Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
How Noise Ruined My Life
I have written a number of justifications
for what I do as a musician. As I have marginalized the time and energy I have to
make music and sound art by being in school, my resolve has hardened and thought process
has deepened, and my countless hours in front of a computer often
suffer from veering explorations into what I really want to get back
to “when I'm done,” if such a state will ever exist.
It is more realistic to look backward at this point and think about how I got here. Being a hack musician has done much for me and against me in the almost twenty years since I started playing in front of people.
It is more realistic to look backward at this point and think about how I got here. Being a hack musician has done much for me and against me in the almost twenty years since I started playing in front of people.
We try to articulate our thoughts in various ways. Conversation, writing, these can fail us
when we are on the spot. For those of us who grew up in the era of
tapes, however, another medium exists: the mix tape. It is a safe way
of giving the listener a set of ideas that can be ordered and
organized to say quite a lot.
This is a modern take on that practice.
I will attempt to write brief personal history through a condensed timeline of my
musical influences.
Tripmaster Monkey – Shutter's Closed
This was the band from my hometown that
was signed to a major label when I was in high school. I bought my
first real bass from their bass player, Wes Haas. That the video was
shot in a roller rink that rivaled the one my family began during the
Depression didn't matter. This told me anything was possible. I find it highly ironic that this video begins with guitarist Jamie Toal counting off those muted chords in front of the old spider lights, which is exactly how my musical life began, staring into the much larger spider lights at the rink I grew up in. Toward
the end of the video, one of the spectators grabs the microphone stand. That was
Jeremy Anderson, the singer in the first band I was ever in.
Joy
Division – Transmission
I got into punk rock in the most
backwards way possible. In one of many articles I read on Joy
Division in my pre-20s, someone said that where the normal ethic of
punk was “Fuck You,” Joy Division's was “I'm fucked.” This
appealed to me.
Low
– Shame
I walked into a record store while I
was on my senior trip in Minneapolis, and what I saw was basically
this. Low's second record Long Division
came out that day, and they were doing an in-store performance at 3
in the afternoon on a Tuesday. That's the type of band they were
then. This changed everything I wanted from music, permanently.
I moved to Iowa City in 1996 and after
one semester at the University of Iowa, I fell so far behind trying
to write about music and publish a zine that I convinced myself that
was more important. I met a friend with my first name, wandering
around town on a break from the coffee shop I worked at, when I heard
a Low song coming from the coffee shop he worked at. A week later we
played music on the floor in his bedroom, and then he played these
two records for me over the course of one evening:
Flying
Saucer Attack – In the Light of Time
Stars
of the Lid – Down
I thoroughly convinced myself that my
ship had come in when my favorite band from back home asked me to go
on tour with them, playing keyboards and guitar and singing. I had
quit the coffee shop I was working at and now worked at the one my
friend had worked at, where there was a piano I could play when the
shop was empty. This was good because I had to go on tour in a few
months and had to learn to play a piano.
Darling
- Transformer
This was the end result of two years of
commuting to my hometown to practice every week, writing while
learning to play, and trying to hold together a band that did not get
along and a van that did not want to go on living.
While I played in Darling, I was
discovering other forms of Very Serious Music:
Steve
Reich – Music for 18 Musicians
Tortoise
I Set My Face to the Hillside
This is from the album TNT,
which I first heard in the van on my first tour with Darling. I
remember that hour or so vividly. On a crappy car stereo struggling
against the sound of a Volkswagen minibus struggling up hills in the
middle of Pennsylvania, it sounded like pure bliss. Two drummers,
horns, vibes and marimbas, Jeff Parker's gorgeous jazz guitar tone
and Doug McCombs's four and six-string basses against that gorgeous
horizon seemed like everything was out there to be had.
This is an excerpt from a whole live
show posted to YouTube in seven parts. This would be their last tour,
as one of the core members of the band, Jason Noble, who also played
in two of my very favorite rock bands, died of a rare cancer last year. This band made me really want to make something graceful and grand, and Jason Noble was just a guy from a rock band, which taught me that you really could do something seriously good without being a trained musician.
Around this time, as Darling was
getting to play more and more shows, and becoming good friends with
the members of Low, there became evidence that the heady music I was
obsessing over was becoming marketable. Or so someone thought.
There was a pair of ads for The Gap one
winter, featuring two of my favorite bands:
Red
House Painters – gap ad
Low
– Little Drummer Boy
The aforementioned Rachel's had a song
appear in a Nike commercial. The Flaming Lips released the album
of 2000, The Soft Bulletin,
which honed their noise-pop goofiness into a sullen and gorgeous rock
symphony, winning them nearly universal critical acclaim and solidifying their career. Alan Sparhawk of Low appeared in Spin Magazine, and in his
“Top 5 records of 2000,” right after The Soft Bulletin,
was “the new Darling record that no one will put out,” undoing
the frustration we had with a record that Sparhawk recorded and
performed on right in his own basement. We were four guys in a hang
glider at the edge of a cliff, and then we broke up.
Godspeed
You Black Emperor – Moya
Bands with ten to twelve people in them are a dime a dozen now. Most of those bands can't name this one. I started making slideshows for Darling shows because of them, and after Darling broke up, I started an experimental band with very long songs, field recordings, and tons of quiet-loud-quiet dynamics, mostly because I was listening to the first Godspeed You Black Emperor album and the two-song EP that contained this song, "Moya," over and over. It became the soundtrack to a personal unraveling in my 20s and was, in my mind, the music for a world falling apart under the second Bush administration.
Lightning
Bolt was a secret reason I moved to Providence. At age 24, Providence had the same aura of weirdness surrounding it that drew me to Iowa City at 18, times ten. This was another band that redefined the live show, with 2400 watts of bass amplification and one of the most ridiculous drummers alive, all on the floor with crowd piled around them so you can't even see the duo playing the noise that is very likely damaging your organs. I was headed somewhere after seven years in Iowa City bouncing from one band to another, but I wasn't sure where. I don't know how culinary school became a part of the equation, maybe to justify to such a move to my parents.
Robert Lowe is the only person I know who does music even vaguely similar to what I do. I began doing improvisational recording experiments with drones and textures a few years before I heard my first Lichens record. What he does isn't that hard, but only he has that voice.
I have now begun to add experimental recordings to my girlfriend's installation work, at her request. She gives me only the most basic suggestion of a direction, or I simply record sounds of her working, and then try to create sound atmospheres around it.
Scott
Walker – Epizootics
I make no secret of my exaltation of Scott Walker and I don't intend to start. I have already written at length on this subject, however, and I will spare the reader the grief of my getting started again. This is a song from his forthcoming album, Bish Bosch.
I end this with a summation, the total so far of all of this listening, playing, stopping and starting again. I am constantly trying to synthesize the thirty-one flavors of dissonance collected in my head, of which this is only a sneeze.
This is the last piece I have done, discounting my part-time rock band, and was the first time I was mentioned by name in a gallery show, in Elsewhere, presented at the Distillery Gallery in South Boston by FLUX Boston, again accompanying visual work by my girlfriend, Elizabeth Alexander.
I end this with a summation, the total so far of all of this listening, playing, stopping and starting again. I am constantly trying to synthesize the thirty-one flavors of dissonance collected in my head, of which this is only a sneeze.
This is the last piece I have done, discounting my part-time rock band, and was the first time I was mentioned by name in a gallery show, in Elsewhere, presented at the Distillery Gallery in South Boston by FLUX Boston, again accompanying visual work by my girlfriend, Elizabeth Alexander.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
20 minutes in a Best Buy: Sound Crank series part II
The soundscape we live in is eternally cheapened while becoming ever more expensive.
The tools for musical production and reproduction are themselves produced on an increasingly inhuman mass scale, while the consolidation and growth of owner-parents (namely corporations and banking entities) means more more more money for less less less quality and equality.
To remain in the sphere of used and refurbished goods undoes this cycle. The status quo degenerates and devolves and devalues, while the ownership class's endless pinch requires the price to go up while the quality of the product spirals downward.
What this means:
Say you bought a stereo in the age of vinyl records. The $xxx dollar system came with a certain array of circuitry - sound source, signal processing, amplification, speakers; with a desired end result of providing clear and pleasant reproduction of sound. Recording is the capture of an event, in this case instruments and voices, tediously rehearsed, arranged, and repeatedly attempted until perfected in the presence of a similar though more elaborate array of technology: microphones, signal processing, amplification, tape machine. The point was to recreate the best possible sound from musicians and bring it into homes.
The advent of the Compact Disc and its "digital age" warped this motive. It became easy to manipulate music in unnatural ways, and where natural tones and nuanced performance were lovely goals, they became lofty ideals that were slipped away from in the name of efficiency.
The auditory spectrum became limited by the sets of frequencies that translated well to a digital file, in which the electronic record of a musical event was converted by a computer into digital code that would be re-assembled into a suggestion of that event by another computer built into the CD player.
The final output, an approximation of music from a series of digital codes stored on an optical disk, came to dictate the methods of recording used in the studio. The digitization used at the end of the recording process crept backwards through the machines, to the production plants, to the recording studio, to the instruments themselves. Rich acoustic instruments are increasingly scarce. The strange possibilities of middle 20th century electric instruments, from the electric guitar to the analog synthesizer, that aided and abetted the creation of rock music, have been "modeled" now into computer-based reproduction machines that are somehow regarded superior to the ghosts they are said to conjure. Man has exceeded God.
The truth of this evolution is that music has not become easier to reproduce, only to mass-produce. The highest technology in music making is quite cheap to build, yet the business interests of the artisans who made instruments and recording devices and stereo systems have faded out as the profit motive of larger money interests that now own what once were many smaller manufacturers has meant "efficient" designs being mass-produced in factories and shipped back to the countries whose consumers can afford them, to create music that fits this aesthetic.
To understand the aesthetic, spend twenty minutes in a Best Buy. There is an array of stereo systems for sale, that are designed along these lines. The rich harmonics that make music pleasing to the ear have all been slashed to bits and rearranged by the recording process, and now musicians, producers, and technology are selected to make music that "makes the most" of the technology, which is now made to hyper-amplify the most extreme high and low tones, so consumers feel they're really getting something, a "clarity" that damages the ears and the brain as you turn up. Piercing treble tones made by digital percussion, squawking and shrieking vocalists, computer-based or -altered instruments, made by groups of musicians who met their A&R representatives before meeting each other. This all sounds great on the modern home stereo, because more effort was spent on the digital light display on the front panel than on anything the sound will pass through. Midrange is a metaphor for the substance that once was. Record label producers are the shop bosses of music industry: they oversee the creation of recordings with a special ear for what suits the suits, including what will play well over a digital radio broadcast or the internet. At the same time, their paid time creates a cash void that devours the good of the process. The studio bill becomes a maxed-out credit card that the artist must pay off on terms set by the record company, their personal lives and creative control relinquished as a down payment.
The tools for musical production and reproduction are themselves produced on an increasingly inhuman mass scale, while the consolidation and growth of owner-parents (namely corporations and banking entities) means more more more money for less less less quality and equality.
To remain in the sphere of used and refurbished goods undoes this cycle. The status quo degenerates and devolves and devalues, while the ownership class's endless pinch requires the price to go up while the quality of the product spirals downward.
What this means:
Say you bought a stereo in the age of vinyl records. The $xxx dollar system came with a certain array of circuitry - sound source, signal processing, amplification, speakers; with a desired end result of providing clear and pleasant reproduction of sound. Recording is the capture of an event, in this case instruments and voices, tediously rehearsed, arranged, and repeatedly attempted until perfected in the presence of a similar though more elaborate array of technology: microphones, signal processing, amplification, tape machine. The point was to recreate the best possible sound from musicians and bring it into homes.
The advent of the Compact Disc and its "digital age" warped this motive. It became easy to manipulate music in unnatural ways, and where natural tones and nuanced performance were lovely goals, they became lofty ideals that were slipped away from in the name of efficiency.
The auditory spectrum became limited by the sets of frequencies that translated well to a digital file, in which the electronic record of a musical event was converted by a computer into digital code that would be re-assembled into a suggestion of that event by another computer built into the CD player.
The final output, an approximation of music from a series of digital codes stored on an optical disk, came to dictate the methods of recording used in the studio. The digitization used at the end of the recording process crept backwards through the machines, to the production plants, to the recording studio, to the instruments themselves. Rich acoustic instruments are increasingly scarce. The strange possibilities of middle 20th century electric instruments, from the electric guitar to the analog synthesizer, that aided and abetted the creation of rock music, have been "modeled" now into computer-based reproduction machines that are somehow regarded superior to the ghosts they are said to conjure. Man has exceeded God.
The truth of this evolution is that music has not become easier to reproduce, only to mass-produce. The highest technology in music making is quite cheap to build, yet the business interests of the artisans who made instruments and recording devices and stereo systems have faded out as the profit motive of larger money interests that now own what once were many smaller manufacturers has meant "efficient" designs being mass-produced in factories and shipped back to the countries whose consumers can afford them, to create music that fits this aesthetic.
To understand the aesthetic, spend twenty minutes in a Best Buy. There is an array of stereo systems for sale, that are designed along these lines. The rich harmonics that make music pleasing to the ear have all been slashed to bits and rearranged by the recording process, and now musicians, producers, and technology are selected to make music that "makes the most" of the technology, which is now made to hyper-amplify the most extreme high and low tones, so consumers feel they're really getting something, a "clarity" that damages the ears and the brain as you turn up. Piercing treble tones made by digital percussion, squawking and shrieking vocalists, computer-based or -altered instruments, made by groups of musicians who met their A&R representatives before meeting each other. This all sounds great on the modern home stereo, because more effort was spent on the digital light display on the front panel than on anything the sound will pass through. Midrange is a metaphor for the substance that once was. Record label producers are the shop bosses of music industry: they oversee the creation of recordings with a special ear for what suits the suits, including what will play well over a digital radio broadcast or the internet. At the same time, their paid time creates a cash void that devours the good of the process. The studio bill becomes a maxed-out credit card that the artist must pay off on terms set by the record company, their personal lives and creative control relinquished as a down payment.
Monday, February 27, 2012
statement
This is a rejection of what constitutes "good" music.
This is a rejection of the idea of "production value".
This is a conscious and unconscious effort to never become trite via perpetual spontaneity. Songs are rare. Plans are less so.
This is all based on the utility of what is at hand. Overpriced current recording tools and practices are not used. Digital technology is used, reluctantly, because there are times when one doesn't need a layer of tape hiss.
There is a time and place for the instruments to be in tune, and that is not all the time and everywhere. It is sometimes and somewhere. Likewise with singing.
Looping can make a spontaneous moment last forever. An accident can be relived again and again, good or bad.
Looping also allows sounds to form a continuous stream, which is necessary when the goal is to erode all the badness going on on the shore. Wear away the dirt and the stilts that cash-palaces full of bad art made on fake sentiments will soon buckle.
This is a rejection of the idea of "production value".
This is a conscious and unconscious effort to never become trite via perpetual spontaneity. Songs are rare. Plans are less so.
This is all based on the utility of what is at hand. Overpriced current recording tools and practices are not used. Digital technology is used, reluctantly, because there are times when one doesn't need a layer of tape hiss.
There is a time and place for the instruments to be in tune, and that is not all the time and everywhere. It is sometimes and somewhere. Likewise with singing.
Looping can make a spontaneous moment last forever. An accident can be relived again and again, good or bad.
Looping also allows sounds to form a continuous stream, which is necessary when the goal is to erode all the badness going on on the shore. Wear away the dirt and the stilts that cash-palaces full of bad art made on fake sentiments will soon buckle.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Keeping Up Appearances
Video collage of installation by Elizabeth Alexander in the exhibition Home Sweet Home at Montserrat College of Art. Sound by the Inevitable Minor Fires.
This was my second collaboration with Liz and I'm starting to get over the nervous excitement of getting to collaborate with my favorite artist, and slowly starting to get good at these made-to-order pieces, with the slight advantage of slowly improving technology. Her next show is now open here in Wellesley, and I am proud to be a part of it again.
Keeping Up Appearances from Todd Bowser on Vimeo.
This was my second collaboration with Liz and I'm starting to get over the nervous excitement of getting to collaborate with my favorite artist, and slowly starting to get good at these made-to-order pieces, with the slight advantage of slowly improving technology. Her next show is now open here in Wellesley, and I am proud to be a part of it again.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
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