Sonic Revelations, Sonic Revolutions

Often whenever a combination of words sounds really pleasing, those will be the ones that stick in my mind for days afterwards, regardless of how pertinent they were to whatever I’d been reading…for example, in Ross’s article “The Record Effect” I came away with “fizz and crackle” tumbling in my mind. He used those words to describe the warm effects of vinyl records, and ever since I’ve been itching to listen to a proper record. A good friend of mine collects records, and we found a  vinyl of assorted versions of R. Kelly’s Remix to Ignition at Goodwill one day. There was an a cappella version, an instrumental track…that find was definitely a high point of our summer. I don’t know if the sound of the record was done justice, as it was played on a vinyl-to-mp3 converter that ultimately piped the songs through computer speakers. I know that many bands choose to release on vinyl even today, despite the near-obscurity of the medium, and combined with the fact that there remain many committed fans of the form (though that might be true of any phased-out product), there must be something really special about records. I also remembered how Ross wrote about recent musicians incorporating those fizzes and pops digitally into their songs to lend them an antiquated feel. While listening to some music on shuffle, I came across about two bands that did just that. I’m thinking of buying a record player, since I’ve always come across interesting looking records at flea markets and garage sales. Do you listen to records? Do you have any recommendations?

Hate is a strong word but….being sick is the worst. You thought I was going to blog about how I “hated” Du Yun? Never!! In fact, her music is some of the most evocative and imaginative I’ve heard in a while, which is a difficult thing to say considering the amount of amazing music we listen to in this class, but I’m saying it anyway. Now, I can’t really write or think in a coherent way about Du Yun’s music right now because I took some Tylenol PM (and to be honest the thought of listening to Vicissitudes 3 or something right now isn’t pleasant…much love, though, Du Yun!) but if I were able to, I’d probably discuss how it brought to mind a million images at once, but with an overall very specific feel…not like ambience-y music that feels very free-for-all and interpretive; her music seemed to carry a specific message–the solitude of a jail cell, imagined by way of lyrics that actually spoke of being alone, in a jail cell. I’d like to elaborate more on Du Yun later, but now I’d like to share something that is making the passage of nausea-colored time bearable, and even fun! Earlier in the week and friend Anna and I swapped music, and I Senuti-ed the contents of her 80 GB ipod onto my itunes, which is now fat and stuffed with over 10,000 songs. It’s like a treasure chest of music, and it’s been great, listening to all this NEWness while snug under my comforter. I found some great new music, some weird new music, the inevitable song that I’d quickly pass over, but I have some new favorite songs…like Consequence by a band called The Notwist, which according to wikipedia is a German pop group that’s older than I am. It’s really soothing. I’m actually listening to it now, and with that, I think it’s time to drink some orange juice and get back to trying to feel better.  

A question that Professor Alegant often asks during class is, How are you listening to the music? I was never one to immediately pick up the kind of time signature a song is in, or have vivid renderings of colorful landscapes in my mind. Lately, I’ve become aware that I create stories to the music, like novellas or film shorts in my mind. Maybe it’s the presence of the soprano in Lang’s  DW 15, but her role inadvertantly sparked a saga of a stable, sane woman (her assured, ringing voice) braving a chaotic world (the sinister fun-house instrumentation in the background). Very dramatic, I know. As the song progressed, though, the soprano’s style of singing veered off the course of pure juxtaposition against the zephyrs (?), and there were moments when her enunciations mimiced the instruments, or vice versa, and at that point in the running commentary, I imagined that she was gradually being drawn into the madness. Towards the end, it was her voice, and not the instrumentation, that was wilder and more deranged–perhaps more daring, in comparison? There was also a moment in which she sang alone, no tape reel or clanging to complement or distract from her voice. This seemed like a pivotal moment, like a book’s climax, in which the soprano discovers some radical truth about herself. Schizophrenia? Maybe. A raging case of dandruff? Perhaps…I think I should add Lang’s music to my “writing inspiration” playlist, right under John Luther Adams. But Professor Alegant’s likening the song to a demon jumping on a bed? I wish I thought of that myself!

It’s hard for me to find the words to write about this song, because it simply encompasses so much emotion. I find that a lot of John Luther Adams’ work makes me feel this way, which is part of the reason why this blog is so late (…I also forgot my password). The pure “white” notes of the song, and the ringing quality they have, taps into my heart’s mind, not my cerebral one. I did my timeline on this piece, and I think I will listen to it again when I need inspiration to write, because it really fueled my creativity–almost like it was the sound of new ideas popping against the surface. For example, at one particularly moving point in the piece, I could only describe it as the sound old photographs would make if they could communicate with each other. I heard images of windows against which there was rain or sometimes cloud or sun, and even though I had never been to Alaska except on layovers at Anchorage, I could feel the essential arcitc chill that had inspired Adams. Even in writing all this I’m not sure I’m doing justice to how much I appreciate his music, the way it brings me to the farthest place, and back.

When I was younger, around seven or eight years old, I got really sick, and at one point my fever peaked to about 103. I feel really uncomfortable when I listen to Feldman’s “Why Patterns?” because it conjures the memory of that fever, and the hallucinatory state of mind I was in because of it. It’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly makes this piece so evocative of that time of illness. It has the feel of being too weak to get out of bed, yet having one’s head hurt and pound: the tempo is slow and creeping, and even though the movement is at the pace of a slowly spinning mind’s, dictated by the whining flute, there are still pangs of piano and tinkles in the background, counteracting the flute’s potential to give a sense of rest with sharp distractions. Even if I didn’t have that experience to draw upon, this song might still embody a sense of insanity…in fact, I think I might go crazy if I listen to it for too long. I played flute for about eight years, and it’s disconcerting to hear flute tones played in this way. Even though I would like to say that the sounds are beautiful in theory, I just don’t like the dawdling and hesitation of it. Then again, perhaps I’m not doing the song justice as I am really tired right now, and maybe a little cranky…

I just listened to Bryer’s song featuring Tom Waits again….the contrast between Tom Waits and the Tramp’s voice left me pondering the interchangability of their lives, and yet the drastic differences between them, which I think is expressed in the song.  Tom Wait’s voice emerges as stronger and more passionate, and in a way I feel as though he is singing for the tramp, singing with all his might to do the tramp’s unfortunate life justice, although I admit that that is very sentimental; nevertheless, sometimes it just seems like Tom Waits is giving the tramp his regards, his respect…this isn’t the best example but it’s the only one that’s coming to mind: on tv once I saw Alicia Keys and Stevie Wonder singing together, and Alicia had a very reverential manner towards Stevie Wonder; in this case, Tom Waits is Alicia Keys, and the tramp Stevie Wonder (sorry…that was a really horrible analogy!).  Could it be the ultimate irony here then, when their voices are overlapped and singing about jesus’s blood, when tom waits is this renowned musical figure, and the tramp dies anonymous, but both espouse the enduring goodness of jesus’s blood? The tramp with the string quartet was the most emotional one for me because his voice is very prominent and shines through the strings, and the feeling I get from the song is very cinematic, as though I could see the tramp on the street, and as the camera focuses on him, the strings begin to play. In the song with Tom Waits, the tramp’s voice seems to become irrelevant after a while, and Tom Waits takes the center stage–in fact, a chorus comes in as well, and the message seems to be predominantly praiseful–it could be taken as a remark  upon how easily the downtrodden and disadvantaged are forgotten in light of the self-righteous and self-celebratory tone of songs such as this. It is never about Jesus’s sacrifices, I suppose, but rather, how it “never failed me.” In the Tom Waits version of the song, the strings and accompanying orchestra sound jubilant and joyous, almost like a Christmas carol. While the first version of the song could be the soundtrack of, as Bryer’s says, a 1950’s war movie, the version with Tom Waits could be the background soundtrack of some Santa Clause spinoff movie.  At times the tramp’s voice peeks through the sound curtain of the orchestra and the chorus and Tom Waits, and for a moment it is just the tramp again, but those moments are very fleeting, and Tom Waits overpowers the tramp. The  progression through the songs could reflect the process of how religion might affect different kinds of people in different kinds of circumstances, if indeed this is even about religion anymore… 

Maybe it’s because of the proximity of Halloween, or maybe it’s because my nerves are still jangled from watching Oberlin’s production of the bloody play Bug this past weekend, but a lot of the music we’ve been listening to lately seems to have a menacing quality. Andrew’s show-and-tell song really evoked the atmosphere of the play, for example, because it resembled the music they played before they began the show. The first blare of the trumpet was elephant-like, so I smiled and scooted down in my chair, ready for a relaxing time listening to experimental trumpeting. Well, that was what I got, but not in the way I expected. The following blare of trumpet was distorted and wild, like the kind of sound a Dr. Seuss animal would make as opposed to its real life counterparts. I could best describe the song as like a carnival fun-house for my ears…there were traces of the familiar, like one’s reflection in the mirror, hidden within the bizarre, one’s reflection stretched out in the fun house mirror, stretched fat or thin–but in this case, with a scary effect, as opposed to a funny one. The heavily distorted Hey Jude inspired chills because it took something that was so genially familiar and made me do a double-take, in a way looking at a familiar friend and realizing that they had a deeper side that apparently was under the surface the entire time, just unapparent to me. It also amazed me when Andrew said that the song was performed live–I can’t imagine the kind of improvisational skills that must have required, or if it followed a practiced score, the kind of practice and preparation that went into it. On a similar note, I had that same amazement after listening to Matt’s bagpipe piece, which was so complex. The beautiful, pure tones that instrument produced would be worth claiming “I listen to bagpipes” just to hear it. That song also had a sort of twist, a musical equivalent of a poem’s turn. While the mournful, saxophone-resembling melody seemed to represent the Irish family’s struggle and pain, the too-cheerful portion at the end was when I felt that the family had finally died, releasing their earthly suffering in a vulgarly celebratory uproar, because death isn’t “supposed” to be so happy. I was really happy that Radiohead’s Everything in its Right Place was the closing piece to our class. For once during those two hours, I felt as though everything was in its right place…here was a beloved, familiar song, straightforward and just as how I remembered it. 

I just came back from the Ratatat concert and my ears are ringing as though I have a personal overtone concert playing in there. I held off blogging until now because I wanted to write about my experience at the concert, but looking over the other recent blogs, most of them focus on the pieces we listened to during class, which probably makes more sense…so I’ll talk about that first, and if I can, I’ll relate Ratatat back to it in some way. (If you haven’t already, I recommend checking them out, they’re amazing–and even more so live). The piece Four Sirens really moved me, and I’m not sure if that’s despite the fact that it was composed of sirens, or because of it. Although there wasn’t much cause for air raid-style sirens to go off frequently back home (New Jersey is pretty uneventful that way, and the local siren that calls for volunteer police to come into the station sounds like moo-ing), I’ve seen my fair share of movies and such to have that Pavlovian fear when I hear that whining crescendo. It reminds me of tornados, of WWII, of impending danger and the need to flee. Yet, making music out of that fear, taking that which triggers raw and delicate emotions and making art out of it, was such a brash and challenging move. It instilled a lot of admiration and hope in me for what music is capable of. My own emotions were toyed with while I listened to the song. At one point during the song, I was convinced that this could be the soundtrack to that “life flashing past your eyes” moment right before you die. At others, I was in a trance simply lost in the way the tones played off each other and created eerie yet beautiful harmonies. Then, of course, as the pitches escalated, the high screaming overtones were too much to bear. Over all, I felt the song possessed a sort of narrative arc. In the beginning, when the sirens colliding produce a sort of uncomfortable yet pleasing effect, I thought it could be taken as (one aspect of) human nature’s tendency to find a sort of comfort in the misfortunes of others–that is, a sense of relief that the sirens of trouble are not ringing for them. Then, towards the end of the piece as the soprano siren becomes almost unbearable (I covered my ears, I confess), that signified to me that one can never truly escape the unfortunate things that happen in the world, that everyone could be affected equally. Now, bringing it back to Ratatat….in one of their songs, although I don’t remember which one, the guitar shredding away with all of the electronic alterations produced a high and painful overtone that was so clearly an overtone–I’d never experienced it live before, and it was really exciting, in a nerdy kind of way. And now I’m going to go to bed.

 A lot of the music we’ve been listening to recently, such as Stimmung and Scelsi, has been described as primordial. This minimalist and experimental style of music challenged, once again, my perception of the difference between music and sound or noise. On the other hand, we also listened to the Anonymous 4’s wrenchingly beautiful interpretation of a Medieval love song. The contrast between, say, Scelsi and the Montpellier Codex, is stark in many respects, and I wanted to explore further the differences that lay in music that aims to sound ancient, and music that ancient society actually produced. (Doubtless there are songs that range from further back than the Medieval times, but I will use the Anonymous 4’s song for comparison here.)        What got me thinking about this was Alex Ross’s article “The Messenger: Giacinto Scelsi Discovered a World in One Note,” in which he glorifies Scelsi and his a-tonal compositions. Ross expresses his admiration for the music by elevating it and its composer to deified heights: “… the Tone is all-powerful once more.” “… considered himself a ‘messenger’ or ‘medium,’ and ” …a cult figure among younger composers: he makes the eternal new.” I agree with Ross on the counts that Scelsi’s music is unique and interesting. The idea of the primordial, for me, comes from the fact that a multitude of textures and sounds rise out of just one note, almost like the big bang theory, or any other creation idea. The Medieval song, on the other hand, has none of the tense or anxious quality of Scelsi, or for the matter Stimmung’s, work. The singers worked hard to perfect a “pure” style of singing, without any dips or vibrato in their tone. Contrary to the generally tune-less Scelsi, “Puisque bele dame m’eime” is all about arching melody.  But when does melody and “melody formed from noise,” as Ross describes Scelsi’s music, begin to differentiate? I think that the Medieval composers were focused on creating pleasant music that would entertain a court, as a love song would. Abstract, minimalist music would probably be the very last thing those people were looking for. Scelsi and Stimmung’s music, on the other hand, is narrative in the sense that they are trying to convey stories in ways that simultaneously were completely new and different, but also universal at the core.

I hear something that sounds almost like static in the very beginning seconds of “Atmospheres,” which then gives way to a ghostly sound mass—ghostly because it seems to have the idea of something solid behind it, but not the density.  The notes float and collide with each other in mid-air, creating a shimmer. The low bass notes are the ground, from which the top notes are repelled, suspended in air once more. The shimmer is like a cloud of insects, in the random yet contained way they seem to buzz around in the air. The music then decresendos into near-silence. Although the song doesn’t seem to have a defined pattern, the interplaying of loud and soft sections seems to be a theme, starting with the opening to the song.  One of the “cool spots” that really struck me was at 1:37 to 1:55. It sort of comes out of nowhere, this frantic and high-pitched cacophony of violins. The more closely I listen to it, the dizzier I get, because as soon as I latch onto a certain sound–a particular strain of violin, for example–that sound recedes and another similar one takes its place, yet as soon as I focus on the new sound, it fades, and the vertigo continues. This spot strikes me because of the nature of its intensity, and the anxious feelings it creates, but also because of how quickly it comes and goes. It’s like a foreshadowing of what is to come in the piece.