02.09.07

Of Noise and Data, Pt. 2: “Data”

Posted in Bands, Music at 8:34 pm by Moody

Ryoji Ikeda: Dataplex

[image]While Merzbow’s noise is accessible as a topic of discussion owing at least in part to its controversial, confrontational nature, Ryoji Ikeda’s dataplex [iTunes link] — an ultra-precise, intricately layered, minimalist audio experience — turns back any easy, let alone ready-made, discourse. In its own way it parallels Masami Akita’s efforts generally: the bits and bytes of (sound) data Ikeda uses do not lend themselves to interpretation; only in relation do they “make sense” as a work or, better, as a movement, and even then that sense takes time to form. As is pointed out:

the first eight tracks of dataplex consist mostly of high-frequency raw data. their structures are located clearly outside the cosmos of music. instead, these linear tracks seem to be source code transformed into an audible medium; a constant stream of data, they represent the basic material of the album.

However, any comparison to Merzbow is bound to be short-lived. Even in those first eight tracks (lasting some ten minutes) there is a marked difference, as if we are dealing with an entirely different aural medium, an entirely different psychoacoustic realm. What is in Metamorphism [iTunes link] a violent, destructive assault on the mind, is in those first eight tracks of dataplex an impersonal flow of bits and bytes of data with only the sense of a machine’s organization. And where Akita strikes down whatever structure would arise and stabilize in the maelstrom, Ikeda builds mathematical structures, both linear and fractal, from the otherwise meaningless atoms and molecules of sound. In other words, Ikeda progressively brings the “raw data” into the “cosmos of music” through an artistic arrangement of its content.

And yet, Ikeda does not remove the listener from the realm of data itself. He does not elevate or suppress the data in the way that, say, pointillists or abstract expressionists do. Perhaps a useful comparison at this point is to Alva Noto’s excellent release, For [iTunes link], where basic elements are treated, manipulated, and beautifully turned — or elevated — into aural paintings that recall everything from Blade Runner’s quieter moments and scenes from La Planète Sauvage, to advanced alien races (beloved of hard SF) blossoming into space on gossamer sails of sculpted light, to the magisters playing the glass bead game, to a meditative night alone with Eno and Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies cards. It is not surprising that Carsten Nicolai studied landscape design. It is also not surprising that, like Ikeda, Nicolai makes art installations. It is certainly not surprising that the two artists have worked together.

But Ikeda’s work represents, it seems to me, a further step into minimalism. It is a masterfully minimalist work that is designed to strip away all but the focus of the project at hand.

The visual aesthetic vanishes, to be replaced by pure data, yet at the same time the very essence of the image transformed into an abstract but utterly precise mathematical code. [Source]

The ninth track, “data.microhelix”, takes flight from the quasi-structures of the previous seven tracks — from “data.simplex” to “data.googolplex” — all of which end with the suffix “-plex” (the first track is, naturally enough, “data.index”). This is the point at which the abstract mathematical code becomes a more aesthetically recognizable geometrical form. It is also where the genius of Ikeda’s minimalism begins to fully reveal itself. As the beats, breaks, hums and clicks roll, it might seem tempting to describe the track as techno-based, but that would be a mistake. Although there are unmistakable similarities, these are superficial, and donning a good pair of head- or earphones is enough to dispel the illusion. One moves immediately from basic math (the m-d-a-s of that old mnemonic) to complex polynomials expressed in sound, whose equations play out like beautiful aural theorems with song titles. Nine tracks farther along (”data.vortex”), Ikeda blows it all away in an astonishingly open space that I can only describe as being the perfect ambient soundtrack for the infinite light of cyberspace, into which he gradually introduces a fluttering beat and certain other sounds that virtually overwhelm the senses. But at the point where the eighteenth becomes the nineteenth track, “data.matrix”, we re-enter a more active space again, leaving the infinite array and returning to the activity of the base Arabic numerals. Into this ten-minute track the infinite is reintroduced as a background for the finite activity in the foreground. And so we have the full spectrum in flow, the full picture is revealed, and none of it is any more or less than the sum of its parts. In the final track, “data.adaplex”, Ikeda returns us to the realm of raw, almost undifferentiated, data. Final impression? Ikeda’s is the work of a virtuoso.

So, is dataplex [iTunes link] machinelike, or does the compositional effort of the artist give it a human face, as it were? As I said, Ryoji Ikeda neither elevates nor suppresses the data that he uses in his composition. In a sense, I feel that he frees the data from its implicit or ulterior use so that it may be expressed qua data-in-itself. Certainly, he chooses the keys and tones, the BPMs and arrangements. But in the execution of the work the data is revealed, as if by an electron microscope, leaving us to ponder that it can be seen as particles or waves but never both simultaneously. The sine wave only exists in motion, though any point along its length may be perfectly graphed. Deeply considered, the tracks are inevitably machinelike — owing to their computational origin and digital existence — up to the point where the listener perceives and (thereby) interprets their motion. It is the listener who will then elevate or suppress the data, or else will yield meditatively to the experience of the data-in-itself.

………

Back to “Of Noise and Data, Pt. 1: ‘Noise’“

01.25.07

Of Noise and Data, Pt. 1: “Noise”

Posted in Bands, Music, Society and Culture at 10:37 am by Moody

Merzbow: Metamorphism

[image]Noise — true and unadulterated noise — is not the chaos from which order emerges, it is the great annihilator that devours all order. The television, the radio, the movie, the CD; the text, the word, the letters; emotions, senses, thought; in the end, noise consumes them all, consumes everything but itself. Noise is the yawning void, the infinite string of random ones and zeros tangling and raveling in a blinding light of overload and feedback, simultaneously attack and decay. It is the amorphous and indefinite haze of shattered alphabets, all babble and insentient glossolalia wrapped, bound and layered over and over in and by and with discordant choral voices saying nothing. It is the utterly unstable, timeless, roiling destruction of all alphanumeric and otherwise information-bearing codices. Noise cannot be reasoned with; it neither hates nor loves, fears nor desires, hopes nor despairs, laughs nor weeps; it is not simply illogical or irrational, it is nonlogical and arational. It lays all composition to waste, and no composition may overcome it.

So it may seem odd, right from the start, to discuss a “noise composition” like Merzbow’s Metamorphism [iTunes link]. Then again, the four tracks that comprise this release are not only or not simply noise — there is, in fact, some recognizable instrumentation — although anyone who’d deny that they each attain a level nearly tantamount to ultimate noise (and for almost unbearably sustained intervals) has apparently not yet listened to Metamorphism. What instrumentation there is is ultimately broken and violently obliterated. But what should be considered here is that Masami Akita, like minimalist electronic music composer Ryoji Ikeda (see “Of Noise and Data, Pt. 2: ‘Data’”), is the composer of the sound we finally hear and interpret for ourselves. The point is that however thought-numbingly anti-harmonious or deafeningly destructive/deconstructive each song is in-itself, it was an ordered mind that made it and laid it out before us. So, then, let’s ask a useful question. What motivates Masami Akita; why does he make noise?

What drives Akita is of course best summed up by him, and in his answers to the questions posed by Perfect Sound Forever, the following exchange is illuminating:

PSF: Your work has little connection with what we think of as music- melody, rhythm, chorus- [what] are your thoughts on this?

I like melody and rhythm and I was listening to many different types of music. But my project is in a very different way. My music is not only my reaction against other music. It’s just my way.

PSF: What are you trying to communicate through your music?

My own sensation. I don’t see it as something that I’m communicating. I’m not of any special opinion about this. I’m just doing my work. Of course, I need listeners to hear my work but I have no control about how they hear it.

How does one hear Merzbow? That depends on a number of factors more or less obvious. For instance, what are the presuppositions at the point of exposure? Let’s assume two things: assume that 1) whatever Akita’s intentions/reasons, you alone shall hear what you hear, and 2) whatever you think or feel about it, whatever you’ve presupposed, the noise that Akita has created/composed shall defy you — it will persist as noise regardless of your or my or his interpretation or attitude regarding it.

As to why one would want to listen to Merzbow, I am sure there are any number of reasons. One that comes to mind — and perhaps it has come to yours, possibly colored by sarcasm — is masochism. This is not at all a bad answer. But let’s remove any ambiguity by providing the straight, general definition: masochism is “the enjoyment of what appears to be painful or tiresome” (source: Apple Dictionary). Masochism is also “the tendency to derive pleasure, esp. sexual gratification, from one’s own pain or humiliation” (source: ut supra). In short, control issues lie at the heart of the matter. There is, in listening to Merzbow or to noise compositions generally, a risk of losing control, consciously engaged in, or a willing relinquishment of control. The subject may be further illuminated by pointing out that early Merzbow releases were frequently wrapped in pornography and images of bondage (taken by Akita). However, by presenting a triad of masochism-bondage-noise, important as it may be, I am opening the door to a subject too abstruse to be comprehensively taken on here. Caution must be taken. And in the end I can do no better, pragmatically speaking, than to recommend “Full With Noise: Theory and Japanese Noise Music” by Paul Hegarty, who tellingly said,

Noise music becomes ambience not as you learn how to listen, or when you accept its refusal to settle, but when you are no longer in a position to accept or deny.

and then cite at length from another interview with Akita:

You have been quoted as saying, “There are no special images of ideology behind Merzbow”– unlike the early Industrialists such as Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and Whitehouse that used shocking imagery. Yet you have repeatedly used pornography. Isn’t pornography a shocking image that creates a certain ideology, whether intended or not?

I have two directions in the use of pornography. In my early cassettes and mail art projects I used lots of pornography. I made many collages using pornography as it was a very important item in my mail art/mail music. I thought my cheap Noise cassettes were of the same value as cheap mail order pornography. These activities were called “Pornoise”. In this direction, I would say that I used pornography for it’s anti-social, cut-up value in information theory. I soon started to release Merzbow vinyl which was very different from the cassettes of this same time period. I think my vinyl works concentrated more on sound itself because I think vinyl is a more static medium. So, Merzbow went in two separate directions in the ’80s- a cassette direction and a vinyl direction. In the ’90s, these directions were mixed for one Merzbow. I know you’re thinking I’m still using porn images like bondage but these images are not porn to me. I use bondage images only for the release of connected works like Music for Bondage Performance I and 2 and Electroknots. My reasons for using bondage images are very clear- not for shock element but for documentary value. In fact, all bondage pictures I use are taken by myself. I know who the models are and who tied them up. I know the exact meaning of these bondage pictures. This is very different from people using Xeroxed bondage images from Japanese magazines. I know that there are many bondage images associated with Merzbow releases. But many of these releases use stupid images without my permission. I should control all of them but it is very difficult to control all products abroad. I don’t like the easy idea of using images without the knowledge of the image itself. So, it’s meaningless to create ideology by using pornography without the correct knowledge of the image itself.

I don’t wish to stray too far afield, here. What I am driving at is simply this: one submits to Merzbow, one submits to noise. There is, in Merzbow, a distinct BDSM quality and an implicit association with it. Fans of W.S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard will immediately get this. In listening to Metamorphism, all that is allowed, in a de facto sense, is the experience of hearing. One’s conscious attempts to find order or sense in the extremely cacophonous assault are beaten down over and over, one’s thoughts sheared off at the root. The apparent order that on occasion arises in the four “songs” comes not as a false hope, and not in bad faith, but as a prop made for destruction that, in its destruction or in the process of destruction, brings about a more profound submission by the listener. It is, or it can be, a liberating experience, even if most people would not find it even remotely pleasurable per se.

It can also point to a more subversive understanding of control structures generally, structures which noise inherently undermines. For example, what is more patriotic than a march (vide “The Military March Form”)? Here we see structure with intent. In the military sphere, the uniforms (uniformity, homogeneity), the discipline of order, the very specific patterns displayed in a myriad of ways, all serve to strengthen the military structure, and this structure reflects the implicit goal of maintaining an ordered, harmonious society. The march is the heartbeat of the structure. It is the celebration of order opposed to chaos. That it may also become dangerous, especially when left unchecked to pursue its own ends, is apparent to anyone with some knowledge of the history of fascist, imperialist, communist, dictatorial and totalitarian regimes. In these may we see how the circle runs round. Consider the following: order needs structure, which in turn needs discipline, which in turn needs submission. In submission we have returned to bondage, which noise destroys (as it destroys everything but itself). Noise is, in terms of the discipline of the march, the war. It is no small point that all discipline, structure, and order eventually fails in a war, just as stone succumbs to the sea. But noise is not simply, militarily speaking, war, any more than it is, politically speaking, anarchy, any more than it is, medically speaking, cancer, any more than it is, sexually speaking, BDSM. One may submit to noise but, unlike the submission to order, that submission will ultimately be annihilated. The listener (the body reduced to being an ear) will be left to wonder about the realities of submission. In the submission to order, so long as it is maintained, so long as the march is kept up, there is no allowance made for asking questions or for self-reflection as such would be perceived as indicative of indiscipline and disorderly conduct. Thus it can be concluded that the submission to noise, however flawed, is or leads to the act of subverting the rule of order, discipline, structure, and society, if only in oneself. Put another way — in the tyranny of the mind, noise is the act of terrorism itself.

– — – — – –

On to “Of Noise and Data, Pt. 2: ‘Data’“

01.21.07

A Window’s Haze of Sunlight

Posted in Bands, Music at 9:25 pm by Moody

Grizzly Bear: Yellow House

[image]Edward Droste’s Grizzly Bear seems to have sprung almost fully formed from the lo-fi bedroom studio scene into the world of well polished lo-fi wonders. On Yellow House, the music of Droste’s band — including members Christopher Bear (the last name is coincidental), Daniel Rossen, and Chris Taylor — induces shivers of heightened emotion and varying inner states of calm by turns as it evokes respectful comparisons, sometimes broad and sometimes specific, to the likes of Radiohead, The Beach Boys, Arcade Fire, and Iron and Wine. Once you’ve listened to just a few songs from their new album, this is not at all surprising or eyebrow-raising.

The new material that comprises Yellow House (released on Warp Records on September 4th) puts the band at the vanguard of contemporary song writing. The album was self-recorded during an idyllic summer. The makeshift studio was provided by Droste’s mom’s living room in a yellow house just off Cape Cod. Magical, haunting melodies are still their mainstay. Grizzly Bear always craft their songs from start to finish - meticulous instrumentation and arrangements are their specialty. On Yellow House, Grizzly Bear still flex their lo-fi connoisseurship, but with a better recording - DIY embellished with Taylor’s fine sonic engineering acumen. Droste and Rossen share initial song writing duties, although the entire band collaborates to breath life into the tracks. [Source: Bio.]

[image]Magical, haunting melodies, indeed. As in “Plans”, when the layered voices croon in your ear “Every option I have costs more than I’ve got…”, as the song’s odd beat (like a slow waltz performed from a burro’s back) dances you forward through time grown oddly syrupy, as the choral voice rises and falls (à la the aforementioned Beach Boys) and is finally cut-up among the odd electronic noises…. And also in “Marla”, with its nude-descending-a-staircase echoing piano and its strangely Seussian lyrics…. But, then again, “On a Neck, On a Spit” winds up with a much more straightforward alternative rock association in the end, shifting gears as it does into a slowly careering wall of sound that would, at the peak of the song (close to the four minute mark), be at home at Lollapalooza even as the initial 2:50 of the song puts me in mind of Pink Floyd’s “San Tropez”. “Reprise” follows all this up with banjo and a folky structure. And yet nowhere on Yellow House do you ever feel lost or snagged by a nagging sense of disjointedness.

Grizzly Bear hold together in their varied compositions with a refreshing musical vision that, for all the comparisons that could be made, is absolutely their own.

See two videos from Grizzly Bear: “Lullabye” (live), from Yellow House, and the more experimental and lo-fi “Deep Sea Diver”, from Ed Droste’s first effort, Horn of Plenty.

Thanks are due Pitchfork, whose review turned me on to the band.

05.04.06

Minor Feast, Motley Album

Posted in Bands, Music at 12:57 pm by Moody

Rogue Wave: Descended like Vultures[image]

There’s a lot of good music out there these days. Sometimes the sheer volume of choices can seem positively overwhelming. Not that that’s a bad thing. But every now and again it would be nice just to know who’s star is really set to rise. Okay, then… Rogue Wave is one band that presents music fans with an easy choice. Like other indie-pop bands, their work refines a standard/style set by successfull garage bands and other talented independents. In this they succeed, though it will take a third album, I think, to fully prove whether their mettle is on a par with the likes of, say, Spoon, or The Shins. For now, they have earned the benefit of the doubt.

Descended Like Vultures, the sophomore offering by the band, starts out slowly with “Bird on a Wire”, an often downright tipsy bit of psychedelia (à la The Sunshine Fix, Robyn Hitchcock) featuring lightly sprinkled xylophones, a dash of backmasking, a minor key seasoning, and a sing-along choral fromage that may make you overlook the wistful turns of the lyrics even as your ears consume the song, which somewhat sets the tone for the rest of the album, although the musical thrust ultimately (mostly) leaves the initial psychedelic recipe behind for more traditionally indie (à la The Breeders, California Oranges, Spoon) and folksy fare (à la Winterpills, Decemberists, Nick Drake).

Lyrically and vocally, Descended like Vultures is a smart album. The layering is well done, the choruses are not overbearing or clichéd even when they are “simple”, and the words are fitted nicely with the music. In terms of the actual mixing, the songs are variable: rough and jangly sometimes, tightly produced at other times. The mixing is, like the lyrics, fitted to the tone and message of the song, which is to say that it seems to be a conscious product and not a non-professional one.

I agree with some reviewers who’ve said that Rogue Wave sound as if they are yet coming into their own sound. There is enough variety in the songs for the album as a whole to border on showcasing une affaire de disparité. But based on this effort, I’ll certainly expect good things from them in future. In other words, I have a lot of praise and no substantial complaints.

02.19.06

(Possibly) The Best Power Pop Ever

Posted in Bands, Music at 10:55 pm by Moody

[image]For much of my life I could not tolerate pop music. Although I grew up in the ’70s listening to the likes of Van Morrison, Marvin Gaye, Jefferson Airplane, Al Stewart, and all that era’s most popular stars, I developed in my adolescence a disdain for anything that looked even remotely pop. I turned my attention to so-called underground bands and/or “darker” music: Sisters of Mercy, :zoviet*france:, Christian Death, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Pink Floyd, Soft Cell and the like (bands I still have fondness for). While others were extolling the virutes of Tom Petty, OMD and The Thompson Twins, I was wallowing in heady reverb, Grand Guignol theatrics, industrial noise pollution and distortion box vocals.

I mention all this because it still matters to me. Perhaps it’s because I am nearing forty years of age now, but my musical tastes have broadened vastly. I’m proud of that. A look at 7000+ songs on my iPod will tell you that my tastes are eclectic and yet nearly all-inclusive. What you still won’t find a lot of, though, is pop. I may begrudgingly nod my head to Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” or Britney Spears’ “Toxic” now and then, but — and make no mistake here — it is begrudgingly, and I usually have to listen to Carcass or A Life Once Lost for an hour afterward. Some things never change — or don’t change much. If it’s pop, for me to like it requires that it somehow transcends the genre. More often than not, it’s only one song that makes it through the filter, and often then it’s simply a matter of the artist having had a particularly great producer behind the song (e.g., such is the case for the two previously mentioned songs). Rarely, rarely, rarely do I wholeheartedly embrace a pop band’s entire oeuvre.

But there is one group who manages to grab all the stars for me, and they are the Canadian power pop supergroup The New Pornographers, made up of Destroyer’s Dan Bejar (who does not consider himself an official member), the highly talented Neko Case, Thee Evaporators’ John Collins, Limblifter/Age of Electric drummer/vocalist Kurt Dahle, Fancey’s Todd Fancey, A.C. Newman and Blaine Thurier. Never before have I heard a band pull together all those elements that make music so fun, so compelling, so danceable, and so compulsively, repeatably listenable both musically and lyrically.

Lyrically, Mass Romantic’s “Letter from an Occupant” gives a solid example of the band’s pop prowess, making emotional sense even as it skirts the hem of the poetically enigmatic:

I'm told the eventual downfall
is just a bill from the restaurant.
You told me I could order the moon, babe,
just as long as I shoot what I want.

What the last ten minutes have taught me:
bet the hand that your money's on.
Where the hell have the '70s brought me?
You trade me away long gone.

For the love of a god, you say,
not a letter from an occupant.

The time that your enemy gives you,
good times are not the ones you want.
I cried five rivers on the way here,
which one will you skate away on?

The tune you'll be humming forever,
all the words are replaced and wrong,
with a shower of yeahs and whatevers,
you trade me away long gone.

For the love of a god, you say,
not a letter from an occupant.

Where have all the sensations gone?
It's the song, the song, the song that's shaking me.

The New Pornographers liberally spice their songs with lyrics that get stuck in your head and flawlessly implement the kind of catchy hooks that you inevitably catch yourself humming throughout day. In other words, they are in good company with the too often overlooked Big Star, as well as Super Furry Animals, The Sunshine Fix and Imperial Teen. They are clever like Arrested Development was a clever sitcom that should never have been cancelled.

And they are maturing. Twin Cinema, their third effort, proves that they are a superband with real staying power. They have expanded and simultaneously tightened their sound. If their first album was a little unfocused (though not detrimentally so) and their second album an affair of finding their groove, then their third release is a solid expression of the band’s collective sound. You can read more about the album at the band’s official Website, and I recommend checking out the review over at Pitchfork.