2013

In the mainstream popular music spheres of 2013 the key word was hype. A number of prominent, but dormant musical acts all seemed to choose 2013 as the year to come out of the woodwork either without any notice or through trite, media-stroking viral campaigns. Despite all good intentions all this really gave us was more of the same. A previous generation stumbled back to assert their supposedly rightful place and show us all really how little has changed.

Thankfully, I've been mostly ignoring all that stuff this year and instead have been eagerly mining a rich seam of unique, innovative and just bloody brilliant musical gold buried within the outer fringes. Here are 10 albums which have defined my year and restored my faith in the boundless and infinite creativity of mankind. Every year all I want is to hear something I've never heard before. Why don't you try the same?

In a completely arbitrary order here are my 10 favourite albums of 2013.

Pharmakon - Abandon



This year has seen a lot of the (relatively) big names of the noise scene re-emerge after a bit of an absence. Hair Police, Prurient, Wolf Eyes, Sissy Spacek, Pete Swanson, all came out with differing takes on their once uniform noise blasts. However, for me the most arresting album in this most ear-splitting of genres was by a new face on the scene. The pseudonym of Margaret Chardiet, Pharmakon's music is remarkable in the power electronics scene for being so honest and personal. The electronics themselves are subdued and claustrophobic but the real highlight is Chardiet's voice. Varying from ear-splitting scream to haunted moan, her voice confronts you with intense emotion and refuses to let you turn away. This is heart-on-sleeve music where you can almost see blood pumping down an exposed forearm.
A rather short album, it's padded out on Spotify with a 27 minute long bonus track. This extra material feels like a mixture of sketches and amorphous ideas but that is no bad thing. Instead, it's exciting to see a young and intensely passionate artist demonstrate their raw creative potential.

Forest Swords - Engravings

Matthew Barnes' first full length release as Forest Swords is more a refinement of the project's core sound than anything radically different. Yet there really is nothing else like it. It somehow pulls off the trick of sounding both ancient and yet completely modern with its unintelligible reverb-drenched vocals, subterranean dub rhythms, lonely Morricone-like guitar melodies and touches of exotic quasi-Oriental ornamentation. Apparently, the album's sound is heavily influenced by the landscape of the Wirral. In which case the tourist board should really get a hold of this stuff, is there really such a strange and magical place in North-West England?

Okkyung Lee - Ghil



Cellist Okkyung Lee has essentially re-invented the cello with perhaps some of the most amazing music for a solo instrument in recent memory. The cello is often seen as very romantic instrument, well not any more! Lee almost seems to torture her instrument, alternating between blistering high-speed attack to laboured and forceful dragging of the bow that makes each vibration of a string seem palpable. At times the wooden body of the instrument itself creaks with the strain. Lee's incredibly skilled and expressive technique seems to put the very acoustic nature of her instrument to the fore. The result is music that feels incredibly alive, stressing the importance of physical instruments in our digital age.
It can't truly be said that this is a solo album though. As much a stamp of identity as Lee's idiosyncratic technique, is the recording process of collaborator Lasse Marhaug. Rather than record in some state of the art studio, they chose to record this album on a 4-track cassette player from the 70's in such diverse locations as an Oslo back-alley and a disused hydroelectric powerplant. As such tracks vary from strong timbral clarity to muddied lo-fi assaults, via ominous reverberant spaces, all of which serve to confront and enhance Lee's playing in equal measure. Ghil is thus a perfect marriage of acoustic and digital techniques. It's the best full-on noise album of the year, the best improv album and it's probably the most exciting modern classical music I've heard in years. Just when you fear there was no where to go in experimental, instrumental music this album comes along and blows everything else away.

Atom TM - HD



A 21st century digital version of Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine except here there is no symbiosis, the computers have won and are revelling in our downfall. HD is collection of fun and satirical pop songs about pop culture's place in the digital maelstrom of the globally interconnected modern world. The only human presence on the album is Jamie Lidell's robotic soul singing and even that is a heartfelt love affair to a machine, I Love U (Like I Love My Drum Machine). Elsewhere the seemingly embodied voice of the Internet itself seems to delight in the destruction it's caused, "MP3 killed the MTV / I am thrilled / All I see is fake and raw / Is empty". There are further bits of twisted lyrical brilliance in the affectless protest song Stop (Imperialist Pop). But don't think that there is also not some pure and simple brilliant music here. The vocal processing in Strom is simply sumptuous as is the twisted and roiling rhythms of The Sound of Decay. In an album filled with highlights, it's the cover of The Who's My Generation that really stands out. A rebellious attitude twisted into a digital glitch-fest it captures an individual sensibility and concept better than pretty much any cover version I've heard before. If this is the sound of the ever approaching age when the computers gain sentience and enslave us all, well then it can't come fast enough!

James Ferraro - NYC Hell, 3:00am

Where previously James Ferraro has made intentionally soulless, hyper-modern background music for futuristic sushi restaurants (2011's Far Side Virtual) it was an unexpected thrill to hear some of his most personal and moving work. NYC Hell, 3:00am is a rather bleak and unflattering portrait of the city that never sleeps, projected through a warped take on contemporary R'n'B and pop music. While New York's modern chic, urban squalor and pop cultural yuppie-ism (expertly highlighted with a sampled reference to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) are all represented in the music, its the human presence - of night-owl, raver and hustler alike - which is at the fore.
Ferraro seems to have perfectly captured that unique loneliness that only can only felt amidst vast crowds of people. As someone who has recently been to New York I can attest to being over-awed and slightly terrified of that giant metropolis. A feeling which seems to be at the core of Ferraro's music. The accompaniment to the "songs" are all submerged low-end as if heard through a neighbour''s wall. But the real expressive heart of this album is Ferraro's singing. Whether intentionally or not his voice sounds distinctly amateurish. However, this gives the music so much more emotional weight and pathos than any musician it may have been directly styled on. We've become so de-sensitized to over-produced X-Factor approved standards of vocal technique, pop songs have lost pretty much any sense of honesty or true feeling. The effect of Ferraro exposing his unprofessional vocals, seemingly performed without any hint of irony, is truly heart-rending. Who knew I'd ever be so moved by someone who once wrote a song called "Find Out What's On Carrie Bradshaw's iPod".

Oneohtrix Point Never - R Plus Seven

Considering the source material of this album - new agey synths; cheesy exotica; that choral sound you get on cheap Yamaha keyboards - it really has no right to be as amazing as it is. It is a testament to the incredible skills of its maker and the craft of arranging and shaping synthesized sound. I don't have the semiological skills to really get into why this album works on a conceptual level. It's just incredibly entertaining and who would really want to ask for more than that!

The Knife - Shaking The Habitual


A sprawling, conceptually ambitious and thoroughly brilliant double-length album from Sweden's finest alternative synthpop duo, Shaking The Habitual is one of the most remarkable releases of the year. The Knife's warm electronic sound has expanded to incorporate more acoustic sounds and, paradoxically, harsher electronic squall. Their vast musical palette moves from multi-coloured ersatz world music (Congotronics-like opener A Tooth From An Eye, frantic percussion and breathy wind instruments on Without You My Life Would Be Boring) to fraught atonal ballads (Cherry On Top). Full Of Fire is a particular highlight and one of my favourite individual songs of the year. A nine minute long epic of pulsating industrial beats, squealing electronics and Karin Dreijer Andersson's unnerving semi-sung vocals.
This is all conceptually packaged up with lyrics on subjects as diverse as fracking, white male privilege, the continuum of gender and global capitalism. While the lyrics may be a bit politically dense for me to really appreciate them, what really matters is that the actual music itself is so inventive and powerful. Furthermore, the duo are more than comfortable dispensing with lyrics altogether and producing driving instrumental workouts (Networking) and blistering noise pieces (Crake, Oryx), though 19 minute drone piece Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realized kinda kills the pace a bit. Still to get all of this on what is essentially an electronic pop album, albeit one at the very fringes of said genre, shows that there are still so many musical frontiers yet to explore.

Matmos - The Marriage Of True Minds


If anyone has ever read any of my blogs before you'll know much I admire the core aesthetics of Matmos' music. Theirs is a very playful creativity, a concept-driven music that understands that the best way to create is to limit oneself to a central idea and push it to its extremes. The Marriage Of True Minds is probably their greatest example of this ethos. The core theme here is communication both passive and active and Matmos approach this by performing a serious of extra-sensory tests whereby they blindfold a willing participant and play white noise into headphones. The intention is to create a environment of sensory deprivation and once this is achieved one of the band tries to telepathically transmit the idea of the new album. The participant tries to receive this message and then describes what comes to them and then this becomes the "score" of the album. It's all just a way of generating ideas and there are some great ones here. The participants speak of strange geometrical landscapes; environments shifting from cityscapes to deserts and an odd proliferation of gigantic triangles. Out of this Matmos conjure an album of all sorts of weird and wonderful treats from the ridiculously fun psych-out of Very Large Green Triangles; making sloshing water a groovy rhythm instrument on Mental Radio; detailed sonic dreamscapes (Ross Transcipt) and a truly bonkers death-metal-cum-americana cover of The Stooges' E.S.P. It's all ridiculously fun while still being experimental and sonically adventurous. Guaranteed to leave a smile on your face.

Rashad Becker - Traditional Music Of Notional Species Vol. 1



Wow. I know I talk a lot about wanting to hear things I've never heard before but until hearing this album I didn't really think that was still possible. Traditional Music Of Notional Species Vol. 1 is a series of 8 short electronic sound pieces that are cheekily split into Dances and Themes (they are neither). These peculiar sound-worlds are teeming with invisible, amorphous life darting across the speakers to return to whatever strange corner of existence from whence they came. The best analogy to listening to this music that I can think of is watching a nature film on deep sea creatures. Through amazing advances in under-water photography we can witness these never before seen animals, monstrous and glowing with bio-luminescence. Such strange beings exist on our planet, you can see with your very eyes that these unbelieveable creatures are real and yet they still seem completely impossible. And so it is for Becker's carefully sculpted sounds, completely alien and yet very much of this planet. Of flesh and blood. Something that much electro-acoustic music fails to capture. What's even more stunning is the quality of the sound itself (Becker is known best for his work as a mastering engineer adding a seal of quality to a large number of techno 12-inches) which breathes so much life into the music. It's like watching those freaky fish in full HD! Whether Becker's creatures are human or not its hard to say. To really appreciate this music you have to open yourself up on a level that almost no music before has asked you to explore. But any challenge is so immensely worthwhile. I can't wait to hear more.
Also I love him for this quote which highlights the ridiculousness of calling any music like this experimental,

"I really don't feel my music is experimental music. I reject that notion because I'm not experimenting."

C. Spencer Yeh, Lasse Marhaug, Okkyung Lee - Wake Up Awesome


Not content with creating one stunning album this year, Okkyung Lee and Lasse Marhaug team with electronic improviser C. Spencer Yeh to produce a more collaborative work that is just as remarkable. The performers are following an area that I've always found fascinating, the interplay between live acoustic instruments and improvised electronics. There's a lot of scope in this arrangement for compelling ways to make music, from supportive dialogues between instrument and electronics to full-on violent confrontations. A lot of these approaches are experimented with on this album which makes it such as varied and exciting listen. It's never clear which direction it will go in next.
This variety extends to Lee's cello playing. She is given the chance to be more conventionally expressive with sonorous, romantic melodies (Ophelia Gimme Shelter) as well display the virtuosic fireworks that made Ghil so captivating. The electronic portions of the album are equally as impressive. Dense multi-coloured textures, threatening squalls of noise, humourous sound effects and playful melodies. Listening to this evokes the pure experimental joy of early laptop groups, such as the legendary FennO'Berg, that began to emerge in the early 2000s. We need to see a lot more improvised music which has such a strong sense of the joy of creation.

And because every year I seem to give out some random award that seems like a good idea at the time. It's:

Harry Hipster's Genre Of The Year Award

Footwork

It's been quite an incredible year for the in-no-way-fledgling-but-feels-like-it-as-all-the-music-journos-have-just-picked-up-on-it dance music style. What's really been impressive is how the genre is evolving. This year we've had the individualistic pop-cultural wizardy of RP Boo; 2 EPs from DJ Rashad expanding on the genre's complicated affair with vocal samples; a more instrumentally-focused release from DJ Spinn and another assured collaboration filled full-length release from DJ Rashad. For those not yet in the know footwork is an intoxicating mix of jittery, mercurial rhythms and samples chopped within an inch of their life often focusing intently on one phrase or emotionally resonant utterance. Despite the fact that it borrows very liberally from musical genres I have pretty much no connection too (R 'n' B, hip hop, trap, jungle) it never fails to draw me in with its ambiguity. Upon chopping-up a hip-hop vocal praising the voluptuousness of a gyrating dancer in a club is it revelling in such misogynistic behaviour? Or is it intentionally robbing the words of their impact, returning such declarations to the primordial sludge of meaningless phonemes? Regardless, all the best footwork of this year has been united by the fact that it is just so addictively entertaining.

Best Tracks Of The Year:



As I did last year, I've been maintaining a playlist of sounds from 2013. Below are some random thoughts on these sounds that have kept me feeling alive this year.

- All year I've been stalked by Very Large Green Triangles...
- "Your shoelaces are bleeding" is probably one of the best lyrics ever.
- Listening to a fist-pumping double of Fuck Buttons and Pete Swanson is a very dangerous thing. Not only will you be so pumped up you'll think you can punch through concrete, you might actually try!
- Re-contextualizing Tarzan's yell as siren warning of a battle in the urban jungle... sheer brilliance!
- Young Echo have pretty much proved the mantra "More than the sum of its parts"
- More and more I seem to be turning away from instrumental music. On that playlist are 2 rock songs, some cello and solo guitar. The rest is all electronic. I imagine it's just a phase... like nu-metal or 19th century classical music were...

A Musician For The Age Of Streaming

I ended my last blog with a bit of an odd metaphor. Something about giant ears. It was all very strange. However, there was actually a point I was trying to make. You see in the pre-internet age, the adventures up the Zambezi of musical discovery comprised very physical, tactile activities. Rifling through racks of CDs, digging through crates of vinyl, sharing mix-tapes, being educated by the slightly odd-smelling guy behind the counter of your local record store. In my last blog I was bemoaning the loss of these journeys of discovery due to the emergence of online music streaming services and my preference for them due to their being cheaper and easier to access. The whole point of the "giant ear" remark was that I think I've discovered a way for the discovery of new music in the digital realm to be just as mysterious and exciting as it was in the physical world. Rather than spend our efforts hitting the pavements of our town centres and hoovering up cult recommendations looking for that one lost gem, we instead immerse ourselves completely down a endless labyrinth of music. With access to so many sounds at our fingertips we can cover the kind of ground it would take months to physically accumulate in just an afternoon. The adventure becomes not "What exciting treasures will you see" but "What exciting treasures will you hear". Listen more and listen to more, to put it concisely. In a way this ties up with my early musings on the various technological advances that help us trawl through the vast media ocean, but I'd like to take this approach on a micro-scale and apply it to just a single artist. What happens if we take one musician and attempt to hear pretty much everything of their's we can find?

Well, for me one artist presents the most exciting prospect of providing almost endless avenues of discovery to keep your ear burrowing into the strange, dark undergrowth of sound. A body of work where it becomes not about some over-produced, singular epoch-defining release but the accumulation of many disparate strands over time and genre to get a complete and multi-faceted picture of one artist and their fractured vision. Not only that but some of his most interesting music has been released this year (because guess what all those Best Of The Year lists are right around the corner!). One of the most prolific musicians of the last year (or pretty much any year for that matter) is Hospital Productions boss Dominick Fernow.

For those who have yet to be acquainted with the man's work, Fernow's early material fit squarely within the US noise and power electronics community, for whom speaker-shredding, tinnitus inducing anti-music accompanied by aggressive yells and screams was the order of the day. In more recent years, an infatuation with techno has seeped into Fernow's work. This, along with his time spent playing icy synths in Cold Cave, has resulted in many side-projects exploring various shades of bleak beat-driven music. Industrial and dark ambient are also key touchstones in Fernow's music but throughout it all from piercing noise blast to pulsing techno workout there is a mysterious emptiness that is possibly summed up best by the tag-line from one of his many releases, "Listen on headphones at night while driving through tunnels in Europe".

Each of Fernow's many side-projects pursues a strong central theme such as Religious iconography (Christian Cosmos), pornography (Torturing Hooker) or the Iraq War (Vatican Shadow). The production and distribution of these projects is very punk in spirit with the vast majority of releases on cheap CD-Rs or cassettes produced in limited editions runs of often less than 50. The physical releases are often more tied with the aesthetic of a particular project than the music itself with carefully designed artwork and extra insets aiming to either enhance an emotional resonance or just for pure shock value. While in a bygone age this DIY prolificacy would engender a very cliquey and insular fan-base, the dawn of the mass internet era allows this tiny world to expand far beyond it's expected boundaries. While for many artists of a similar type, the music blog / file-sharing scene would probably maintain an in-the-know status quo, the fact Fernow has uploaded so much of this "limited-edition" music to online streaming services means he has a more accessible and potentially wider reaching platform to present his art. We know too that this must have been a concious decision on his own part as he owns the label through which he distributes his music.The overload of music now present on Spotify alone grants the perfect opportunity for an eager listener to completely explore Fernow's work and its many guises. And we really are talking overload here, a quick glance at Fernow's entry in Discogs tells us he is involved with 28 different named projects. With so much work under his belt, the task of being a Dominick Fernow "fan" is quite a daunting one. Here's a playlist with my own attempt at plucking out the bits I think you need to hear. After you've tucked into that, continue on below where I'll talk about some of the key projects and releases from this year that have ensured double clicking on a link is just as thrilling and potentially nerve-racking as sifting through a box of old 45's in a probable serial killer's basement.



Vatican Shadow

Right now Vatican Shadow is perhaps the most well-known of Fernow's guises and it's easy to see why given the amount of questions the project raises. Cassette tapes featuring the images of infamous figures from current conflicts in the Middle East, track titles like "Tonight Saddam Walks Amidst Ruins". The thematic direction of Vatican Shadow clearly originates from the War on Terror and its continued fall-out after the Iraq War. There is surely some dark part of ourselves that Vatican Shadow is trying to tap into here. I mean there is somewhat of a perverse thrill of clicking on something that's so intentionally controversial as on a cassette cover an image of an army major who murdered his own soldiers . "Washington Buries Al-Qaeda Leader At Sea" being quite a name for an album too! Perhaps a commentary on the strange entertainment value we now get from movies like Zero Dark Thirty? Live performances with Fernow wearing army fatigues also make the true intention of the project unclear. But, as always, its the music we're interested in hear (unintentional spelling error pun :P) and this is probably the biggest criticism of the project, that all the imagery around it seems to overshadow the music. No matter what the artist's political (or perhaps apolitical?) stand-point is, the music clearly asserts that we are in the midst of a conflict with no winners. Taking driving, masculine techno as its starting point but still never afraid to attempt quieter reveries, the music always aims towards the dancefloor but perhaps one under 10 feet of rubble. It's never sincerely bombastic or jingoistic and at times seems to be mocking its own extreme imagery. While often not as varied or as experimental with pure sound as other projects, that disconnect between outward appearance and the actual music is an incredibly powerful draw.

This year has seen the release of the first "official" Vatican Shadow album, Remember Your Black Day. Dubbed an official debut mainly because it was released on CD rather than a limited run of cassettes. But the intrepid streamer will really obtain no sense of this as it sits nicely in amongst the rest of the Vatican Shadow back catalogue. Perhaps the controversy level has been dialled down a wee bit but the project's core theme is still very much in place. For example, stand-out track Enter Paradise's strident guitar blasts seem to scream out suggestions to the infamous use of heavy metal music by American soldiers as a method of torturing and breaking down prisoners. Remember Your Black Day suffers from some of the same issues as other Vatican Shadow material, tracks establish strong musical themes but rarely develop them and tracks seem to just end with no real sense of conclusion. Is that the entire pont though? Still questions are being raised.  However, it is a great listen even without trying to unpack all of the thematic baggage.


Prurient

Fernow's longest running and most prolific alias is also his most varied and surprising. With no less than 45 different releases available for streaming (not to mention hundreds that exist in limited edition physical media only) there is a lot of jungle to explore. Prurient's early sound was primarily based in the "sheer walls of blistering noise" mould, with Fernow's screeched and distorted vocals depicting violent outpourings of emotion. About what is really hard to tell and like other noise artists sometimes it's difficult to draw the line between artistic commentary and whether Prurient is really just glorifying in the violent themes it raises... but that's always been part of the thrill. What is one to really make of a lyric such as "If I could / I would take a tree branch / And ram it inside you / But it's already been done". It's chilling and yet ridiculous and that's what makes it so intriguing.

This year however, we've only seen two actual releases from Prurient. One a side of a split release and a three track mini-album, Through The Window. Again the influence of techno is clear, as it is on a lot of Fernow's work in the last few years, and this is certainly the most dancefloor-oriented the project has ever been. Pulsing, repetitive rhythms and insistent synth melodies are a far cry from sheer walls of obliterating noise. Unusual for a Prurient album there is no real violence or sense of anger, except for a few trademark noise bursts in the second track. Lyrics are mumbled rather than screamed, although they still have that disturbingly surreal edge. Taken as part of Prurient's vast discography, Through The Window feels more like a sigh. The fading light of a once potent, raging beast that has calmed with age. It's almost as if this particular project is singing its swansong. As depicted on the album's cover, a solitary point of light surrounded by encroaching darkness. The album even seems to end on an uncharacteristically optimistic note, "You show great spirit".

Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement

As far as I'm aware (and it's bloody hard without Discogs to keep you in line) Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement is the most recent of Fernow's many faces and sits within the same spectrum of other recent releases. However, this might just be his greatest statement as an artist yet. Again we are walking through haunted, post-techno lands. Repetitive drum loops initially recall the dancefloor but there is something a little bit off. The project name is perhaps most telling, if there were such a thing as "Rainforest Techno" this would be it. An odd mix of environmental sounds and subterranean bass rhythms. There's all the suggestion of shamanistic, tribal rituals but with no sense of exotica or glib notions of the primitive savage. Instead it's as if the very trees and boulders were hearkening back to life in the gloom before the dawn of mankind. The track titles themselves tell stories of nature fighting back against the oppression of man, "They Dropped The Stone In The Harbour But Overnight It Returned". It's claustrophobic, humid and truly mysterious. This alias has also never seen what one would describe as an "official" album release (In fact I'm not even sure Fernow has been announced as the man behind it all but one listen confirms its clearly him). Looking through the Discogs entries again I keep seeing limited cassette here, limited vinyl there. But guess, what it's all there to stream online! Like he's done with Vatican Shadow and a number of his other side projects, Dominick Fernow has created the best combination of collectible consumables of exciting physical value (I really want to get my hands on one of these limited editions one day) but also putting the music first, allowing access to all online. This gives listeners the opportunity to construct their own continuity, their own sense of narrative between all these releases, without ever knowing that one of albums was the widely distributed official album and the other was a series of extras that were made into only 35 cassettes. These are the kind of adventures I strive for as we advance further into the digital age.

Internet Posterity

Hi everyone,

This is isn't a "proper" blog I just wanted to let everyone know that I've got a SoundCloud account which I will occasionally be uploading little bits and pieces to when I get time to work on them. This includes a few experiments I have in the pipe-line like a review of the awesome Bit Reactor FX pedal.

I've started off the account by uploading my student work from my undergraduate electroacoustic composition course. Mainly for posterity's sake as the last place I put my music was on MySpace and... well we all know what happened there don't we.

Anyway, enjoy mocking my efforts at being a "serious" composer.

Oh To Be A Giant Floating Ear!

During the past few months I've been struggling with a particular quandary. A completely self-inflicted quandary. A fairly inconsequential first-world problem which I often inflate to gigantic proportions. It's importance is directly proportional to the volume of Thom Yorke's whining. Yes, we're talking Spotify and the blockbuster issue of 2013. The Music Consumption Wars: Streaming Vs. One-Off Purchases. So much has been written recently from the artist's side of the argument maybe it's time we got the opinion of a consumer...that's me.

First thing's first, as we're talking about the various options for the personal imbibing of music, I'm going to eliminate some of those options right from the off. I'm going to ignore digital purchases through sites such as iTunes and Amazon. For me this is worst of both worlds, the ephemerality of a digital file with the cost impact of a physical object. No thanks, not for me sir. I'm also ruling out the whole notion of illegal file-sharing, partially because that's like so last decade but mainly because it's actually easier to get obscure gems like Rashad Becker's Traditional Music Of Notional Species Vol.1 through legal streaming software than illegally through Russian data dumps found around page 20 of a Google. This then leaves me with two options for listening to a piece of music, buy the physical object (be it CD, vinyl or cute box of loops) or stream it online. Thus we reach the quandary.

This is the time of year that a lot of music gets released, the high-point for me being some weeks ago when 3 albums I was absolutely desperate to hear by three radically different musicians were all released on the same day. I was so excited that at the first opportunity I jumped onto my chosen online retailer of choice (All hail Boomkat!). But just I was about to give these fine independent retailers my money, I paused. Took a step back and said to myself, "Why not just wait one more day and see if they get released to Spotify on Monday morning?". Lo and behold, one full rotation of the Earth later, Spotify produced a little red circle of joy claiming 3 new albums were available to stream. I never bought those albums but I felt very guilty for not supporting an independent music supplier and a few fringe musicians .

Ending my guilt-trip early, the economic machinations of the music industry should not really be my concern. Sure it's nice to be informed of the various arguments for and against streaming but, despite many delusions of grandeur, the future of music distribution does not rest squarely on my shoulders. I'm sure one day I'll look back on these arguments with the same "Ha, those were the days!" attitude to which we now view the whole Napster saga. So when it comes to how I spend my money I have one golden rule: If you can't stream, Buy. As may well be expected the easiest and cheapest option pretty much always prevails. That doesn't exactly mean I'm happy about it though.

So, if I've decided I don't really care who gets my money and how much of it (which, I've learned from speaking to a friend with music on Spotify, is shockingly little) why does this feeling of doing the wrong thing still persist when I opt to double click an album rather than hoof it to central London with tenner in hand.

Well, I miss the physical object. The joy of searching for and discovering something unexpected or long sought after. The effect of picking up one of those purchases from my shelf now is utterly Proustian. They are time-capsules, shards of memory depicting not just where I found the CD but who I was at the time of buying it. Each disc signifying a desire to own and explore an assorted collection of sounds, intimately tied with my personality, childish naïveté, teenage angst, student discovery. All I can say whenever I re-visit an influential artist I discovered through Spotify is "Oh that time I was sat in front of, or next to, a computer. Let's see, what was on my browser at that life-changing time...". Hardly the kind of story one would tell their grandkids. Actually no grandchild would want to hear about discovering a limited edition Yellow Swans CD in deepest, darkest, crate-digging-est Soho but what do they know.

Hunting for CDs was, and still can be, an adventure, albeit a very mild, Sunday afternoon strand of adventure. There is no excitement to be found in typing into a textbox, apart from that small glimmer of hope, "Hey I wonder if they have...Nope." It's not just the CDs that fill me with joy but the stores they came from. The best of these are ingrained in my mind. Spending hours browsing through promos in Manchester; the sheer warehouse size of Amoeba in San Francisco; lamenting the loss of Sound 323 a beacon of experimental music in North London sadly lost forever. I know the exact locations of every avant-garde/experimental section in every Soho music shop.

That pang of regret I occasionally feel when I deny myself the opportunity to venture forth and try and hunt down a rare gem in favour of the easy option of streaming it at home is the loss of that adventure. That sense of community of like-minded souls, frantically flipping through racks of the good stuff. Thankfully, the recent resurgence of vinyl (both second-hand and ludicrously expensive new release) seems to be keeping that spark alive...just...that...little...bit...longer.

This is all of course without considering the incredibly saddening state of an album's artwork in the digital environment. A low resolution JPEG is never going to cut it, nevermind the fact that you're unlikely to be even looking at your stream software while listening. Can there be any other future eventuality other than having no album artwork at all? Oh and say goodbye to being able to follow along with the lyrics or enjoy unusual design feats like including stereoscopic glasses to further augment the experience of album ownership.

It's not all rosy for physical media though. I believe the democratisation of the stream through subscription services is truly an amazing thing and a potential wonder of the 21st century (despite its potential flaws). Every tweenie-bopper and punk rocker should have access to the po-faced classical and the secret language of cosmic jazz. Tear all those elitist walls down, Comrades! The Beatles liked Stockhausen so why can't you?
And as for Mr Yorke's assurances that no-one will discover new bands through Spotify. Well various levels of fuck you, because the amount of music I've discovered is almost immeasurable. It's almost completely changed my current musical tastes, without it I wouldn't have discovered a whole swathe of genres such as noise, footwork, krautrock etc etc. I've also seen so much more incredible live music through bands I was given the chance to explore through Spotify... well the situation is by far more nuanced than his bare bones arguments seem to suggest.

Current trends in physical sales are also suggesting a somewhat unwelcome turn. With vinyl sales being higher than they ever were post-iTunes a few of our indies are still staying open but it is ever more likely that the vinyl trade will devolve into simple novelty or trendy consumerism. Collector's editions. Special editions. Limited editions. As much as I love a well designed box-set, it's about the music people!

I guess in some ways, I want digital to win (Oh, no Luddite me). In all fairness, it most certainly will. The grand irony being that I write this while listening to a stream, proudly contributing probably less than a penny to the hard-working artist's coffers. If I had the CD, I like to think that instead I would be contemplating the album art while mulling over the origins of the track names. Oh well. Maybe this is the start of the change. No longer shall we be required to walk for our music; to hold an album in our hands; to see carefully designed artwork with our eyes. Oh to be a giant floating ear and to let it all just come rushing in.

They Did It Their Way

Hey everyone, its been a while since I last delighted you all with one of my finely crafted playlists. Today, I'm going to share with you my favourite and perhaps most fun playlist. Cover versions! OK, while not a particularly original idea for a 21st century mix-tape I'd like to think that I've unearthed some rare gems for your perusal.

I've never been completely sure how I feel about the cover version as a valid medium of expression in popular music. One's early experiences of cover versions are usually provided by the local rock band playing an under-18's club night. Busting out a Green Day facsimile or a version of Marilyn Manson covering Eurythmics ("...because the Eurythmics suck!"*) was usually a sure-fire crowd pleaser and a great way for a band to hide their anaemic song writing talents. Or it was just me playing some songs because I thought they were cool. In those teenage years cover versions were no more than repertoire; a louder, longer haired version of a pianist and his études. Here's where we can detect a whiff of the cover version trying to establish a historical canon in popular music. Venerating the great composers just like in the realm of classical music. Just substitute Mozart and Beethoven for McCartney and Lennon. It's pop music proving it is just as "serious" as the other musical genres. "Hey, look those classical guys are just playing the same old tunes over and over again and they're making, like, really important art!" Popular music should not be a history culture (even though it is) and should always pushing towards making future generations of parents grumble and moan.

*an actual quote from the, hopefully defunct, Darlington-based band Incarnation.

So there's that side and then there's this:

Yes we live in a universe where that happened. No wonder the idea of cover songs leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

But while compiling this playlist I discovered there was another way. Cover versions don't have to be pandering to the "greats" or a tedious joke. They can be anarchic, satirical, iconoclastic, all those things a truly rebellious art form should be. Basically, you can leave your Unchained Melody's at home unless its being performed by three transvestites singing it in Mandarin.

This playlist is by no way definitive, it's just a collection of interesting tracks which I've discovered over a two year period. So without further ado here it is (oh and there's more waffle after the break in case that's what you'd like):


So what constitutes a good cover song. Well here are the 4 trends I've noticed that seem to be the most effective.

1. I Like The Lyrics, I Like The Tune But Let's Do Things MY way

When we most often get cover versions what we are treated to is the same lyrics and pretty much the same melody/harmony but slightly re-tooled to fit within the comfort zone of a band that's usually trying to syphon off reputation or gain hipster-cred off the back of another artist. Once the band starts to adapt the song into their own style then we start to get something interesting. The original song is hacked to pieces, twisted and deformed. And that's the way it should be, there should be nothing sacred in music. I think Mr Vicious sums it up quite nicely, his punky sneer just about saving the My Way cover from drowning in bland production.
There's not much art here but damn it if it isn't fun. When else are you going to hear Flash Gordon in 56 seconds, The Who as inventors of glitch music or someone gibbering along to The Godfather theme.

2. Keep the Words, Sod the Tunes

Possibly the rarest form of cover is the one which keeps the lyrics but completely discards the original tune. It's an interesting proposition in which the lyrics are seen as irreducible poetry and the music a disposable afterthought. Many people hold lyrics in high esteem but (as I'll probably discuss in a future blog) I am not one of those people. I'm firmly of the opinion that lyrics support the music otherwise well, it's not really music is it... Sound poetry? Still I'm open minded enough to give this approach a try, especially when it's Tori Amos covering Slayer. Yes that's right. Miss Amos was obviously so smitten with the idea of the Heavens opening and blood pouring from the skies that she wanted to put her own spin on it. I'm not sure whether this move casts Slayer's evocative but hasty thrash lyrics in a positive light or exposes their grandeurs for mockery but hey it actually works. Mainly because the music is so incredibly brooding and atmospheric.

3. The Tune Was Banging But Those Lyrics Sucked!

In this bracket one can put possibly one of the most iconic "covers" of all time. Jimi Hendrix's legendary rendition of Star-Spangled Banner created an anthem for a hippie America that was shorn of all the ponderous and jingoistic lyrics that spoil all national anthems (bar the ones that enough sense not to have any words in them at all). However, keeping the lyrics seems to a common theme for cover versions so I guess this a rare example. Under this loose theme I've also thrown in Jackie-O Motherfucker improvising around Amazing Grace and Mouse On Mars retooling some of their loops as backing for Mark E Smith, just because I can.

3. Uh, that's not what I meant AT ALL!

Similar to before, this is really just another version of applying a bands own style to an existing set of melodies and lyrics but the end goal is something much more playful, satirical or sinister. This is where the truly great covers lie! For example, nothing really tickles me more than the idea of a seminal straight-edge hardcore punk song being re-tooled in the style of sexy, ecstatic House music; and that's what we get from The Soft Pink Truth. Another fun genre-twisting example presents the ultimate antithesis to the clinical  electronic man machine sounds of Kraftwerk with a colourful, light-hearted Samba band (Señor Coconut). I don't think the intention here is really to mock Kraftwerk, I imagine there is genuine affection from Mr Coconut, but the opening salvo of a car failing to start is certainly a humorous jab.

If you want your satirical intentions to be blindly obvious then you need look no further then Laibach's bombastic cover of Queen's One Vision. By turning up the military pomp, barking out the lyrics like an angry drill sergeant and (in perhaps a somewhat un-PC move) translating the lyrics to German; this optimistic, crowd-pleasing tune is transformed into a loving ode to Fascism. Sorry Freddy!

Furthermore, as someone who doesn't care much for lyrics, cover versions can really come into there own by exposing the vapidity, self-defeating and misogynistic lyrical content which courses through pretty much all popular culture of the moment. Sex Worker's pained vocals and ghostly rhythms turn a 90's club classic into a requiem for victims of sexual violence. Similarly, Kevin Blechdom's sleazy, over-the-top version of Tina Turner's Private Dancer makes you wonder how a pop song about prostitution can make any kind of serious comment when the marketing around the music itself seems to be glamorizing the concept of women as sex objects.

4. You Lying Rat! That Wasn't Even A Real Song In The First Place!

Probably my favourite kind of cover, is one for which the original song and band are completely made up. I'm sure there are quite a few good songs of this ilk but I have no idea what they are off the top of my head and as I've said before this blog is always very badly researched! So I'm sticking with one my favourite albums from last year, Prince Rama's Top Ten Hits Of The End Of The World. On that album the band constructed a number of fictional 80's bands and attempted to cover their hit songs after the seemingly inevitable 2012 apocalypse. It's the kind of bat-shit crazy idea which results in what sounds like a power-ballad being played by the biker gangs from Mad Max, which is a proposition that's tough to argue with.

New World Order

Wouldn't it be awful if we all liked the same things. It's a platitude I hear fairly often and I often have to tell it to myself to try and get past the fact that a lot of you have truly horrible taste in music. But a world where we all like the same things?! I mean, just imagine the sheer horror of it...

Imagine a world where art-house movies are widely screened in multiplexes across the land. That's right you're never more than 3 miles from a Werner Herzog retrospective!
Imagine a world where mummy-porn and fan-fiction were not the fastest growing forms of literature.
Imagine a world where a new release of an album of Japanese noise music is as immediately available in music shops worldwide as the latest pop chart-topper. Hell, imagine a world where there are still shops where you can buy music!
Imagine a world where a young, exciting composer's work is given the same attention currently being reserved for two French dudes re-hashing 70's dance music.
Imagine a world where your favourite sitcom never gets cancelled and you have to quit your job because there's just too much great TV on. No bland, soul-crushing production line talent shows or moronic brain-numbing so called "reality" television.
Imagine a world where right-wing nut jobs are not given newspaper column space to rant on inane, white middle-class suburban topics...and cars.
Imagine a world where fewer people waste money on video games where blokes shoot other blokes from behind brown chest-high walls and instead buy more puzzle games about infidelity.
Imagine a world where no matter who you meet you can bond over a shared love of music, art, literature, film... Every club plays your music, every shop sells your clothes and you can still buy those limited edition orange chocolate Kit-Kats.

How truly awful that all sounds.

Putting away the over-the-top sarcasm (although in that ideal world it would indeed be the highest form of wit) this hypothetical scenario could in fact soon become a reality. Well in a sense. Rather than everyone sharing your passions why not just limit the world so the only things you ever see are those that you're most interested in. This is where 21st century, Generation Me technologies come to the rescue.

We are entering an age of media tailored specifically to our needs. For example my personal view of the world is hand-crafted by a number of internet-based services I use and subscribe to. The individualised film genre picks of  Netflix (ah, I see you enjoy Critically-acclaimed Visually-stunning Cerebral Foreign Dramas); the personalised magazine app Zite (please limit my news stories to those about Feminism, Video Games and North Korea), Amazon's recommendations (the least accurate of the bunch as they get screwed up every time I use it for buying gifts), last.fm's ability to tell me what musicians sound like other musicians and even my supermarket has a recommended for you section! Its the classic marketing phrase "If you like this, then you'll love..." fed through a supercomputer which can empirically prove it knows what you like better than you do.

It's not going to stop there, of course, we're only at the beginning of the emergence of technologies that serve discovery through familiarity. The new PlayStation 4 will go so far as to pre-download games it thinks you'll like. While DIY Youtubers and Kickstarter projects are democratising creative production - you want it? you make/pay for it. What now for 20th century behemoths like broadcast television. It would be nice to think that all creative persons are in it for the love of the medium but everyone needs money. Why risk a new idea when hundreds of fans will directly pay you to write a sequel to that one successful thing you did?

Even your social world can be tailored to your needs. Follow only your favourite comedians on Twitter (that's all its good for). Some old school friend wittering on about Muse on your Facebook timeline but you don't want to decrease your total friend count? (I mean you did go to school with them and that's a bond that lasts forever!) Just denigrate them to "Acquaintance" and you'll never have to hear from them again!.

I'm conflicted. I do really enjoy having technology that only shows me what I want to see. Technology that only tells me about my kind of obscure music, mutes annoying friends and recommends black and white documentaries about homeless people in New York. Thanks to them I can now live in a world where I can pretend people like Carly Rae Jepsen don't exist. But I'm afraid of the consequences of this. In world where all our entertainment is chosen for us based on some cryptic algorithm, how does one discover new, unexpected experiences. Those rare, ecstatic, eureka moments in life where one's taste is completely altered for good. We've all had those moments and they don't often occur within our safe zones. They dwell in wild and untamed lands, the gateways to which I worry are becoming harder to find.


I fear that what we'll be left with is an increasingly retro-ised culture and maybe a purely static one. People by and large will stick to what they like and if that's all they're ever exposed to then why bother looking elsewhere. If culture had always been purely democratic would we ever have had jazz or rock 'n roll or punk? "If you like teenage rebellion we also think you'll also like middle age conformity." While I have the overwhelming desire to coin the phrase "culture of equilibrium" to describe where I think we're going I know I'm definitely getting in way over my head. I'll just finish with Tom's Truism Of The Day™ - "Try new things, you just might like it."

So what kind of music are you into then?

On meeting someone for the first time there is always one question I fear more than any other.

"So what kind of music are you into then?"

While this blog was intended to help me exorcise my demons and allow me to elucidate that which I can never seem to express in person, thankfully that need is erased by music scrobbler last.fm. While I begin to mumble something unintelligibly, this becaped superhero swoops down to provide me with the perfect tailor-made answer. (I knew there was reason I signed up).

"Well my dear fellow, I'm into experimental, electronic, noise, ambient and indie, including:
Melt-Banana, BBC Radio 5 Live, Animal Collective, Satanicpornocultshop, Liars, BBC 6 Music, The Knife, BBC Radio 4, Broadcast, Dan Deacon, Shining, Andrew Collins and Richard Herring, Mouse on Mars, Battles, Fennesz, Laurel Halo, Scott Walker, Deerhoof, Matmos, Autechre, Black Dice, James Ferraro, Death Grips, Swans, Jonny Trunk, Atom™, Sonic Youth, Rustie, Prurient, Hanne Hukkelberg, Alexander Tucker, Wolf Eyes, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, Actress, Hell Is For Heroes, Burial, Zavoloka & AGF, Harry Pussy, The Times, DJ Rashad, Evangelista, Asa-Chang & 巡礼, The Locust, Grimes, John Fahey, Lightning Bolt, Emeralds, Crystal Castles, Bass Clef, Otomo Yoshihide."

By the end of that mouthful (that was all one sentence) my acquaintance has either left the room or is giving me a soul-piercing glare. And they would be within their right to. What a stupid answer to a innocuous question! Also big lulz at the inclusion of ultra-hip electro-wonky outfit BBC Radio 4.

I guess its a fairly accurate representation though. I mean this is stuff I've been listening to. Usually when people ask this question they expect a genre or a couple of band names and last.fm's answer kinda provides that. (I have an issue with the "experimental" genre but that's for another day). But looking at it again, what about my interest in 20th century classical music or Saharan blues or technical death metal? Or the fact that right now I'm listening to a mix of free-Jazz and Korean zither music. This is the crux of why I'm terrified of this question. I like too much.

"So what kind of music are you into then?"

The brain is overwhelmed with choices. How does one communicate such an eclectic taste?

"Uh... I like a bit of everything really."

Ah, the ultimate cop-out. An answer that says nothing. What has my curious new friend learned from me? In this context: everything is nothing. It's basically perceived short-hand for "I don't really want to answer that question" which seems to placate some people. However, it could also be perceived as saying "Ah, such a sophisticated person as myself, could never expect one such as you to comprehend the kind of rare and exclusive audio delights of which I indulge"...

"Oh, so like obscure bands and stuff yeh?"

"Something like that..."


"..."

What surprises me is the oxymoronic potential other people have pulled from my preferred response.

"Uh.. I like a bit of everything really. 70's Rock, indie, heavy metal... yeah I'm open to anything, me"

Thanks for that. Call Oxford! We've redefined everything to mean Western guitar-based popular music written since 1970! No wonder nobody understands what I mean.

Facetiousness aside, my real intention with my answer is that I'm trying to skirt around the inherent tribal nature of musical affiliation. In a world where Goths are an official minority, we can clearly see that asking someone's music taste is not as light a question as it might first seem. I know if I try and pick any one of the many bands or genres I enjoy, it'll be the wrong one.


"So what kind of music are you into then?"


"...Minimal techno...?"

"Really?! Ugh!"

 Hell, I'm worse than anybody for making snap judgements about people for their musical taste.

"Oh really, One Direction? Soulless moron!"

Can we save such jibes until I've learned your surname, at least. Better yet I don't really want to bond with you over music.

At this point it becomes clear that the issue is me. In terms of music taste I've forged bravely ahead down a dark, overgrown forest path to live out a hermitic existence listening to the sounds of the wind and Mongolian throat-singing. Any outsiders I treat with fear and a very pointy stick. I take things too personally, is what I'm trying to say. I'm sure everybody else can just brush off the fact that some people didn't like the last Animal Collective album, but to me saying such a thing feels like you're attacking my very soul!

Its this sense of being under attack that means I basically don't want to use music as a basis for friendship. By and large this has been easy to achieve because people are complex, multi-faceted creatures. I've been able to share some music-related things with friends but such things are always discovered accidentally and aren't forced by a rigorous note-taking or Facebook 'Like's scrolling just to answer that bloody question.


"So what kind of music are you into then?"

"You know what mate, I'm into music which challenges me and enriches my soul. Music which is inventive, exciting, cathartic, baffling, complex, adventurous, playful, joyous, bleak, haunted, iconoclastic."

But who in their right mind would say such things to someone they've only just met.




"Uh... I like a bit of everything really."



But of course I don't like everything, that would be ridiculous. I can't stand Reggae, Country & Western, Rap, Trance, Minimalism, Gospel, Pop punk, Salsa, Northern Soul, Grime, Ska, Dixieland Jazz, Opera...

I'll stick with my cop-out answer for now. Who knows, I may miss a kindred spirit but its probably better than alienating every person I'll ever meet. And I won't ask them that question back because I don't want to be filled with a petty prejudice just because they never grew out of their nu-metal phase. I hold the opinion that human beings are essentially nice; up until the point you know they enjoy Coldplay. Ignorance is bliss!

"So what kind of music..."

"Hey, how about that local sports team, huh?"

Three stupid songs

For a change I'm actually going to talk about pop music. More specifically my experience with three pop songs during my final year of university. This is probably a good way to generate some Web traffic, to write about things people actually search for e.g.
NEW UNRELEASED JUSTIN BIEBER BONUS TRACK!
THE SMITHS REFORM!
HARLEM SHAKE! GANGNAM STYLE!
NUDES
NUDES
NUDES

etc

For once you can sit back and relax knowing I'm not going to lecture you or force you to listen to 4 minutes of silence.

So most of 2008/9 was fairly standard music wise for me. I was buying lots of obscure glitch and noise music and borrowing hundreds of academic computer music CDs from the university library. But that all ground to a halt by March as a series of daunting deadlines loomed ominously on the horizon. I actively listened to less music and that which I did listen to was stuff I knew and was comfortable with. At that point I began to understand part of what it means to establish a musical comfort zone and start nestling into it. However, three rather banal pop songs had a striking impact on my emotional memory of that period. I love music so much but it's true I rarely truly connect with it on a raw emotional level. Somehow these three songs tied themselves inexorably to my guilt, fear and ultimate joy.

The first of these pop tunes quickly became my "guilt" song. Mainly through bad timing. Like all good men when faced with a difficult problem, I procrastinated. Rather than work on my impending coursework I decided to re-watch old series of Peep Show on 4oD. The adverts that preceded these shows invariably repeated and one that came up every time, without fail, had this as its soundtrack.

Madcon - Beggin' *

It was the guitar riff that got to me. Soft and melancholic but persistent and endlessly repeating. It's strict clock-like rhythm seemed to be counting out every second I was wasting. Selfishly streaming a brilliant sitcom rather than working on my final year Computing project. Useful time I would not get back. There is a similar sense of loss in the lyrics too. As is made evident by the title, the sense of loss is so great that the singer has been brought to his knees, looking for a lifeline, which I felt I probably needed too. Just put your loving hand out, baby... I think the advert was only about 50 seconds long but it had enough time to squeeze in this lyric which really hit the nail on the head in terms of loss and the crushing march of time.

Ridin high, when I was king
Played it hard and fast, cause I had everything
Walked away, won me
But easy come and easy go
And it would end

I couldn't hear that song, that riff without being reminded of the sheer amount of stuff that still needed to be done. It affected me so much that one year later, after everything had blown over, some acappella buskers managed to dredge up these feelings of pressure and guilt by singing this 4 Season's tune without the accusatory guitar line.

Just like that one guitar riff gnawed its way through my psyche another pop song of that year had a strong musical motif that in my current state I found chilling.

Lady Gaga - Just Dance

Oh God! It all comes flooding back when I hear that synth line. Seriously, I've talked about the primacy of pure sound before and there's something about the tone of that synth that's more depressing than anything I've ever heard. OK, such a response to the timbre of music is purely subjective but the picture doesn't get much rosier when we start to hear the lyrics. To me this song seems to speak of the horrible soulessness of modern club culture; the hideousness of substance abuse and the predatory nature of dancefloor dynamics  I mean look at these lyrics

Where are my keys? I lost my phone
Keep it cool, what's the name of this club?  
How'd I turn my shirt inside out?

Seriously, something really bad is going to happen to this poor woman! You're a broken, wasted mess and you're probably going to die soon... what else is there left to do but Just Dance. I can see her now, stumbling around, her dress drenched in sweat and booze, tears streaming down her face. The dancefloor is empty except for her convulsive movements. She's fine as long as she just dances... Surely whenever this song comes on all the jolly ravers lie down on the floor, curl up into the foetal position and start sobbing with existentialist angst at the pure meaninglessness of their lives. I imagine... I've never actually been in a club when this song came on.

But again maybe this was just because of how I felt at the time. It's probably speaking to my own inadequacies when trying to hold my own, the few times I did go out that year, in the clubs in Leeds. I couldn't comprehend the law of the club and so it became a fairly frightening place for me. Where Gaga sees revelling I see horror.

Perhaps the most telling evidence is from Gaga herself in a quote I found on Wikipedia:

 Everyone is looking for a song that really speaks to the joy in our souls and in our hearts and having a good time. It's just one of those records. It feels really good, and when you listen to it, it makes you feel good inside.

Fuck, really?! So either there's something wrong with me of with Gaga. But come one, who writes a happy song in C# minor!

Back to my main educationally based worries. Luckily for me there was a light at the end of the tunnel. In fact the light illuminated my tunnel and revealed it to be nothing more than a cosy living room with the lights turned off. Yes, my brain had inflated a first world problem into an end of the world scenario. Deadlines were met, good grades were received and in the end everything worked out fine. But that's what it is to be human sometimes. So where did I turn to celebrate getting past this stuff? An 80's Canadian one-hit wonder classic...

Men Without Hats - Safety Dance

To me this silly song is probably the greatest statement of pure joy that I've ever heard. It's pretty much the antithesis of what I found worrying about the Lady Gaga track. There's none of that tribal, verging on the rohypnol-y, club excess. Instead its a defiant cry to dance anyway we want to. To live anyway we want to. An ode to the child-like joy of being completely free.

And you can act real rude and totally removed

And I can act like an imbecile

I don't know how I came to this song but immediately I attached to its up-tempo nature my own feelings of achievement and victory. It was even better that the song could grant me leave of that which was weighing me down.

We can leave your friends behind

'Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance

Well they're no friends of mine

There we have it. In 2008/9 three stupid songs stuck in my mind more than anything else I discovered that year. Primarily due to the raw, human emotions they stirred up in me. For one of the few times in my post-adolescent life I actually experienced that strange link between music and moment. Something along the lines of the old cliché that falling in love suddenly causes all those slushy pop ballads to be deep and moving (which I've come to learn is bullshit by the way). I can understand how these feelings link to such strong nostalgia which causes people to stay entrenched in their musical comfort zones. (All music since the 60's/70's/80's/90's being shit, man!) Or why people would actually listen to pop music at all. After hearing those three songs, I can understand what it is to be human. But still... it's not for me.

* In a brilliant twist of fate I've just discovered, watching this music video for the first time, that it opens with the band playing Halo 3. This, of course, was my other great source of procrastination!

I have something to say and I'm saying it

It's time for us to have a frank chat about an incredibly divisive piece of music. John Cage's infamous 4'33". I haven't timed this well seeing as last year was the Cage centenary, when avant-garde aficionados could not avoid being encaged by the man, not even the BBC Proms could escape. But I have to get this stuff off my chest because it seems like every couple of months someone will offhandedly mention the work and I take it upon myself to defend it from the giggles of workmates or the sneers of friends. Plus writing all this stuff here means I can just point their noses at this blog rather than blustering about, probably half-drunk, trying to remember all of my key arguments.

So let's begin. This is in no way an academic or well-researched argument. I'm aiming at a "middle class dinner party" level of rhetoric as this is the environment where I imagine the sneers to be at strongest.

In case you weren't aware 4'33", composed in 1952, is John Cage's "silent" piece for any instrument or group of instruments. And that's how its always described, with the silent air-quoted to buggery. But not without reason because the first thing I have to make clear when trying to introduce people to this work is that true silence is very hard to come by. Cage himself tried and failed and through this failure 4'33" was born. Cage visited the anechoic chamber at Harvard University in search of silence. Put simply an anechoic chamber is a room that is perfectly sound-proofed and allows no sound to bounce off its walls. Therefore such a place must be the closest on Earth to perfect silence. But Cage was surprised that he could still hear something. A high and a low frequency. The engineer told him those sounds were both his nervous system and his blood circulating. And people talk about dance music as being all about the body... The mechanics of our own bodies ensure that we can never experience true silence.

What this means for the music is that while on the surface we seem to be presented with a block of silent musicians in reality we are presented with an infinity of incidental sounds. In fact Cage sums it up perfectly when speaking after the 4'33" premiere:

"There’s no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out."

With 4'33" and "audible" works such as Cage's experiments with altering the sound of the piano and pieces using non-musical instruments such as plants and torn paper Cage was proposing a whole new approach to listening. A deep and considered listening of the world and the inner, micro-qualities of all sounds. Cage's music was all about an opening up of music to embrace that which was always outside it.

It seems a simple prospect, just to listen with an attentive ear. But its a conceptual leap that I imagine my dinner party guests will struggle with. There is something unsettling about not knowing what you're supposed to be listening for when there are no obvious in-built musical signposts like a change to a minor key or a drum solo. Especially since this is the point where verbal or written communication of ideas completely breaks down. Maybe a personal example will do. While watching the performance of But what about the noise of crumpled paper... at last year's Cage event at the BBC Proms I had a small deep listening epiphany. On stage a performer picked up a flag and began to wave it. The wafting of the flag punctuated the hall and yet was so fragile... yep words really are failing me but nevertheless there was something about the raw sound that was just incredible. There is no trick it. I was just listening to someone waving a flag. And it was amazing.


This approach to both listening and composing has lead to so many exciting explorations of sound. From Chris Watson's nature recording to Scanner's controversial use of hacked phone conversations. Don't think popular music was safe though. The incorporation of non-musical sounds in music is commonplace today and the alchemical sound processing of modern electronic dance music producers owes a lot to this whole idea of deep listening.

I'm sure the next question on the lips of my wary acquaintances will be "But is it even music?". Well this blog is going to be long enough without trying to wade through this minefield so I'll just state my opinion. Anything organized by a human or human-created system is music. Therefore, I would say a recording of a rainforest would be music but standing in the rainforest and listening to it would not be music. 4'33" is thus music because it was structured by a human. The duration, choice of instruments and choice of material (silence, duh) were conscious decisions. Anyway that's my definition of music, it may not be yours but there's nothing to gain from arguing over semantics. A rose by any other name etcetera etcetera.

There are of course many more analyses and theories about 4'33" but they would probably overwhelm or serve to prove the point of my detractors. I'll quickly point out though Cage's connection to Zen Buddhism and I'm sure the yogic among you could discover some inner peace within the tranquility of Cage's silent meditation. Not for me though, I prefer to look it from the angle of Cage's interest in randomness. 4'33" can be a chaotic work (especially if you were to schedule it during The Last Night Of The Proms) completely open to the whims of an apathetic universe... Anyway, having so many interpretations and provoking so many debates and arguments must prove that this is an important work of 20th century art! And of course the opinion that it really means nothing is equally valid. Hell, this is basically backed by Cage himself in one of my favourite quotes of his:

"I have nothing to say / and I am saying it / and that is poetry"

I'd like to think this is a very punk quote but I don't have the skills to present Cage as a punk vanguard so let's just ignore that thought...

So my points have been presented, my references check out and everyone at the dinner table seems happy. I've cast a bit of light on what to most people was little more than academic tomfoolery. But then the contented air is broken when one person pipes up with, "Yeah but it's still quite pretentious isn't it." Argh, how I hate that word, so much so I think I'd like to dedicate a future post to the subject. Thankfully, since I'm sat at a computer and have time to gather my thoughts I can take my time to prepare a carefully worded counter-argument... That's bollocks! It's not pretentious at all. The piece asks less of the audience than practically the entire canon of classical music. All it requires is that the audience listens to the world around them. Just sit and listen. Nothing else. You don't need to know about sonata form, major and minor keys nor any of the awkwardness that still persists around movements and whether or not to clap in-between. (Yes, I know 4'33" is in 3 movements which is a bit ridiculous but the nature of the piece means this is hidden from most listeners). Despite everything I've said and the arguments presented, this piece does not lecture. Its apolitical. Its completely benign. So if it's become pretentious just to concentrate and listen then we might as well give up as a species and live as semi-sentient blobs plugged into the 24-hour Michael Bay channel.

Phew, rant over. There's one more snide comment that I expect someone to make. "If you like it so much than would you buy a recording?" ... "Would you see it performed live?" My answer would then be a, perhaps suprising, "No". Hypocritical? Well, not really. You see 4'33" is actually quite dull. Despite what I've said about the importance of the piece it somewhat detracts from the rest of Cage's work. Its so singular in all aspects of structure, texture, timbre, rhythm... I'd be one to say that silence is an under-used tool for creating extreme tension or calm in music but (har har) there's too much of here. Of course, what's around me is infinite in variation but if I was to listen to the piece I'd probably be in a concert hall or in my flat. Not very interesting soundworlds!

So in summary, is it necessary to know about any Cage's ideas to appreciate the music? Did you really need to read this blog? Sadly, yes and I admit that is a big barrier to any completely fresh listener. Our culture hasn't set us up to know we can listen to everything or why just listening (rather than just hearing something while paying attention to something else) is important. But learning about this stuff isn't hard in the Wiki-age and if you're interested in exploring new music you really should put in a bit of time. Like you would for anything you were passionate about. Just reading the Wikipedia article on 4'33" will show you more interesting ideas than I could touch on here. But if you're not interested that's perfectly fine. You don't have to pay it any attention. Its not going to harm you. Just don't be a dick at dinner parties. You don't have an excuse now.