Bay Area phone critic Marc Weidenbaum — acoustic historian , noise fantast , medicine instructor , and author of abrand new book about Aphex Twin — has been blogging about music , electronics , and everyday sounds at his blogDisquiethere at Gizmodo for the last few month .
But his written material and music career both go back nearly two decades , and can be tracked not only through his main web log , atdisquiet.com , but also through the tortuous work he has produced with theDisquiet Junto , a immense , international , and unstructured group of sonic collaborators task every few hebdomad with a new melodious challenge .
Marc ’s work has always been impressive for its mystifying centering on — and ability to sort out through — the overlap soundscapes of the cosmos . His own rummy form of acoustic news media might let in exploring the emergency warning sirens of San Francisco , afresh , wondering soundtrack for the metropolis of Lisbon , or even thebackground sound of retail environments . In the cognitive operation , Marc ’s employment suggests that , as much as we ask computer architecture , pic , or engineering science critic , we need sound critics , people out there hash out and yield almost weirdly intense tending to the noises of the routine world .
In any case , Gizmodo latterly sit down to talk to one of our own , enquire Marc about hisnew book . It looks back at a double album secrete in 1994 , one that has since become a modern classic of electronic ambiance : Aphex Twin’sSelected Ambient Works vol . II . I was especially excited to find out that Marc would be writing about this : it would be one of my best-loved music author tackling an album that more or less soundtracked my own early teenage years , with its tolerant swathes of attractively alien , even deep sinister and claustrophobic , medicine that seemed to me , at that early eld , to be utterly and awesomely relentless in doing away with any expectation of what medicine could or should be .
sum up to that the weird rumor circulating at the fourth dimension that Richard D. James — Aphex Twin ’s actual name — rely on a strange combining of place - made synthesiser and crystal clear dreaming , not to mention the challenging — though some might say pretentious — fact that the album utilize small , textured double instead of song titles , and the whole thing had the feel of a unearthly , post - verbal creation of humbled keyboards and off - kilter looped samples . What Marc Weidenbaum would have to say about this , not only stylistically or musically , but historically — whether he would be canonise Selected Ambient Works vol . II or bursting its house of cards — not only got me excited to take the book but to get in signature with Marc and ask him questions immediately about his enquiry and thoughts .
Marc Weidenbaum : Well , the shortest answer is , simply , no . Gear was n’t really a focal point for me . I ’m much more focussed on the civilisation of technology and on the role of sound in the medium landscape painting — about the way euphony has been ingest , appreciated , intriguingly misread , and subsequently used by others . As the saying goes , some of my best friend are gearheads , and they provide me a helpful balance during my enquiry , but we have complementary skills and interests .
In improver , Aphex Twin is a great misinformer . He has historically toyed with his audience , using the media as a semi - witting player in the fantasm fun . He ’s utter up his own home brew technological skill , even when , after the fact , it ’s been made clear by listeners far more informed about such things than I am that the equipment is often just off - the - rack clobber . Which is n’t to pass judgement , either on his culture electronic jamming or on his employment of pre - existing equipment . We need pranksters — especially pranksters who make beautiful music .
In fact , Richard D. James talked with me about his gearwhen I interviewed him back in 1996 . He focused during the conversation in particular on the economic value of a circumscribed toolset . To cite it in part , he said : “ I could be quite happy knead with , like , about four bit of my favourite equipment forever , ’cause it ’s got unnumbered possibilities . You ’re not limited — well , you are limited with some sound genesis sort of things , but you ’re still only limited by your imagination , and set out new equipment is sort of like being spoiled , really . ” My take on what he was saying was n’t : “ I only use these few pieces because they specifically are best , ” but more along the contrast of “ Setting the constraint of just using a few pieces of equipment is good . ”
This is n’t to say , though , that there is no technology discussed in my leger — in particular , I look at how database , such as the monumental one operate by Gracenote , mediate our experience of civilization , and I talk about some early , influential electronic mail treatment groups to explore how that variety of internet communication influenced our discernment of the criminal record .
Weidenbaum : The track record is often take at expression value as being “ beatless”—as being barren of rhythm and percussion . But I spend a chunk of the book trying to move past that formal Wisdom of Solomon , and to have the album be reconsidered as a sequence of compositions , not as a collection of atmospheres .
One track in particular stand out in this regard . It ’s the third track on the album . It often goes by the name “ Rhubarb , ” but it ’s officially untitled on the album .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVvjXJentik
It ’s a very simple track , even on an album of very dim-witted tracks . It consists essentially of one single lovely melodious phrase that repeats for the full length of the birdcall . There is no chorus line , no verse , no nosepiece , just a musical phrase limit to coil . It ebb and menses , gentle as the sort of matter you might play when rocking a baby ’s provenience . Just because the tune is extremely simple , however , does n’t mean that interesting things are n’t happening . At the aerofoil horizontal surface , with each repetition , it has a slightly different tonic and timbral presence . But that ’s the atmospheric part , the sound invention part .
There ’s also a more traditional compositional element , which I regain fascinating . In my research for the book I interviewed not one but two musician who , independent of each other , transcribed this track for acoustic guitar . The melodic phrase in fact change , simple as it may be . This is structural : when the song begins , it ’s just a five - preeminence musical phrase and , at some point along the line a sixth bill is added — it fills in a lowly gap . Then , toward the end of the song , that 6th note goes away again .
The musical theme of a song whose compositional development consists of the accession of a single note is a remarkable affair , especially because of how that eventual absence seizure plays out : the absence seizure of that note at the end is very unlike than the absence at the beginning , because we hear the absence seizure . And what could be more ambient than get word an absence seizure ?
Weidenbaum : Just the other workweek , I was watching the sixth episode of the first time of year of True Detective . There ’s a moment when Marty , the character played by Woody Harrelson , ups and leaves the interrogation that he ’s been submitting to for much of the length of the series . you’re able to see the gears move in his head , and scarcely a simple sine wave of sound starting line playing , just a wisp of what might be considered a “ score . ” It ’s the sound of a mind that has resolved itself .
For a moment , though , I was pulled out of the narration because , have Aphex Twin on my mind for so long , I marvel if the album was used in the show , the way its euphony has demo up in such films as the Amish documentary The Devil ’s Playground or the feature film Manic , both of whose directors , Lucy Walker and Jordan Melamed , I question in my book . It turned out not to be ; but , whether or not it was specifically music from the album almost does n’t count . The album ’s firebrand of standard atmosphere - as - tonal pattern has become ubiquitous . As one person translate my book put it so wonderfully in a tweet to me latterly , “ you may see this shit in like , everything today . ”
https://twitter.com/embed/status/439238823982415872
The upshot of that omnipresence — of the variety of music we discover every day in TV commercial message , in video games , in movie heaps by the the likes of of Cliff Martinez and Jon Hopkins , to name just two example — is that it takes effort to remember back to when releasing such music was still very new .
Weidenbaum : Selected Ambient work Volume II wad with the idea of what an album is . If it ’s an album with an overarching concept , that concept may be about the beauty inherent in willful confusion . This is what Frank Loesser and Jimmy McHugh celebrate in the Sung dynasty that Chet Baker helped make renowned : “ Let ’s Get miss . ” In retrospect , the sort of getting drop off that ’s implicit in in Selected Ambient Works Volume II — an philia for value the unnameable — taps into the digital era that was just begin its logarithmic rise to mogul .
So much about the book ’s horse sense of discombobulation is overdetermined . The tracks , with one exclusion , have no titles . Only pictures are furnish , in a beautiful spread head of graphic and photograph , a data formatting that tap into Aphex Twin ’s state pursuit in logical dreaming and , close relate , in synesthesia . As with his descriptions of his home brew tech , his interest group in limpid dreaming has to be folded into his myth - fashioning with forethought , but I spoke independently with two people who worked intimately with him who confirmed lucid dreaming as part of his creative outgrowth .
The record album comes in three different edition , with three different numbers of track — some with 23 cartroad , some 24 , some 25 . immix with the lack of titles , this makes even discussing the album quite complicated . It ’s an engine of freak out .
And , of course . there is the euphony itself . At the time of its liberation — when hearing it on vinyl radical was not meaningfully less common than listen to it on CD — it was very difficult for the attender to distinguish where one track finish and the next one began . In time , as civilization and engineering have becharm up with the record , its sonics have become more common , and thus it ’s more knowable than it was early on , but it still is inherently tantalize . Ironically , now that it ’s uncommitted in MP3 data formatting , and it ’s almost always experienced in a manner where the individual racecourse is front and center , a new level of confusion has begun , because digital version , such as the one on iTunes , do n’t broadly speaking come with the full original artwork .
That ’s the storey of engineering : for everything we gain , we lose something , too .
Weidenbaum : The theatrical role of titles in medicine is an interesting area .
To start with , I ’ve always been covetous of the relationship that musicians have to words — especially mass who make music that does n’t have Word . I stand for , for Oliver Nelson to be able-bodied to title a workplace The Blues and the Abstract Truth , and to then make the hearer listen for that title ? Charles Mingus with The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady ? Miles Davis with In a Silent Way ? Ornette Coleman with Body Meta ? And those are just album titles — the specifics of caterpillar tread titles , and how titles shape and inform our hold of the nonfigurative kingdom of vocal - less music , is a rich , ample topic . I like your take on this : the feedback loop of mental image fend for music and music standing for images and dustup mixed in there somewhere .
Selected Ambient Works Volume II plays with it in numerous ways . At the level of album title , it ’s called Volume II even though there is n’t a bulk I , not in the real sentiency . There was Selected Ambient Works 85 - 92 . Perhaps Selected Ambient turn 92 - 94 was n’t as impressive - sounding , in terms of ambit . At the level of Song dynasty title , it has these images stick out in as song title . The look-alike are only mistily abstract . citizenry well visualise out what they referred to , and those footing came , in written anatomy , to stand for the image that stand for the track . Antipathy among some longtime Aphex Twin listeners for the “ word titles ” has confused me , because it makes a rough preeminence between articulate the image out loudly , as it were—”I like the track with the domino image”—and typecast it out as “ Domino . ” net communication remain largely textual matter - ground , no offence to all those hombre GIFs out there , so it ’s natural that “ Domino ” and “ Lichen ” and “ pieplant ” would proliferate and take root .
Anyhow , I toil into this a lot in the book , in the “ Synesthetic Codex ” chapter , but that ’s me getting at the contours of it .
Weidenbaum : My affectionateness for the recent , lamented Southland ’s use of strait has not abated , despite the show ’s cancellation . If anything , it ’s grown , especially as newfangled appearance have struggled to find a equilibrium between score and wakeless design . True Detective is a good deterrent example of this . The music in it , especially in the terminal installment , is more texture than compose euphony , in the horse sense of music identifiable by the view audience as medicine . The matter is , audience are still more used to euphony than to texture , so I intend , in some ways , it ’s even more artificial - sounding than music . These things are shifting powerful now , so someone ’s get ta push it forward , and True Detective sure enough did that .
I have it in judgment , if metre grant , to do a post - mortem — an release consultation — with multitude who worked on Southland . In the course of study I teach on the function of sound in the media landscape painting , I ’ve been assigning episodes to the students to study how sound help a narration purpose . This semester we address the first 16 episodes in full , in sequence , one episode per student . It was really exciting to do that geographic expedition , and then to watch Jacques Tati ’s Playtime and heed for audio in that classic film , which was even more under - appreciated in its prison term than Southland has been .
The difference between composed ambient sound and found ambient is complicated , and has a mint to do with setting . In terms of music — that is , in terms of audio intended to be enjoyed on its lonesome — the quad is slur by the employment of field recordings in ambient speech sound , something a lot of musicians do , with increasing frequency .
In the linguistic context of narrative , of tv and film , I think bang-up heavy design requires a point of view . When the screen shows an explosion and the sound go out , that ’s because we ’re experience it from the decimal point of view of the of a sudden deafen admirer . When we hear Cliff Martinez ’s music in Drive , it ’s partially because it ’s the medicine we imagine Ryan Gosling ’s character playing in his car or hear in his straits .
What I ’m acquire at is a psychological looping on Walter Murch ’s idea of “ worldizing . ” Murch ’s work , most famously perhaps in American Graffiti , necessitate hearing sounds , notably medicine , as if they were being heard in the linguistic context of the story : songs vocalise like they were on a crappy car radio . The next step is how those sounds sound to the graphic symbol , depending on the character ’s state of mind . This is what Southland did so well : the humming of a store ’s refrigeration unit is loosely unheard in everyday life , but as a signaling of an unobserved menace — as a symbol of looming malevolence — it is gimcrack during time of stress , such as if you ’re a police force police officer seek to line up a murderer in the back of a convenience computer memory .
Selected Ambient Works Volume II muddies this space between write and ascertain in various ways . At the level of general hearing , in the classic ambient good sense , it melt into your way when you playact it in the desktop . It melts into the thin atmosphere . And it does matter then to disrupt that , like put a relatively gimcrack course after a placid one , so you cozy up to the speaker system , and then get surprised . In the circumstance of film , it ’s especially exciting in its ambivalent , runny commonwealth .
I think director Lucy Walker , well known for her The Crash Reel , is peculiarly successful in this regard . I ’m very proud of I got to speak with her as much as I did when research my book . She used a mickle of Selected Ambient Works Volume II in her Amish rumpspringa docudrama film The Devil ’s Playground , where the sound of Aphex Twin ’s euphony at times seems to be the sound of electrical energy , of modernism , that looms at the sharpness of the Amish community .
More of Marc Weidenbaum ’s authorship can be found atdisquiet.comanddisquiet.gizmodo.com , andhis book is available nowfrom 33 1/3 Book .
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