium that's naturally uncanny. Whereas seeing and touching are believing, hearing is a sense that is manipulative and defined by uncertainty. We can rarely relie on hearing alone. Without recording sound, you can never be sure what was said because it is no longer being said (sound is transitive). You can never be sure of the source of the sound unless you are looking directly at it (combining hearing with another sense).
Toop also articulates the dangers in minimalism/extremism in art, which I've too expressed elsewhere(such as in this article which touches on free jazz). To Toop (and me), the 20th century modernist project was stalled largely due to the race to the margins. The problem was not so much whether art was ready for its own dissolution into bare essence (in the case of minimalism) or to move beyond representation (in the case of abstract expressionism/free jazz/freeform/noise), but where to go thereafer:
"In a sense, that has been our dilemma ever since -- for the artists, or for musicians, and the audience. Where do you go from there [after the nothingness and void of minimalism]? Do you go backwards? Do you go back to 19th century romantic music, or do you go back into figurative painting, or do you go into pure philosophy? Where do you go after that? It created this colossal dilemma, and you could characterize that as a kind of silence."
After you've mapped the territorial boundaries of how far an artform can go, is there any coming back? What can now reside within those boundaries except existential despair? Does the introduction of minimalism and abstraction to a form spell an end to all novelty of the form?
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
On the Subject of Cover Art
A few posts back, I called attention to a review I have up of Robert A.A. Lowe and Rose Lazar's Eclipses. Lazar is notably for being solely the album's graphic artist, yet retains an artistic credit for the whole of the album. This assignment of authorship is not an arbitrary title, it's a recognition of authority. When the Cahiers du Cinema critics were establishing their criteria for who takes responsibility for a work, they ultimately decided that the authority rests with an author, something which all but the most casual film fans tend to agree upon now (yet it's producers, the financial centers of the film, who receive the Best Picture oscar-go figure).
Albums always seemed to have less ambiguity about authorship. The artist listed on the cover is the creator and mastermind behind the piece in front of you (though artists rarely "own" their own music). In some instances, there can be a contention that the work is actually the product of a producer moreso than the musician, who is just the vehicle or instrument through which the producer's ideas flow. The graphic artist has always seemed supplemental, since they are not actually a part of the recording, but certain records are granted aura and mystery by a great work of cover art, to the extent that the iconography of the cover itself becomes embedded into the music. Can bad cover art make an album "sound" worse? It certainly sounds superficial to think this could be the case, but since sound is reactive and intimately linked with the other senses it may just be that an album linked with shallow or tawdry iconography can get debased in the ears. The current era's solution, stripping music of all imagery, leaves us to our own poorly-establised echolocation.
Idiot's Guide to Dreaming linked to the page at Rate Your Music devoted to the art of Vaughan Oliver (of 23 Envelope), who was kind of a 4AD house artist and responsible for much of the mystified persona of that label. It's interesting looking through his collections and seeing how many things remain gorgeous works of art and how many seem extremely dated by the fashions of the time. Most of it is merely typography, which can offset the allure of an entire piece. There's also the whole "frame-within-a-frame" thing that seems to have been put to rest post desktop background patterns (which may be a product of record or cassette to CD transition):
Some work better than others:
For some reason, particularly with nudes:
The typography menace even continues to present day, as evidenced by this hideous cover:
Yet, in terms of iconography there's too many to mention:
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Robert A.A. Lowe and Rose Lazar- Eclipses
Eclipses: A review of the new album by Robert A.A. Lowe and Rose Lazar. Lowe, you may know from the criminally under-discussed Lichens. Their album The Psychic Nature of Being would probably make my best of the naughts list if I ever get around to it.
A little bit in the article about the role of the graphic artist in music production too.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Things We Were Due to Forget: Coldwave and Minimal Wave
Things We Were Due to Forget: The Cold Undertow of Minimal Waves
My Difference Engine column at PopMatters is now hot off the (virtual) press on PopMatters.
Upon reading this article, I realize that the reason I mentioned tape fidelity with regards to Hauntology and Chillwave was because I had intended to mention that this kind of physical medium fidelity was not common to coldwave. As far as I know, none of the reissues or even the new stuff has come out on cassette, but rather mostly vinyl and CD. What’s more, Vasicka performs her own remastering, making the whole physicality of the releases a non-issue since the grain and crackle is suctioned out and erased from the recording. This obviously brings up its own issues with minimal wave/coldwave’s dimensions of revisionist history, commodity fetishism, etc.
Also, as per it relates to the literature surrounding some of the revivalist bands (and it should be pointed out that 20JFG is perhaps one of the biggest current advocates for this scene- even their own mini-genre “drag” seems to be somewhat of a coldwave offshoot), the question remains as to whether a DIY revival of any genre is relevant in a time when any one can do it themselves. Minimal wave was DIY, but also invested in brand new technology. I’d agree with Xeno and Oaklander’s Sean McBride when he says that we skim through machinery now and don’t maximize its resources, but instrumentation austerity also seems to be an excuse to not engage with the present (it should also be pointed out that some revival bands like Further Studies and Figure Study do not even sound analogue…maybe they are, but if so what’s the point of the distinction?).
Engaging with the present also brings up the uncomfortable topic of race. I purposely avoided the issue in my piece because it would perhaps require a separate essay equal in length (and it may be something I touch on in a later piece). However, for coldwave/minimal wave (the new stuff) to engage with today’s zeitgeist (dubstep, funky house, wonky) would seem to require an engagement with black rhythm, which would probably also defeat the purpose of coldwave’s mechanical pulses. Austere rhythm is such a central component to the music that it makes it a hard music to translate to other styles, which may be one reason I’m a bit pessimistic about coldwave’s potential as a profound shifter of cultural temperatures.
This, of course, brings up a host of other issues about rhythm itself. It’s often assumed that a lack of rhythmical complexity or “soul” makes a music white (tell this to Robert Hood or Jeff Mills), but this too comes from a rockist notion that upon closer inspection seems to actually carry a Eurocentric notion. The assumption is that not-black or, perhaps not-Other, is white, making whiteness the blank slate on which to base everything off of, the default state which qualified when the limited criterion for otherness does not apply. Recent months have seen a number of new popular studies on whiteness gaining press (countered by a divestment of ethnic studies in public schools in Arizona) that make whiteness seem at best a nebulous distinction, so classifying anything as “white” is pretty specious (Anglo, Euro, Teutonic, yes. White, no). Unhuman electronic sounds and simple beats are commonly thought to be the territory of white people despite the multiplicity of dark faces involved in its origins and creation, but in truth they are beyond race/postracial. It’s certainly hard in our multiculturalist society to think of anything as not having a racial dimension, but it’s particularly electronic music’s anti-humanism that seems to make it perhaps the prime candidate in the arts for a complete dissociation with race. With race as a human social identity construct, electronic music (dance music particular) has little use for it. Electronic music has little use for notions of identity in general. It is anti-star, anti-ego, and anti-organic (generalizing here, of course, there are exceptions).
Specifically, minimal wave seems to have no cultural identity because so little is known about it. Any notions of sexual or racial identity must be assumed or taken from a blurry picture.
Interesting that coinciding with the election of Obama comes the adoption of electropop by black culture, with its simplified rhythms and un-bluesy, un-soul, un-sampledelic electronic instrumentation and all. It seems that black culture is not condemned after all to revisiting the same styles spawned as a result of the Black Atlantic Diaspora (although those may be more interesting than a mere black take on white/blank pop art forms). Black folk forms like blues, hip-hop, jazz, and gospel were often thought to more “pure” because at one time they were not yet coopted by the corrosive hands of white Capital (still soaked in the blood of slave trade). At this point though, it’d be foolish to think that any of those form weren’t completely absorbed into the hegemonic superstructure, so what exactly really can be authentic “black music” these days if it’s not black futurism?
My Difference Engine column at PopMatters is now hot off the (virtual) press on PopMatters.
Upon reading this article, I realize that the reason I mentioned tape fidelity with regards to Hauntology and Chillwave was because I had intended to mention that this kind of physical medium fidelity was not common to coldwave. As far as I know, none of the reissues or even the new stuff has come out on cassette, but rather mostly vinyl and CD. What’s more, Vasicka performs her own remastering, making the whole physicality of the releases a non-issue since the grain and crackle is suctioned out and erased from the recording. This obviously brings up its own issues with minimal wave/coldwave’s dimensions of revisionist history, commodity fetishism, etc.
Also, as per it relates to the literature surrounding some of the revivalist bands (and it should be pointed out that 20JFG is perhaps one of the biggest current advocates for this scene- even their own mini-genre “drag” seems to be somewhat of a coldwave offshoot), the question remains as to whether a DIY revival of any genre is relevant in a time when any one can do it themselves. Minimal wave was DIY, but also invested in brand new technology. I’d agree with Xeno and Oaklander’s Sean McBride when he says that we skim through machinery now and don’t maximize its resources, but instrumentation austerity also seems to be an excuse to not engage with the present (it should also be pointed out that some revival bands like Further Studies and Figure Study do not even sound analogue…maybe they are, but if so what’s the point of the distinction?).
Engaging with the present also brings up the uncomfortable topic of race. I purposely avoided the issue in my piece because it would perhaps require a separate essay equal in length (and it may be something I touch on in a later piece). However, for coldwave/minimal wave (the new stuff) to engage with today’s zeitgeist (dubstep, funky house, wonky) would seem to require an engagement with black rhythm, which would probably also defeat the purpose of coldwave’s mechanical pulses. Austere rhythm is such a central component to the music that it makes it a hard music to translate to other styles, which may be one reason I’m a bit pessimistic about coldwave’s potential as a profound shifter of cultural temperatures.
This, of course, brings up a host of other issues about rhythm itself. It’s often assumed that a lack of rhythmical complexity or “soul” makes a music white (tell this to Robert Hood or Jeff Mills), but this too comes from a rockist notion that upon closer inspection seems to actually carry a Eurocentric notion. The assumption is that not-black or, perhaps not-Other, is white, making whiteness the blank slate on which to base everything off of, the default state which qualified when the limited criterion for otherness does not apply. Recent months have seen a number of new popular studies on whiteness gaining press (countered by a divestment of ethnic studies in public schools in Arizona) that make whiteness seem at best a nebulous distinction, so classifying anything as “white” is pretty specious (Anglo, Euro, Teutonic, yes. White, no). Unhuman electronic sounds and simple beats are commonly thought to be the territory of white people despite the multiplicity of dark faces involved in its origins and creation, but in truth they are beyond race/postracial. It’s certainly hard in our multiculturalist society to think of anything as not having a racial dimension, but it’s particularly electronic music’s anti-humanism that seems to make it perhaps the prime candidate in the arts for a complete dissociation with race. With race as a human social identity construct, electronic music (dance music particular) has little use for it. Electronic music has little use for notions of identity in general. It is anti-star, anti-ego, and anti-organic (generalizing here, of course, there are exceptions).
Specifically, minimal wave seems to have no cultural identity because so little is known about it. Any notions of sexual or racial identity must be assumed or taken from a blurry picture.
Interesting that coinciding with the election of Obama comes the adoption of electropop by black culture, with its simplified rhythms and un-bluesy, un-soul, un-sampledelic electronic instrumentation and all. It seems that black culture is not condemned after all to revisiting the same styles spawned as a result of the Black Atlantic Diaspora (although those may be more interesting than a mere black take on white/blank pop art forms). Black folk forms like blues, hip-hop, jazz, and gospel were often thought to more “pure” because at one time they were not yet coopted by the corrosive hands of white Capital (still soaked in the blood of slave trade). At this point though, it’d be foolish to think that any of those form weren’t completely absorbed into the hegemonic superstructure, so what exactly really can be authentic “black music” these days if it’s not black futurism?
The One Way Internet
I've closed comments, as they seem to mostly have become a haven for Asian spambots. I encourage those with thoughts or responses to
1. Use the PopMatters comment boxes
2. Post a response blog and send me an e-mail at the address to the right after you've done so.
3. Send a private e-mail.
1. Use the PopMatters comment boxes
2. Post a response blog and send me an e-mail at the address to the right after you've done so.
3. Send a private e-mail.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Ariel Pink Has a Posse
Think Ariel Pink is not some kind of maverick? Try this on for size.
"What do you think about being classified in terms of hauntology or hypnagogic pop?"
“I love it, I love it. It beats lo-fi!"
After 10 million interviews of people trying to disown the scenes they've been attached to, it's refreshing to see somebody embrace genre and not trying to be a b(r)and apart.
Read the interview with K-Punk here.
"What do you think about being classified in terms of hauntology or hypnagogic pop?"
“I love it, I love it. It beats lo-fi!"
After 10 million interviews of people trying to disown the scenes they've been attached to, it's refreshing to see somebody embrace genre and not trying to be a b(r)and apart.
Read the interview with K-Punk here.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Go(a)ne Today, Here Tomorrow
Interesting that I should come across this article several days after finishing and a few days before publishing a massive new Difference Engine column on coldwave and memory (not that I needed more material to work from). It turns out the rudiments of what eventually came to be Goa's psy-trance movement started in the burgeoning electronic dance music scene, much of which (from the list detailed on that page) carries crossover classifications with coldwave and minimal wave (Borghesia, A Split Second, Neon Judgement, Front 242, et al.). Idiot's Guide to Dreaming, upon suggesting a new future for trance (that assumedly erases Judge Jules, Infected Mushroom, and company from the equation), brings up the concept of uchronia, which seems perfect to apply to coldwave as it basically involves an alternate reality that bridges time and space. Coldwave artists notably came from separate scenes,had little interaction with each other, and recorded over a roughly decade-long span. Pretty hard to imagine coldwave being enjoyed at the beach though. Even more fittingly, the concept of uchronia seams to have its roots in the steampunk scene from which The Difference Engine gets its name.
Most interestingly though perhaps from the article are the facts that:
1. DJ Laurent spliced the vocals out of tracks where they might prove distracting, thus anticipating techno's forced exile from disco/diva Chicago House. Notably, he left in darker,colder, and presumably less emotive vocals.
2. DJ Laurent mixed his sets on cassettes, tying us yet again back to the common means of distribution for minimal wave
Monday, April 26, 2010
Zizek on Avatar
As always, Zizek offers an article which remains impossible to not get frustrated at, but some interesting critique therein as well:
"In a typical Hollywood product, everything, from the fate of the Knights of the Round Table to asteroids hitting the earth, is transposed into an Oedipal narrative"
"The film teaches us that the only choice the aborigines have is to be saved by the human beings or to be destroyed by them. In other words, they can choose either to be the victim of imperialist reality, or to play their allotted role in the white man's fantasy."
A little late to be posting about Avatar, maybe? Maybe it's me, but it already feels like people will be destined to forget this film in a couples years time. I found myself having trouble remembering anything when coming out of the theater save for being visually assaulted for several hours. For me, the reconciliation of violent oppression and exploitation with...violent aggression left me completely sour. My wife, on the other hand, was convinced it was a Ferngully remake, and I guess others on the internet have made the same connection.
"In a typical Hollywood product, everything, from the fate of the Knights of the Round Table to asteroids hitting the earth, is transposed into an Oedipal narrative"
"The film teaches us that the only choice the aborigines have is to be saved by the human beings or to be destroyed by them. In other words, they can choose either to be the victim of imperialist reality, or to play their allotted role in the white man's fantasy."
A little late to be posting about Avatar, maybe? Maybe it's me, but it already feels like people will be destined to forget this film in a couples years time. I found myself having trouble remembering anything when coming out of the theater save for being visually assaulted for several hours. For me, the reconciliation of violent oppression and exploitation with...violent aggression left me completely sour. My wife, on the other hand, was convinced it was a Ferngully remake, and I guess others on the internet have made the same connection.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Peripheral Views of BMSR
My review of The Seven Fields of Aphelion's beautiful Periphery is now over at the newly redesigned (and way more reader-friendly) PopMatters
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